Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Regulations 2025

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.