Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am speaking today in full support of the Bill, precision breeding and our outstanding scientists, who are looking to this House to unlock barriers to solving many of the most important problems facing us on earth. I want to see this Bill unleash their capability and energy on those problems, and I hope to be supporting the Bill throughout the whole of its passage.

Let me explain why I stand up with this bouncy enthusiasm. To take the House back to the 1990s, when I was young and thin, I was honoured to be at the Nottingham University life sciences department doing a biology degree. If the House will bear with me, I have a little practical knowledge of DNA editing techniques, as my undergraduate paper was using transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans as a biological monitor for freshwater sediment toxicity.

[Dr Hudson]

Hear, hear!

[Katherine Fletcher]

Quite. That is a mouthful, but the key here is “transgenic”. We were putting a gene from Escherichia coli—E. coli—into an itty-bitty nematode worm, an animal, and making a cross-species C. elegans. Those little guys were effectively harnessing natural stress repair mechanisms to produce something that we could measure easily.

I was a scientist; I was fascinated by that, but it did not always sit brilliantly with me, and the mechanisms that were used to produce that transgenic environment were at best embryonic and new. It was effectively taking DNA material in vectors such as plasmid, and pebbledashing a target DNA area. We did not know where it was going to land, and we had a lot of wastage where bits of DNA were going in the wrong place. That is not what the Bill is about, and I look forward to going into that in more detail.

[Dr Hudson]

We have heard concerns that people feel that an exogenous species of DNA would be coming in. Does my hon. Friend agree that this technology is not about that? This is not about an external species coming in, and perhaps the Bill could be tightened up by clarifying that, which would appease some of people’s potential fears.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Yes. If the Bill contained a way of opening up the transgenic debate, be that in plants or animals, it would not enjoy my support.

While I have put on a lot of weight since the mid-1990s, science has also massively moved on. In response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), this is a bit like comparing a 1997 diesel car with modern zero-emissions vehicles. Yes, they both have wheels, go along in a straight line and are called cars, but the two things are completely different. The British public were right to be cautious at the time, but let us explain why this is different. We now know the genome sequences of other target species and plants, and we have exact tools that are effectively like clever genetic snippers that will go along a genome and only cut in the exact place. There is confidence and science behind that point. We then insert something that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) highlighted, comes from the same species. If we have wheat that does not taste nice but is good at growing in dry conditions, why can we not give it that dry condition gene, so that it tastes nice and is nutritious and can help feed the third world? There are scientists chomping at the bit to have a go at that—I really cannot wait.

As part of my undergraduate degree I went to Rothamsted and saw the scale that has to be put in place for traditional breeding techniques—think fields and fields and fields. Variant 1 has been crossed with variant 2 in a modern way, but it then needs to be tested, because in traditional breeding techniques we basically take the whole genome, throw it up in the air and ask nature to pick one variant out of two. That means we are looking at multiple generations to try to keep the tasty wheat, as well as the dry, coarse wheat. This is a fantastic opportunity to use fewer resources while doing that research, and to use fewer resources from the environment.

Let me highlight some of the extremely exciting opportunities that I have pulled out of the literature: disease-resistant wheat that needs less pesticide, as mentioned by the Secretary of State; tomatoes with a little extra vitamin D; wheat with reduced asparagine to ensure that people are not exposed to carcinogens, especially if, like me, they cannot cook properly and always burn everything; or chickpeas with high protein levels that help those who are making an environmental choice by being vegan or vegetarian. The possibilities for health, climate, environment, farming and our planet are as endless as the natural variation within species that had Darwin so fascinated. We must do this, and I totally support the Bill.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The regulation of genetically modified foods is a devolved issue. It is important to emphasise that at the start because, as in a growing number of policy areas, the UK Government pay only lip service at best to the powers exercised in the Scottish Parliament, while at the same time running roughshod over devolution with their post-Brexit deregulatory agenda.

Although the intended scope of the Bill may be England only, it is explicit that it will have significant impacts on devolved areas. The devolved Administrations were, however, only informed of this just one day before the Bill was introduced, in a letter from the Environment Secretary encouraging them to adopt the Bill’s principles. A UK-wide approach can, of course, sometimes be desirable, but this invite creates an illusion of collaboration and choice when in fact DEFRA is acting unilaterally once again. Frankly, it smacks of contempt for our democratically elected Government.

If the Scottish Parliament refused to allow gene-edited crops to be planted in Scotland, we would still be prevented from stopping GMO products from being sold in our shops under the devolution-violating United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. This is exactly the kind of scenario the SNP warned against when the Tories forced that legislation through this place. I understand that DEFRA officials have now suggested that the Department discuss the UK Government’s plans to diverge from the common UK-wide GM regulatory regimes. Well, thanks very much, I am sure, but any discussions of that nature should have taken place prior to the introduction of the Bill so that potential policy divergence could be properly considered. The fact that they have not is deeply regrettable and unacceptable.

The SNP is committed to ensuring that Scotland operates to the highest environmental standards, and that we protect and enhance the strength of Scottish agriculture and food production. If we end up with unwanted gene-edited products in Scotland, diverging standards with the EU could cause further damage to our sales, risking damage to Scotland’s reputation for high-quality food and drink.

[Katherine Fletcher]

The way the hon. Lady is talking about gene editing implies that one can tell the difference. It brings in variant genes from the same species. It is literally scientifically impossible to identify a gene-edited product if it is done properly.

[Deidre Brock]

I accept the hon. Lady’s experience in this area, but there are many scientists who would differ from that opinion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I believe that this is a flawed Bill—it is not strategic, it is not clear and it does not do what it says on the tin. Ministers breezily assert that it will deliver access to wonderful new markets, while failing to acknowledge that it actually risks hindering access to our closest significant market, the EU, as we create a divergent regime for regulating genome-edited products. As we have heard, consequences for trade with Northern Ireland are being ignored. With the Scottish and Welsh Governments currently taking a different approach from that of England, the Bill is a recipe for consumer confusion and significant operational difficulties for retailers across the UK.

These big questions are critical, but in the short time that I have, I shall spell out how the Bill falls down on some core principles that render it flawed and not fit for purpose. Those principles are scientific coherence and clarity, properly defined criteria—or the lack of them—and transparency.

On coherence and clarity, in its title and text the Bill uses the phrase “precision breeding”, yet that is neither a specific technology nor a scientific discipline. It is a marketing term: a vague colloquialism for a number of recently developed genetic engineering technologies, which do not form a coherent group of methods, and do not justify being called “precise”—not when the scientific literature contains reports of genetic technologies such as genome editing creating unexpected and unwanted mutations, genetic errors, altered proteins, and extensive deletions and complex rearrangements of DNA in plants. [Interruption.] I will not give way yet.

The Government give a nod to that uncertainty with their caveat that genetic editing of animals will not take place until animal protection can be safeguarded. Engineering the DNA of animals raises major animal welfare and ethical concerns. A wealth of problems are set out by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report on gene-edited farm animals. As I understand it, there is nothing to prevent biotech-created disease resistance being used as a sticking-plaster for the intensive factory farming practices that are the underlying cause of disease emergence in the first place. That is why, given the current drafting, animals should be removed from the Bill’s scope, full stop.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Nature makes mistakes; that is how evolution comes about. So the mistakes that are reported in the literature are actually further evidence that such technologies effectively replicate a natural process. Does the hon. Lady agree?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. As has been said, she clearly has expertise, but I am looking at the scientific evidence that has been put before me, and it is being suggested that the mistakes that can be made in this area, especially when it comes to nature, appear very different from those that are seen in nature.

I move on to the principle of properly defined criteria. Using a term that lacks any proper definition looks like an attempt to obscure the full scope of the proposed deregulation. The terms “precision breeding” and gene editing help promote a particular narrative—that the process is just a simple “cut” or “tweak”. The Government are also at pains to stress that any changes might have occurred “naturally” and do not involve the insertion of transgenes—so-called “foreign” DNA.

I have read that this is to some extent smoke and mirrors. The Bill seeks to deregulate all manner of genetic manipulations, and genome editing can sometimes involve the insertion of foreign DNA. As I understand it, the argument is that in such cases the inserted DNA gets removed before the product goes to market. That may well be the intention; but by using poorly defined criteria in the title and wording of the Bill, the Government are asking us to pass bad legislation.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (First sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q Thank you for your time, Professor Dunwell. I am going to cough up that I have a biology undergraduate degree. Listening to some of the questions from Opposition Members, it strikes me that you are in quite an invidious position. You have to describe the messy complexity that is biology—how we evolve and how bits of DNA exist almost in their own right, and that it is humans that say that something is a species or a plant, and so on. We have to try to describe that and codify it into law in a way that allows people to have confidence that they are safe, but also allows for opportunities for scientific innovation, using fewer resources and so on.

This might not be a fair question, but has science ever got to the point where it could effectively give us a legal definition that we could use to erase some of the confusion on the Opposition Front Bench, or is biology itself too complicated?

Professor Dunwell: Biology is not physics—you cannot measure every charge of every atom. The appearance of any plant depends on not just the genes that are in it, but where you grow it.

[Katherine Fletcher]

On what gets switched on and what does not.

Professor Dunwell: Yes. The so-called genotype-environment interaction is what determines how big the weeds in your garden grow. It depends on whether they are watered, whether they have fertiliser, whether they get mildew on them and so on. The plant itself is a consequence of that interaction.

As you say, that is an extraordinarily difficult thing to put down in words to be subject to legal enforcement. I am not a lawyer; I admire the people who put our advice into this Bill. There may be bits that people can tweak, but it is the job of the lawyer to try to compose something that fits legal standards but is also compatible with the kinds of—

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q But would you say that a lawyer may look at a definition and say it is vague because the very nature of biology is vague? Is that fair? I do not want to put words in your mouth.

Professor Dunwell: I have not spoken to the drafting lawyers, but I imagine they have struggled at times with trying to pin down something that is, as you say, flexible and messy. Biology is something that perhaps does not always fit or meet strict definitions.

[Katherine Fletcher]

But is entirely natural.

Professor Dunwell: Yes.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q I want to go back to the idea of environmental release, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith talked about. To my mind, that implies something that would not have been there as part of nature. You are releasing something into the environment—a transgenic animal; a plant that has genes from different species in it that would not be there in nature. Is there anything that would come under that definition of “release” that the Bill allows?

Professor Dunwell: Taking one step back, any form of agriculture and any form of domestication and multiplication of a crop in the last 10,000 years has been to put something into the environment that was not there. In the case of maize 10,000 years ago, someone somewhere in Mexico found a unique plant with characteristics that they had never seen before, and he or she—that very bright individual—said, “This has got attributes that I can see are good and I want to keep.” That was the beginning of the agricultural system.

[Katherine Fletcher]

And she—let us make it a she—almost environmentally released it into a field.

Professor Dunwell: Yes. That is the context, and I think it is important just generally that people—well, that is me producing a sermon. That is the context in which we are now working.

[Ruth Jones]

Q I am interested in the environmental release side. Your advice to DEFRA was that “different parameters” should be applied to the environmental release of gene editing micro-organisms because of the increased risk of gene flow. Can you explain that point about gene flow? Does that mean that micro-organisms are outside the remit of the Bill?

Professor Dunwell: That is a whole other area. Science in this area has not been applied in the same way to a micro-organism. Obviously, it has been applied to animals. You talked before about asking the question about gene edited animals. One of the things I should add before I get to the other question is that the best example of that on the market at the moment is gene edited fish in Japan. There are two varieties of fish whose growth rate has been modified through gene editing, which have been on the market—I do not know whether successfully commercially, but they are one of the prime examples of that.

On micro-organisms, we hope at the next ACRE meeting—we have not had an in-person meeting since covid started—to start to explore the applications in the microbiology area. We have invited people along from outside, as we do quite regularly, for consciousness raising at a scientific level, to get the best experts to say where they see this type of technology going. Microbiology at the moment is not specifically described in here. It will develop over time because there is an increasing interest in applying different microbes—often ones that have been selected, because the soil is full of tens of thousands of microbes, and some of them are good and some are bad. Many companies now have huge collections of hundreds of thousands of microbes that they go through to try to pick ones that may have an antagonistic effect on other microbes, so they can be applied as inoculants into the soil to improve soil health.

All that is really admirable and exciting stuff. It depends, again, on our ability to identify, extract and sequence genetic information. I went to a meeting probably 20 years ago in Paris, when somebody for the first time said that their PhD student, having spent three years, had got the sequence of one bacterium. He was so proud of that student. Now, you can probably do hundreds in a day. The rate of change is orders of magnitude just in 20 years. It is in what grows out of that and how we develop the regulatory boundaries that the challenges lie.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Third sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Yes, you can. The question was not directed to you—again, I am mindful of time—but of course, please do come in.

Dr Campbell: I will be very brief. I just wanted to pick up on one thing said by Mr Stevenson and one by Dr Mills. Mr Stevenson mentioned the scope of the animal welfare advisory body as it is written into the Bill, and I think he is absolutely right. It needs to be increased so that it has a more proactive function and looks at the actual process of precision breeding, not just looking at marketing authorisation applications. I know you talked before I joined the meeting about the interaction between the ASPA and this piece of legislation. I think it is going to be very important to understand that and whether the Bill is proposing to bring some genetic precision breeding out of the ASPA and into a non-ASPA realm. The advisory body will be important there.

That brings me on to the point about the international aspects of this legislation. I am very aware that one can go online now, already, and buy a genetic editing kit for frogs, including live frogs. You have to purchase it in the States—I checked this morning before I joined. We must be careful of having a system in place that carefully regulates professional scientists, but somehow allows others to undertake genetic editing of animals outside of it. That will be very important to protect animal welfare, as well.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q I am a huge supporter of higher welfare standards for animals—it is really vital. Having lived and worked in Africa, I agree with Dr Mills that we are fortunate in the UK to value the fellow mammals that we share the planet with—we can forgive the odd chicken and not get offended. However, to my mind, the Bill is about enabling science and making sure that we can go forward and use the tools and techniques in institutes such as Roslin. I am not sure why animal welfare would need to go in the Bill if precision breeding is the same as traditional breeding and, in fact, lots of the deficits in traditional breeding techniques are what has produced some of the deleterious conditions that current stock animals find themselves in. I will start with Dr Campbell, but I would welcome anyone else coming in. Dr Campbell, in your practice as a vet, if you identify poor animal welfare, what current legislation would you be using to ensure that that was taken up and prevented? I do not see the link between a different breeding technique and animal welfare standards falling over. Do you see what I am getting at?

Dr Campbell: I think I see what you are getting at. Obviously, in normal, non-experimental areas, one would be looking either at the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or at the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966. I think what is different here is the potential for off-target effects, which at the moment are not very well understood and not predictable. We need to have a mechanism for keeping a very close eye on those.

I have one more point. There is—carried over from the consultation on this Bill, I think—an idea that a mutation, effectively, that could occur in the wild is really no different from what we are trying to achieve by genetic editing. And while it is true that a mutation might occur in the wild, that does not necessarily mean that it is not a bad thing. And anyway, when we are doing the genetic editing, we are very deliberately trying to cause something at a very high incidence, and that probably would not be the incidence of the mutation in the wild. So I do think there is a difference between employing these technologies and just more general selective breeding, and so-called traditional breeding is currently ill defined in this Bill.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q There are a couple of points there. Could I just come back to the question that I asked, which was about having animal welfare standards in this Bill, because for me the Bill is about enabling science? Then I would like to ask a brief follow-up question on your point about the techniques.

[The Chair]

Be mindful that we have under three minutes left of the whole sitting.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Okay, I will ask this in one sentence. Current animal welfare standards are not in this Bill, but we have animal welfare standards—is that right?

Dr Campbell: We have animal welfare standards under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, certainly. A noticeable thing about this Bill—I think someone else mentioned the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022—is that, as I understand it, the Bill is relying on the definition of animal in the Animal Welfare Act and that of course is less comprehensive than the definition in this year’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. It does not include cephalopods or decapods, and I am unclear on why that is.

[Katherine Fletcher]

In the interests of time, perhaps we can pick this back up and explore it later. I am conscious that others want to come in, Ms McVey.

[The Chair]

Okay, with two minutes left, is it possible to get Kerry McCarthy and Andrew Bowie in?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q This will possibly have a one-word answer. We have heard quite a few witnesses say that the farm animal welfare codes are sufficient in terms of regulating some of our concerns bout welfare. This question is particularly for Professor Campbell and Mr Stevenson. Do you think they are adequate?

Peter Stevenson: No, the codes do not address breeding issues in any very clear way, other than sometimes through a broad principle to say, “Yes, be careful how you breed in order not to harm animal welfare.” We have a huge amount of legislation in this country, but just one or perhaps two provisions that deal with breeding, and they are so broadly worded that they have never had any impact on the harms done by selective breeding. To go back to Katherine Fletcher’s point, I think it is vital that there is something in this Bill to protect animal welfare, because the current legislation, as I said, has really very little on breeding, which is why we have all these problems. If this Bill is going ahead—I know it is—let us at least have some good, well-crafted animal welfare protections.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Is not the implication of that that you would be telling the scientists what to do?

[The Chair]

Sorry, but we have only 30 seconds left. Can you do a quick question, Andrew Bowie?

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Deidre Brock]

Q We received a briefing from GeneWatch UK, in which it talked about its concerns about a potentially significant impact on trade. As you perhaps know, the Scottish Government are waiting for the EU to complete its consultation on gene editing and GM, and the difference between those two, and whether or not it may allow them to be permissible within Europe as well.

GeneWatch UK said that if exempt GMOs are not traceable—because they are considered to be, as we have heard from several witnesses, the same as conventionally bred organisms—manufacturers should be required to publish a validated test for each GMO released. It suggests that all countries that require such organisms to be regulated could potentially refuse all imports of food and other products that contain that exempt GMO. Could you just expand a little on that for us? I would be interested to hear your points of view.

Lawrence Woodward: If I have understood GeneWatch UK’s position, it is pointing out one of the aspects of this situation, namely that if England proceeds by itself —isolated, without regulatory alignment—that would raise all kinds of trade transparency marketing issues, which are not really addressed and which the Regulatory Policy Committee identified as not being really addressed in the impact statement. You then have dysfunction in regulation and alignment, which leads to confusion in the marketplace, and I think that GeneWatch UK was pointing out the fact that England might allow non-labelling and non-traceability of some of these products would not carry a weight in other markets.

There are many different ways of dealing with that situation. What is absolutely clear is that there needs to be in this Bill greater consideration of traceability throughout the supply chains so that the market can function, and both farmers and consumers have choice. There are different ways of doing that.

GeneWatch UK pointed to the need to develop specific analytical tests. Those analytical tests are being developed. Robin May at the Food Standards Agency pointed out—I think he made some comment that labelling is useless if it cannot be verified. In theory that is true but, first, analytical tests do exist, they are being developed and they can be developed faster. Secondly, we already have in a lot of areas geographical identification and source of origin identification—in egg marketing, whether they are free range eggs or barn eggs. We already have marketing verification based on provenance and audit trails. There is no reason why traceability cannot be built up on that, if the right kind of mandatory information is put in the Bill.

There is a separate discussion about labelling. Obviously, we are in favour of labelling. How that would be, where it is and so on—we recognise the difficulties.

Pat Thomas: To add to that, we have heard a lot over these sessions about how it is not possible to trace these organisms and that simply is not true, particularly for a patented organism. There must be something in place to trace that, in order to protect the patent. So, alongside the development of these organisms, there is also the development of the tests to trace them. The question is whether we will put those into effect or not. I would assume that if the developers want to protect their patents they would want to ensure that those tests are there and available.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q There are a number of things that I think we have heard robust evidence on, but you have clearly spent a lot of time looking at this in a global context. Countries such as Canada, Japan and Argentina are forging forward and allowing their scientists to develop new lines and strains to move forward their agriculture. Do you have any comments on how they are doing it? In all candour, I am worried that, to prevent worries and questions such that you are raising, we almost throttle something that has the potential to be genuinely transformative. What assessment have you made of what Canada, Argentina and Japan, who are forging ahead, are doing?

Lawrence Woodward: People often forget in this conversation that European research establishments overall have made an awful lot of research investment into GMO technology and gene editing technology. Some great work is being done in UK research establishments. It is not that we have a block on this. On how much faster would deregulation, in terms of what is envisaged in the Bill, increase that research activity, others can speak more on that. It is not entirely clear to me that that is the case. It might be a benefit in terms of increasing inward investment from multinational companies.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q I can believe that. It is already happening out there in the world, I just wondered what you thought about what was going on in Canada, Japan or Argentina?

Lawrence Woodward: The impact statement pointed to the development of research in Argentina by pointing to the increase in the number of patents that have been registered in Argentina since it altered its regulation. You might say that is a proxy for research and development activity. It is not necessarily. There is not really that much published information that says how much research is going on, who is funding it and where it is being funded. On the development of traits and the interesting science, it is not clear that it is any greater in Argentina or Japan than it is in Europe and the UK.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q Sorry, what I meant was, obviously they have stuff in place and they have some sets of regulations in their countries to address your concerns, along with the laws that they have passed to allow gene edited, precision bred products. I wondered whether you have looked at what they have done to protect the safeguards while being able to forge ahead with scientific research.

Pat Thomas: In all those countries, the answer is that it depends. There is a patchwork of regulation throughout the world, with not much in the way of harmonisation. What is very clear is that the media narrative around these countries deregulating gene editing is exaggerated. In some countries such as Argentina there is a much more nuanced type of regulation that looks at things on a case-by-case basis. It is not a wholesale deregulation, which is what we are looking at here. That puts us out of step with those countries. China is the latest one to come on, again, with a much more nuanced approach to regulations. I think you have looked at the Canadian regulations, Lawrence.

Lawrence Woodward: The Canadian regulation is product-based but with a greater analysis of where the end product differs from conventional, so there is a trigger mechanism. I am probably still not understanding what you are asking. In the last five years we have had a lot of discussions with conventional researchers, GMO developers and so on. One of the telling things in our roundtable on the use of genome editing in animals was that the research and development very much depended on the commercial partnerships and roll-out. That very much depended on the markets that those companies could see. That depended on the type of agriculture that they were seeking.

It is not a surprise that most of the development is going into pig disease and those conditions that effect elite breeding lines, because that is where, for the breeding companies, the genetic ownership sees most return. That is not to say there will be no spill-over or benefit to small agroecological farmers and so on, but that is not the thrust. The thrust is about the commercial roll-out.

Pat Thomas: I think what you are asking is whether consumer concerns are being taken into account.

[Katherine Fletcher]

No, I was—

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock]

Fascinating. Thank you very much.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q We spoke in a previous evidence session about the difficulty of codifying the beautiful complexity of biology into law, because biology in and of itself is not in a static state. I think the quote was, “Biology is not physics; it’s not a specific number.” So I am sympathetic to some of the comments that you made earlier. What I want to chase with you is what the consequences of the uncertainty in the drafting are. I cannot understand why someone would want to say that something has been genetically edited when it has not been, and I cannot understand why someone would want to say that something has not been genetically edited when it has been—and that is an expensive process. You have much more experience, so what are the consequences of the uncertainty in the drafting?

Dr Edenborough: The long and the short of it is that a single entity can say different things to different people in different contexts and therefore, in essence, confuse and confound people. You can secure rights in a place by saying one thing and then perhaps avoid liability in another place by saying the opposite.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q But there is no risk to humans, no risk to health. This is about a commercial give and take, in effect. That is the consequence of the uncertainty in the drafting.

Dr Edenborough: No, there might be risk. This is a circular definition, in some senses. You do not need to regulate these matters, because these things can result from a traditional process, or natural transformation. It is because of that that there is a low risk. But that is actually answering the question: you do not actually know whether the thing really could have been—

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q No, it is not—forgive me, Mr Stringer; shout if you want me to stop. The classic example is that Belgian Blue cattle, through a natural genetic mutation, ended up with double-muscle haunches. Everyone thought this was wonderful because you have a cow with a massive bum that is more saleable for the same food. But then there was the discovery of consequences about birthing and ease of birth, and it was dropped out. So I do not think saying, “It could have occurred naturally,” and saying, “It is risk free,” are the same thing.

Dr Edenborough: Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes. The things that can occur in nature are not always risk free. So that agrees with what you have just said. But one of the underlying justifications, as far as I can ascertain, for this Bill and for removing onerous regulation, is that, because these things are supposed to be potentially capable of resulting from—“could have resulted from”—a natural process, it is likely that they would not be harmful, and that is a fallacy.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q Biology can make mistakes—some mistakes are positive, and some are deleterious. But gene editing allows us to press fast-forward; it is a speeding up of the opportunity that natures engages in, but within an individual species. That is all true, but it is just happening faster, and with more opportunity and structure behind it, so we can go, “Actually, no, don’t do that—it’s a bad idea.”

Dr Edenborough: It is not just a speeding up, in the sense that the way in which it would occur naturally is probably one step at a time. Here you are allowed to take many steps, so what might have been stopped at step 1, you suddenly get to step 5. Therefore, that could be a fundamentally different thing that you are releasing into nature.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q That is not my understanding. What you are saying, in effect, is that what we do not want to be doing is creating a plant that is both drought-resistant and has a natural pesticide resistance, and—steps 3 and 4—tastes better and has vitamin D in it. You do not want to do all those in one go. I can see that argument, but surely the regulatory regime in the Bill will allow for people to say, “No, that is just a bit too complicated, when you have to go through the phenotypic analysis at the back of it.” But I want to come back to the core point: what are the consequences of having to accept the biological uncertainty within the way we describe things? What bad is going to happen?

Dr Edenborough: I think it comes back to the point you just mentioned, which is that if you are doing one step at a time, the way in which the Bill will work is that you will probably be allowed to do that, but if many steps are taken, you may not be allowed to do that. The question is on the “may”: who is going to act, in essence, as the gatekeeper on how many steps you are allowed to do at any one go?

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q I presume it would be somewhere between the market and the regulator, and we have heard about the importance of that. If you are going to go far down and take multiple steps, you are going to have to know that you are going to get a commercial return at the end of it, because this is not cheap or easy. So in the other instance you were mentioning earlier, I was thinking, “Okay, that could make it much more expensive to do, but then it is going to get disintermediated by something that is not as expensive.” I hold to the view that law and biology are always going to do this and we have to make sure that we have got ourselves protected against any big negative consequences. That is why I keep pressing you on the “for instance”.

Dr Edenborough: It falls back to the discretionary nature of the way in which the notification process and the control are exercised. If it is discretionary, it could be more or less active. That is the long and the short of it. You are going from a regime that is quite tightly controlled, and therefore every step is controlled, to one where you are allowed to jump through many hoops in one go, because the regulation allows for that in a discretionary sort of way. By having the discretion, you introduce greater uncertainty and therefore greater risk.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q Okay, but if I flip it the other way and you do not have the discretion, you are effectively closing off avenues to what biology will do naturally. If you want to say, “No, we can only do this, this, this and this”—

Dr Edenborough: No, you are just closing off the pace at which you could do those things.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Right. I am very grateful for the exchange.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q May I ask about liability? I hope this is within your remit. What happens if an organic farmer finds that there is contamination? Does the Bill provide any mechanisms or safeguards for people who might want to resist going down this path and are affected by it?

Dr Edenborough: Very minimal safeguards. I think you are talking about the potential release of an edited genome. What happens if it breaks out into the wild and then, for example, goes into the field next door?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I want to try to get two questions in, very quickly.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Q I will be very brief. There were tanks of fish when I was at university and I have seen the distress that sea lice cause to salmon. It is a problem that has been impenetrable to science, so I can see why that is exciting. My question, as someone who is going to practically implement this, is not necessarily about the technique for inserting the change, but about the thing that is concerning most people. How are we absolutely certain that we have made a very specific change and we have not missed a bit or left a bit of rogue DNA in the wrong place? Can you briefly talk about what you would do within Benchmark Genetics to ensure that, in the nicest possible way, you were getting what you had paid for?

Ross Houston: I see what you mean. Of course CRISPR, the technique we are focusing on, is making a double-stranded cut to the genome and allowing the cells’ natural repair mechanisms to repair the cut and either introduce a small deletion or a small change, or possibly insert a synthetic template of DNA, which would essentially be changing the sequence in a slightly more precise way. There are a couple of parts to that.

In terms of the potential for the CRISPR molecule to make cuts elsewhere in the genome—called off-target effects—we would have to be doing some fairly rigorous DNA sequencing of our animals to ensure that we are not detecting any of those off-target effects. My opinion is that we are now getting very good data from research experiments showing that off-target effects are very rare, and as we learn more about the genomes of our species we are able to design the guide RNAs to take to a specific part of the region that is unique and precise. I see that as a very small risk, but also one that it is important to address.

[Jo Churchill]

Q Did I catch you saying that the Scottish Government are funding precision breeding work within your institute?

Ross Houston: Yes. I moved job recently; I was working for a number of years at the Roslin Institute doing academic research together with industry. The Scottish Government centre, the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre, is funding projects using precision breeding technologies as a research tool with the goal of—

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

In the past 40 years, the milk yield of cows has more than doubled to around 22 litres a day. That is obviously far more than cows would naturally produce if they were just feeding their calves. There are issues with mastitis for a start, and cows are becoming unfertile extremely quickly as a result of intensive milking. In the wild, a cow’s natural life cycle would be about 20 years, but when raised under intensive farming conditions, it is three or four years. All of that has happened through natural breeding techniques but that is incompatible with good animal welfare, because we are literally squeezing as much as we can out of an animal. Its life is massively shortened because of how it is treated. With gene editing, I am concerned about whether we are expecting to increase yield beyond 22 litres a day. What exactly are we expecting to get out of cows?

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening hard to the hon. Lady’s speech and I wholeheartedly agree with her about some of the welfare issues she has described. Does she agree, however, that the Bill offers the opportunity to solve some of the problems that she has identified? The problem with natural breeding is that we effectively chuck everything up in the air, and then it comes back together with one part from the mum and one from the dad. That means that when we select for improved production, we cannot also make sure that we are selecting for health and fitness. We are stuck with the selection—for example, we may select for a dog whose face gets smaller and smaller. I understand what the hon. Lady is saying about making sure that we do not use gene editing just to target individual production methods, but does she share my excitement that the Bill offers the opportunity to fix some of the inherent deficits that traditional breeding has imposed on animals—animals that I know many farmers work with every day, and love?

[Kerry McCarthy]

My concern is that that is not spelled out in the Bill, and it goes back to our argument about the public benefit. I would be far more comfortable if the Bill spelled out what the hon. Lady has described and made it clear that that is what it is designed to achieve. The ongoing welfare of the animal should be one of the factors to be taken into account when deciding whether to approve applications. The Bill is not clear about that. Market forces being what they are, some people will want to use the Bill as an opportunity to increase yields.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I understand that the hon. Lady is leery about market consequences, and we should always have a good look at them. Some of the welfare issues that we think of as distressing also have a financial cost attached to them—increased vets’ charges; increased housing requirements; and increased vets’ visits. Would the hon. Lady risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater by being specific about the Bill, because a happy, healthy animal that is productive and fecund is an economic positive for the individuals who seek to farm them?

[Kerry McCarthy]

One might think so, but consider the lifespan of cows and that fact that they become infertile pretty quickly. One would think that logic would suggest that a farmer would want a cow that they did not literally milk for everything, and that lived a longer, healthier and fertile life. That is not what happens on some farms. Some farmers view the economic advantage to them as getting as much out of a cow as possible in its shorter lifespan. We want to encourage best practice, and I am not casting aspersions on farmers who want to do the right thing, but we know that big market forces are at work, particularly in chicken production. In fact, wherever products are sold in bulk and consumed in vast quantities, some players in that market will not have animal welfare in mind.

I am conscious of time, so to conclude, amendment 7 calls for welfare reports to be submitted to the Secretary of State to consider whether yields would be increased and whether that would lead to suffering. That goes to the nub of the issue. I will not repeat what I said earlier, but if the development of gene editing led to the phase out of some of the diseases that affect animal welfare, I would like more reassurances about what that would mean for increased density and animals kept in cramped conditions, and so on. If we have a stronger animal, that might mean that it is thought they can withstand such treatment.

I think the welfare provisions are too weak, and far too much is being left to regulations and consideration at some point in the future. The Bill should have been put on hold while we made more inquiries and gathered more information. That would have meant that we were discussing a fully rounded Bill, and that we knew what we were likely to get from it.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

The only distinction made in the Bill is between processes that could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding techniques and those that could not. That is where things start to get difficult. As the Labour party, scientific societies and stakeholder groups have said a number of times, that is a weak definition, which could feasibly include just about anything—that is what Professor Henderson admitted. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South Ribble looks sceptical.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am not looking sceptical. You are describing nature. You are describing the fact that bits of genetic material will get swapped around in a series of different vehicles, especially in plants such as plasmids. What you are asking us to do is—

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Lady has been here long enough now. I am not proposing anything; the hon. Gentleman is.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I apologise for the inappropriate language, Mr Davies; I am just getting a bit over-excited. The hon. Gentleman is asking us to include a legalistic definition of nature. I have scrutinised the Bill quite carefully, and I believe that it has sufficient protections to replicate the best parts of nature. That is why I was looking the way I was.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for the intervention—enthusiasm is welcome. The hon. Lady gets to the nub of the point: it is very difficult to describe in law—which is what we as legislators are trying to do—the complexities of the natural world. I suspect that we will probably go around in circles on this, but my point is that the reliance on the notion of something occurring naturally would make the law difficult to interpret—that is key. That is why it is hard for legislators to pin those things down, and I have some sympathy with who have had to capture them in drafting the Bill.

As I am sure the Committee will remember, I pressed Professor Henderson on that point. He said:

“The Bill is designed not to allow exogenous material”.

That is not explicitly coded in the Bill, however. He also said that this is

“something of a grey area.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 15, Q18.]

He was absolutely right about that. He said that transgenesis can occur naturally, and he drew a distinction between intentional and unintentional transfer, which, again, I can understand.

I appreciate that, as the hon. Member for South Ribble implied, the distinction is complicated and messy, but it is important. Unfortunately, although that is the distinction that the Government have presented in the Bill, not only does it not appear in the Bill, but it is contradictory. As we read it, it seems that transgenesis is possible under the Bill, so long as it could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding processes. I appreciate that it is difficult, but I ask the Minister to explain today how her earlier remarks, and the remarks made by others—that gene editing does not involve introducing DNA from one organism into another—are reflected in the Bill. I do not think they are.

The other related point is the general looseness of the definitions in the Bill. I am sure we all recall the striking evidence from Dr Edenborough QC, a distinguished lawyer, who may well end up advising on how disputes in this area might be resolved. That is an important point: we are setting the law, but others will then interpret it. If it is not clear, we will see trouble ahead.

As Dr Edenborough explained in the evidence session,

“‘could have resulted from’ is staggeringly imprecise. Is that ‘likely’? Is that ‘very possible’? What level of probability is it?”—Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 125, Q199.]

In essence, he raised that many things that would be permissible under the Bill and qualify as precision bred organisms would be unclear. The Government need to clarify what they intend here. Without clarity, there is a real risk of challenge. That goes back to my opening point, and I think it will be a thread running through our debates. With the lack of clarity comes uncertainty, and with uncertainty comes a risk to investment, which is exactly opposite to what the Bill is designed to achieve.

That is why we have tabled the amendments—to try to bring the Bill in line with the distinctions the Government have themselves drawn between genetic editing and genetic modification. The amendments would tighten up the Bill, provide clarity of purpose and bring the Bill in line with the Government’s stated aims.

Amendment 1 explicitly rules out transgenesis by adding a new subsection to clause 1, while amendment 2 amends the definition in the subsection (8) definition of “modern biotechnology” to exclude the introduction of “exogenous genetic material”. Both amendments would bring the Bill into line with the stated objectives of the Government. We will seek a division on amendment 1, although I am happy to withdraw amendment 2. We hope the Government can support us on amendment 1.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

It has to go through the regulatory framework to be defined as precision bred, to ensure that any of those precise changes are changes that could have occurred in nature, because we are describing what would happen in nature.

[Katherine Fletcher]

In nature there will be random deletions continually within the genome, so the idea of sections of DNA being taken out or added in is part of the process.

[Jo Churchill]

I thank my hon. Friend.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Eighth sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Prentis]

I have listened with interest to the points made by the hon. Gentleman. It is not necessary to put either amendment in the Bill, and I will do my best to reassure him as to why that is the case.

The scientific advice is clear that precision breeding poses no greater risk to the environment than traditional breeding. Section 19 of the Environment Act 2021 provides that Ministers must have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. DEFRA has already published and laid that statement before Parliament for debate. I understand that that is the draft version, but we have made it clear that our intention is to publish the final version in autumn this year. Therefore, by the time regulations are made under this Bill, the final version of the policy statement will have been laid before Parliament, and section 19 will be in force. It is therefore unnecessary to make a provision that will be meaningless by the time the Bill comes into force.

However, to provide more assurances, let me add that one of the five principles—the precautionary principle—was touched on in the evidence sessions, including by the hon. Gentleman, and I believe that many of the experts are satisfied that it is being met. They include Professor Jim Dunwell, the chair of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment; Dr Alan Tinch; and Professor Gideon Henderson. To quote Gideon,

“the Bill we are putting forward now is precautionary—it follows the guidelines of the precautionary principle. We are not leaping in with both feet, but we are moving in stepwise motion.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 89, Q145.]

In line with the requirements of section 20 of the Environment Act, we have reviewed whether the Bill reduces existing environmental protections. Based on the scientific advice from the independent scientific committee ACRE, our assessment is that the provisions do not have the effect of weakening environmental protections. We published that statement when the Bill was introduced.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Cambridge said about the TCA. The scientific advice is clear that precision breeding poses no greater risk to the environment than traditional breeding, and we therefore believe that the Bill is consistent with our non-regression commitment to the EU. Indeed, the EU is consulting on its own new regulatory framework for precision bred plants. The TCA aims to prevent either party from weakening their environmental protections below the levels that were in place at the end of the transition period. Article 391 states:

“The Parties…shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment…environmental levels of protection”.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening to a really good debate. Does the Minister agree that the Bill gives us the opportunity to strengthen our environmental protections, not just to maintain the status quo? It is a great leap forward.

[Victoria Prentis]

The Government certainly believe that there are real environmental benefits to allowing carefully regulated precision breeding that enjoys public trust, and we are keen to realise those benefits. Although I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) is no longer in position, I was pleased to take over the Committee stage of the Bill because, as Farming Minister, I have long taken a close interest in it. I am very excited, for example, by the reduction in pesticide use that may be brought about really quite quickly if we pass the Bill and crack on with appropriate precision breeding. I do not think it is necessary or appropriate for regulations to be made subject to amendments 26 and 27.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I have been referring to new clause 1 throughout the Bill’s passage through Committee. Labour has been clear that we regard labelling as an important part of this new regulatory framework, and it is sadly not really referenced in the Bill, although it is discussed and then dismissed in the impact statement.

The Bill will create a new type of food product on supermarket shelves: the precision bred organism. As I said earlier, it is clear that there is a trend towards consumers wanting more information about their food—what it contains, where it comes from and its environmental impact, which are all important. As I am sure the Minister now knows, and will be tired of hearing, Labour will buy, make and sell more in Britain. How could one do that without knowing how our food is made and where it comes from?

Our new clause 1 would require the Government to introduce regulations to ensure that precision bred food and feed is labelled to provide

“sufficient information to support informed consumer choice, having regard in particular to—

(a) nutritional content,

(b) the potential presence of allergens or other substances which may cause adverse human health impacts, and

(c) the environmental impact of the product.”

It would also require the Secretary of State to consult stakeholder groups before pursuing that and to seek the advice of the Food Standards Agency.

The Government have said time and again that they support nutritional labelling to inform consumers of any allergens or if the nutritional content of a food is changed from its natural state. They must put that in the legislation and make it a commitment in the Bill. We have also heard about the issues of co-existence with other production systems and supply chain tracing, and how the legislation might have an impact on the organic sector. It is important that it is properly consulted, so that whatever labelling regime the Government introduces, it allows for different types of food production to co-exist.

The only information the Government have divulged in writing regarding labelling is their opposition to it, in the impact assessment, based on the costs it could incur for businesses. However in the impact assessment they have not actually calculated the costs and benefits of labelling, so I am unsure how they came to that judgment. Perhaps the Minister can tell us. Indeed, in that part of the impact assessment, around pages 40 and 41, it is interesting that, in paragraph 114, the Government notes that

“maintaining a labelling and tracing system could also have wider benefits, most notably, improved consumer confidence in food products potentially adding value across the food supply chain.”

Well, absolutely.

The impact assessment also states:

“Given uncertainties, as set out above, we have not monetised the estimated annual cost of a labelling and tracing system to business.”

That was identified by the Regulatory Policy Committee, which in its report—which, I have to say, categorised the Bill as “not fit for purpose”—stated:

“The traceability and labelling costs, the primary benefit for the preferred option and which differentiates the two regulatory options considered, is not quantified. As this is the main difference between the two regulatory options, the Department needs to provide some quantification of the scale of the potential impact from this change.”

I would be grateful if the Minister commented on what is, frankly, a pretty damning assessment. I appreciate that she is new to this area and that it may not be possible for her to do so today, but a written assurance that those serious issues will be addressed would be welcome at a later stage.

Further to that, in its written evidence to the Committee, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics noted that the Government’s present stance on labelling

“runs contrary to the findings of many public engagement initiatives that have broached this question... in this context, not labelling amounts to the withholding of information about consumer preferences”.

[Katherine Fletcher]

In the oral evidence sessions, we heard about not only the costs of implementation but the practical challenge with labelling precision bred organisms, which is that they are scientifically and practically indistinguishable from traditionally bred organisms—that is, the ones that we have, know and love day-to-day. I note that the hon. Gentleman has not touched on a mechanism for how that labelling could be executed. The only practical way that we could know for certain whether a crop, for example, was precision bred would be to insert exogenous DNA for the purpose of labelling, which clearly goes against the spirit of some of the other debates we have had.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Lady raises a series of interesting and important points. I do not disagree with what she has said, other than to say that I think it is possible—this came through in some of the evidence as well—to maintain traceability throughout the process if we are careful about how we do it, but we have to set up systems to do so. It is clear from the impact assessment that the Government have thought about this issue, and our view is that to maintain the necessary public confidence it is absolutely right for it to be considered carefully. As such, our new clause would put the structure in place for that discussion to happen. If the hon. Lady looks carefully at what the new clause actually says, she will see that.

I was about to make exactly the same point as the hon. Lady: we understand the challenges that labelling may pose. However, as was said in the impact assessment, the significant benefit it would bring in terms of public trust and supporting consumer choice may well be worth having. Our view is that the Government have not given sufficient thought to the matter nor evaluated it sufficiently, as is admitted in the impact assessment. Our new clause 1 would require them to undertake further consultation on labelling and then introduce an appropriate system.