Oral Answers to Questions

Nic Dakin Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I am happy to agree with my hon. Friend, who represents, as I do, some of the most fertile land in the country in south-west Norfolk. She is absolutely right about the problem of multiple inspections. One of the challenges I have laid down to the Macdonald inquiry is to come up with a risk-based system and to merge the different inspection arrangements. By doing so, we can bring this all together and start to trust farmers. Concentrating inspections on a risk-based system will enable us to address those who are likely to be abusing the arrangements while trusting the vast majority who will not.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

T4. if she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities. At the last International Whaling Commission meeting, a proposal that would have legitimised commercial whaling for the first time in decades was rightly defeated. However, concerns were expressed about corruption and vote rigging prior to that meeting. Will the Government say what steps they are taking to eradicate those concerns?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I met the secretary-general of the IWC in Agadir and raised those points clearly with him, as we will continue to do. I was as alarmed as he was by the articles in The Sunday Times, and I remain absolutely convinced that, if the IWC is to have credibility, it has to sort out its governance problems.