Food Industry Competitiveness

I have never known my hon. Friend to do anything amateurishly, and I will come to the issue of food labelling in a few moments. The real issue with "Food 2030" is not what is in it, but what is not in it. There are no substantive proposals to restore the prosperity of our food supply industry, and therefore assure us of food security. The first thing must be to ensure that consumers are properly informed. We must have proper, honest country-of-origin labelling, initially in the meat sector. Even the Government have come round to that, but they have blocked four different private Members' Bills that would have provided such labelling. While the Minister and the Secretary of State have been declaring their support for country-of-origin labelling, we have it on record that Food Standards Agency officials have been voting against it in meetings in Brussels. There is not a lot of substance there. "Food 2030" says that agriculture must be supported by first-class research and development, yet the Government have been cutting funding on agricultural research for most of the past 12 years. The fundamental objective of the document is that the demand for food should be met by profitable, competitive, highly skilled and resilient farming—fish and food—businesses. It refers to the market and sharing risks, yet the Government have taken two years to respond to the Competition Commission report. We wholly support the new code of practice—GSCOP, as it is being called—and as we announced before the Government did, we support the idea of an ombudsman. Some think it odd that the Conservative party supports an ombudsman.