"Before he moves off the issue of insurance, can I ask my hon. Friend the Minister whether he is continuing a dialogue with the insurance companies about the two things that I see as being difficult? One is the lack of recognition of mitigation work that has been put in …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the swift, proportionate and comprehensive action she has taken, but warn again that the resilience and capacity of our animal health precautions must be protected against future depredation by the Treasury. Will my right hon. Friend look again at how she can get …..." David Heath - View Speech
"It is a pleasure to join the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). It is good at last to have a voice in the debate from the west country of England, where an awful lot of the finest dairy land in the …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I am delighted that the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) secured this debate, to which I am a co-signatory. This is an opportune moment to talk again about the national pollinator strategy and what we do in this country about pollinators, and to pick up on the …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I am genuinely in two minds about that. I agree that the advice must be there, and that farm and wildlife advisory groups are probably the best apparatus for doing that, along with Natural England and other agencies. However, when I was a Minister, I visited Dartmoor—not a million miles …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I just wanted to respond to Mr Speaker’s interjection by saying that when I was a boy, half a crown would buy an entire gallon of Somerset cider...." David Heath - View Speech
"My hon. Friend will remember that I had some involvement in the problems at that time. It was important early on to establish a threshold for contamination/adulteration that made sense. Otherwise, we would have been in the absurd position of testing every piece of meat and finding that it was …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) on securing this debate, which is of critical importance to consumers, retailers, producers and everyone involved in the food industry. As I said earlier, I was Minister with responsibility for food when the horsemeat scandal broke, and …..." David Heath - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One of the earliest actions I took as a Minister was to convene a meeting—I remember it happening—at the Food Standards Agency with all the major retailers. I made it plain to them that they had a very real problem to deal with, and …..." David Heath - View Speech
"We made it clear that testing was the retailers’ responsibility. Retailers had not only a legal responsibility but a moral responsibility to their consumers to ensure that the material they put on their shelves was what they said it was. They were put in no doubt whatever that they had …..." David Heath - View Speech