Public Bodies Bill [HL]
Lord Whitty Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I will move the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Whitty. Passenger Focus plays an important role in protecting the interests of Britain’s rail passengers, England’s bus passengers outside London, coach passengers on scheduled domestic services and tram passengers. It is important that this function is not undermined and it is not appropriate that Passenger Focus is included in the Bill. I am very happy that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is joining me in support of this important amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, my noble friend did not realise that I had arrived from the airport to move the amendment. I, too, am grateful to the Minister and I congratulate him. This is the first time that a Minister in this Government has added their name to an amendment of mine on any piece of legislation. What I am about to say should not undermine my gratitude. However, I have to ask two questions.
First, where does this leave Passenger Focus, because it achieved the distinction of appearing under three different schedules to the Bill and it remains in Schedule 3, which we agreed at an earlier stage? The piece of paper given to us for our debate on Monday, had we reached the amendment then, indicated that a much reduced role is envisaged for Passenger Focus. The document states that it would concentrate on its,
“core role of protecting consumers”,
that there was “scope for significant savings”, and that the body would be working under a “significantly reduced budget”. The reference to the core role is slightly sinister, because it implies that the organisation will focus on the complaints function and therefore act in processing and improving that function, but that it will not be allowed to be more critical of the train or bus companies and, more particularly, the department’s overall transport policy as regards the rail or bus network. If that is the intention, it will neuter Passenger Focus considerably. I should like the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who I assume will reply, to provide reassurance on that front.
My second question is on a wider front. The various existing consumer bodies are being dealt with differentially under this legislation. Some are to be abolished, some are to be merged, some are to have their functions transferred and some, given the abolition of Schedule 7, will be retained—presumably in their present form. Passenger Focus will be retained in a modified form. The Government’s original intent, for which I had some regard, was to rationalise the whole structure of consumer representation. Instead of that, the danger is that they will leave a bigger hotchpotch than the aggregate of previous legislation on consumer matters and weaken the statutory base of a number of consumer bodies.
As the Committee knows, I have an interest as a past chair of Consumer Focus. On the one hand, it appears that that body will be abolished, while on the other hand the Government say that they will transfer the functions to Citizens Advice. It was BIS’s original view that other bodies, including Passenger Focus and the Consumer Council for Water, should also be transferred to Citizens Advice. Whether or not that was a good idea, at least it was coherent. It seems now that we will end up on the consumer front with greater incoherence than the Government inherited and were determined to do something about. Not only is regulation likely to be more incoherent, but it is also likely to be substantially weaker, with fewer resources. Therefore, although I very much appreciate the Government’s support for the amendment, I have serious misgivings about their specific and general intentions as regards consumer protection.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said. There is certainly scope for economy. I did not agree with the previous Government’s decision to transfer protection of bus and coach passengers to the Rail Passengers’ Council. However, the work of the council is concentrated mainly on issues such as punctuality. It has produced extremely good reports on things that irritate users such as huge queues at booking offices and the way in which ticket machines baffle many users and often do not work. These issues are important to people and I cannot think who will regulate them for less money. Transferring the functions to the Office of Rail Regulation, which is full of lawyers, will raise the cost of doing this work.
I will say one further thing in defence of Passenger Focus. It has developed a system of statistical analysis by which it can take very little in the way of raw information and turn it into statistically robust results. I am all in favour of economy, but I am also in favour of having a body to look after the interests of passengers that is functional and that rests on a secure base. I and most passengers would regret anything that abolished this body.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I was surprised when the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, did not move his amendment, so it is a great pleasure for me to respond to him. He and I have debated together over many years. He has accepted some of my amendments and taken others away. It is a great pleasure to continue our debate, albeit with our roles reversed.
The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to remove Passenger Focus from Schedule 5 to the Bill. The appearance in the Bill of Passenger Focus does not reflect the view that the interests of passengers are unimportant. We are clear that passengers are the only reason why we run a public transport system. This was reflected in the public bodies review, which concluded that Passenger Focus should be retained but substantially reformed to focus on the core role of protecting passengers, thereby allowing a reduction in the cost to the taxpayer.
Noble Lords may see this as a first step towards cutting the budget of Passenger Focus to the point where it is no longer capable of being an effective voice for passengers. I reassure them that this is not the case. We fully accept the need for a powerful and effective passenger advocate. This is reinforced by EU provisions that require us to have a properly independent complaints body to which rail passengers can turn. Passenger Focus plays that role.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked whether this was not simply an opportunity to weaken and abolish a body that has been critical of the Government in the past. The answer is no. We want to maintain an effective passenger advocate because that is the best way of ensuring that transport operators are held properly to account. This is an effective opportunity to ensure that that role is performed in a robust and cost-effective way.
The Government had originally listed Passenger Focus in Schedule 5 to enable possible changes to its functions. Further work and our discussions with Passenger Focus have clarified that we can significantly reduce the cost to the taxpayer without recourse to legislative change through Schedule 5. For example, efficiencies can be derived by reducing the scope of Passenger Focus’s research and survey work. My noble friend Lord Taylor has added his name to Amendment 98 on that basis to support the removal of Passenger Focus from Schedule 5, which we hope will be welcomed by the Committee. However, the governance changes that we intend require its inclusion in Schedule 3, so we cannot support Amendment 75, which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was unable to move on Monday. Amendment 160A, which would remove Passenger Focus from Schedule 7, is effectively redundant in the light of the Government’s decision to remove Schedule 7 from the Bill.
I hope that I have been able to reassure the Committee and the noble Lord that we are not planning to leave passengers without proper protection and I hope that the Committee will accept Amendment 98.
Lord Whitty
I am not sure that it is in order for me to reply, given that my noble friend moved the amendment. However, I am grateful for some of those reassurances about the future of Passenger Focus. It would be helpful if we could be told the nature of the changes in governance that the Government propose, but perhaps that is for another day. However, I think that the body’s removal from this schedule is important. The noble Earl was probably not in a position to reply to my other points, which concerned the broader landscape of consumer representation.
Earl Attlee
The noble Lord asked what reforms we plan under Schedule 3. That schedule can be used to implement changes to the make-up and composition of the Passenger Focus board. Although the details are still to be finalised, the intention is to streamline the board’s operation significantly, which will also result in significant cost reductions.
Lord Whitty
I thank the noble Earl. Of course, some of the make-up of the board reflects the structure of the railway industry and the structure of the company. I hope that we will not lose that geographical dimension in changing its composition. I accept what the noble Earl says in relation to Passenger Focus. Clearly, I am grateful for his support for the amendment, although I think that we will have to return to the wider issue of the consumer landscape as a whole either in this Bill or in some other context in this House.
Lord Whitty
“( ) In relation to a transfer of functions, duties or powers under section 1 or 5, or to mergers under section 2, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (S.I.2006/246) apply to a transfer which relates to rights or liabilities under a contract of employment whether or not the transfer would, apart from this subsection, be a relevant transfer for the purposes of those regulations.
( ) In the case of an employee of any body whose functions, duties or powers are transferred or merged under section 1, 2 or 5—
(a) a period of employment with the transferor is to be treated as a period of employment with the recipient organisation;(b) the transfer to the recipient organisation is not to be treated as a break in service.”
Lord Whitty
In this amendment, I move away from the detailed consideration of individual bodies and their future to a more general principle. This relates to what happens to the staff of those bodies whose functions are transferred or merged. There is a clear-cut situation where, if bodies are abolished, although some of the bodies are Schedule 1, there has also been commitment by the Government to transfer the functions, duties or powers elsewhere and, therefore, the question of what happens to the staff who are carrying out those functions under the current arrangements does arise.
This amendment would make it clear that, in normal circumstances, the TUPE arrangements would apply as they would apply to mergers in both the private and the public sector, and across the private and the public sector where functions and duties are transferred. Under normal procedure concerning people’s entitlement to terms and conditions, including redundancy terms, pensions and other aspects of their employment, if the functions are moved into a receiving body, it would be for that receiving body to maintain both the continuity of service and the terms and conditions unless and until, either by collective agreement or by individual contract agreement, those terms are changed.
Because of the complexity of the bodies involved and the contractual terms which appear and have grown up in many of these bodies over time, it may not be all that clear, even to eminent employment lawyers, whether a TUPE applies or not. Even in the more simple past, when we were only dealing with one or two mergers of bodies or transfers of functions, it sometimes was not at all clear. The form of words here is almost exactly that which was included in the legislation in 2006 which set up the present Consumer Focus body—the National Consumer Council in legal terms—when we had the merger of the old National Consumer Council, Energywatch and Postwatch. The terms and conditions were preserved, albeit in some situations it was not entirely clear whether TUPE would apply or not.
In 2006 the regulations on TUPE came in. When Consumer Focus was created they were quite new, but similar forms of words have appeared in other legislation where there has been a merger or transfer of functions from one state body—NDPB or equivalent—to another. This Bill has a wholesale raft of such transfers. It does not have quite as many as it started out with but there are still quite a few left, and a few where it is not quite clear whether the transfer is occurring or not, and whether it is a function which normally comes under the TUPE regulations.
This amendment would make it clear, however, that if the function transfers or the duty and power transfers, the staff would go with them unless and until the receiving body decided it might wish to dispense with their services as the new employer. It is not up to the previous employer to declare them redundant until such a rationalisation has taken place by the receiving employer, which can happen more or less instantaneously in certain circumstances. The important point is that up until that point, the terms and conditions of the staff employed under the pre-existing bodies would be preserved.
This important point relates to quite a lot of staff, and there is quite a lot of uncertainty among the trade unions and staff bodies representing them. We need clarity on this and if the Government are unable to accept this form of words then, clearly, I am happy to discuss it with them. The principle needs to be established for all the bodies which remain within this Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I would very much like to support my noble friend on this. It is timely to remember that thousands of people who work for the public bodies listed in this Bill are likely to be affected by its provisions. Many will lose their livelihoods; some will find their careers seriously damaged; some, as my noble friend Lord Whitty has said, will find themselves transferred to other employers. It is important that we recognise and acknowledge that those people have given dedicated service, in some cases for many years. Where they are transferring to another body, we must make the transition process as smooth as possible. That is clearly the intent behind my noble friend's amendment. It would ensure that, where a person is transferred to another body, TUPE will apply, with the implications and protections as described by my noble friend. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide the necessary assurances on that. The Government also need to take on board the point that my noble friend made about the complexity of the issue and the need for clarity, which is why his amendment deserves serious consideration.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for tabling the amendment, because it raises an important aspect of the reforms and allows the Committee to consider the impact of the Government's reform programme on the staff of the bodies affected. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of the thousands of hard-working staff of public bodies across the country. Specifically, I put on record that our proposed reforms to public bodies are no reflection on the work of the staff.
I assure the Committee that the Government are working with the chairs and chief executives of public bodies and trade union representatives to ensure that necessary change is carried out as smoothly and fairly as possible. As the noble Lord said, that must be an important aspect of this operation. The Government have been diligent in acknowledging the needs of staff during the public bodies review programme, and we will continue to be so—for example, by exploring opportunities for redeployment where possible.
The Cabinet Office has been working closely with other departments since 2010 to ensure that the needs of staff are fully factored into the public bodies programme of work, particularly on the need to provide staff with clarity following reform decisions and the milestones along the route. The Cabinet Secretary has sent a message to departments on that very point. The Cabinet Office has also provided a checklist of considerations for departments which takes the needs of staff and stakeholders into account.
Those arrangements reflect a flexible approach that ensures that government departments can respond in the context of individual changes—based, of course, on the proper protections that are already enshrined in UK employment law. That is the right approach to support our public bodies’ staff. It also reflects the Cabinet Office statement of practice on staff transfers in the public sector. The guiding principles, as set out in the document state:
“The Government is committed to ensuring that the public sector is a good employer and a model contractor and client”.
The principles recognise that the:
“involvement, commitment and motivation of staff are vital for achieving smooth and seamless transition during such organisational change”.
On the specifics of the amendment, I should like to inform the Committee why the Government believe that the blanket application of TUPE is not appropriate. TUPE, and the European law which underpins it, was designed to protect staff where the business for which they worked, or the services to which they were assigned, would be carried out by a different organisation. Staff retain their jobs and conditions, and the new employer steps into the shoes of the old one. The definition of relevant transfer under TUPE is broad and will cover most transfer situations.
However, Clause 23 already provides the mechanism for equivalent protection to be confirmed in non-TUPE situations where that is appropriate. That is underpinned by the Cabinet Office statement of practice on staff transfers, to which I have already referred, which provides that the TUPE principles should generally be followed through a transfer scheme which addresses the imperatives of the particular transfer.
The blanket application of TUPE to all transfers conducted pursuant to this Bill seems likely to lead to inefficiencies and unintended consequences. For example, there may be circumstances where a body following an order made under this Bill is carrying out functions which have significantly altered and which require different skills and resources, with the result that there is no relevant transfer for TUPE purposes. If TUPE were nevertheless to be applied, staff would be transferred to the new body by operation of law, only to be potentially made redundant by the transferee. This would involve extra work and unnecessary expense and delay with no benefit to anyone, increasing uncertainty for staff and possibly disruptive relocation.
I appreciate the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I can assure him that the Government will continue to have a positive approach to TUPE regulations where they properly apply, and seek to make appropriate provision where this is not the case. I hope that, in the light of the assurances I have given, he will feel free to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I appreciate much of what the Minister has said about the approach of the Cabinet Office advice and what is going on in anticipation of various changes. Of course, we are not at a point, in most cases, where the exact format of the change is clear because we have to go through a period of consultation in association with the secondary legislation. However, I am slightly disappointed that he is not prepared to accept this amendment, because I had seen Clause 23(5), which referred to this, and my amendment was intended to be a rather clearer exposition of that principle and is the formulation that has been used on past occasions. It is true that people will find themselves employed by a new body and that there could be a redundancy very rapidly, but that has been the situation in both the private and the public sector, and is what is laid down in the TUPE regulations for a lot of situations and has happened in past public sector mergers.
The difficulty for me being able to be sufficiently reassured by the Minister’s words and by Clause 23(5)(f) is the question why, if on previous occasions, legislation has provided for a pretty unambiguous form of wording that I have outlined in this amendment, we could not use a similar form of words in here. I think that would be greater reassurance to the staff and trade unions that are having to deal with potential changes of employer. I do, however, accept the good intentions of the Government, and the Minister in particular, and will not press this amendment. I will consider his words carefully to see whether I need to bring it back at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Food: Regulation and Guidance
Lord Whitty Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Whitty
To call attention to the role of regulation and guidance in the food chain and of food standards in improving nutritional outcomes for adults and children; and to move for papers.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, first, I must declare an interest. I am for a few weeks longer the chair of Consumer Focus. I mention that because Consumer Focus and its predecessor organisation, the National Consumer Council, has a long history of trying to influence food policy from the common agricultural policy to areas of nutrition. Indeed, our social marketing sector is currently working with the noble Earl’s department on ways of changing consumer behaviour in relation to nutrition and other areas of public health. I cannot forbear from mentioning also that, along with many other public bodies, Consumer Focus has a question mark over it at the moment. I hope that it or another body survives to do this work in the future for the benefit of consumers and their role in food policy in general and nutrition in particular.
I shall focus on nutrition. No one can be unaware from reading the newspapers of the nutritional crisis facing the country and the consequent costs for the NHS. Yet in neither the Queen’s Speech nor the coalition agreement, as far as I can see, is there any mention of nutrition. According to a parliamentary reply in another place, as of the end of July at least, Ministers in the noble Earl’s department had not condescended to meet any consumer groups on this or any other issue. I hope that that has changed in the past few weeks.
Regrettably in one sense, the incoming Government have not been idle in this area because they have done at least three things, among which they have determined to abolish the School Food Trust, a body designed to improve the quality of school meals. The Secretary of State has issued a somewhat half-hearted apology to Jamie Oliver, having previously criticised his efforts. However, the area I want to concentrate on most is that as from last Friday, the responsibility for nutrition and dietary health was moved from the Food Standards Agency back to the Department of Health. I regard that as an extremely regressive step, in the wrong direction, that will seriously undermine the widely recognised need to tackle the problems of declining or largely declining nutritional standards.
Noble Lords will recall that the FSA was established in 2000 in the wake of the BSE scandal. It was established precisely because the public did not trust Ministers’ pronouncements on food safety or dietary advice. It was therefore important that we set up an organisation that was based on scientific evidence, not on passing political whims or bureaucratic considerations. Under the leadership first of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, then of one of my predecessors at the National Consumer Council, Dame Deirdre Hutton, and now of my noble friend Lord Rooker, it has gone from strength to strength. It is respected for three key reasons. First, it is open and transparent; secondly, its pronouncements and regulatory approach are based on solid scientific evidence; and, thirdly, it has the consumer interest at its heart and involves consumers in its decision-making. Indeed, in a report by my organisation produced two years ago, Rating Regulators, of them all, the FSA scored the most positively on consumer interest and engagement. As a result, it has gained the trust and respect of most consumers, scientists and industry. Its key characteristics are openness, an evidence base, consumer engagement and public trust. With all due respect to the noble Earl, his colleagues and his department, and their predecessors, these are not characteristics often associated with the Department of Health or of its leadership: rather the reverse, I am afraid.
Trust is key in the area of nutrition. We must try to do as much as possible through information, persuasion and education, augmented where policy is required by regulation and guidance. We are faced with a serious nutritional crisis in this country, particularly in childhood. It is bizarre that our nation suffers such poor nutrition when, at a casual glance, there is huge interest in gourmet food both on television and in our glossy magazines. But for all that such a widespread choice is now available to consumers through supermarkets and elsewhere, and despite all the apparent public interest in upmarket food, the problem is that our nutrition is not improving and has in fact seriously declined since the 1950s. Despite all the efforts of government, of the FSA, of Jamie Oliver and of everybody else, they are of course up against different forces of persuasion—the forces of advertising, particularly the advertising of foods that are limited in their nutritional value and some that are actually nutritionally counterproductive.
This is particularly a problem for the very poor since the two lowest deciles pay out about 17 per cent of their household budget on food, compared with around 7 per cent for the likes of us. If you are a family with several young kids and no car, you also have the problem that the food outlets in your area are small and you cannot get to the supermarket. Even if you do manage to get to the supermarket, a survey by the NCC undertaken two years ago showed in many respects that the lower-price-range foods were often—not always, but often—of the least nutritional value when rated pound for pound sterling or avoirdupois. Moreover, the problem of food poverty is likely to increase. The reality is that the West has enjoyed cheap or cheapish food for the past 40 years. The globalisation of the food supply, the cheapness of fuel, improved logistics and serious technological change have brought cheap food to the West, helped by subsidies in North America, Europe and Japan, so that the consumer has been paying relatively little for food.
There are clear signs that the era of cheap food is now ending and going into reverse, with global pressures on demand through growing prosperity in China and India competing with demand in Europe and elsewhere. There are also limits on cultivatable land supply, and the impact of the environmental cost of extending that supply, which will eventually be embodied in the cost of food to the final consumer. Costs are going up generally and that will hit the poor in particular, but the problem of poor nutrition is by no means confined to poor and low-income families. Some of the least healthy of our children and young adults actually come from middle-income and relatively affluent families. The parents of those families, whether justifiably or not, see themselves as time poor and with not have enough time to choose more nutritional food or to cook it. Some would undoubtedly say that that is another symptom of our child-placating society because kids frequently want, and are encouraged to want by advertising campaigns, food that is not particularly good for them. Instead, our kids are filled up or bought off at all meals, from breakfast through to tea, with packets of crisps, burgers and sweets topped up by sugary fizzy drinks, all of which are widely advertised and hugely available directly to the kids themselves as they pass to and from school—indeed, sometimes, even now despite intervention by the previous Government and by local authorities, into schools themselves.
The shocking result is that, for many of our children, their diet is worse than it was in the 1950s. The prevalence of obesity has increased in the past 20 years and is now affecting 24.5 per cent of all adults. While that increase has flattened out a little, partly as a result of interventions by the last Government and the FSA, it is still marginally going up and is dramatically worse than it was 30 years ago. Some 10.1 million adults and 716,000 children are clinically obese. Around 2.5 million adults never eat any fresh fruit or vegetables, and after 10 years of campaigning on the “five a day” slogan only 19 per cent of our children actually reach that goal, compared with 22 per cent who eat between nought and two pieces. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey, reporting in August, also showed that we are still consuming well above the recommended level of saturated fats and sugar. The intake of fibre is below recommended levels, as is oily fish for omega acids.
The balance of our diets, whether as adults or children, is not right—and I emphasise that I am talking about balance. Like several other noble Lords, I suspect, I am a war baby, and those who were brought up immediately after the war on national health orange juice ended up in the 1950s with a fairly good diet. However, on the day sweet rationing was abolished, I remember buying a farthing’s worth of hundreds and thousands in my corner shop. Little did I know that that measure was the start of a decline in the nutritional standards of children. But of course it was not. The food industry always asserts when you attack some of its products that it is not a question of bad food but a question of bad diet—and that is true. However, it is also true that if we depend on foods of poor nutritious value such as crisps, sugar, butter and dairy products—and if the balance of our diet is made up of those foods—it is extremely bad for us whatever age we are.
In recent years there has been some improvement through a variety of sources, some of which are surprising. When I started as a Minister in Defra in 2001, the FDF, the manufacturers’ association, was in denial. It was chaired at that time by the director of Cadbury’s but, even so, it took a heavy line that its products had nothing to do with health and nutrition. Now, firms such as Mars, which you would think was an offender, have reformulated their chocolate to eliminate trans fats. McDonald’s, which is often the bogeyman in this area, has greatly improved the nutritional value of its offerings at the retail end. Caterers at the top end of the market have also begun to show calorie scores on their doors and on their menus, a process that was pioneered by Consumer Focus Scotland.
Although there are still problems with the supermarkets, four years ago sweets were offered at the till, a location that gave maximum pester power to kids to harass their mothers who were trying to find enough money to pay the bill. I am pleased to say that that has gone in most supermarkets.
The previous Government helped by reintroducing and improving nutritional standards for school meals. However, the biggest contributor has been the Food Standards Agency, which has improved the situation through a combination of sustained persuasion based on firm scientific evidence; the use of regulation and targets—for example, by putting pressure and a target date on the manufacturers of bread and other products to reduce the salt content; the use of guidance and codes of practice, including most recently advice to caterers; and by pressurising for a restriction on advertising. A change was made by a rather reluctant Ofcom, although I, my organisation and many others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in a debate not long ago in this Chamber, pressed it to go further. However, we have cut out television advertising during children-specific programmes.
We have moved hard on nutrition labelling, which is not a happy story. The FSA, supported by my organisation and others in the nutrition field, were going for a traffic light system. More than half of the supermarkets were prepared to do that but most of the manufacturers and the remainder of the supermarkets resisted. As a result we have had about a five-year delay before ending up with a less good form of labelling. Nevertheless, a coherent form of labelling is about to launch—which is at least progress—both here and at the European level. However, it took that long to get there. Incidentally, if we are not careful, we will do the same with the labelling of carbon products. We need a single, clear, significant and comprehensible system of labelling in that field was well.
The attack—led largely by the FSA—on major social and behavioural patterns, which have all been going the wrong way in the past 30 years, has combined information, education, guidance, regulation, social marketing and advertising. The FSA has served us well. However, in the last of those areas we need stronger intervention now. The Ofcom guidelines on advertising to children on TV relate only to children-specific programmes—which, as everyone will know, are a minority of the programmes that children actually watch. We had to see through a lot of opposition from the industry to get that far—it was a good first step—but we need to go further. Indeed, advertising what is clearly junk food should not be allowed any more than advertising tobacco and alcohol should—certainly on television.
It would have been better if responsibility for nutrition had remained with an independent, respected, scientifically based organisation. I accept that some parts of nutritional policy have always rested with the Department of Health, even after the creation of the FSA, and that it would be sensible to put it into one place. However, in Scotland, where they have come to that conclusion as well, the one place would be the FSA. In terms of public credibility, reputation and the likely effect on patterns of eating and family behaviour, direction by the FSA is much better than direction and representation by the department or, with all due respect, by the noble Earl and his colleagues going on television and telling us what we should eat. It is a wrong move. I hope the Government, who have already enacted it and taken away a fifth of the Food Standards Agency’s total resources, will consider it again. Indeed, I suspect that a few years down the line the move will be in the reverse direction, whether under this Government or another. The importance of the nutrition crisis requires independent, authoritative and trusted sources of advice and direction, and a more proactive form of regulation. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I welcome much of what the Minister has just said and I welcome very much the contributions of everybody in this debate. My noble friend Lord Giddens and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, reminded us that this is only part of a huge issue about the world food industry and food chain, and its inter-relations with individuals, with society and with the environment. That might well be appropriate for a wider debate at some point in this House.
Almost everybody has accepted that we have a serious nutritional crisis on our hands; the Minister has just done so. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and my noble friend Lord Rea have particular professional experience in these areas with the more vulnerable people. It was much welcomed that we drew attention to those things. The only points of contention around this House were, first, the role of regulation and, secondly, which part of government should be responsible. On regulation the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, played his part as the man in the street. He did it quite well and we do not think that he is mad—or, at least, not much madder than the rest of us—but the man in the street or, more particularly, the woman in the supermarket wants more understandable advice and more bad things banned. My noble friend Lord Rea and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, made the point that, at times, we have to have a bit more regulation.
However, that was not actually my main point about the FSA, which has used softer but more effective means, some of which the Minister has just referred to, as well as regulation. Often, the threat of regulation, as my noble friend Lord Rea said, produces miracles to which otherwise industry would not respond. The FSA’s record in the area of nutrition, as well as of food safety, is difficult to replicate in a government department. I wish the government department with that responsibility well, but—and this is where responsibility lies—the FSA has a reputation for independence, which is important and was the original concept behind it, and for its scientific base. It is also trusted by the public and nutritionists and, as my noble friend Lady Hayter said, trusted by consumers. I welcome the assurance that that consumer engagement will continue to be an issue, but independence is more likely to be trusted than political management.
I wonder sometimes why Ministers actually want that responsibility. I am not against Ministers taking some more general responsibility for the operation of agencies, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, suggested, but on actual advice to the public it is most difficult for Ministers to be taking responsibility. Indeed, history is littered with otherwise eminent, successful and distinguished Conservative politicians who have fallen foul of this: Edwina Currie for telling us what we could not eat—as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, reminded us—and John Gummer for telling us what we could eat. John Gummer has, of course, had to change his name to come into this House.
The Minister may object that that was food safety and not nutrition but, as somebody said to me, the only difference between interventions on nutrition and those on food safety are that the latter are to stop us eating things which will kill us quickly, while interventions on nutrition are to stop us eating things which will kill us slowly. My final contention is that both of those are better off in an independent agency, but for the moment I wish the noble Earl and his colleagues joy of them. I beg to withdraw the Motion.
Motion withdrawn.