Examination of witnesses
Steve Brine MP, Heather Hancock and Dr Christine Middlemiss.
Q11 The Chairman: May I welcome everybody to this evidence session on food safety risk management post Brexit? May I remind Members to declare any interests that they have when they first ask a question? I would remind everybody that this is a public evidence session. We will be taking a transcript and if our witnesses feel that something has not been recorded correctly—we will send you a copy—please let us know. The session is also being webcast. Perhaps I could ask our witnesses to introduce themselves very briefly for the record so we know who everybody is.
Dr Christine Middlemiss: I am the Chief Veterinary Officer in Defra. I lead on technical advice, animal health and welfare and international engagement, so I work with the EU and the Commission.
Steve Brine MP: I am the Public Health Minister.
Heather Hancock: I chair the Food Standards Agency.
Q12 The Chairman: Minister, you are very welcome to our Committee, and welcome back to Christine and to Heather, who have given us evidence previously.
Perhaps we could go straight to the heart of the matter. Does the Food Standards Agency have the resources it needs to take on the functions of the EFSA from 29 March, those functions being pretty extensive? Would its assessments apply to the whole of the UK, or would Food Standards Scotland conduct its own assessment? The devolution question and how we keep it to a UK single market, or whatever, is perhaps also important here.
Steve Brine MP: Thank you very much for inviting us, and thank you for doing this. It is my first time before a Lords Committee.
Does it have the resources it needs? For a start, I do not think it will be required. I am an optimist, in spite of previous events, and I am confident that MPs will agree the Withdrawal Agreement next week and we will get this done. We need to.
A direct answer to the question is yes, I believe the FSA has the resources. As the Minister responsible for the FSA, I ask Heather that question. She can say more on that in due course but, in my experience, she is not shy in coming forward and in asking Ministers when she does not feel she has what she needs.
The FSA do a huge amount of risk assessment work in relation to food and feed safety at the moment. They have strengthened their capacity significantly in preparation for Exit. They have recruited new staff. They have 40 additional experts on their scientific committees and three new expert groups. It is expanding its expertise for ad hoc scientific advice which will inform its work and, yes, I am confident it has the resources it needs.
On your point about the whole of the UK, Food Standards Scotland will continue to have access to the FSA’s risk assessment capability as currently. This is a devolved capability and competency, so it is a decision for Holyrood, but it is very much in our interests that it is for the whole of the UK. What we do not need right now, on top of the disruption of Britain leaving the European Union, are internal market issues within the UK.
Heather, do you want to talk about your resources?
Heather Hancock: To add to the assurance you have had from the Minister, we set a test as a Board right at the outset of planning for EU Exit that one of the flags we would raise was if we felt we could not deliver a full, complete and viable regulatory regime from day one. Whatever day one was going to be, we understood that we still had to have a complete regime in place here.
We have been well supported by the Treasury to do that. Today, 94% of the new posts that we created have been filled and they will all be filled by the end of March. We have increased our risk management capacity by 30% and our science capacity by 30%. We have significantly beefed up the National Food Crime Unit and our Incidence and Resilience Unit, the team that deals with the ongoing incidents that occur week in, week out in relation to food.
We are not flagging that we have a concern about resources. I would say, subject of course to your Lordships and to MPs completing the passage of our Statutory Instruments, that we are absolutely on track to be ready with that full regime for day one.
The Chairman: These people that have come in: as we all know from organisations, it is one thing joining up and it is another thing being effective so, in terms of training and putting teams together, tell us a little about what you have been doing to make these people effective, potentially from two and a half weeks’ time.
Heather Hancock: The first thing to say is we have been really pleased with the quality of recruits we have had. We have attracted a really strong field of candidates for these roles, and so we should as they are really interesting and good jobs to be doing. We are delighted with the starting point. Our Chief Exec, and executive team, have done all the things you would expect—buddying systems, special training programmes, sending people out on site where that is relevant to a particular role. There is no replacement for being out there with industry and seeing how things happen on the ground.
We have also done a lot of exercising, particularly in the incident space, which always requires our scientists and our policymakers to be involved. There has been an extensive programme of exercise and testing some of the new systems that we have built, and that has involved our new staff as well. We have also done a lot of additional training of local authority personnel with online, face-to-face and e-learning packages to help local authority personnel prepare for the changes that will affect them.
Steve Brine MP: The FSA has also done a lot of reassurance work with local authorities.
We are a quarter of a way through the SI bundles transposing the EU regulations across. We did the first one yesterday and we will do another two next week. My Shadow asked me during that session about local authorities’ readiness; and said there is an awful lot to read and an awful lot to do. There is not because, if we transpose EU law into domestic legislation under the housekeeping allowed by the Withdrawal Act (which we are doing; it went through without vote and too much challenge yesterday), that is in place. I think the Agency has been quite good at reassuring local authorities that there is no need to panic here.
I have spoken to Heather about recruitment before; it is not a competency that we are starting from scratch on. It is not like how Britain has not needed trade negotiators for 40 years because we have been a Member State. The Food Standards Agency is very well respected internationally, and as and when I travel—I have the international health brief as well, so I do the G20 and G7—it is obvious to me how much the FSA is respected, so I am not at all surprised that it finds it relatively easy to build up decent capacity from the starting point that it is at.
The Chairman: May I come back on the devolution thing, because I am not very clear? If I ask you whether there is a good relationship between Scotland and you, you are bound to say yes, but it is not a straightforward area, is it, so how would that operate? Would you have a joint committee, or is Scotland going to say, “We give up and give you all the authority”? I do not see that somehow. How is that going to work?
Steve Brine MP: Heather, do you want to talk about the joint Board meeting that you have set up? Heather would say that, I suppose, because she is involved operationally, but I am a step away and so therefore I ask the questions: I scrutinise the FSA, and Parliament scrutinises me. I am confident that the FSA has that good relationship with Scotland, and it is in our interests that we have it, but, as I said to the SNP spokesman yesterday in our Committee, Scotland has many qualities and SNP Members have many issues and problems with Brexit—obviously they do not support it—but given that it is such a strong food-producing nation, I would have thought that the last thing they wanted to do was create any internal market issues within the UK right now, so keeping Heather as its best friend, I suggest, would be in its best interests.
Heather Hancock: We had a joint Board meeting with Food Standards Scotland in October. We had three major areas to explore. We spent a long time talking about alignment around EU Exit and preparation for it. Food Standards Scotland is of course an independent entity, but we work really closely together. We are working on the basis of the same science. It has a slightly broader remit than we have but, aside from that, we collaborate on incident management and policy decisions, share information and are moving in a similar direction in improving the regulatory regime. We have a very close relationship. That is helped by the fact that it was only hived off in 2014, so there are a lot of personal relationships there, hence the need to keep reinvesting in the things such as the joint Board meeting.
It is for Scotland to decide how it wants to participate. We have constructed really carefully a framework that we hope helps the whole UK participate in a common position on food and feed. That framework is really important for consumer interests, for all the reasons the Minister has just said, and it is also important for business interests.
I feel that we have done as much as we can to create a regime where Scotland can choose to participate fully and where we can keep the whole UK position together. It is devolved in Wales and Northern Ireland, but we happen to operate in all three countries. We have the same duties in all three countries and are used to triaging all that and understanding how we come to a common position, and doing that with Scotland is just an extension of that.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: It sounds like good news. I just wanted to check whether the IT systems that you will be relying on are new systems or whether you are modifying existing systems. It will not be the first time these have gone wrong. What is your assessment of that?
Heather Hancock: Some bragging rights now, Lord Young. We have built one new system from scratch—a digital registration system for food businesses.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: Custom-made for you.
Heather Hancock: Custom-made for us, up and running, and so far, I think, running through to about 40 local authorities over the current implementation period in anticipation of a future risk outside the EU in terms of our line of sight on the performance of all food businesses and where they all are. So we have done that.
We have also built some new systems for surveillance work whereby you can put in open data and make better forecasts of where food risks will come. Those are tested and up and running already.
We have also expanded our systems for how we use data to manage incidents, and those have already been tested and are up and running. I will touch wood at this point.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas: In one sense I think the view can be put forward by your Minister that the FSA’s record has been a sustained success story. It has a highly professional approach and seeks co-operation. May I mention that if there was an SNP majority in the Scottish Parliament, it might seek to duplicate everything, but if it did it would be enormously expensive and the electorate would react?
Steve Brine MP: I completely agree. There is absolutely no need for them to do that. The heavy lifting that is currently done at EU level can and will be done at UK level, I am sure.
Q13 Baroness Sheehan: When or if Parliament votes—very much if—in favour of the proposed Withdrawal Agreement, what would be the nature of the UK’s participation in the EFSA during the transition period?
In giving an overview, would you address the following three aspects? Would the UK still be able to contribute to the strategic direction of the EFSA? Would UK data still be fed into EFSA risk assessments? Lastly, would the UK have the same access to the EFSA’s risk assessments, including the data underpinning its advice, as is currently the case?
Steve Brine MP: Obviously, negotiations are Defra-led. My understanding is that—and certainly the encouragement that they get from me and from the DoH is that—during the transition period EU rules and regulations will continue to apply, one of many very good reasons why Parliament should support the Withdrawal Agreement next week.
It is therefore very much in the interests of both sides for the UK to participate in some EU bodies and agencies during the transition period. There are only a couple of arm’s-length bodies—the European Medicines Agency and Euratom—that are specifically mentioned in the Withdrawal Agreement as organisations that we want to have some form of associate membership thereof. We do not mention all of them, which is why I say they are subject to negotiation.
What we are encouraging Defra, in leading on negotiations on this, is that we have very strong and effective partnerships with the European Union and we want to see that reflected in our relationship with its agencies and all the other bodies going forward. We already field experts into the technical groups of EFSA. We have really strong bilateral relationships outside and within the Member States, and there is always room to strengthen that more. We have a very strong relationship with Codex, which Heather likes to tell me about, which is the global standards-setting forum for those watching from outside who do not know that. The chairmanship of Codex is coming up at some point next year, which may be an opportunity for the UK.
In answer to your question about the strategic direction of EFSA, we should remember, and reading your transcript from the session last year, which Heather participated in, that the FSA is the rock upon which EFSA built its church. The honest answer to whether we will be able to contribute to the strategic direction of EFSA is no, but we will still have the ability to submit evidence. We have a very strong international leadership reputation in the area.
Will we still be able to feed data into EFSA’s risk assessments? I guess that is still a matter for negotiation. No final decisions have been taken about that relationship. That will be part of that ongoing negotiation. We have been working with other Government departments, Defra primarily, to understand the impact that withdrawal will have on our relationship with that agency. That is certainly the message that I give to Minister Rutley and Michael Gove over at Defra. The FSA publishes most of its material anyway, so our data would be fed into its assessments.
Finally, you ask about access to EFSA’s risk assessments, including the workings out, as they used to say in school, underpinning its advice. Again, that is a matter for negotiation. The outputs of EFSA’s risk assessments, or its scientific opinions if you like, are made publicly available and are very much open source, but the supporting data is not published. Following exit, if we do not have access to that data we may need to source our own, and Heather can talk a bit more about that.
The point that I would make more generally is that you cannot leave the golf club and still have the same access to the course. We made a decision as a country—it was not my decision personally—to leave the golf club. While I personally think we should negotiate the strongest and closest possible relationship, reflecting the outcome of said vote, you do not have exactly the same access, and there is a price to pay for that. Are we in a strong position in this area? Very much so. Are we in a strong position in this area more than almost any other? Yes, I think we are. Heather, do you want to add to the point about feeding into the risk assessments or the data?
Heather Hancock: Only a couple of things. We will in any case also be doing our own science assessment in the areas that are on EFSA’s agenda. We will be generating that really high-quality world-class content that EFSA will want to take into account. Whatever the level of formality involved, I think the openness in the scientific community will support as much sharing of information as possible.
Steve Brine MP: This also goes back to the point that Exit day may be day one in constitutional terms, but it is not day one of the relationship. That relationship is so strong because EFSA grew out of the FSA anyway, so we are in as strong position as we could be while exiting.
Q14 Viscount Hanworth: You have just answered the question that I was about to raise: to what extent was EFSA modelled on the FSA? If there is a similar organisational structure, there will be much greater ease of communications.
Steve Brine MP: There are people around this table who were involved in setting up the FSA who will probably know infinitely more than I will ever know, but my understanding is that it is very closely mirrored.
Viscount Hanworth: How recent are these developments? How recently has the EFSA been structured in this way?
Steve Brine MP: How recently, Heather?
Heather Hancock: In 2003.
Steve Brine MP: It followed the BSE crisis.
Baroness Sheehan: Heather, something you said really struck me, and that’s personal relationships. What is the impact? Some things are measurable, but there are other imponderables such as personal relationships and the soft intelligence that only comes out in conversations. What will be the impact on that relationship over time?
Heather Hancock: One of the consequences of the referendum vote was to make the FSA think a bit harder about what we were doing about those relationships and that you do not take them for granted, from a UK perspective but particularly from an international perspective.
For example, there is an annual gathering of the global food safety movement. To be honest, over the last three or four years the FSA has been a bit-part player in that; I cannot talk about when previous Chairs in the room were in charge. We are now front and centre of the agenda-setting in the GFSI and in sharing the innovation we are doing. The gathering for this year happened last week. We were talking about our leadership on AMR and in regulatory reform, and about the innovation we are doing in surveillance, on the main stage. We had major food-producing countries outside the EU coming to us wanting to understand what we were doing and wanting to share it and go home and start to replicate it.
Being on those platforms and forming relationships there is really important. We have ramped up our international capacity. Codex is really important. One of our senior directors is the Vice-Chairman of Codex. That is a really critical role for the whole of the UK interest, and hopefully he can continue to expand that role and play a bigger part. There is a lot of influence there, but those positions also enable you to form relationships.
Q15 Lord Young of Norwood Green: The Minister has stated that the UK hopes to negotiate continued access to the EFSA, but the rules governing EFSA participation, as you know, state that third-country participation is only possible if the third country applies all related EU legislation. Obviously, it depends on whether it is negotiated or we have a no-deal scenario, but what future relationship between the UK and the EFSA you would like? I know you have covered some of this ground.
Steve Brine MP: I guess I probably have. I am in fear of repeating myself, but I will be stressing to Defra that we have this long tradition of scientific collaboration with the EFSA. It grew out of and is very closely mirrored to what we do. We greatly value what it does and it greatly values what we do.
We set out in the Political Declaration that we are exploring the possibility of collaboration between the UK authorities and the Union’s agencies, and we will carry on working with our friends—and they are our friends - and partners in the European Union to see the basis of the conditions for UK participation. The exact arrangements for that are a matter for negotiation.
I would argue that those of us who are in Government and doing the heavy lifting of government, and who see the benefit of that relationship with the European Union, are better placed than, let us just say, some of my colleagues on the back benches who prefer to rely on the principle that “It’ll be all right on the night”. Those of us in Government want to make sure that it is all right on the night, which is why I believe that we should reach across to our friends in the European Union. The idea of a clean break where we walk away and have nothing else to do with each other like a couple with no children is utter nonsense.
Dr Christine Middlemiss: From a technical perspective, we will continue to trade in some form with the EU and it will continue to be big trading partner in that way. Ensuring that is underpinned by good science and evidence, so we are very keen from a technical perspective to continue to be as integrated with the EFSA as possible, and to share technical science information to manage our shared risk pathways.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: Participation from a third country is only possible if the third country applies all related EU legislation. There is bound to be some divergence over a period, is there not, if only because you have been leading the way sometimes, as in the point you made. What is your assessment?
Steve Brine MP: As I said at the start, the European Withdrawal Act is about housekeeping, and the regulations that we are transferring are just that. We are not strengthening nor are we weakening any of those regulations. Any divergence will be subject to agreement by this place. That is absolutely right. Perhaps we have finally found what “take back control” means, but that is certainly one aspect.
Heather Hancock: We do not have a list of things that we will change. We know that the public are happy with what is done and industry has confidence about what is being done. When it comes to the case for making any change to regulation, we are science and evidence based; there is evidence as well as science, and the evidence is about broader consumer interests and other measures that you could take to achieve the same outcome without necessarily having to adjust the regulation, et cetera.
We also know that colleagues in Europe will regret the loss of the ability the UK has shown to challenge thinking, move things forward and innovate, but some of the global networks we talked about earlier are a different way for us to have that kind of influence in Europe and still be able to improve the system both for the benefit of consumers and to reduce the burden on industry wherever we can.
Steve Brine MP: If you look at where the complex supply chain is in agriculture, clearly that is our biggest and closest market, so I would argue, and I will argue to Defra, that close alignment with that market is very much in our interests and the interests of our primary producers, and therefore our constituents. I am very clear on that.
The Chairman: Is it not inconceivable that over the next five years there will not be some difference of opinion on something, somewhere? Otherwise we are a completely, 100% rule-taker and, Heather, your organisation is just a mouthpiece for the EFSA, is it not? From that point of view, and the fact that this is about independent decision-making under Brexit, is it not inevitable that we cannot be a member of this organisation?
Lord Cameron of Dillington: We have a briefing note from the Biotechnology Council about the brave new world this will bring us and how GM foods will be allowed and so on. It is the same question. There is bound to be some divergence.
Steve Brine MP: Any divergence would have to be, in our opinion, for the bettering of what we have right now.
The Chairman: But that will happen, will it not? There is bound to be an incident of that happening, is there not?
Steve Brine MP: If it does, it will be democratically accountable through this place.
The Chairman: I know, but we are talking about our future relationship with the EFSA. It automatically precludes us being a member of it, does it not?
Steve Brine MP: I need to be careful what I say, in the sense that I do not want to prejudge the negotiations that Defra will have. All I can say is a closely aligned relationship is in our interests, but you are right in the sense that there is no precedent for a country leaving the European Union under Article 50 and then seeking all the same benefits from its agencies.
The Chairman: We are not promoting any solution as a Committee; we are just trying to go through the arguments. What you are saying, which I can understand, is that the wish is for as close a relationship as we can have, but membership will not be possible because at some point we are bound to diverge.
Steve Brine MP: Hence my golf club analogy.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I would be interested to know what Heather thought about future divergence and where the FSA might go.
Heather Hancock: It is quite important to remember that the EFSA is only the risk assessment body for the European Union. There is then a risk management process, which is probably what Lord Krebs is coming on to now, which is through the Commission.
Some of the very sensitive, almost totemic issues that are talked about, where divergence may occur, whether about GMOs or some of the products that might be imported from other countries that grab the headlines. They seem to me to have an important food safety component, but they have much wider considerations than that, so they will be much bigger decisions for Ministers to take because of their other public policy dimensions. That is much more likely to drive where difference is.
The UK has been a very pragmatic voice around the EFSA table and the Commission table in food safety decision-making and I do think it is true that once we are outside the European Union we may see that pragmatism decline a bit. That might also be the prediction of experts who observe this area, and a cause of divergence over time.
The Chairman: That is a very interesting point, yes.
Heather Hancock: It takes a very long time for the science process, the risk assessment and the risk management analysis to happen, so we are definitely looking at a five year-plus timeframe. There is therefore time for us to work out how that relationship will flex and flow.
Q16 Lord Krebs: My question, as Heather anticipated, builds on what she has just been saying. Before I ask it, I should declare three interests. I act as an adviser to three food companies: Marks & Spencer, Tesco and the Japanese company Ajinomoto.
My question to the Minister is about who will take responsibility for food safety management decisions after Brexit day. As you know, at the moment the vast majority of those decisions are made by the Standing Committee in Brussels, on which the UK is represented by the Food Standards Agency. We understand from previous interactions with you and other Ministers is that, after Brexit, Ministers will grab back those decisions from the FSA and make them at ministerial level.
We would like to understand your reasoning behind that, why you want to have responsibility for these decisions, and which Minister it will be. Will it be you or your successor as the Health Minister, or is it going to be a Defra Minister or a joint responsibility? What about the Ministers in Scotland as well as in Westminster?
Steve Brine MP: That is a good question. This is not a massive power grab by me. There is still only one of me.
It is not a day one issue. That is my point. We need to understand the nature of the decisions further before we set out exactly which decisions could be delegated to the FSA and to Food Standards Scotland. At the moment, as you rightly say, those decisions are all delegated to the FSA and the FSS through the Council route, the Standing Committee route, and they are obviously coming back domestically. So I do not think anybody in the DAs could say that we are grabbing it back into London.
We need to understand the nature of those decisions and which decisions are rightly made by Ministers, and build on that in the transition period. The further consultations would enable us to do that. I guess I am being cautious. I am mindful of public confidence in this area and the need to give the public confidence that ministerial oversight remains strong. Immediately after exit, the FSA and the FSS will provide Ministers with the food safety risk management recommendations, and we will work with other Government departments as appropriate.
In answer to your question, Health Ministers will take the final decision on food safety related issues, consulting other Ministers as required. That is the day-one position. I do not feel the need to make a day-one decision to change things greatly. If you want my personal view on the direction of travel, I think there is time for us to make a sensible transition decision, and I would envisage taking the power to delegate that to the FSA in the shorter to medium term.
Lord Krebs: To play that back to ensure I understand, even if the formal position on day one is that Ministers make all the risk management decisions, it would be your intention as the responsible Minister to hand that back to the Food Standards Agency, in effect.
Steve Brine MP: It most certainly would, yes.
Lord Krebs: As I am sure you are aware, the whole raison d’être of the Food Standards Agency in the wake of BSE crisis—and I speak as the first chairman of the FSA—was to “depoliticise” contentious decisions. If we think back to the 1990s, there was salmonella in eggs and BSE in cattle and other things, where Ministers got themselves right in the firing line and suffered consequentially, as did the UK food industry from a lack of confidence. I am assuming that you would not want in any sense to undermine the independence and transparency of the Food Standards Agency.
Steve Brine MP: Lord Krebs, I have read your comments before about this. I will ask Heather to give you her experience of working with me as the Public Health Minister in this space. I have an eye for detail, but I also have an understanding of when I need to trust my experts. The FSA is a body of independent experts who give us advice, and I most certainly do not have the time or the inclination to wade into decisions that are absolutely not to be interfered with politically. Heather, am I betraying my behaviour with you over the last 19 months?
Heather Hancock: No, that is exactly how you have operated. The FSA’s position is a position of pragmatism. I absolutely appreciate where the Minister is coming from. It is a devolution approach that we are trying to ensure works really effectively, because, of course, it will be Health Ministers in England and Wales and Northern Ireland who will all make those decisions, so there is the issue of timeliness and a risk of fragmentation, which nobody intends but may come as a result of ministerial decision-making. The FSA has absolutely no wish to get involved in really complicated, bigger public policy issues where food safety is a component, but it is not the only decision at stake. We absolutely can see that there is a dividing line between the 150 reauthorisations of feed additives that we deal with a year and the position on food and antimicrobial resistance, for example. The Government have taken a massive leadership role globally on that, and food has a part to play in it but our decisions on the food safety component will be part of a bigger picture. We can differentiate between those things. It is the technical decision-making, which is what we handle in SCoPAFF, where we think there is a good argument for it resting with us.
Steve Brine MP: Of course, that is only food safety management decisions. Defra will then create its own workstreams for veterinary issues. Obviously Dr Middlemiss can add to that, if you have time, Chairman. I know you are pressed.
Lord Krebs: Following Heather’s last point, I have two supplementaries. When you met with us last year you talked about creating a body that mirrors the Standing Committee, and you had a shadow organisation already structured in your mind and perhaps even in reality. Is it the intention that on March 30 that shadow body will come into existence?
Heather Hancock: It is in existence this month, I am glad to tell you. It is entirely along the lines that we talked about with the Committee last summer. Participation is agreed from all the relevant departmental interests in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We are waiting for Scotland to decide its position. We talked about that earlier. It will be chaired and led by the Food Standards Agency and the process is similar to SCoPAFF’s, which is to form an opinion but is not the decision-making body: it is an opinion to ensure that we have covered all the relevant interests and gathered all the relevant evidence forming risk management advice.
Lord Krebs: Will it all be published?
Heather Hancock: The outcome will be in the public domain.
Steve Brine MP: And I will obviously be watching it closely and ensuring I stay on top of the work.
Lord Rooker: I have a quick supplementary on what you just said. I do not have any interests to declare, like John, but I recently chaired an egg summit for the largest retailer in the country. It was more about production than safety, but there were a lot of eggs about—and, of course, I was a former chair of the FSA.
One of the things that came into my box the other day was from the four main biotech companies, who thought there was a big opportunity here to go back to what they called independent, non-politicised and science-based regulation, as though we had moved away from all that. Opportunities are seen by the sector. It is true there are some empty laboratories in this country, because all the staff had to go to America as we could not do any biotech research here because of the European arguments.
How will you deal with the issue about this being science based, open and transparent to the public, which is the benefit of getting confidence into the industry, when you will be under pressure when we leave from people who adopt what I might call a very narrow science view? The argument is that the European Parliament has been a bit iffy on science, particularly on pesticides and other issues. How will you cope with that in light of what you have just said to Lord Krebs?
Steve Brine MP: That is more for Heather than for me. It is a bit technical.
Heather Hancock: We have spent a long time over the last 12 months thinking about how we cope with that and similar challenges. To that extent, it is all a bit governance-y, we have completely redesigned the way we will frame the question and gather the evidence, and the way that will be done in a proper publicly visible way, with input from all participants.
We have strengthened our Committees so that they can challenge us much more about whether this is the best evidence we can use and the right science we are looking at. We have also strengthened the role of our Chief Scientific Adviser to be able to give that challenge, and we have created a science council to help with that. There is as much robustness as possible in that space.
We are very clear that there is a separation between risk assessment and risk management. That cannot be done in the same room, as it were, so our process separates that. On the risk management side, we will be discussing the final bit of this at our Board meeting next week where we will talk about the other factors—what constitutes another relevant or legitimate factor - to take into account when you are making a judgment about food safety risk.
I hope that we have strengthened and codified a sensible way of looking at this issue. That does not mean it is identical for every possible food or feed risk, but it is a consistent way of looking at it. I think that is our best defence against that challenge. We also know that we will have to be a lot more resilient in the face of lobbying. The FSA does not really get lobbied these days. That will change quite significantly. We need to be very clear about how we deal with that.
Lord Rooker: This memo is the start of it.
Heather Hancock: That is the start of it, and we have already seen some early indications of that kind of activity.
Steve Brine MP: Presumably you would welcome the organisations that Lord Rooker had in his box—egg box or otherwise—to be in touch.
Lord Rooker: I was quoting from what purports to be the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, which is basically the four biotech companies.
The Chairman: Do not quote too much.
Lord Rooker: I am not arguing. I just raise the point that I can see how the pressures on you that are not there now will be intensified, as you say, because being in the EU protected you from that side of lobbying.
Heather Hancock: I hope what we have done in the last year, as well as making us more resilient to that, has created a better framework for your Lordships or the other House to hold us to account against that framework. As I think I have shared with some of you around the table in the past, we do not get as much parliamentary scrutiny as we ought to get, and hopefully this creates a way for you to scrutinise our consistency and the way in which we are always weighing that evidence in a fair and open manner.
Dr Christine Middlemiss: To add Defra’s perspective, we recently published a report by Dame Glenys Stacey, who undertook a review of farm inspection and regulation, and a consultation on that will come out shortly.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. As to your point, Minister, I am sure we appreciate that you give the FSA and Heather a lot of autonomy but what we are looking at is when you become Secretary of State for something else and you are replaced by someone perhaps more pliable—what we have to look at is the longer term relationship here in terms of that independence. Secretary of State for Transport perhaps?
Steve Brine MP: Your faith in my ability in the next re-shuffle is touching. I will leave you to lobby on my behalf.
The Chairman: We move on now to Lord Selkirk and a fairly short item.
Q17 Lord Selkirk of Douglas: The background to this question is that if Parliament approves the proposed Withdrawal Agreement, the United Kingdom is very likely to be bound by the EU’s risk management decisions during the transition period.
If a transition period is agreed, do you expect the United Kingdom to be able to continue to attend meetings of the Standing Committee? If the answer is yes, would the United Kingdom retain its vote in the Standing
Committee?
Lastly, in negotiations about the future UK-EU relationship, would you expect continued UK alignment with EU food safety risk management decisions to be contingent on retaining a vote in the Standing Committee?
Steve Brine MP: I will be honest and careful, Lord Selkirk. The truth is that our attendance at SCoPAFF will be dependent on invitation. We would not be able to vote. We would certainly like to be invited. I am confident that we would be because of the relationships point that Heather has set out already. Would we retain our vote? No.
Our future relationship, and those decisions being contingent on retaining a vote, is an unknown. Defra Ministers will have to negotiate on this point, but my view is that we would want to be in the room as a rule-maker as well as a rule-taker. As I have already said, there is no precedent for a country doing what we are doing. In my honest opinion, alignment with our biggest market in this space is more important. That is the honest answer.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas: Perhaps I should mention that I have a past interest in that I was an MSP for its first eight years, and I would express the hope there will be a meeting of minds.
Steve Brine MP: Me too.
Q18 Lord Krebs: This is tangentially related to the longer term. As you know, Minister, one of the repeated assertions by some members of the current Government is that we will not accept food from third countries that differs in its standards from the food standards that are required in the European Union. Iconic examples are hormone-treated beef and chlorinated chicken. I need say no more.
Could you give us a reassurance, as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did to this Committee last autumn, that the UK will not, either in the short or long term, diverge from EU standards?
Steve Brine MP: Michael Gove told the NFU conference last month—I will quote him, because I liked the quote and keep it on my phone; that is how sad I am—”We have been clear across Government, from the Prime Minister down, that we will not lower our standards in pursuit of trade deals, and that we will use all the tools at our disposal to make sure the standards are protected and you”—farmers—“are not left at a competitive disadvantage”.
He was then challenged by the chair, who said, “I don’t want your words in blood; I want them in ink”. What she meant by that was establishing a new commission. Michael said that he welcomed the NFU’s call to establish that commission, bringing together expertise from across the country and the sectors to ensure that we maintain the world-class standards of British food producers, which are why they have their well-deserved global reputation.
I said this yesterday in Committee, I have said it in the House and elsewhere, publicly and privately, and I say the same to you: we are crystal clear that we are not going to lower our standards in pursuit of trade deals. I read the comments about this last week from the former Farming Minister, the Member for Camborne and Redruth, and I am in the same place as he is. He was the longest-serving Minister in the Government, and Farming Minister for five years. I think he is spot on.
The Chairman: Thank you. That is very definitive. We move on to surveillance now and Lord Cameron.
Q19 Lord Cameron of Dillington: I should have declared earlier that I am a farmer and have an interest in a farming business.
If we leave without a deal and are in a no-deal scenario, we will no longer be members of the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. What assessment have you made of the level of risk posed to our food safety if we are no longer a member of RASFF? What measures are in place to ensure that UK authorities receive swift notification when risks to public health are detected in the food chain?
Steve Brine MP: The FSA is preparing for all scenarios, including leaving without a Withdrawal Agreement. I say that instead of no-deal, because of course next week we are not debating a deal; we are debating a Withdrawal Agreement. I think people conflate those issues. A deal is a trade deal, and that comes next. I know people like to think that this recurring challenge will be over next week, but this is never going to end and we will move on to the future relationship.
We are preparing for all scenarios, including leaving without a Withdrawal Agreement. The FSA has put measures in place to counter the loss of access to RASFF to ensure that the high levels of consumer protection are maintained. If we lose access to it, we will continue to use high-level information from public-facing RASFF portals—it is not secret log-in only—among many other sources, to analyse the data trends. This will be part of the Agency’s wider work to strengthen the incident-management process.
It is worth saying, and Heather will want to expand on this, that we are also increasing our engagement with the International Food Safety Authorities Network, the WHO, the United Nations, the FAO. RASFF is not the be-all and end-all. I am sure Heather will want to talk about new systems which she is interested in, and she is testing for forward-looking surveillance. RASFF tends to be rather reactionary and responsive. If we have access to a lot of that open-source information from RASFF but we can mix in some of the best emerging notification systems around the world, I think we will be in a stronger position. Heather may wish to add to that briefly.
Heather Hancock: We are good participants in RASFF, so we hope we would still be able to play a role in it. If we cannot, we have already done quite a lot of things to build better understanding. We have signed an agreement with the Food Industry Intelligence Network for the exchange of information. That is a really important component of it.
The Government have been superb in backing the growth of the National Food Crime Unit. It is now up to 80 personnel with an investigative capability, but of course we also are leading on the global food crime initiative and have been the co-ordinators of that. That is a really important source of intelligence and insight.
We have been investing in INFOSAN, which the Minister referred to, which is outside the EU. It is not quite the equivalent of RASFF, but it is an important information exchange network.
We have also been investing heavily in new approaches to surveillance to put us on the front foot. We have been developing models that can, for example, predict where the aflatoxin risk will come in imported food. We have built that model and are now running that model across a whole range of food groups in which there is an aflatoxin risk. We have built models to help us to judge what is called ‘mass balance’ in the meat supply chain: where is what is being produced not going straight through to the consumer; where are the shortages or storage issues; are they going to create for us a food risk down the line; do we know where that is coming from?
We have looked at commodity adulteration risk, we have looked at changes in trade routes and we have built, using open data—going back to Lord Young’s point, we have not created a big chunky, clunky single system to do this but there are lots of good tools and techniques out there, and we have built some of our own. They are all replicable, so we are now getting a much better line of sight into future food risk. Of course, it will not be perfect. There is always going to be food risk and we will not spot everything, but it is an important counter to RASFF, which is important but reactive.
For us, one of the main values of the RASFF system is the traceability of food with which there is a problem once it is inside country. Think of the issue we had two years ago with a banned chemical in eggs that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands. The RASFF process really lagged behind what we were finding out from industry about where those imported eggs were, where they had gone, where they were in the food chain. Industry collaboration and building that relationship with industry are important components in giving us a better set of data and intelligence to triage and decide where the real risk is.
The Chairman: Are there any specific examples you would like to give us of risks that come in? You gave a good one there, but are there others?
Heather Hancock: The EU currently has specific controls on the import of Brazil nuts from Brazil. That is a reactive measure because of a level of contamination and food safety risk that was associated with those nuts. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It was an ‘after the event’ to stop the next event happening.
We have looked at the production of Brazil nuts in Bolivia, which is really similar climatically and in production method. There is no reason why the risk would be different from that of Bolivian Brazil nuts. It is a good example of asking, “Hang on, why are we controlling one area but not the other area. Should we be looking at this from a different lens?” It is a good example of how we are trying to build a better understanding of where the risk is coming from, and how it is changing seasonally and changing with supply chain issues, climate change impacts and those sorts of issues.
Lord Krebs: Does your predictive tool deal with authenticity issues as well as safety ones? I am thinking of things like basmati rice and olive oil, where there are substantial risks about authenticity?
Heather Hancock: It is not a single tool, Lord Krebs. It is several different mechanisms and tools. They have the capability to do that in some areas, but of course that is not our core responsibility. Authenticity sits with Defra, it is one of those overlap issues. We are already sharing what we are doing with Defra, so there is no reason why this could not be used, including sharing it with industry and with academia. It is a very open set of approaches and tools.
The Chairman: I am very keen that we should give a bit of time to the next three questions, but we need to keep them fairly short as we only have nine minutes left.
Q20 Lord Rooker: I will be brief, if only because your Statutory Instrument is in Grand Committee this afternoon. I will spend half an hour on RASFF with your ministerial colleague, so I presume that between now and then she will have all the answers.
I take what you say about RASFF, but of the 32 Member countries the UK is the fourth highest in issuing notifications and the fifth highest if you add in follow-up notifications. In the top 10 notifications by notification countries, we are down twice in the top 10. We are making full use of it, there is no question about that, so my question is this. If there is a transition period, assuming the deal is done, which you are optimistic about, Steve, will the UK continue to be a full member during that period, bearing in mind we will not be a Member of the EU?
Steve Brine MP: No.[1] Third-country access to RASFF is limited compared to that of countries that are part of EFTA or the EEA or full Member States. The truth is that the exact nature of our access to and participation in the RASFF system is subject to negotiation thereafter, but that is why I would say, and have said many times, that our preferred position remains to negotiate full access to the RASFF system, because it is mutually beneficial to the EU and to the UK on data sharing. That is the position as it stands at this very point.
Lord Rooker: My supplementary back-up to that, though, is that it is all very well Ministers keeping saying “subject to negotiations”, but we are three weeks away. The FSA told Sub-Committee B - the Committee that sifts the Regulations, on which I plead guilty to volunteering to serve— before we dealt with it (it was only a few weeks ago and it is on the Floor of the House today): “We are negotiating to maintain full access to the Rapid Alert system which allows the UK to respond quickly”.
What is the state of the negotiations? Who is physically doing it? Or is this for the future when we have left? We never get any information, and we are on a wing and a prayer, three weeks away from, as you say, stopping having access to a system that we are using on a daily basis.
Steve Brine MP: In reality, as I said, Exit day is a constitutional position. The practical reality is different, for all the reasons we have discussed over the last 55 minutes. It is much more pragmatic and relationship-based. I genuinely cannot answer your question about the negotiations. Defra leads on that and I would suggest that you ask the Defra Minister; I am sure they will be willing to give you those answers.
Our preferred option remains having full access to RASFF, but it is not the be-all and end-all. From all the things Heather has just said, we can see that there are lots of other strings to this particular bow.
Dr Christine Middlemiss: My team is currently focusing on a third-country listing if a Withdrawal Agreement is not agreed, so that we can continue to trade with the EU. Our focus at the moment is getting that up and running.
Lord Rooker: Can you tell us anything about the RASFF negotiations?
Dr Christine Middlemiss: Not specifically.
Lord Rooker: The Minister has just said, “Ask Defra”.
Steve Brine MP: Dr Middlemiss is the Chief Veterinary Officer.
Lord Rooker: Sorry, I am not being fair.
Steve Brine MP: It is a fair question. It is just not a fair question to Dr Middlemiss, because she is not the Defra Minister responsible for this.
The Chairman: We only expect witnesses to answer what they are confident about answering. We are in no way critical about that. We will take that up with Defra, I guess. Duke of Montrose, I think you have a yes or no question.
Q21 The Duke of Montrose: The question has already been answered by the Minister in every respect. The only point I want to make, declaring my interest as a livestock producer, is my worry that there is a danger that the EU will relax or ignore the standards that we fought for. It is not very good at following up on these things.
A more immediate point is what influence we could bring to bear on the US to implement more acceptable livestock production methods. I do not think that needs an answer.
Steve Brine MP: Bringing influence to bear on the current US Administration is possibly going to escape me.
The Chairman: I would love to have another hour on that topic, and it would be very good to have the United States ambassador here to answer that. We are assuming that you agree that we cannot become a full member if we are not a Member State. I am taking that nod as a yes.
Q22 Viscount Hanworth: I think we have come full circle here with my question, which is essentially about resources and readiness.
We began by hearing from Heather Hancock that 95% of the new posts in the FSA have been filled, which I think implied that there was an overall 30% expansion in your personnel. However, I am still struggling to understand how food safety matters should be categorised. We have heard of the dichotomy between risk assessment and risk management, but presumably risk management can be further subdivided into management advice and management in practice, by which I mean inspections and audits and the personnel that carry them out.
It is in that connection that I would like to have more assurance that we are ready and have the resources.
Heather Hancock: Regarding the assurance of the controls and regulations that are in place here, there is no particular reason why that would make a resource difference to us. It is the same body of regulations for one thing, and with our local authority partners we already have to ensure that those regulations are enforced and assured and that the public and you and others have confidence in them. The area where there is perhaps a slight spike in additional work is a particular aspect of imports of food, where we have resourced additional staff and given additional resources to Port Health Authorities to prepare for that.
I think I may have said when I last appeared here, but it is worth repeating, that our risk judgment is that food imported from the European Union the day after we leave the European Union is no less safe than it was the day before we left the European Union. It operates under the same regulatory regime as we apply here for the protection of public health. Per se there is no reason over the next period, outside of an incident, for there to be a requirement for additional controls, additional inspection or assurance.
Viscount Hanworth: We have had some indications that our local authority inspection regimes are not in a very good state. Could you comment on that and what we can do to improve them?
Heather Hancock: I absolutely can comment on that. We have a separate programme in place that has been running concurrently over the last two and a half years of our EU exit planning, which is to reform the regulatory regime as it operates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland at the moment. That recognises that it is rather outdated, that we do not use data and technology in the way that we could do and that we do not use third-party reliable insight to help us judge risk.
The programme is also looking at how these services are delivered on the ground in local authorities, at Environmental Health Officer level and at Trading Standards level. The enhanced registration system for food businesses is a part of that. We have looked at how we can use the appropriate Primary Authority system to support local authorities and industry. We are now looking in depth at food standards, which is where there is much more pressure than in public health assurance that is going on at local authority level.
Viscount Hanworth: Is there not a dearth of personnel at the local authority level?
Heather Hancock: It would not be quite right to say that, because we are monitoring that, but we are intervening more with local authorities where we think they are not fulfilling their legal obligation to maintain the inspection regime. Our Chief Executive has recently intervened with a major local authority, as a result of which that local authority has put more resource into meeting its legal obligations in that area.
Viscount Hanworth: So you are on the job.
Heather Hancock: We are on the job, but it is about being on the job now, and also designing a better system for the future and then ensuring that is properly resourced. We started that reform two and a half years ago, and it has another two years to run.
Viscount Hanworth: That sounds reasonably reassuring.
Steve Brine MP: There are many challenges to leaving the European Union. That is the understatement of the day. The UK has lots of challenges as a result of that, but we have a world-leading framework for food safety and quality in this country, which the public rightly have confidence in and should rightly be proud of. When you think of where we have come from since the BSE crisis, it is remarkable.
The Withdrawal Act 2018 will ensure that everything is transposed across to ensure that we maintain those high standards. My plea is to certain elements of the media. There is a story today in one of the national newspapers entitled: “Food fight: doubts grow over post-Brexit standards”. Somebody from the Soil Association has said that, in the pursuit of a US trade deal, standards on beef and chicken could be negatively affected. Lots of things could happen in life, but we have been crystal clear that we see Brexit as an opportunity to increase and improve food safety standards, not to diminish them. My plea to the media is: stop scaring the public, because frankly they deserve better.
Lord Rooker: It is the Soil Association scaring the public there.
Steve Brine MP: And it is the headline writers adding to it.
The Chairman: Do you have one more minute, Minister? We will not detain you much longer.
Lord Krebs: Minister, I would like to pick up on your last statement: “We see Brexit as an opportunity to improve rather than reduce food safety and standards”. Do you see it as an opportunity to restore to the Food Standards Agency its original remit?
Steve Brine MP: In what respect?
Lord Krebs: Various elements of the Food Standards Agency’s remit in relation to labelling and nutritional advice were taken away in 2010 when Andrew Lansley was Secretary of State for Health, and it seems to me this could be an opportunity to say: “We will re-emphasise our independent world-leading agency by giving it back its original responsibilities”.
Steve Brine MP: What relationship we have with our partners in the EU is still subject to negotiation, but I am open to all offers and everything is on the table. There are many opportunities for us in leaving the European Union, such as on labelling, and this comes up in other parts of my portfolio. I am very much open to offers, and, as I said at the start, Heather is never shy at coming forward when she feels she needs something more from me.
The Chairman: May I also emphasise that this Committee’s mission in many ways is to absolutely ensure what you are saying yourself, Minister, and that we are concerned to make sure that we are able to maintain those standards. In our earlier Brexit reports on agriculture, food and other issues, it was the different messages coming out from Government in some ways, between the Department for International Trade and Defra – very different messages on this area - and that is why, perhaps, the Government—and I do not say this in a party political sense at all—have perhaps caused themselves some problem in the past. I understand now that there seems to be a much more unified message, which I am sure this Committee welcomes.
May I thank you very much for coming in front of us as well for your evidence, Minister, Dr Middlemiss and Heather Hancock? We trust that the excellent work you are doing in the Food Standards Agency, Heather, will continue, as well as your independence.
