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Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hayman of Ullock
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 25 February be approved.
Relevant document: 20th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, these regulations implement the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 for precision-bred plants in England. They provide the practical and technical detail to implement a new science-based and proportionate regulatory system for precision-bred plants, as set out in the Act.
The territorial application of these regulations is England only and covers the environmental release and marketing of precision-bred plants as well as their use in food and feed in England. This includes a process administered by Defra to confirm that plants are precision bred—not genetically modified—before they can be marketed. It also establishes a food and feed marketing authorisation process administered by the Food Standards Agency which allows products to be placed safely on the market. The regulations also outline details for public registers and enforcement.
The Government recognise that concerns have been raised in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report and in the regret amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, most notably around provision of information and the impacts on the devolved Governments. We agree that these issues are important, and our work to understand and mitigate implications is ongoing. The department recognises that transparency is important and will be establishing public registers to ensure that information about precision-bred organisms authorised for marketing and for use in food and feed is available to consumers, farmers and landowners. We are also looking at ways to enhance this further and have recently closed a public consultation seeking to gather views on how to improve the accessibility of information on these precision-bred plant varieties, including through the labelling of seed and plant reproductive material.
We are also continuing to engage regularly with the devolved Governments on today’s legislation. In addition to monthly meetings at official level and regular ministerial engagement at the interministerial group, Minister Zeichner, as Farming Minister, is organising discussions with his counterparts in the devolved Governments to consider any concerns in more detail. Some of these talks have already begun and we value the progress that is being made. We also note that discussions are now taking place between devolved Governments and key stakeholders across industry on this policy area, and we look forward to hearing updates as this develops.
I believe that we have struck the right balance with an enabling regulatory framework that is proportionate and evidence-based, while providing measures for transparency and regulatory oversight. Today, by passing this secondary legislation, I believe that we have the opportunity to transform and modernise our food system —to make it fit for the future.
The 21st-century agricultural system faces significant challenges. It must provide enough food to meet growing demand while at the same time becoming more sustainable. It must also survive the threat to productivity posed by climate change. Food security is national security. To help us achieve this, we need innovation in fundamental sectors such as plant breeding. Precision breeding would be transformative for this sector, enabling innovative products to be commercialised in years instead of decades—and we do not have decades. Through precision breeding, crops can be developed that are more resilient to climate change, more resilient to pests and diseases, and more beneficial to the environment. In turn, this will increase food production, reduce the need for pesticides and fertilisers, lower emissions and reduce costs for farmers.
However, to capture these benefits, we need a regulatory framework with a sound science base that encourages innovation. The scientific consensus, across key advisory committees and institutes, is that precision-bred organisms pose no greater risk to health or the environment than traditionally bred organisms. The existing legislation carries a significant burden. According to the AgriFood Economics Centre, current regulations add a stifling 74% to the cost of marketing for businesses. This deters investment and limits the type of companies and products that can be brought to market. Countries that have kept pace with the science and introduced regulatory reform have seen significant investment. The Americas have attracted over 80% of venture capital investment in the sector, while only 5% comes to Europe. It is paramount that we act to change this.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
At end to insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations fail to provide consumers, farmers and landowners with sufficient information on genetically modified precision bred organisms, and fail to allow devolved authorities to implement their policy choices in areas where responsibility has been devolved to them.”
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, for clarity, I express that this is a regret amendment, not a fatal one. That is due in part to an error of mine, but I am choosing to regard this as an opportunity. I know that many Members would not vote for a fatal amendment, but here is an opportunity for noble Lords to show their concerns about this deeply flawed instrument before us. I will listen to the debate before deciding whether to divide the House.
Your Lordships do not have to take my word for the statement that this is a flawed instrument. I am sure that many Members of the House have already seen the 15-page—yes, 15-page—report from our hard-working Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, to which the Minister referred. It contains a great many concerns about the basic workability of what is here before us today; these are issues that I will get back to.
In bold on the front page of the committee’s report is a suggestion that
“The House may wish to question the Minister further”
on the concerns raised about
“about the lack of labelling requirements despite apparent strong consumer preferences for mandatory labelling”.
The committee also says that Members may want to ask about the impact on trade and on organic producers. I would also add—and we may hear more—about the impacts on Scotland and Wales.
I am confident these issues will be at the centre of our debate and that the Minister will be pressed on them. Trust in our food system, and trust that the label will tell you what you want to know about what is in the packet, is clearly crucial. We have seen in the US —and, yes, I will use the phrase—“Make America Healthy Again” deployed very often. This is what happens when trust breaks down.
There are already signs of growing concern here in the UK. I point noble Lords to an article in the Independent published yesterday, headlined:
“A mobile app told me my kids’ food isn’t healthy—now I am emptying out my kitchen cabinets”.
The writer comments:
“Like many other mums, I’ve become hooked on it”—
the app—
“mainly to check if the food I feed my kids is any good for them”.
Before I get back to that, and in deference to the fact that many new Members have joined your Lordships’ House since we debated the legislation behind this statutory instrument, I will explain the background. Many will remember, I am sure, the public reaction, the concern, which started in the 1990s, about the possibility of genetically modified organisms getting into the food system in the UK. Public concern here and around the world has not faded. Courts in the Philippines and Kenya, to take just two examples, have recently ruled against GM foods. In January, responding to a Trumpian push to force GMO crops on his country, the Mexican President said:
“We do not want GM … We are a sovereign free country”.
We were told that what is being proposed under the legislation was different and rather than introducing genes from other species, the gene-edited organisms that this covers would allow only genes from other organisms that would have interbred naturally or genes that had been deleted from the original organisms. But that is not really what is happening.
Handily, Rothamsted Research released news in the past month to help me illustrate the point. It had proclaimed success in gene-editing a wheat variety low in the amino acid asparagine, which on cooking can be converted to acrylamide, about which there are concerns. This wheat might be handy for the manufacturers of processed snacks since it is classed as a processing contaminant that legally needs to be monitored.
As with so much of this regulation, we are talking about benefiting biotech companies and food manufacturers, not consumers. But Rothamsted acknowledged to Euronews that it had encountered a snag. Foreign DNA it had introduced into the wheat, not wheat DNA at all, had proved impossible to breed out so this wheat cannot meet the definition of gene-edited and very clearly remains a GMO.
That lines up with an informative—rather technical, I confess—slide that I would be happy to share with any interested noble Lords that Dr Vladimir Nekrasov from Rothamsted presented at a Westminster Forum event on gene-editing that I chaired last week. It identified challenges to gene-editing, including limits to the understanding of the genetic networks controlling key traits in crops, the recalcitrance of some crops to gene-editing, the difficulty of changing multiple genes at the same time, and the difficulty in ensuring that the result is free of transgenes; that is, foreign genes.
In summary, this is not a simple or predictable process. It is not a precision process. As I said in Grand Committee last week, putting the terms engineering and biology together reflects a profound misunderstanding of how life works. Engineering is fine for machines but not for biology. In that debate I pointed to the astonishing new discovery that mitochondria can migrate between cells. In another new discovery this week, phys.org reports:
“Scientists make discovery that upends our beliefs about how cells divide”.
We are messing with systems we do not understand, like a child dismantling a clock and throwing the pieces into a microwave to see what happens.
I hope that explains the legislation—which, unfortunately, already exists—so I turn now to the practical problems of this instrument, many of which were outlined so clearly by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. In the interests of time, I will be brief; I believe other noble Lords will be picking up some of the points I am making. I have already referred to the failure to require labelling of gene-edited crops. The Minister spoke about a register that you might be able to look up online—I think the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee sets out how utterly inadequate that is for the consumer, that mum such as the Independent writer, who is there in the supermarket, wondering what to buy for her children that night.
Method-of-production labelling is common in our food system. It is what allows us to choose free-range eggs, organic milk or fairtrade coffee or tea, or which items are halal or kosher. Indeed, we still do not know how these certifications will regard this gene-editing. Labelling allows consumers to meet their own personal food needs and to shop their values, which is surely the cornerstone of a democratic food system. The other issues—some of which the committee has already covered—for organic farmers and food producers include that gene-edited organisms remain GMOs and must be excluded from their supply chain. This regulation does not allow them to do that.
The Minister spoke about implementing the legislation, but the Government still have not solved the issue that none of these organisms can be sold commercially unless it is first on the national seed list. Will they be a separate listing on the list? This is very much unclear.
I will briefly mention the devolved nations because I have confidence that this issue will be covered very strongly by other noble Lords. I will set out where we are at. An English producer can sell a bag of gene-edited grain or a tomato into Scotland and Wales and the internal market Act means that that cannot be stopped. But once those commodities undergo further processing and become flour or tomato sauce, under Welsh and Scottish law they have to be labelled as GMOs. I really do not see how that is going to be solved.
Going beyond the other nations, in terms of trade issues, a new legal opinion published in the European Union says that not labelling what we are calling PBOs directly contravenes the obligations under the Cartagena protocol—which aims to prevent potential harm to biological diversity caused by the movement of GMOs across international borders—to which the UK is a party.
We could see the EU lay down a phytosanitary marker that says that unlabelled English PBOs will be rejected at the border. It is considering the possibility of bringing in something like these rules—its labels are NGT 1 and NGT 2. I will not go into the details of all of that here, but it has an entirely different classification system from what this regulation introduces. The complications—and I am happy to talk to any noble Lord who would like to discuss this later—are very high.
Finally, I note that while everyone in this legislation and regulation is talking about food crops, we are in fact talking about regulations affecting any plant, including ornamental and wild plants, and how we could be messing with our already much-depleted natural systems. But we are going to hear, and have already heard, from the Minister about feeding the world. I am going to go to Katja Tielbörger, a professor of plant ecology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, who spoke to Euronews about the Rothamsted difficulties. She said:
“We don’t need any new varieties to feed the world. Food security is not an issue of which varieties we have. It’s an issue of how the food is distributed and what is happening with it”.
I am pro food security, pro agroecology and pro working for farmers and consumers and not for multinational food companies and giant agrochemical companies. I am pro a healthy food system, and so I beg to move.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, it will be no surprise to anyone in the House that I strongly support this statutory instrument. Precision breeding as a method of plant breeding is safer and more precise than the random selection methods of existing traditional breeding. Above all, it is the speeding up of the process of developing new and urgently needed varieties that makes it so important in today’s world.
If you have 15 to 20 years to spare and are dogged enough to pursue your single-issue target with the millions of options available to you from the 200 or 300 hybrids you are breeding every year—95%-plus of which you destroy—you might eventually be able to produce a variety with the vital characteristics you want. But we do not have the time for the 20 or so harvests needed for the random-chance mutations that such traditional breeding provides. We urgently and desperately need to make multifaceted improvements to a whole range of crops.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, just said. I do not intend to repeat the technical aspects of it, but I hope I can deliver the lay man’s common-sense view of it—backed by the science, because that is what we are about.
Precision breeding is not genetic modification, whatever anyone might say. In 1998, I was the Food Safety Minister before the FSA existed, when the campaign was laid against GM foods. In fact, this technique was not available then; if it had been, we would probably not even have tried to go down the road of GM. The American population has been the sitting duck sample of GM food technology for 30 years and, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever died from any of the food.
I am also quite critical of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I feel really sad about this, because its report is biased and does not take a full range of evidence. I am not going into further criticism, but I think this report deserves criticism. It is a shame, because they are normally incredibly good.
It is just as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said. It has been a long time since I went to Norwich to the John Innes Centre and the other laboratories and saw the amount of time spent on traditional breeding. If you look at it fully, traditional breeding is gene editing, but they did not know that they were doing it. That is the problem: it is randomised, so they are not certain about it. But the products that come out are safe; the science says they are safe and the FSA says they are safe, and that should be good enough for most of us.
I do not hide behind organics. Anyone would think that organic farmers do not use antibiotics or medicines for their animals. They do. The idea that they are completely natural, with no scientific input at all, is absolutely preposterous.
We basically had this debate when we put the legislation through in 2023. The other place probably has not spend as long on it as this House, from the experience I have in both Houses. Most people—including me, before I went into MAFF—are completely ignorant about the breeding of plants: the technology, the randomised nature of it and the hit-and-miss view of it. The time spent on it is enormous, and is happening all the while. The fact is that breeding is taking place on a regular basis, and we do not worry about it. The products are safe. They are not labelled. That is my criticism of the report: if you cannot check that it is different, how can you label it? I would be much keener on having the methods of slaughter of animals labelled, but everybody is against that. That is more practical. In this case, if you cannot tell the difference, how can you possibly label it? It is scientifically preposterous.
I do not deny that there are scientists who take an opposite view. We had this happen 20-odd years ago, when a scientist told us that something was wrong with potatoes and GM technology. He was checking raw potatoes. I think the advice is, basically, do not eat raw potatoes because the chances are they will kill you. There is a real problem here with some odd scientists. The general scientific community—I hope I am not going to be contradicted in a moment—is generally in favour of this system. It is safe, it is an advance on the science, it helps consumers and it helps the environment. I cannot see what the problem is or the need to slow it down.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the published register. I am torn on this matter. I am a scientist by background and, as such, I have welcomed progress that has been made by science, but I believe that, with the immense impact of that progress, we have a responsibility to be extremely careful and to take steps forward only when we are absolutely certain we are doing the right thing.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, took me back to the early days of devolution in 1999, when the question of GM products was very controversial and caused immense difficulty—not least across the England-Wales border, in north-east Wales and in Cheshire. These are matters that need to be thought through in advance, otherwise we could once again get ourselves in the same sort of mess as we did around that time.
In responding to this debate, can the Minister clarify where exactly the discussions with the devolved Governments have gone? The responsibility for these matters lies with them, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Minister indicated that discussions were taking place, but by putting it in those terms the implication is that they have not reached a conclusion. Should we in this House be steamrollering an order like this through when that conclusion has not been reached, and many aspects of it may not have even been discussed at all? Why are the Government bringing this before the House before concluding the procedures to which they themselves have signed up—in the context of Wales—with their own Labour Government in Cardiff, who want to have the time to discuss this and come to a conclusion?
Therefore, I welcome the fact that there is a regret amendment, because I believe that we should move down this road if that is the consensus and it is agreed that it is safe, but only when we have gone through the proper procedures. If we are not going through the proper procedures with regard to the constitutional realities in these islands, how can we be sure that we are also going through the other procedures that are vital to the consideration of the substance of these regulations? Therefore, I ask Minister to think again, at least about the timescale, until further thought has been given to this matter.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support these regulations. That should be no surprise to your Lordships, given that I was Secretary of State when we took the primary legislation through this House. I would just remind the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that this measure has already been through this House, during which time amendments were tabled on marketing, labelling and so on, to which this House did not agree. Therefore, noble Lords have already had a say in the decision on how to take this technology forward.
I am conscious that there will be challenges about things like the United Kingdom Internal Market Act. I remind your Lordships that in the days when we were part of the European Union, the UK Government certainly listened to the responses and views of the devolved Administrations, but ultimately made determinations based on what was determined across the European Union as a whole, as well as relying on its votes. As a consequence, all that regulation was applied without any say from the House of Lords or the House of Commons at that time. We are now in an odd situation where we are trying to redo the arguments from just a couple of years ago. Those debates were intense, and it was right that they be had; nevertheless, they were had in this place. I am grateful to the Government for taking this forward.
I remind the House that 40% of crops are lost globally every year due to floods, pests and other such events. That is why it is important that agriculture and food security make the best use of our science. Today, we had a Question about the report from the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Climate Change Committee. To my surprise, when it comes climate-resilient agriculture, the Adaptation Sub-Committee does not refer in any way to devices like this, or to how we could improve food security through this technology; it talks more about the use of land and so on. It is important that we embrace technology. The John Innes Centre in Norwich, which has been referred to already, is a particularly good example, but there are others.
As has been well said, gene editing is the acceleration of natural processes. We will see food productivity increase, which is particularly important given the climate incidents we have witnessed on our own shores in just the last few years. That is why drought-resistant and disease-resistant crops that reduce the use of fertilisers are an important part of what we need to do to help biodiversity improve across this country, instead of it remaining in current regrettable state. But it is also important that we respect the United Kingdom Internal Market Act.
I am very conscious there are 40 pages of this legislation. I appreciate that in my time as Secretary of State, I sometimes got a bit frustrated, once we had completed the primary legislation, with how long it took to get on with some of the detail. I commend the officials in the FSA and Defra for proceeding with this. It matters that we get sensible, science-based decisions right, and do not worry too much about—to be candid—the artificial concerns people have when those decisions are accelerated. We are already experiencing artificial intelligence in so many walks of life. There is a lot of concern about that, I accept that, but this is the scientists and our farmers speaking. That is why, if this is forced to a Division, I will be supporting the Government tonight.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support these regulations; I do not regret them. The UK is a leader in these technologies, and exploiting and implementing them will be an integral part of developing our biosciences expertise to help drive economic growth in the UK. But much more than that, critically, they will help us feed not only ourselves in the UK but the world, in the face of a growing population, constantly emerging disease threats and environmental challenges.
I would just like to point out the rather obvious: the fruit, vegetables and crops we grow and consume now are very different from their natural progenitors and have been subject to genetic changes by humans over hundreds of years, through selective processes involving no knowledge of what other genes might be affected. We have been eating genetically modified food for years and years.
Historically, the world, and especially populations in some of the poorest countries of the world, benefited from the green revolution in the decades after the Second World War, when varieties of wheat and rice in particular were improved such that many people could be fed adequately in those countries. Again, that was achieved by traditional methods. But the modern techniques enable us to make changes extremely quickly, and with incredibly sustainable and environmentally friendly means, to benefit humankind by reducing parasiticides, chemicals, fertilisers and even water—and by reducing food waste. So I find it difficult to understand why the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and our colleagues in the Green Party oppose them.
I have confidence in our molecular biologists and our plant scientists—and these regulations. For these reasons, I support the Government strongly, but I urge them to press ahead with similar enabling regulations to permit precision-breeding technologies in animals. They offer, for example, the prospect of creating avian flu-resistant chickens, which would not only prevent disease in chickens but could reduce the possibility of spillover infections into humans of, for instance, the highly pathogenic avian influenza strain H5N1. Doing that has the potential to prevent the possible adaptation to human-to-human transmission. So I strongly support these regulations for plants, and I urge the Government to consider bringing similar enabling regulations for animals to this House as soon as possible.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)
My Lords, my career has been in the communication of science and evidence, helping to give people the information that they need and want to make decisions. There have been 25 years of studies on the communication of genetic modification and all these techniques. Some of them were done by the FSA, which neatly summarises the decades of research, saying that consumers
“saw a range of risks and benefits to PB food but on balance consumers thought the benefits outweighed the risks if properly regulated … they trust the FSA to regulate PB food”—
but they
“wanted labelling to enable them to make choices at the point of purchase”.
The FSA says:
“The power to decide on the mandatory labelling of PBOs for non-safety related purposes in England sits with … Defra. FSA officials have shared results of the consumer research and public consultation with Defra”.
I am really concerned about the lack of labelling here, not because it is a safety issue but because going against what consumers want carries risks. Defra responded:
“Based on the scientific advice that the risk associated with precision bred plants is no greater than for traditionally bred counterparts, we do not consider that mandatory labelling focused on the breeding technology or process used is appropriate”.
I have heard those arguments echoed by noble Lords today already. But the problem with this is that a lot of people’s concerns about this technology are not safety based, and ignoring the fact that people have other concerns, which they feel are not being listened to, might create a public backlash to this technology.
Often, people feel that something will not be fair here. They are worried about this benefiting the big players and the rich over the smaller players or the poor in the world. Defra’s response, focusing only on food safety, does not even make sense because, as we have heard, labels on food are often about things that are not direct food safety. Labelling of country of origin is mandated, for example. This allows consumers to make decisions on things they want to decide on when they are buying things at the point of sale.
I worry that, if the Government continue on this path of not having mandatory labelling, organic producers, who cannot allow gene-edited material into their supply chains, will have to take the responsibility to do all that tracing and labelling of products themselves. It will be very difficult, as we all know and have already heard, to trace a product all the way from a register—a variety—right through the supply chain. So, if people are not able to do that work or if it will be very expensive, how is the organic labelling supposed to work and how are consumers supposed to make a choice?
If we dig down into the FSA’s material on labelling further, we find a paragraph that says that labelling
“is likely to add extra costs. Providing this additional verification and assurance for all PB food would add extra cost to the whole PB food market, making it less affordable, reducing the incentives for food businesses to innovate and bring new products to market”.
That is the sort of phrase—“incentives for food businesses”—that is likely to trigger the sentiment that we have already experienced around genetic modification, and around the fear that the Government are pandering to big multinational companies, allowing their profits to override concerns about the environment or small businesses such as small farms.
I have a positive solution here for the Government. Rather than making organic and small brands, usually SMEs, label their products as “GM free” or choose whatever label they want—thereby causing resentment among the public about the costs to small businesses and worries about the lack of transparency—it would be far better for gene-edited products to be clearly labelled with what modification has been made to them and why. The Royal Society mentioned this in its consultation response. For example, labels could say: “Genetically enhanced to contain more vitamin C”. This would give people an understanding of the potential benefits and would let them know, and reassure them, that things have been traced through. To respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, if something has been edited and it has shown stability through the generations, it does not matter how many generations later you are: that edited gene is present in that product—and it is there for a reason. This is why people are doing this work: we want these beneficial genes.
Giving people that understanding, through labelling, that it has been enhanced to do whatever it has been enhanced to do allows people to make an informed consumer choice, and it minimises the costs and places them fairly on the people doing the gene editing. I beg the Minister to reconsider on this issue. She should listen to people’s concerns; they are not irrational or misunderstanding science—it is about establishing trust and about your priorities and ensuring that they are the same as the public’s priorities. If you do not act in a trustworthy manner, you cannot expect people to trust you. Once you have lost trust, we know what happens: we have been there before on this issue.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, given my experience with polling, I wish to focus on one particular statement made by Defra which underpins this Statutory Instrument. In the de minimis impact assessment, it says that polling commissioned by Defra, from YouGov in 2022, found that
“over half (57%) of respondents thought the use of gene editing in crops/plants for food production was acceptable, 16% were undecided, while 27% thought the use was unacceptable”.
It is a little unfortunate that, as well as initially not having published the impact assessment online but only making it available on request, the department also initially seemed reluctant to share further details of that polling. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on this noted:
“Defra has not published the survey”,
and that remained the case even after the committee asked for information about it.
As a result, I contacted the pollster directly and pointed out that, under its own industry regulation, it appeared to be required to publish the poll, which I am glad to say that it did—and to be fair I note that Defra has since added a link to the details of the poll to the impact assessment. But this sequence suggests an unfortunate reluctance to be as transparent as possible about the evidence being used for decision-making. Why should the details of a poll, paid for by the taxpayer and being used to justify legislation being put to Parliament, be obscured in that way?
Now that we have the details of the poll, they pose further questions. In the poll, a full 52% said that they had not even heard of this technology. Moreover, of the 48% who had heard of it, only 3% said they were “very well informed” about it. As that is 3% of the 48%, it means that overall only 1.5% said that they were very well informed about the topic that they were being asked to give their views on.
The specific question which Defra cited, whose wording we now know despite that earlier reluctance, is not an awful question, by any means, but its wording is problematic, given how Defra has chosen to use its results. The question wording provides positives about PBOs without providing any mention of possible drawbacks. There is an obvious and clear risk of skewing answers, if you ask a question on a topic about which only 1.5% say they are well informed and in that question provide only benefits and mention no possible drawbacks.
I hope, therefore, that the Minister will address both these points. First, why was there the initial reluctance to publish full details of the poll? Secondly, can I press the Minister on whether a question in a poll where only 1.5% of people say that they are well informed of the topic, and with wording that provides only positives for the policy, really provides the solid evidence that the impact assessment presents it as being?
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I would briefly like to support the statutory instrument before us. There have been very many good speeches and some that I disagree with, which are fighting battles that we have already fought, discussed at length and voted on—and here we are still raising them—and then people bring in the red herring of genetically modified foods, which is not what we are talking about at all.
There has been quite a lot about labelling. I repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said. All the food that we eat now has been genetically altered. It is not labelled—there was no labelling on Golden Promise, that wonderful barley in the 1950s. That started life in a nuclear reactor subjected to gamma rays; there has been no labelling about that. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, by the time it gets into the food chain, it is a very different plant from what originally happened.
I believe that the Government have absolutely got it right and have struck the right balance. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, says that she wants healthy foods; we all want healthy foods. But the food that we are eating, which is healthy, is all genetically modified. If the noble Baroness wants really healthy food, she should go back to basics, when mankind first appeared on the planet—she would be dead of starvation. She would not have a hope.
I wish also to support the noble Lord, Lord Trees, in asking the Government to move forward on the animal front, too. These regulations are hugely important for farmers and consumers and for feeding the world’s population in the years to come.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I want to intervene briefly just to agree with my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I will not repeat their points, but I think it is important for us to ask the question of whether it is right to use a debate on statutory instruments to try to revisit arguments that were, as far as I am concerned, thoroughly discussed during the passage of the originating legislation. Likewise, perhaps the Secondary Legislation Committee should not have treated people raising concerns with the committee as a basis for asking questions to the Minister. The committee should have examined some of those questions itself.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly and in so doing declare my interest as a scientific adviser to Marks & Spencer. I do not want to repeat what has been said, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that much of the debate this evening has been a repetition of what we heard in Committee and on Report of the primary legislation.
However, I just want to recap on the question of mandatory labelling, which has cropped up in a number of noble Lords’ contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, made the point that it would be very difficult to enforce mandatory labelling because you cannot tell the difference. That is the whole point: precision-bred organisms, as defined in the Bill, are organisms that could be produced by conventional breeding. So, if I were an enforcer, I would not know where to start. My noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington made the point that in due course, these gene-edited, precision-bred products will be pervasive in the food chain. Once there is a wheat that could grow without application of pesticides or could grow more effectively in our climate, it will become pervasive in the food chain. So where does the labelling start and end?
My third point, which was made by my noble friend Lady Freeman, is that it may be up to retailers, on a non-mandatory basis, to label the benefits. So: “Here is a tomato that is better for you”—and it may be labelled like that. It is not the process but the end product that matters. But if we insist on the process, and I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, we should be equally willing to put labels on conventionally bred organisms—apples, bread or other products—that says, “This product has been produced by bombarding gametes with nuclear radiation”. That is a process: it is the equivalent of gene editing but on the other side of the fence.
My final point is about cross-contamination. If I were a farmer producing gene-edited wheat, I would be really worried about cross-contamination from the neighbouring organic farmer. I would want guarantees that that organic farm was not going to contaminate my gene-edited crop. At the same time, the organic farmer is looking at me and saying, “I don’t want his stuff contaminating my crop”. It is in the interests of both sides to figure out ways of reducing or minimising the risks of cross-contamination. So it is not a one-way street, and I strongly support this secondary legislation.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, I shall intervene very briefly on the issue that was highlighted in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on the impact on the UK internal market. As we have heard, products of precision breeding that are approved for sale in England can be sold into Scotland and Wales, and we have had a bit of discussion on that, but at paragraph 47, the committee said:
“In relation to Northern Ireland, Defra explained: ‘Under the Windsor Framework, mutual recognition does not apply to precision bred organism legislation. Therefore, precision bred products must comply with GM legislation before it can be sold in Northern Ireland’.”
At paragraph 48, it said that
“because PBOs are currently not recognised in the EU and therefore in NI”—
since we are under EU law and jurisdiction, despite Brexit—
“producers with PBO authorisation in England will have to label their products as GMO for trade with NI or the EU. This is a matter of concern”.
It talks about the submissions that were made raising fundamental questions about the ability to trade with our EU neighbours. Therefore, I ask the Minister when she comes to reply just to explain and clarify the position of Northern Ireland. What is the impact on Northern Ireland of this particular situation that Northern Ireland finds itself in, compared even to Scotland and Wales?
The fact is that these issues, as the committee says at paragraph 49, could not be addressed in any detail whatever through a de minimis impact assessment. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, discussions are happening with the devolved Administrations. I would be very interested to hear what stage they are at. What discussion is happening with the Northern Ireland DAERA Minister? I have certainly not heard anything being reported in the Northern Ireland Assembly on this matter, so I would be grateful if the Minister could just clarify those very important issues, which have been highlighted in the report, with regard to Northern Ireland.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, I shall speak very briefly on this issue, mainly because I followed the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, into that portfolio in MAFF, which was something of a poisoned chalice at the time, and lived through some of the very bitter and divisive debates around GMOs. I work often and very closely with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I think I did not agree with almost anything that she said this evening. At the time, a quarter of a century ago, the debate was almost impossible to have with any clarity or without high emotion, and that was terribly destructive on all sorts of levels. In particular—the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said this, and I think he was so right—that somehow a technology in itself became something that people either believed in or did not believe in, instead of looking at the application of that technology, what its effects were, whether those effects should be allowed but people should be aware of them, or whether they had no traceable consequences, and therefore labelling was in some ways itself dishonest.
The noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, made a very interesting speech about trust, and I agree with her. However, there is a problem if we pretend that there is something that can be identified and that ought to be flagged up, against the advice of the FSA, the department and all those who spend years of their lives looking at these issues, because 1.5% of respondents to the survey, when asked specifically whether this is something they would like to be informed about, say that they think that is a good idea. We could put the most enormous list of things that 1.5% of the population would be interested in being informed about when they buy something. It is a really interesting and important debate, but I do not believe that it is relevant to this subject.
All I will say is that I formed my view on this issue not only on those rational, scientific grounds, but because I went to the John Innes Centre very early on in my ministerial job. There, I met young scientists and agronomists from Africa, who were so enthused about and grateful for the opportunity to spend time in that scientific institution, because they thought of the relevance that this work could have for their populations and their agriculture.
I went back to John Innes a few months ago with the Action Against Hunger group. That same commitment, not to the agro-industry conglomerates nor to business, but to the improvement of crops that will help the world—and help agriculture in this country—and which could have such potential, was still there. They had kept the faith over those 25 difficult years when we did not make progress, so I am absolutely delighted to support these regulations tonight.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I will make just a brief contribution. It is nice to be able to enter a debate where we are not confusing genetically modified organisms with gene editing; that has been the problem in the past.
I think the Government have got it right. We have been around the labelling track and seen how practically impossible that is. They have got it right because there is a balance to be struck, but if we are not careful, the perfect will be the enemy of the good, and we know this is good for so many different reasons—some of which were outlined by the previous speakers.
I welcome the Government’s approach. It is right, it is evidence-based and it is designed to take us on a path which will improve food security in this country and throughout the world.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches support the aims of this statutory instrument but welcome the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in her regret amendment.
The Liberal Democrats have always made it clear from these Benches that we are not anti-science and support the idea of encouraging a science-based approach to technologies such as gene editing for precision breeding. We believe that such methods can be helpful in addressing challenges such as climate change, reducing the need for pesticides and fertilisers, and in mitigation against disease and pest issues for food and food crops.
We recognise, as has been mentioned by other noble Lords, the scientific consensus from bodies such as ACRE and the European Food Safety Authority—which has not been mentioned—that these organisms pose no greater risk to health or the environment than traditionally bred counterparts.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for their fascinating historical context and insight, and especially for the important information about when not to eat potatoes, which I will take with me.
However, the point of a regulatory process is to manage both the benefits and risks in an appropriate way. While the existing legislation carries a significant burden, these draft regulations raise some questions. They appear to take away some of the safeguards that apply to other genetically modified organisms, such as mandatory risk assessments, public notice, traceability, and environmental monitoring.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, this statutory instrument enacts policy from the ground-breaking Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act, brought in by the previous Conservative Government in 2023. It is a fantastic innovation, which we should welcome. This legislation permits us to use safe science to speed up what nature has been doing for millennia and plant breeders for 100 years or so. Britain has used its Brexit freedoms to bring in the well-tried and tested procedure of gene editing, and we now see the EU considering following behind it.
I also commend my old friends from the FSA for their simplified regulatory regime for marketing precision-bred plants and a proportionate regulatory regime for precision-bred animals to ensure that animal welfare is safeguarded. I am proud to say that I was on the board of the FSA when we agreed the regulatory regime, and we took into account every representation made, including consumer concerns.
I think the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and a few others in the other place attempted to muddy the waters when the Bill went through by claiming that gene editing is the same as genetic modification, but that argument was overwhelmingly rejected as bogus by all major parties in the Commons and Lords, and by Cross-Benchers. Parliament, especially this House, debated this in detail and rejected the ideas produced by the noble Baroness tonight. I therefore deplore the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness —she is entitled to table it—in particular the completely misleading words
“genetically modified precision bred organisms”.
I do not want the Whip on duty to report this to the Chief Whip, but I am tempted to say that I agree entirely with every word of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that it is my policy as well, and sit down and say no more. But I had better stick to my script.
Gene editing simply makes changes that could occur through traditional breeding methods in plants or animals. It takes about eight years to produce a new variety of strawberry, 10 to 15 years for a new variety of potato, and about 25 years for a new variety of apple. Essentially, gene editing produces a natural but faster process. In precision breeding, there is no foreign DNA. All the genes being edited belong to the species.
I say to the noble Baroness that if Rothamsted has found a wheat with a GMO in it, that is its problem. It will not be approved by Defra or the ACNFP, so there is no threat to consumers. As Professor Cristóbal Uauy of the excellent John Innes Centre, has said, all crop breeding relies on the creation and selection of genetic changes to produce beneficial traits. Precision breeding is a way of creating the same genetic changes that could have been made through traditional breeding methods, but much faster and more precisely. All new varieties are subject to strict standards, and this will be the same for precision breeding. The new regulatory framework maintains protection for public health and the environment, allowing scientific advances that support sustainable agriculture to be brought safely to market with consumer confidence, offering enormous benefit to farmers, the public and the environment.
I reiterate that we warmly welcome the Government’s decision to follow Conservative policy and lay these regulations. We should acknowledge that genetic editing enables precise improvements to crops, making them more resistant to pests and diseases, reducing the need for harmful pesticides and increasing tolerance to extreme weather conditions such as drought and floods. These advances help ensure a stable food supply, despite environmental challenges. This increased resilience, as other noble Lords have said, is vital for enhancing food security not only here in the UK but in other countries where farming communities are especially vulnerable to challenging climates. With stronger, healthier crops, farmers can produce more consistent harvests with fewer resources, lowering their reliance on pesticides and fertilisers, which are often expensive and environmentally damaging.
As a result, gene editing supports more sustainable and efficient agriculture. By investing in this technology, we can help ensure that future generations have access to nutritious food. Genetic editing, particularly using tools such as CRISPR, involves making precise, targeted changes to an organism’s existing DNA without adding foreign DNA. It is often used to fix genetic defects and enhance natural traits.
I understand that some of the things being worked on are banana trees resistant to Panama disease and, as the Minister said, bananas which do not go brown in hours. Personally, I would love to find in a supermarket bananas which are yellow instead of the horrible bright green things we get these days, which are unripe and inedible—but that is an aside. People are working on strawberries and tomatoes which will be mildew resistant, wheat which will be able to grow in hotter, drier climates, and broccoli with enhanced glucosinolates —whatever they are—that help prevent heart disease, apparently.
Work is going on to eliminate magnaporthe grisea—rice blast disease—which destroys enough rice crops to feed 60 million people per annum. Gene editing will give us tomatoes with enhanced vitamin D. One day, I hope, we will get tomatoes which are properly ripe and sweet in the supermarket; they are picked when they are bright green and unripe, stored at 12 degrees and then zapped with ethylene, which turns them red. That is another benefit we may get in future.
Precision breeding is not an alternative to conventional breeding. We can get all the benefits I have just described with conventional breeding if we are prepared to spend 20 to 30 years tinkering about with cross-breeding techniques and rejecting 95% of the failures. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, these products will not be on our shelves next year or the year after, since they will have to go through the strict testing regime and the final Food Standards Agency regulatory regime. There are 55 clauses and five schedules—yes, the regulations are complex, but we have to demonstrate to consumers that we have built in all the necessary safety features, which I believe the Government have.
I understand that potential UK developers are taking it carefully and slowly, and that must be the right approach to reassure the public. I am also told that these developers are small start-up companies, not the huge agrochemical companies of the world—the Cargills or whatever. The FSA and its expert scientific committees always adopt a strict precautionary approach. If they are satisfied with the inherent safety of any gene-edited product approved and placed on the new register, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is very safe indeed.
Talking of dollars, I want an assurance from the Minister that if we do a trade deal with the USA and it involves food, we will not permit any product that is produced to lower welfare standards than ours or treated with drugs or chemicals that we have banned. That also means that we should not permit any US gene-edited products to enter our shops without their going through the whole safety and environmental testing regime we have invented in this Act and these regulations. No matter how safe the Americans may think they are, we have to reassure our consumers that we are checking them out too.
Since gene-edited species have genes that are no different from species that have been created slowly, labelling is also nonsensical, as nearly every other noble Lord has pointed out. When I cannot get English apples I buy those delicious Gala apples, which were invented by a Mr Kidd in New Zealand 90 years ago. Since then, Gala apples have been cross-bred and tweaked conventionally up to 36 times. If we label any new gene-edited version, logically we would have to label the other 36 variations as well. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is right, as is the noble Lord, Lord Rooker: Parliament rejected calls for labelling, and our expert scientists pointed out that it is impossible to label something as different if it is actually just the same as the other varieties of the same species. That was beautifully and bluntly put by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in his usual style. We all laughed.
Let us be honest: those who call for labelling simply want to discredit gene editing by trying to show that the product is somehow different; they claim that it is actually genetic modification by the back door and somehow dangerous. Labelling, rightly, will not happen. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, was also right: if you ask consumers 100 questions on different things that they would like labelled, there will always be some who say, “Yes, we’d like that label”, and we would have to put 200 different things on the label. We all have our own personal fetishes about what we would like to see on food labels. If any Government tried to apply all of them, the label would be about 3 feet long.
I have more bad news, I am afraid, for the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. A survey conducted by the FSA showed that 65% of the population would eat a precision-bred product if it had health benefits, 64% would eat it if it was better for the environment, 64% if it was safer for people with allergies, 62% if it tasted better, 61% if it was cheaper and 60% if it was more resilient to changing climates. Consumers are onside, provided that we follow the safety regime in these regulations.
Ultimately, as was so neatly explained by Professor Stephen Penfield of the John Innes Centre:
“The resilience of the UK’s food supply depends on our farmers and growers being able to sustainably and reliably grow their crops”.
This legislation unlocks agricultural innovation, accelerating the development of new crop varieties with higher yields and enhanced pest and disease resistance, enabling farmers to reduce the environmental impact of their agricultural practices.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for your contributions and comments in what has been a very interesting debate and, in most cases, for your Lordships’ support for the regulations. We have covered a bit of old ground as well.
I want to take a moment to reflect on the importance of implementing this legislation. Without it, the potential of precision breeding cannot be realised. The existing legislation carries a significant burden, limiting which companies can bring products to market and which crop species and traits we can benefit from. Our understanding of the science has advanced. It is not proportionate to apply the existing legislation to plants produced by modern biotechnologies when the overwhelming scientific advice is that they pose no greater risk than traditionally bred varieties. The secondary legislation that we have been discussing today will change this, providing a science-based approach that is proportionate to the level of risk. As my noble friend Lord Young said, we are taking an evidence-based, balanced approach.
I recognise, however, that there have been concerns and issues raised, so I will turn to these now. Devolved Governments were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Dodds. We recognise the valid concerns that noble Lords raise on the issue of divergence within the UK, which is why we are continuing, as the noble Lord said, to regularly engage with the devolved Governments. My colleague in the other place, Minister Zeichner, has recently been speaking to our devolved Governments and has invited them to discuss the issues in more detail. This work will build on the regular monthly meetings that we already have with devolved Governments.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, raised the issues of progress and timing. We are making good progress in discussions. As I have said, the devolved Governments are considering their positions and holding discussions with the key stakeholders that are impacted. We wanted to crack on: we do not have the time to wait to realise the potential benefits. We have, as the noble Lords have said, gone through this in a very long debate on the legislation, but we recognise the importance of working closely with the devolved Governments.
On Northern Ireland, which the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, raised, I want to assure noble Lords that we recognise that this is an important issue, and we continue to engage with stakeholders and officials in Northern Ireland properly to understand the potential short-term and long-term impacts. That includes recent engagement with Minister Muir— Daniel Zeichner met him to discuss specifically the implications of precision breeding. We are also engaging with the EU at the UK-EU Agri-Food Structure Group on the potential implications of its proposed regulatory framework for Northern Ireland.
The impact on the organic sector was raised by a number of noble Lords. This is one of the areas where we have a lot of work ongoing. Our engagement with the industry has suggested that the first products that would come to market would not undergo significant further processing; so, they can be kept separate from traditionally bred material, which would mean that the exposure of organic production to precision-bred material would be very limited in the short term.
However, Defra is working closely with the organic sector to prepare for the medium-term and longer-term impacts by discussing non-legislative options for supply chain coexistence, including facilitating discussions to establish which measures currently used by industry could be used by farmers to enable coexistence between precision-bred and non-precision-bred crop production. That is in line with how things are approached internationally. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, talked about cross-contamination and the importance of getting this right. Defra is also working with the organic sector to look at any other further potential issues in the wider supply chain.
Labelling came up a lot; many noble Lords talked about it. Obviously, it was a key area of debate during the passage of the Act, and I felt that we were revisiting that to a certain extent. As noble Lords have said, the Food Standards Agency Board concluded there was no justification for the provision of labelling on grounds of consumer safety, since there was no scientific evidence that precision-bred organisms are intrinsically more hazardous than traditionally bred organisms. Because this was not considered to be a safety issue, mandatory labelling to indicate the process does not align with the principles behind the policy and would also raise costs for both business and consumers.
Methods of production are normally voluntarily labelled and can be catered for by the market if there is the demand; that follows the approach taken by many partners abroad, including the current EU regulatory proposal. However, I think we would support the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that voluntary labelling of benefits could well be very helpful. We have tried to get the right balance here. However, out of interest for your Lordships, there are discussions within Defra at the moment about how labelling for consumers could be improved. This is something we are looking at.
The noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, mentioned consumer views and transparency. The FSA regularly gathers consumer views on a wide range of topics, and the most recent data shows that the price of food remains the top concern for consumers, alongside food poverty, food inequality, sustainability and the healthiness of the food being eaten. The FSA continues to undertake regular polling and insights to track public attitudes. We know that public levels of understanding are low, but public sentiment is more in favour.
While I am on polling, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, mentioned the YouGov polling and why it was not published. It was carried out by YouGov to look at public perception. All three polls were designed for internal use to enable us to track whether our communications around the Act had been effective. It has now been published and can be found on the Government’s website.
Plant varieties and seeds were mentioned by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. Plant varieties of the main agriculture and vegetable crops must be registered on the Great Britain or Northern Ireland variety lists before seeds of the varieties can be marketed. To be listed, a new plant variety must undergo testing to confirm that it is new and an improvement on varieties that are already available to the market. As the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 removes precision-bred organisms from genetically modified organism regulations and requirements applicable in England only, a precision-bred plant variety list for England is proposed in addition to the existing variety lists.
The EU position was raised just now by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I am sure that he will not be surprised to know that I cannot comment on the EU reset discussions. Among other noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in particular, talked about the EU Commission’s proposal for the regulation of plants—the NGTs, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. We are monitoring the EU’s position closely and have noted that there has recently been progress in the European Council on the draft NGT proposal. It is quite similar in aim to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 that we have been talking about today, but it is clearly going to take some time before new legislation is implemented in the EU.
I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that all products from the United States will need to go through the regulatory system in order to be placed on the market.
Environmental and health and safety risks were talked about. This is understandable given the controversy around genetically modified organisms in the UK historically, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and my noble friend Lord Rooker. This is why it is so important to take an evidence-based approach and to work with experts as we develop the policy. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, made the point so strongly in his contribution: the scientific evidence is clear. The risk that a precision-bred plant poses to the environment and health is dependent on its characteristics rather than the technique used to develop it.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned Africa and the impacts of climate change. The purpose of the Act was to encourage investment in research and development and innovation in agriculture, which has huge potential for climate change and for developing countries, such as those in Africa, which need to move forward in agriculture. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey —in her very important speech, with her experience from when this was first developed—talked about the importance of climate-resilient agriculture, which this will be able to support.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned safety of food and feed. I reassure Members that the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes advised that
“There is no evidence that precision-bred organisms are intrinsically more hazardous than traditionally bred organisms”.
The further movement of the Act towards including animals as well as plants was mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord Blencathra, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. As noble Lords are aware, the scope of the regulations is just for plants, but we recognise that there is strong support in relation to animals and that Members are keen to know more about the Government’s plans and approach, and any potential timelines. To inform noble Lords, we are currently continuing research on this but, while it is going forward, we will not be bringing forward any further legislation on animals.
The final question was from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who talked about the Cartagena protocol. We remain committed to our international obligations and the protocol. Our proposal is consistent with our obligations as a signatory.
In my opening speech, I outlined the challenges we currently face in the food system, and recent world events really have shone a spotlight on the urgency of addressing these. We must take advantage of the opportunities presented by new technologies and advancements in scientific understanding, and we cannot afford to inhibit innovation through having outdated regulations. Harnessing innovation in precision breeding can help us to achieve several priorities: bolstering food security and championing British farming, helping to mitigate and adapt to climate pressures, and driving the Government’s missions on growth and health. The growth potential is evident, and we have the opportunity to be right at the forefront. Voting to approve the regulations today, if the noble Baroness decides to call a vote, is the only way to implement the Act in relation to plants and to realise the potential benefits of precision breeding for farmers, consumers and the environment.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and, indeed, thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I apologise to those who said it would not take more than an hour—I am sorry about that.
First of all, I thank the Minister for saying that the issues around the organic sector need a lot of work. I am pleased that she has acknowledged that there is a real issue there and that work needs to be done.
I am also pleased that the Minister, reflecting on the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Dodds, acknowledged that there are big issues that need to be worked through with the devolved Administrations.
I make no apologies for returning to the issue of labelling, and I point out that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also returned to the issue of labelling. We heard, in a very powerful contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, that this is not just about issues of safety or the technology; it is about public confidence. That was one of the reasons why I led with that in my introduction to the regret amendment.
I note particularly the comment made by the Minister in response to the noble Lord, Lord Trees, that the Government do not have any plans to take this forward with animals. I point out that the Minister herself tabled an amendment when we debated this under the previous Government to take animals out of the Act altogether. I very much hope that she and the new Government will stick to that position.
I highlight in particular the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Pack. I am honoured that this was his first post-maiden speech. It will be considerably more significant than most such speeches because any government department will have to look very carefully at its future use of polling and the kind of transparency it uses in polling. In saying that, when I reflect on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I think he was using polling that the noble Lord, Lord Pack, had pointed out issues with.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and others—I give credit to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman —spoke of their concern about the situation of Africa, with its young and fast-growing population et cetera. But I point out that only 11 of 54 African nations have approved GM crops. For example, 2023 was the UN’s International Year of Millets. Many traditional existing crops in Africa that were swept aside in the colonial era have huge potential for public health, drought resistance and all the other characteristics that already exist.
The noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Blencathra, and others, said we are not talking about genetically modified organisms. The Act specifically defines precision breeding as genetic modification and then creates specific regulatory exemptions around it. There is no question, legally or scientifically, that PBOs are genetically modified.
With regard to identifying so-called PBOs, the FSA ordered a literature review by an adviser to the Government Chemist that made it very clear that it is possible—and it should be done—to create methods to detect organisms that have been genetically modified in this way. Since it has come up quite a lot, radiation breeding is not used anymore.
However, I can count and, on that basis, with reluctance, I have no alternative but to withdraw my amendment.