Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee 

Oral evidence: Public sector procurement of food, HC 469

Tuesday 10 November 2020

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 November 2020.

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Neil Parish (Chair); Ian Byrne; Geraint Davies; Dave Doogan; Rosie Duffield; Barry Gardiner; Dr Neil Hudson; Mrs Sheryll Murray; Derek Thomas.

Questions 1 - 44

Witnesses

I: David Bowles, Head of Public Affairs, RSPCA; Ruth Westcott, Sustainable Fishing and Climate Co-ordinator, Sustain; Rob Percival, Head of Policy, Soil Association.

Written evidence from witnesses:

– RSPCA

- Sustain

- Soil Association

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: David Bowles, Ruth Westcott and Rob Percival.

Q1                Chair: Welcome to our inquiry on the public sector procurement of food. I very much welcome our witnesses this afternoon. We have Ruth Westcott, campaign co‑ordinator at Sustain; David Bowles, head of public affairs, RSPCA; and Rob Percival, head of policy at the Soil Association. Would you like to introduce yourselves a little more? Then we will make a start.

Ruth Westcott: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Ruth Westcott and I am from Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming. We have been working on public procurement for about 20 years, of which I have been doing that for about seven years now.

David Bowles: Good afternoon. My name is David Bowles. I head up the RSPCA’s campaigns and public affairs work. The RSPCA also writes the standards for RSPCA Assured, which many of you will know is the UK’s higher animal welfare assurance scheme. It has about 55% of the eggs that you eat, about 25% of the pork that you eat and about 15% of the turkeys that you will hopefully eat at Christmas.

Rob Percival: I am Rob Percival, head of policy at the Soil Association, which you might know as an organic certification body, but it is also a charity campaigning for healthier and more sustainable food and farming. Within our charity branch, we run a programme called Food for Life, which runs a catering accreditation scheme working with caterers in half of the schools in the country, many NHS trusts and other public settings. We have a long legacy of working on public procurement with members of the expert panel that developed school food standards, members of the Defra panel that developed the balanced scorecard, and members of the hospital food review that Prue Leith has been advising.

Q2                Chair: We look to have a very good panel this afternoon, so thank you all very much. What impact has Defra’s 2014 plan for public procurement had on actually procuring food for the public sector?

David Bowles: The short answer is that nobody knows, because Defra has not audited the scheme at all in the six years that it has been operating. The RSPCA believes that there are two things that the public procurement scheme needs to do. The first is to raise its standards on animal welfare. They are baseline standards whereas at least on fish they are Marine Stewardship Council standards. Secondly, because they have been in operation and nobody has audited it, nobody knows how much of an impact it has had in hospitals, prisons or other procurement areas.

Ruth Westcott: I would certainly echo what David said. There is a lack of data about how much impact the standards have had, both in terms of how well they are being implemented but also the impact it has had on producers and farmers that could be benefiting from the standards.

The best guess out there is in the Department of Health 2007 report into hospital compliance with the minimum standards for hospital food. It said that 48% of hospitals were not complying. Sustain also did a study into London hospitals and found that only 51% were compliant. That is the minimum food standard. As a best guess, there is about 50% compliance with what is supposed to be a mandatory standard. It is fair to say that that is not working at the moment.

However, there is some evidence of good progress. Sustain runs the Sustainable Fish Cities campaign. We have worked over the last six or seven years to get the fish standards, which first came out in the Government buying standards in 2011, adopted as far as possible across the food service—so public sector catering and private catering. We found that where there is a level of transparency—we publish the businesses that have a sustainable fish buying policy—some follow-up and accountability, and a level of monitoring, those standards have been very well adopted. We have seen a transformation in the supply chain over to verifiably sustainable fish being the norm.

The main suppliers have increased their supply of fish that is compliant with the Government buying standards. It is now getting to the point where it is more difficult to buy anything that is not compliant with those sustainability standards. There is really good evidence there about the power of public procurement standards in changing the supply chain and delivering those benefits down at the supplier level. But, while it has happened in fish, we just do not have the evidence that this is happening across the board with the standards.

Q3                Chair: The obvious supplementary question to ask you is how we make sure it is not just fish. How do we move it to meat and vegetables across the piece? How do we do that?

Ruth Westcott: I am a campaigner and I have been working to get those fish standards adopted for six years. It would be great if you just put me out of business. For businesses that are working with the standards, it is much better if it is a legally binding standard that all the businesses know that they need to meet. That is what happens with the school nutrition standards. It makes life easier for businesses and for the supply chain. It is much more efficient if businesses know what they need to do and if that just happens automatically.

Making those kinds of changes in the supply chain when new products are developed, so that suppliers do their work in the supply chain to make compliant products, requires investment whatever the size of business, but particularly for smaller businesses. Investment in creating compliant products requires money. These businesses need the certainty that these standards will be followed and implemented properly. Legally binding standards with monitoring, enforcement and proper compliance checking are what is needed.

Nobody wants to be on the receiving end of a campaign. Businesses would much rather not be named on our website as not compliant. For them, it would be much nicer to know that they are just meeting the same standards as everybody else.

Q4                Chair: It could be a case of name and shame, but also to encourage people before we get there to make sure that we buy the right food for the process. Rob, at the moment, the Defra standards seem to be the best kept secret in the world. What is your take on it?

Rob Percival: The key contribution that the plan for public procurement made was the introduction of this balanced scorecard, which is a tool for procurers that incorporates the Government buying standards and allows them to balance cost against broader dimensions of environmental and social quality. It is mandatory across central Government but not across the broader public sector, although the recent review into food in the NHS has recommended that it should be mandated across the NHS.

If the Government were to move to implement that across the public sector, we would see clear benefits for British farmers, more money channelled into spend on UK produce and a higher quality of environmental and animal welfare standards assured. There are big questions about compliance and monitoring but, as a first step, as you say, it needs to stop becoming a secret and become a mandated tool.

Q5                Chair: There is no doubt that some of these standards in the 2014 plan are pretty good, but the trouble is that they are not necessarily being implemented and monitored. Who are the ones who can actually monitor it? Does it need to be Government? Does it need to be independent? How does it need to be done?

David Bowles: It is important to work out where these standards have come from. The three organisations in front of you now were all dealing with the London 2012 committee. It was the first Olympics to ever put sustainability and animal welfare standards as part of the Olympic Games. They had some quite good standards. They did not go so far as the RSPCA wanted but they had 100% free-range eggs, for instance. They also had a certain percentage of higher-welfare chicken. Therefore, we felt that that was an opportunity, because the Olympic Games showed that we could produce that and procure that for the athletes and for the public. We thought that was a good opportunity for Defra when it wrote its standards in 2014.

However, as you say, it is quite strange. In some areas, like fish, they follow the MSC standards, which is fine. Indeed, other countries also follow the Marine Stewardship Council standards. However, on animal welfare, they are very poor. They are just baseline. For instance, as I said earlier, about 57% of eggs produced in the UK are free range. That is going to go up as retailers move across to free range in the next two years. By 2024, we could have 70% to 80% of eggs being produced in the UK as free range, but the Government buying standards are still baseline battery cage and caged eggs.

That is not realistic. If the Government’s procurement standards did not change, they could be keeping the cage system in place in the UK. The Government need to look very clearly at the standards, look at what worked in London 2012 and apply the new procurement standards going forward.

Q6                Chair: I could not agree with you more. Free-range eggs have been a great success and we can actually move it even further in that direction. You are saying that the Government need to lead by example and they are not necessarily doing so at the moment. That is the diplomatic way of putting it. It is unlike me to be diplomatic, as you know, David, but on this occasion I will be.

Rob Percival: I can share our experience of the Food for Life scheme, which covers a broad range of health and sustainability criteria, and incorporates mandatory legal nutrition standards where they apply in the sector—say, the school food standards. It is a tiered scheme going up from bronze to silver to gold, with the gold level of the scheme being very ambitious around organic and RSPCA produce, MSC fish and so on, and local and more sustainable procurement.

Half the meals we certify, which is 2 million every day, are at those higher levels of the scheme. We know clearly that when the right framework is in place and caterers have the right support and incentive, they can move from that legal baseline and progress into these higher tiers where they are delivering genuine environmental and social benefit.

One key component that needs to be tackled is the tendering environment in which these contracts are awarded. Food for Life has grown in the last 10 years in a context in which the weighting to those quality criteria relative to cost has generally been 60:40. It has created an environment in which caterers can viably compete on those broader dimensions of quality. But in the last few years we have seen a real shift to low-cost tendering with the ratio adjusted to 80:20 in favour of cost, which creates a race to the bottom and a situation where even those baseline legal standards are sometimes not being met.

There are a few pieces of the puzzle. Are the standards fit for purpose? Some of them are getting there but they need to be improved, as David said, particularly for animal welfare. Are they being implemented and enforced? If the Government can do all those things, and progressively improve and raise those standards as they go, it could deliver genuine benefits for public health, for British farmers and for the environment.

Chair: The challenge is that cost will always be part of the process. You expect that. But sometimes, with a very minimal cost, we could have much better-quality food and much better welfare and environmental standards. This is the whole raison d’être of our inquiry where we will be looking into how we nuance that.

Q7                Dr Hudson: Thank you, Rob, Ruth and David, for being before us today. Your answers have already teed me up for this second question about exemptions in Government buying standards. Many of us have been working hard in Parliament in recent months trying to uphold animal welfare and food production standards in international trade deals. We have had some significant movement by the Government on that. Your answers already have shown us that, as well as upholding those standards in international trade deals, we need to uphold them in our domestic trade transactions when we are procuring food in the public sector in the United Kingdom. Your evidence is giving us strength to say that we should be doing this at home as well as when we are securing trade deals.

As an MP who is a veterinary surgeon, I will quote this with a bit of alarm. The Government buying standards for food and catering services state, “All food served must be produced in a way that meets UK legislative standards for food production” and “for animal welfare, or equivalent standards”, but they add, “If in any particular circumstances this leads to a significant increase in costs which cannot reasonably be compensated for by savings elsewhere, the procuring authority shall agree with the catering contractor or supplier to depart from this requirement and the reasons for doing so shall be noted and recorded”.

Having put it on record, I feel some alarm when I look at that exemption. I just wanted to ask you what your thoughts on that exemption are and what impact it has had in practice. Has it come into play? Ruth, you have talked a little about the fish side of things, but has that exemption come into play significantly and should this be a cause for concern for our Committee?

David Bowles: It is ironic that Parliament has been advocating ensuring that the Government meet their manifesto commitment of not having lower animal welfare standards and produce coming in from free trade agreements, while their procurement rules allow them to go for lower animal welfare standards than the legislation. You have three issues here. You have low standards; you have a balanced scorecard that says you can ignore those low standards; and the Government have given an exemption to even meeting their own animal welfare legislation. That is really undermining British farming and the British animal welfare standards that the Government have fought so hard to have.

The short answer to your question is that, because there has been no review, we have not had much transparency and we know very little about what the impact of that is. We know very little about where the Government get their food for their procurement. We assume it is from the UK but it may not be. It may be coming in from Europe. As we know, some countries in Europe are farming at lower standards than the UK. On chickens, for instance, the Czech Republic farms at lower standards than the UK.

That is without looking at the free trade agreements. The worry for the RSPCA, if you still have this exemption under procurement rules, is what could happen in a free trade agreement with the USA. Do not forget that our farm animal welfare standards are essentially protected by our tariffs at the moment. If those tariffs go in a free trade agreement and we negotiate those tariffs away, what is to stop, for instance, dried or liquid eggs coming in from the USA, being used in our procurement standards, going into our hospitals, schools or prisons and undercutting the very welfare standards that the Government said that they were here to enhance and keep?

Q8                Dr Hudson: You feel that the evidence is not really there as to how much of this food is potentially coming in. We just do not know.

David Bowles: There is very little transparency on this whole issue. As Ruth said, we have some evidence from certain hospitals and you have received some evidence from hospitals about how they are trying. Even that evidence shows that they are making up only 50% to 55% of the standards for procurement. As the evidence that we have shows that there is little adherence, my worry is that we could have the potential for a lot of food being produced and used in procurement that is below even UK legislative standards.

Rob Percival: I agree with David. We do not know how much is coming in but regularly and repeatedly we see, when schools or hospitals in public settings come into the Food for Life scheme, where the baseline requirement at the bronze tier is that all meat is farm-assured, typically through Red Tractor, and eggs are free range, that a lot of the animal‑based produce being served is not from the UK and is quite plausibly from lower-standard systems. It is undoubtedly there and these loopholes are entirely unhelpful.

We know that there is some cost balancing to be done if you want to serve better produce in public settings but it is entirely achievable, through rebalancing the cost-quality ratio in tenders, as I mentioned, and through more ambitious moves to make the service more appealing.

In the gold tier of Food for Life, 15% of the produce is organic and all the animal produce is higher welfare. This is achieved in a cost-neutral manner by rebalancing the menu to serve a little less meat of better quality. By raising the quality of the service overall, you get more bums on seats and a more viable service because you are selling more meals. Buying differently with more local procurement and building relationships with suppliers and producers often enables you to get a better price for better-quality produce. We know that it can be done but you need the legislative and regulatory baseline in order to encourage that best practice.

Q9                Dr Hudson: That is really helpful. It also confirms the point that much of this food coming in would escape the labelling system as well. The consumers will not be able to make an informed choice because there is no labelling; it will just be served up. That is something that we as a Committee can look at.

Ruth Westcott: You have taken the words right out of my mouth there, Neil. The panel should be very concerned that the public sector could be the back door through which chlorine‑dipped chicken and other substandard food enters the UK market. We have had commitments from some retailers that they would not buy it, but we have not seen the same from the contract catering sector. The proposal that has been touted is that consumers will have the choice and they can make the decision about whether they buy lower-standard food or whether they want to support higher standards and support our farmers. That is not possible in public sector catering because it is not normally labelled on menus except with the Food for Life food. More often than not, people eating public sector food do not have the choice.

The other way that you could look at it is that the Government commit to buying a certain amount of food for the public sector, so we are the consumer. We say, as the public sector, that we will make the choice not to buy it and the money we put aside for that service—25% of the public eat a public sector meal every day—will be spent in a way that supports the raft of Government priorities that it should prioritise, such as climate change and supporting British producers, especially post‑Brexit and with other supply chain disruptions.

The best solution is to not let the food into the country in the first place and to ban the import of food that does not meet British standards through the Trade Bill, just because the Agriculture Bill has lost that opportunity. It has gone; the Trade Bill is still there. If not, outlaw it in the public sector food standards.

Q10            Ian Byrne: These are probably going to be extremely short answers. Once you give your answers, which I fully expect to be what I fully expect them to be after listening to what you have just said, could you also tell me if you have had the opportunity to feed into Henry Dimbleby’s plan and if you have taken it, in the potential answer that you are going to give me? The question is a simple one. Should this exemption be removed?

Ruth Westcott: Yes, 100%, for the reasons I have given but also on a practical level. If you are producing food for the public sector, and you know your competitors can produce to a lower standard and it can still be accepted, there is no incentive to produce a higher standard. We need that incentive. On a practical level, especially for the SMEs that work in the supply chain in the UK, without that certainty they cannot invest.

Rob Percival: Yes, we should tighten the standards and remove the exemption. Yes, we have been in ongoing dialogue with Henry and his team, who I am repeatedly reassured are committed to something bold on public procurement in the final food strategy. There are several folks there working on it. The Government’s recent obesity plan also committed Henry and his team to working on procurement through the final strategy.

David Bowles: I am going to join in the consensus. That derogation should be got rid of. We just talked about labelling. Do not forget that in public procurement there is no labelling. Do not forget that there is only mandatory method of production labelling for eggs. We welcome the Government’s commitment to bring in mandatory method of production labelling for other things. That may well happen in the next year or so, and we hope it is going to happen quite quickly on things like pigs and chickens, but the danger is that that will just be for retailers and not for public procurement.

We could again be in the ironic position that the retailers have committed not to import chlorine chicken or hormone beef, for instance, but the Government have not, even though they have said that it is in their manifesto commitment. The Government’s own rules could in fact allow this to come in via the back door and there would be no labelling of it. Those are real risks.

We also agree with part one of Henry Dimbleby’s food strategy. It contains some useful things about trade such as having conditional liberalisation, only allowing in products that are produced to our own standards, giving lower tariffs for those products and keeping the products that are not produced to our standards out. The Government should be looking at that very seriously and putting it into their trade negotiations.

Ian Byrne: The labelling part is extremely key and it will hopefully be reflected in the report.

Dr Hudson: We have a lot of consensus there for that final example of whether this exemption should be removed. Could we get on record how best that could be done so that it has teeth that could be enforced? Is that through Henry Dimbleby’s strategy? Is it through secondary legislation or something that says that this practice is unacceptable and that it is in law? We as a Committee could take that away but, Chair, you or our expert witnesses might want to answer that. How can we get that exemption removed?

Chair: This will be a conclusion for our report. We can also link it to the Government’s proposal now to amend the Trade Bill to make sure that food that does not meet our high standards of production here does not come into the country. We have to link that to make sure that, when public procurement is made, that also meets those high standards. I would have thought that we have a great opportunity. If the witnesses are happy, I will leave it there. We are getting great answers but we probably need to speed it up a bit.

Q11            Geraint Davies: We have already heard that there may be a need to tighten up the Trade Bill to protect consumers in Britain from chlorinated chicken and hormone-impregnated beef. Assuming that does not happen and we have a relatively toothless Trade and Agriculture Commission, would the witnesses agree that while consumers may be able to differentiate different products, such as hormone-impregnated beef, from the labelling, people in hospitals and schools will not have any labels and will end up with substandard food? Therefore, as a backstop provision, would you agree that we need Government buying standards and so-called scorecards to be consistent, mandatory and enforced across the whole of the UK so that, whether you are in a school, a hospital or a public place, irrespective of the trade arrangements, you can have safe, nutritious, healthy and sustainable food?

Rob Percival: It feels like we have covered a lot of this but, yes, there are risks that that food will end up in the public sector. Chlorinated chicken is the one that captures the headlines but we should probably be more concerned about the high levels of antibiotic use in US farming that is driving antimicrobial resistance. The prospect of UK hospitals serving meals that are fuelling antimicrobial resistance should be completely unacceptable. Tightening those procurement standards and mandating them across the public sector would be an obvious way of prohibiting that from occurring. Requiring that all meat is served from animals reared to UK production standards, for example, would be one part of that. Yes, I would agree with your suggestion.

Q12            Geraint Davies: Ruth, would you agree that it is important to have mandatory standards applied right across the UK to protect people in public services, schools, hospitals and the like from substandard imported food?

Ruth Westcott: Yes, 100%. It is also useful to think about what the word “mandatory” means. At the moment, the hospital food standards are supposed to be mandatory. The school food standards are mandatory but they are legislated in law, so you are breaking the law if you do not serve certain food. Those are the nutritional standards. It needs to be written into legislation and that is what “mandatory” needs to mean, because we know at the moment that so-called “mandatory” is only followed 50% of the time. It has to be mandatory and in law.

Q13            Geraint Davies: Are you aware of any variation across the country in the application of food standards in the devolved nations, in Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland? Are you concerned that if there is a food shortage as we Brexit on 1 January, that could be negative for the standard of food?

Rob Percival: Yes, there are differences between the devolved nations. Scotland, for example, has a separate set of nutritional standards for schools that are inspected annually. People go in, unlike in England, which means that there is a far higher level of compliance in Scotland. We have already seen in the last two or three years—for a variety of reasons including Brexit uncertainty, uncertainty in supply chains and rising overhead costs and staff costs—that the quality of food served in public settings has been in decline.

There is no doubt that another shock to supply chains would result in a lower quality of service. The catering service is under huge pressure and, in the event of some sort of messy future trade or no-deal scenario, we would expect lower-quality produce, less money for British farmers and a direct impact on public health.

Q14            Geraint Davies: In other words, if, in the middle of a pandemic, we have a Brexit that is not very satisfactory, alongside facing economic difficulties, there could be a situation where we have food shortages and lower food standards for the poorest people. Is that what you are saying?

Rob Percival: That is unquestionably a possibility.

Q15            Geraint Davies: David, what are your thoughts about the need for mandatory enforced standards across the UK to hold up the quality, rather than to let substandard imports through the back door that people are then force fed in hospitals, in essence?

David Bowles: We need mandatory standards, transparency and better standards. Those are the three exam questions that I would set for Defra. The RSPCA is very worried that, if we get a no-deal Brexit, the EU and the UK will essentially have high tariffs. There are huge tariffs on a lot of the food that we are discussing: eggs, 29%; chickens, 35% to 40%; and beef and sheep, 60% to 70%. If that produce is not coming in because of those tariffs, the UK will look to other countries to fill that vacuum.

The worry that the RSPCA has is that we could be filling that vacuum from the USA, Canada and Australia, all countries that have far lower standards than the UK, that inject their beef with hormones and that wash their chickens with chlorine. That is a huge problem that we need to look at. It is amazing that the Government have resisted putting language into the Agriculture Bill or the Trade Bill on stopping imports coming in to lower standards because they say, “Do not tie our hands in those trade negotiations”. While the RSPCA believes that that is not a legitimate reason to resist doing that, they could very easily do that in their own procurement standards and say that they would not be using produce produced to lower standards than the UK.

They could do that now. The European Union does not prohibit that at the minute and we have some examples of countries that have gone higher in their procurement standards than the UK has. If other countries can do it, the UK could do it as well. Of course, over the last four years, they have been fixated on Brexit but the worry for the RSPCA is that we are facing a perfect storm here. We could have a no-deal Brexit, which would stop imports coming in from the USA. The Government would be desperate to look for cheaper food from other countries and we could inadvertently import food that is illegal, and that would be perfectly legal to produce and to give in hospitals, prisons and schools under the Government’s own procurement standards.

Q16            Geraint Davies: Do you feel that, if the Government did put their muscle behind procurement in providing locally produced, highly nutritious, decent food, that would give the critical demand to raise the industry to create more productivity, better food and perhaps an export platform and a quality standard that would see us good for the future? Building back better would be building back stronger and more environmentally sustainable. Do you think that that should be the strategy?

David Bowles: Absolutely. There does not seem to be any joined-up thinking here with Government. For instance, this week, Parliament is passing the Agriculture Bill. The RSPCA hugely welcomes this and, for the first time, it will be diverting agricultural subsidies—over £3 billion-worth of food—into environmental and animal welfare type projects. We have never been able to do that before. At the same time, the Government are saying in their own procurement standards that, while they are prepared to give farmers money to improve their welfare standards, they are not prepared to say, “We are going to buy that particular food and use it in our hospitals and schools”. That seems to be a very un-joined-up piece of thinking.

Q17            Geraint Davies: Rob, you have used the figure of £200 million going into British produce if we buy better, in essence, and buy nutritiously and sustainably. I would have thought that that would not be a very ambitious figure, to be honest. In general, if we put our firepower of procurement behind decent food, would that be good for British business and for export as well, rather than having alternative backdoor substandard food in hospitals?

Rob Percival: Yes, absolutely. Those figures were derived from the plan for public procurement and represent additional spend that could go into British produce in the near term, if the balanced scorecard was rolled out across the public sector. It seems obvious that if the Government are spending more than £2 billion of public money per year, they should be spending it on things that benefit British farmers, the British environment, animal welfare and public health. It feels like there is a huge opportunity.

You have mentioned examples from other countries. We have seen just how ambitious public procurement can be in Denmark where the Government set the ambition that 60% of the food served in public settings would be organic. Copenhagen has gone beyond that to reach 84%. That is progressed in tandem with changes in land use. If you want to drive more sustainable farming in the UK or a shift in systems, not necessarily towards organic but in whatever agroecological direction you desire as being more sustainable, public procurement can provide a market for that produce and can support that land use transition.

It is about joining up the thinking. Hopefully, Henry’s food strategy is going to do some of this. With everything in play, the Environment Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the obesity strategies, public procurement should be seen as a key strand in joining all that together.

Geraint Davies: Ruth, do you think COP26 is an opportunity for us to set a global example of how we can look to ourselves to raise standards, to give the best food for everyone, whether you are in a school, a hospital or a shop, and to look towards a better future that is productive, economic and environmentally sound?

Chair: Just to add to the question, part of it is whether this is value for money. We all want to do it but, if you were in the Treasury, would it be value for money?

Geraint Davies: Sorry, I forgot. I should have mentioned value for money. Would it be value for money as well as good, nutritious food?

Ruth Westcott: It is a good point to add. If you think about it, this is money that we are already spending. We are not asking for a whole tranche of new money from the Treasury. We commit to delivering a certain number of meals per year to those who need it the most in the UK. It is a question of deciding what we do with that money and it is not an insignificant amount: £2.1 billion to £2.4 billion a year.

At the same time, we subsidise the farming systems. This is another way to subsidise the kind of farming systems that we want to see by guaranteeing them a market, not just now but over the long term, and guaranteeing that those investments in changing to agroecological farming, more sustainable fishing and so on will have a market for the produce. That is so important, especially for smaller businesses when they are looking to make decisions for the long term about how to manage their businesses.

It is also about normalising good diets. That is really where the public sector comes in. I talk a lot about fish but, now that it is the norm to be able to buy sustainable fish through the supply chain, those products are the norm for restaurants and other food service outlets because they all use the same suppliers and the same supply chain. Not only has it unlocked those products for the businesses that would not necessarily have thought about a sustainable fish buying policy without it being the norm, but it also normalises that in people’s diets.

We know that COP is coming up. We need to eat less but better meat as a population. We need to eat more fruit and veg, and less very heavily processed food. We have legal obligations to do this. Some 30% of carbon emissions come from the food system. The Government have a legal obligation now to deliver net zero. If not the public sector, then what? It will be more difficult and probably not preferable to legislate retailers. The public sector is the place to start, so you normalise those supply chains and guarantee that good producers have a clear market incentive for doing it. Knowing that we have to do it, this is the best place to start.

Q18            Geraint Davies: If you are a farmer producing and you know that public procurement wants the best standards, you are going to produce the best standards, then sell to the retailer and change the whole game. Do you think that COP26 therefore gives us an opportunity to say, “This is how you can use public procurement to provide a better future for all of us, plus extra exports and better value for money”?

Ruth Westcott: Yes, 100%. The Government have some very strong commitments to clean energy and transport changes. At the moment, the food bit of the puzzle is still lacking. We still do not really have a good solution to how we are going to change our diets to meet our climate objectives and our land. The best place to kick that off is public procurement. We are going to be internationally scrutinised on that and, at the moment, other countries are doing it a bit better. This is absolutely an opportunity for us to show global leadership. It is the path of least resistance.

Chair: Could I ask the witnesses to keep their answers a little tighter? We are beginning to run away with time. They are very good answers but just keep them a bit tighter.

Q19            Derek Thomas: Thank you to Ruth, Rob and David for giving us some fantastic insight and letting us see the opportunity.

We started off with the Government buying standards. The first point you made, David, was that we just do not collect the data so we do not know how well we are doing. The work that has been done by your organisations and by the Department of Health shows that schools and hospitals are largely non-compliant. Who should be responsible for gathering data on compliance with food procurement standards? What should the Government be doing to address the lack of data? It sounds to me that there is opportunity but also that there is quite an urgent situation ahead of us. Who should be gathering that data? How do the Government need to address this lack of evidence on how well we are doing?

David Bowles: There are different standards in hospitals and prisons, et cetera, so they should be collecting the data and bringing it to the Government. The Government should then be producing a report on how close they are to meeting their particular standards. I believe that there was supposed to be a report in 2017, which never happened, presumably because it was overtaken by Brexit. The first stage for the Government is to set up a transparent system of reporting and to give that report to Parliament, to this Committee for instance, and show where they are in terms of meeting their own standards.

We have mentioned other countries like Scotland and Denmark, and I am going to mention Italy here. Italy has had public procurement standards, including on animal welfare, since 2011 and improved them last year. For instance, they mandate that 40% of their eggs come from free-range eggs. They mandate that 15% of their meat comes from organic meat. If the Italians can do it, and their Government reports on how far they have come in doing it, surely the British Government should be able to do it as well.

Q20            Derek Thomas: You are really talking about each public sector area having a kind of self-assessment that they feed into Government. Is that what you are suggesting?

David Bowles: Yes, there needs to be a process and a system so that you get self-assessment and then the Government produce all of that into a report. You can maybe then get an independent auditor as well to look at that to accept that all the data is correct and has been adjudicated properly.

Ruth Westcott: I do not have much to add. The others have more experience in this area. Self-reporting is what happens at the moment in schools and marking your own homework has not really been seen as a very effective way of doing it. An independent organisation is right. The hospital food report from a couple of weeks ago, which Prue Leith led, said that the Care Quality Commission would be the best people to do that for the NHS. I will refer to Rob, who is more of an expert in this area.

Q21            Derek Thomas: When David gave his answer, I thought, “Crumbs, the amount of schools, hospitals and council departments that would just despair at the idea of collecting more data or having to do another report”. Is there a better way of doing this? Should we put the onus on the supplier themselves in terms of what they should be supplying to the public sector?

Rob Percival: School governors already have a statutory responsibility to gather evidence of compliance with the school food standards. Most of them do not know this. It is not on their radar. That is because the Government are not talking about it. Ofsted, in its inspections of the school leadership team, is not considering whether the school leadership is fulfilling its responsibilities with respect to school food. We have been suggesting for many years that Ofsted should have an enhanced role in this respect and that, in a similar manner to the sports premium where access to funding is contingent on providing evidence of spend, the school food funding mechanisms should only be accessible by a school if they are demonstrating compliance with standards.

That opens up a number of questions about what is suitable as evidence of compliance, which we will not get into the nitty-gritty of now. The school leadership team and, similarly, the leadership teams in NHS trusts should be held to account for their statutory responsibilities. There should be third-party organisations like the CQC or Ofsted overseeing that. There should be penalties for non-compliance, including lack of access to key funding.

Q22            Derek Thomas: For a minute, I thought, “Let us not get into reducing the food available to children any further than we may have already done”. If you had a contract to provide food to the public sector, could we not just make it the case that you legally have to meet certain standards so that food cannot go through the door of the school, the hospital or the prison unless it reaches the right kind of standard? Can it be done that way?

Rob Percival: That plays into the discussion we have been having about whether procurement standards are fit for purpose, whether they are implemented and so on. If the Government buying standards were properly enforced and tightened up, that would presumably do the job that you are referring to.

Q23            Mrs Murray: Could I turn to the Food for Life Served Here standards? Should more public bodies use the Food for Life Served Here standards or is there a risk that it leads to sustainability being treated as a tick-box exercise?

Rob Percival: When the balanced scorecard was developed in 2014, we worked closely with the Defra team to map Food for Life standards against what is on the balanced scorecard. That led to a statement within the document saying that, if you want to score highly against the balanced scorecard, one avenue for doing so is to seek accreditation through Food for Life. I should add that, as an accreditation scheme, it encompasses other schemes. RSPCA, MSC, Red Tractor and so on are built within it.

We have found that the scheme has been genuinely transformational in the settings where it has been implemented. It is not a tick-box exercise, partly because it is so rigorous—there is an annual inspection—and because it is ambitious and is driving genuine improvements in the quality of ingredients and provision. If it was rolled out more broadly or through a parallel approach, such as the balanced scorecard, you would see significant and long-lasting impacts on the food served in public settings.

The risk of a tick-box exercise is more the scenario we are in now where there are very weak standards that are not monitored and where compliance is weak.

Ruth Westcott: I completely agree. In the interest of time, I will not say too much. The other risk is that, rather than a tick-box, it becomes a postcode lottery whereby some people get such great meals through the Food for Life Served Here standards and others do not. Those standards should just be mandatory across the whole of the public sector. You also get a greater risk of non-compliance if it is not mandatory because it is more difficult to get the products that you need to meet the standards. If it is mandatory, that is all that anyone will sell, it is all that you can get from your supplier and it all just becomes a lot easier and more efficient.

David Bowles: I concur with what Rob and Ruth have said.

Q24            Rosie Duffield: Does the panel think that public sector menus should include and encourage vegetarian and vegan options as a way to reduce the environmental impact of food? Would the panel agree that there should be more education provided on this issue? For example, Ruth mentioned that 25% of people eat a public sector meal every day. Could a fact such as 30% of carbon emissions coming from the food sector be advertised more in those public sector settings?

Rob Percival: We know that less and better meat is a key part of the dietary shift that we need to resolve the climate and nature crises. The role that public settings can play is to normalise a more sustainable dietary pattern. There is perhaps a role for active education, fact conveyance and teaching but it is more just about making a different style of eating normal.

We are very clear at the Soil Association that a sustainable farming system includes animals and that an organic and agroecological scenario includes red meat. It is not necessarily the case that chicken is more sustainable than red meat and so on, as is often said, mainly due to the feed crops and the supply chain, and the impacts that they have.

We are talking about less and better meat across the board, and that should be applied in school and hospitals. That obviously entails more vegetarian and vegan options. At the moment, an update of the school food standards is underway looking at the fibre component of meals where there is an opportunity to introduce more beans, pulses and so on to the menu. We would strongly support such a move.

Ruth Westcott: There are some very good examples of this happening already and there is good evidence that the catering sector can adopt “less but better” very well. The PS100, for a month over April, reduced the meat in its meals by 20%. The emphasis there was on reverting to the expertise of caterers about where they did the reduction and where the better came from. It was not about taking meat away from people but allowing the caterers to understand where they can make those changes that would fit with the people receiving the meals. That is the approach that we would favour.

If we are going to make the dietary shift, it should feel like something that is a positive change for our health, not necessarily taking away something that people really like. What would come with that is vegetarian and vegan options as well as “less but better” across the board and reverting to the expertise of caterers about how to do that.

David Bowles: The RSPCA Assured scheme has had an “eat less, eat better” slogan for the last two years. I mentioned at the beginning of the evidence that RSPCA Assured has over 50% of the eggs and 25% of the pork produced in the UK. On the other end, there is still a huge amount of room. For instance, only about 1% of the chicken produced in the UK is produced to higher welfare standards. Less than 1% of our beef, sheep and dairy cattle are produced to RSPCA Assured standards.

Just going down that “eat less, eat better” mantra, there is a huge opportunity for us. Public procurement can play its role in also taking up that opportunity, particularly now that we are in a situation where farmers are going to be rewarded for farming to higher animal welfare standards. We are going to see Government money given, for instance, to chicken farmers to produce chickens that are slower growing, to beef farmers to increase the amount of pasture that they give their animals each year or to capital costs to improve their housing. There is this big opportunity and “eat less, eat better” will be a real part of that.

We talked just now about the COP meeting coming up next year. I also hope that the COP meeting has some very good food sustainable standards when they all meet up in Glasgow, and that all the attendees there are eating food that is not only good for animal welfare and good for the environment, but good for the climate.

Chair: There were some very diplomatic answers there.

Q25            Barry Gardiner: Ruth, I want to probe a little further with you what you said about public procurement and the way in which it can change supply chains. This is a really critical point. You mentioned the Olympics. About 15 years ago, we changed Government timber procurement. Timber procurement from Government is about 25% of all timber that is sourced in the UK. The effect of that was to make suppliers decide that, if they had to go to all the extent of getting PEFC or FLEGT accreditation for 25%, they might as well just do it for the whole lot. Is that your view of what will happen in the supply chains for food in the same way? Will suppliers just say, “If we are doing it for 25%, do it for the lot”?

Ruth Westcott: My experience of working with fish is exactly that. Brakes, for example, which is the largest food service supplier to the public sector, has increased its range of MSC fish year on year. Bidfood, which is the second largest, increased from 45 MSC certified lines in 2014 up to 132 in 2019. A couple of years ago, Brakes became the first supplier to say that all of its own-brand produce would be compliant with the Government buying standards. It has come to that point now where it is almost automatic. If you are a supplier, a smaller range is better. Just having a smaller range that meets the standards is more efficient for a business and, as a supplier, you are making it easier for your customers to meet the required standards.

Again, I would stress that, if the standards are voluntary and you know that people do not really meet them, you cannot make the kind of investment that is needed to develop the new product. Product development takes a lot of investment, especially for small producers. Unless they are mandatory, we just do not see it happening. You can browse the websites. It has to be mandatory.

Q26            Barry Gardiner: That is statutory mandatory, not just mandatory with the exception built in.

Ruth Westcott: Yes, exactly.

Q27            Barry Gardiner: You are really saying that the Government have an incredible amount of power here to change the way in which we source food, eat food and produce food. That power lies in the ability to direct and control the public procurement process.

Ruth Westcott: Exactly. Certified sustainable fish fingers were not really a thing 10 years ago and now they pop up on menus that have nothing to do with the Government buying standards.

Barry Gardiner: You even have Sheryll smiling so you must be on the right track.

Rob, the Soil Association has said that EU procurement rules were never the barrier to healthier and sustainable food procurement in the UK. Sometimes they were put up as such, but you do not believe they were. Could you just elaborate on that, to say how and whether leaving the EU and joining the Agreement on Government Procurement will enable the UK to change its domestic food procurement rules in any way?

Rob Percival: The domestic ambition is more important than the EU or WTO context. As you say, I do not think that the EU procurement laws were a problem. You can look across Europe and see that. We have covered that ground.

I do not see the WTO scenario as being either a threat or an opportunity. We just have to get our own policy right. There are also some technical barriers to be overcome. If you are a small-scale producer, it can be difficult to meet some of the public sector contracts as they are currently tendered. There is a trial going on with the Crown Commercial Service of a new platform called dynamic food procurement, which allows for a more nimble approach to delivering those public sector contracts and grants SMEs greater access.

With Ruth, you were talking about those ripples down the supply chain. It is also about fixing the routes to markets so that, if you are a small-scale and more sustainable producer, you can supply into these public sector markets. Dynamic food procurement, which the Crown Commercial Service is trialling in the south-west, provides the technology platform to do that. In addition to everything else we have discussed, we would want to see that platform rolled out across the public sector because that would allow a greater range of producers to supply, including those smaller-scale and more sustainable producers.

Q28            Barry Gardiner: Would you also say that, because the GPA—the Agreement on Government Procurement—only applies to contracts above a certain value, that also opens up that space for smaller companies? If we were smart and put out contracts that were of a lesser value, if we were procuring at local level at a smaller value than the GPA would cut in, could we enhance the public benefits of our food procurement even further?

Rob Percival: That is plausible. I am not close to the technical elements of the WTO rules but I do not believe that they pose any barrier to sustainable procurement on any scale. Certainly there are advantages to some of that smaller-scale and more dynamic procurement.

David Bowles: The GPA does not inhibit us doing what we want on procurement of food at all. I do not even think you will find the word “food” in the WTO’s GPA. It is mainly about large infrastructure projects, building bridges, roads, transport systems, et cetera. It is not about where you get your food from for hospitals.

To be honest, there are much bigger battles at the WTO for the UK Government to fight than the GPA. We need to protect our tariffs. We need to go in there and make sure that we are battling for high animal welfare and environmental standards when we are sitting down with people. The GPA gives us a lot of flexibility. I have not yet known a country that has been inhibited by it. Hopefully, we will join it. The Government have said that animal welfare should be part of the Government’s mandate going into trade agreements and into the WTO, so this gives the Government a real opportunity to espouse animal welfare in the GPA as well.

Q29            Barry Gardiner: Procurement has very much been in the news of late. How many PR consultants do you feel would be needed to procure good sustainable food and what sort of salary might they command to do that? Would it be, say, £165,000 or could we do it a little more cheaply than that?

Ruth Westcott: Good food sells itself. I do not think you need any PR around it. People just need to taste the good food. It tells its own story. But I would happily do it for that money.

David Bowles: The way that we have seen standards rise in free-range eggs over the last 15 years is due to two things: mandatory labelling and consumer power, because they have been asking for it. If I was unfortunately going into hospital, I would be asking, “Where is my food coming from?” because I want good food and healthy food to make me feel better sooner. It seems to me to be a win-win situation all round. You do not need costly PR consultants. You just need consumer power.

Q30            Dave Doogan: Building upon Barry Gardiner’s first question, if lower standards were proscribed by public procurement, it would have the effect of making the UK a less attractive proposition in gross terms for that type of product being imported. Would that have the effect, just by the virtue of scale, of protecting the wider food service market and retail from a leakage across of lower food standards that people otherwise would not want to see?

David Bowles: We have covered this before but, yes, the UK needs to ensure that its procurement standards are not allowing leakage of substandard, or indeed illegal, food into its procurement buying process. As we have discussed, you have quite good transparency with labelling in retailers but, the further you move away from retailers into restaurants and fast-food restaurants, and then into hospitals, prisons and universities, the less labelling you have and the chance of something going in via the back door becomes greater.

We talked about the Government’s power on this. The Government have two levers to pull. One is the £2.4 billion that they spend on public procurement, to raise those standards and to give an incentive to farmers to meet those. The other is the £3.3 billion that they hand out to farmers through subsidies, which they will now be directing towards animal welfare and the environment. That is a really powerful piece of financial elbow for the Government to use.

Q31            Dave Doogan: Expanding on that, do you believe that it is faintly contradictory to invest so heavily in animal welfare standards and production standards with taxpayers’ money only for them, by procurement rules, to render that product almost certainly unable to compete against standards available in procurement?

David Bowles: Absolutely. I said earlier that the Government do not seem to have a joined-up approach, but it is even worse than that. They seem to be tying their own hand behind their back. On the one hand they are giving out to farmers and saying, “Yes, animal welfare standards are really important so have some money to improve those”. On the other hand they are saying, “But we are not going to buy any of your produce. We are just going to buy the worst stuff, and it could even be coming in illegally from other countries”. They need to have both hands in front of them and use both sets of money to support British farming, and to support and improve animal welfare standards.

Q32            Dave Doogan: Is it not reasonable, if you want to pursue a whole system view of cost and cost drivers, to assess that, by spending that little extra on quality when it comes to public procurement of food, those savings will be made many times over, in support for your own domestic production and in hospitals and schools with better health outcomes for young or vulnerable people?

David Bowles: Yes, absolutely. We can have a discussion about whether Britain has the highest welfare standards in the world. In some areas it does and in other areas it does not. If you are buying British, you are shortening your supply chain and shortening the distance that the food needs to travel. Therefore, that has an impact on your carbon emissions and your carbon footprint. There should be a win all around here. It has amazed me that the Government have not yet worked out that they have all this financial power but they are not using it to the best of their abilities at the moment.

Q33            Dave Doogan: If we agree, and I hope that we do, that public procurement of food should represent a significant baseload for UK food production, what are the consequences of the UK’s domestic producers and farmers being unable to compete for a market of this size? What does it look like? It is not just unfortunate, is it? It is very significant.

Ruth Westcott: It looks very uncertain. At the moment, food producers particularly need certainty and clarity about planning for the next 10 years, if not more. This is an opportunity not just to support the kind of environmental systems that we want but to support food-producing regions that have been especially damaged by Covid and, potentially, Brexit. It is about using the money we have at the moment to level up and invest in places that produce food, including fishing communities and rural communities that could be producing good food to be sold locally. Not doing that looks very scary.

David Bowles: There are a lot of unknowns at the moment. Will we get a Brexit deal? What will we do when we get free trade agreements with other countries? The Government are right to a certain extent that that is a negotiation. This is one area—the Government’s procurement standards—that entirely lands in the power of the Government. They can decide what they are going to do and that is not provisional on what anybody else says. It is the easiest win for the Government to have and to get rid of one of those uncertainties. I would have thought they should take that with both hands.

Q34            Mrs Murray: Ruth just mentioned fishing communities and the uncertainty. The Fisheries Bill clearly says that we are looking at supporting local coastal communities. We have also been assured that there will be more access to a larger quota in a lot of species. Surely that does not point to uncertainty; that actually says that we are going to see benefits for our coastal communities.

Ruth Westcott: We could do but, at the moment, most of the fish that we catch is exported. We could end up in a situation where we are catching more and then exporting it and potentially paying tariffs on our exports. It could be very good, but let us make it as good as it can be by controlling what we can control, as David said, and making sure that there is more of a market. The Cornish hake is an excellent example of where they achieved Marine Stewardship Council certification. We could make more funding available for those communities to get accreditation through the Shared Prosperity Fund or the new local economic partnerships, and really make those communities producing good food have the best opportunities for the best markets in the UK and abroad.

Q35            Mrs Murray: We have seen agreements signed, most recently yesterday, with the Faroes, Greenland and Norway. We should be looking at this as a real opportunity and looking at it in an optimistic way. It is acknowledged that a lot of our imported fish comes from those countries at the moment. We would be able to supply domestically, cutting back on the carbon footprint of some of those fish because we would have access to them ourselves rather than relying on third states. I just emphasise again that there is a real opportunity there and we should be talking it up and not down.

Chair: Ruth, you are welcome to come back. We will park that one there because there are great opportunities. It is about making sure that the Government lead by example. We have been talking about that all afternoon.

Ruth Westcott: It is a great opportunity for British fisheries because, at the moment, people in their kitchens struggle to deal with lots of UK species. Let us get caterers with the expertise to use it and then we can enjoy it in a fish pie without having to worry about the processing, which we all struggle with.

Chair: You are right. Sometimes, when we see a picture of a fish, we do not necessarily want to eat it whereas, when it is prepared, we do. There is a lot of that to come, Sheryll, because we have a lot of home-produced fish that we will eat and enjoy, but there is a bit of progress to be made on how we market it, how we process it and how we cook it. Shall we leave that one there, Sheryll? Are you happy with that?

Mrs Murray: Absolutely, I am more than happy. I was just pointing out that, actually, there is a positive story here and it is not all doom and gloom. Yes, nobody has urged people to try other species of fish more than I have, from red mullet and John Dory to red gurnards and all sorts of things that we should perhaps be persuading the British housewife to try because they are really tasty.

Chair: We will have to try to put that in the public procurement rules. That will take a bit of doing, Sheryll, but we will work on it. Thank you for that question.

Q36            Geraint Davies: David, we have talked about the benefits of high-quality public procurement as an export platform. In the US trade agreement—the United States has a very developed agribusiness—hormone-produced beef and chlorinated chicken are big issues on the negotiating table. Do you not think that the Government will be thinking about market penetration for other sectors? It might be digital, financial or even manufacturing. If the British consumer does not want to eat these products, public procurement is a way of keeping them on the table. If the UK can feed hormone-produced beef to people in hospitals without them knowing and that gives them access to another market, is that the reason that they will object to the mandatory standards in public procurement that you want?

David Bowles: I cannot second-guess why the Government have not put it into the Agriculture Bill. The RSPCA supported it and I know that many of you around the table personally voted for that to go in. While we moved the Government a little, we did not actually get it in there. Yes, the UK has a number of bans on animal health grounds such as beef hormone, chlorine chicken, ractopamine and BST in dairy cattle. We also have 18 different farm animal welfare standards that we have inherited from the EU.

All of those farm animal standards are well above the US farm standards, particularly for those states that export to the UK. The US is this classic country where we definitely know that its agribusiness is pushing its Government to open up the UK market. It has not been successful in opening up the EU market and, to a certain extent, it sees the UK as a bit of soft-touch backdoor approach to try to get in to the EU market. The RSPCA has been really adamant that we need to keep our standards when we go into those negotiations. We need to be clear with the USA that our animal welfare standards are not up for grabs. That is the reason why we wanted it more than anything in the Agriculture Bill. It gave a very clear indication to the USA that our standards were not up for grabs.

At the moment, of course, it is not in there. Who knows what will happen now with the new incoming US Administration, but if we do sit down with them, if a trade deal is still on the table and if they know that there is this backdoor route into procurement—even if they do not get the produce going on to the shelves but into the hospitals and prisons—they may well think that this is a really good opportunity for them. The RSPCA would try to get much better clarification from the Government that not only are our animal welfare standards not up for grabs but that they will change their procurement rules. As we have discussed, it is the one area in which they have the power to do that now, if they want to do it. They are not limited by WTO rules or by EU rules. They can do it now if they want. That would give a clear message to the USA that our standards are not up for grabs.

Q37            Geraint Davies: If they think procurement is a backdoor entry point for substandard US food into Britain, do you think that will generate barriers and resistance to trade with the EU so that, overall, our trade position will be worse by allowing procurement to be used as a way of getting in hormone-impregnated beef? Would you agree with that?

David Bowles: Yes, absolutely. What scares the EU more than anything is produce coming into Great Britain like hormone beef or chlorine chicken that goes back into the EU through Northern Ireland. That breaks their laws because they have those laws in place. If the UK changes its laws—for instance, we decide to get rid of our ban on imports of beef hormone, which we could do by statutory instrument quite quickly within 30 days—the EU would have no trust in terms of sorting out whether the beef coming in from Great Britain is American hormone beef or whether it is just British un-hormone beef.

It is also undermining our British farmers because our British farmers do not want to inject their beef cattle with hormone. They do not want to inject their dairy cattle with BST or their pigs with ractopamine. It is about trying to protect and safeguard our British farming as well as giving a clear indication to the EU: “Don’t worry; all of our food is still going to be equivalent to your standards”.

Rob Percival: We have repeatedly mentioned hormone-treated beef and it is not necessarily commonly known that there is a high level of antibiotic usage associated with those hormone implants. The EU is moving to ban prophylactic use from 2022. Another dimension of this conversation on US trade is about the future of antimicrobial resistance and the far higher volume of antibiotics used in US farming. That should be a far higher concern for the Government in the context of these negotiations.

Q38            Geraint Davies: In other words, if we say no to that in our procurement policies in British public services, that will help our trade with the EU as well. Otherwise there is backdoor entry into its market for these chemicals.

Rob Percival: That is correct.

Chair: That is why we will see in the Trade Bill, all being well, the food and farming commission put on a statutory basis so that it can report on every individual future trade deal. I feel a lot more confident than I was that we will know exactly what is being negotiated. It also makes it much more difficult for any Government of any colour to then put into those trade agreements something that does not meet our standards.

Rob, you made the point that we sometimes miss the reason why chicken has this chlorinated wash. Because it is produced under low standards with a lot of antibiotics, it is then washed with the chlorine to make it safe to eat at the very end. We sometimes lose that. You made the point that if we are feeding this type of food in hospitals, reducing the amount of antibiotic use, as we are in this country, is essential. We need to probably go further and reduce antibiotic use even further. We can have much more control over what we are producing in this country than we can over what we are importing. I thank you for that evidence.

Q39            Mrs Murray: I would like to hear what our panel thinks about salad leaves that are presently washed in chlorine. Would you want to ban those as well?

Chair: We are probably going slightly off the subject but I suppose it is public procurement. I am not sure we are going to import salad leaves.

Mrs Murray: Absolutely, Chair. We already see these readily available and I am sure that they are procured as part of public procurement as we domestically purchase them in a supermarket. Can we just be absolutely clear as to the situation? You quite correctly said it was the animal welfare side of the chlorine-washed chicken; it was not that anything washed in chlorine was dangerous to health. We perhaps lost sight of that a little.

David Bowles: Washing something in chlorine is not a human health issue. It is safe, as Sheryll has said. We wash our salads in this. It is symptomatic of an underlying animal welfare issue. Essentially, the US chicken farmers do not clean out their sheds as much as the English ones. We do it after each batch. The Americans wait three or four batches and, at the end of the fourth batch, you need to wash the poor chickens, which are sitting down in their own filth.

Chair: They are also more densely populated in many occasions in America. There are a lot of issues, but we probably will not spend all afternoon denigrating American chicken because they can actually produce chicken to high standards. It is just that about 20% to 25% of their market is to this lower standard, which we sometimes forget. This is what they want to export to this country. We want to be sure, if we do a trade deal with America, that they can produce chicken to the same standards that we have. We can then accept those imports.

Dr Hudson: Chair, I want to reiterate your comment about the chlorination process mitigating and masking the substandard animal welfare upstream in the production. In terms of the safety of the chlorination, a study came out of the American Society for Microbiology in 2018 that said that the chlorination disinfection process is perhaps not the panacea; it does not get rid of 100% of the pathogenic bacteria. It merely makes them undetectable in the lab. It is not necessarily the thing that is making it completely clean. Animal welfare is the more important issue but there are some question marks over the disinfection process that have been published in scientific studies.

Q40            Chair: Thank you, Neil. I know you made the same point previously when we were debating the Agricultural Bill.

We have been talking about how we can procure the right food with the right standards. What I want to add into the equation now is how we can help support small and medium-sized suppliers. What difference could the Crown Commercial Service’s future food framework make?

Rob Percival: The framework is the vehicle through which this dynamic food procurement platform is being trialled and tested. It could be transformational if it was rolled out nationally. If further testing and trialling was needed, one avenue we could explore is through the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme. This is a Government scheme that provides a free piece of fruit and veg to all children aged four to six each day. We submitted a freedom of information request last year because no one would tell us and learned that 20% to 30% of the produce supplied through the scheme is UK-sourced. Obviously, bananas and so on need to come from abroad but, for example, 5% of apples and 13% of pears are supplied from the UK.

Consequently, a lot of it is of a lower quality, it is lacking in freshness and there is a high level of waste. This is partly because there is not this access for SMEs and smaller-scale producers. The dynamic food procurement platform that is being trialled could be applied to this scheme, allowing for a more nimble and flexible approach to procurement to get more British sustainable and fresher produce into schools, which would result in children eating more of it. There is a big opportunity with a fairly small procurement scheme, in the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme, to try some of this out.

Ruth Westcott: There are obvious benefits to local procurement, one being that the New Economics Foundation calculates that every £1 spent on the local food system delivers £3 in benefits to the local economy. Upscaling that would deliver significant benefits to food-producing communities.

I want to also mention the importance of food resilience and coping with changes in food supply. Sustain runs a network of small food businesses and we surveyed them during the lockdown. We found that they were nimble, agile and able to adapt to changes in the supply chain very quickly, resulting in very low waste and minimal job losses. In fact, many of them took on staff at the point of disruption. You can contrast that with the supply chain problems that we are seeing with the very large, very inflexible supply chains delivering things like milk, where there was widespread waste, with the environmental and social consequences of that.

There is a need to support more small enterprises for the sake of delivering a resilient food system that is capable of dealing with shocks and supply chain issues and can deliver what local communities need when those changes arise.

Q41            Chair: David, what else do you think could be done to support more SMEs to access food procurement contracts? It is not an easy one but it is about making sure it is local and making sure that the standards are right. How can we particularly help SMEs in the procurement process? Sometimes these contracts are very large.

David Bowles: They are, but there are some opportunities for SMEs. Ruth has given some examples. You need to have stability in the process so that SMEs can start to bid, and so they know that this is going to be the issue going forward and that it is not going to change. The whole “go local” mantra now to cut down on the carbon footprint and to get the local produce into the hospitals is going to be an advantage for SMEs. If you are going into a hospital in Cornwall, you will get Cornish hake, Sheryll, and, if you are going into a hospital in Cumbria, you are going to get Cumbrian lamb, Neil. It is about playing to the local conditions.

Chair: I am glad you mentioned Cumbrian lamb, David, because Neil was very worried earlier on that we had not mentioned any great food coming from Cumbria. Thank you for that.

Q42            Geraint Davies: First, what is your view on local providers in terms of internet infrastructure? In Swansea, if we had “buy Swansea” and anybody could go on there and buy anything, including food, we would begin to support local providers and ensure that people did not buy everything from Amazon during a pandemic and beyond. Secondly, I just want to know whether there is any variation on food standards for public procurement in devolved nations and between local authorities. Would that be a reason to have a universal standard?

Chair: Scotland was mentioned as having a higher standard at one stage.

Rob Percival: If I have understood correctly, your first question was about more direct purchasing and novel routes to market. You are talking about using online platforms to buy locally. There are veg box delivery schemes and the Farmdrop process where citizens can buy more directly from farmers, which have proved to be very helpful. In a public procurement context, the key is creating the conditions where investment in local is encouraged through the tendering process. If you have the right framework in place that is incentivising social value, you can deliver that on the basis of buying local.

There is a key piece of legislation here, the Public Services (Social Value) Act, which requires that procurement decisions place a certain emphasis on benefiting the local community if they are over a certain spend. Again, that piece of legislation is not being used. I am not sure if that addresses your question but, yes, there are opportunities there.

Q43            Geraint Davies: Is anyone aware of any best practice? I know in Wales that, when businesses are being supported, they are asked three questions: whether it is part of the carbon neutral future; whether it is locally inclusive; and whether it is part of the growth future. Does anyone think that the public sector could step in and provide the digital infrastructure to help local producers compete more effectively so that local consumers can buy locally?

Ruth Westcott: The Dynamic Food Procurement National Advisory Board responded to the consultation and gave a written response. I do not know if it is giving evidence as well, but it has a really good example from Bath and north-east Somerset. Basically, online platforms will take a contract and break it down into smaller chunks that will allow local producers to bid. You might not want to bid for the whole dairy contract for schools but you might want to produce yoghurts for primary schools, for example. They are the middle-women but they provide that expertise in dealing with contracts, where small producers often do not have legal and technical knowledge of the ins and outs of contracts.

It is just a pilot at the moment. Our very strong recommendation would be that every local authority and every public buyer would have access to a platform like this dynamic procurement platform to allow it to buy locally. That is a good example to look at.

Q44            Geraint Davies: David, should the Government provide the digital infrastructure to help people buy and procure locally?

David Bowles: Yes, making it easy for people to procure and buy locally is the way forward. I am aware of some local authorities in Brighton and Sussex that have sustainability officers employed to look at what they are buying and where they are buying it from. You may also look closer to home. I understand that there are different procurement policies between the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Lords does not allow eggs from caged hens but the House of Commons does. There is a very good example right on your doorstep in trying to get joined-up thinking.

Geraint Davies: It is because the Members are like caged hens.

Chair: We will have to make sure that we sort the Commons out from the Lords this time. Their Lordships may well have had it right this time and we have it wrong. We will work on that one, David, straight away.

Can I thank Ruth, David and Rob very much for a great session? You have started off our inquiry into public sector procurement of food really well. It emphasised, for me and I am sure for all members, that Governments of all colours need to lead by example. At the moment, we are not. It is not only national Government but also local government, through education. Having good local food is the right way forward. We are led by example on fish, Ruth, as you have mentioned, and Sheryll is very happy about that, but, if we can do it for fish, we should be able to do it across the board.

The point has been made again this afternoon that antibiotic use in much of our production is going to be a big issue in the way forward. We are reducing the amount of antibiotics we use in this country, but we can reduce it further and make sure that the food that we have in hospitals is even better. I look forward to that.

Thank you all very much. It has been a really good session. It has started off our inquiry very well. Thank you, members, for your time. Thank you to the witnesses.