Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations 2025

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.