I am very happy to look at the operation of the horse passport. However, the national equine database is a red herring. It never provided any information on the food-chain status of individual horses, and therefore, it really is not relevant. What is relevant is that passports need to be robust. They need to have the information, and people need to respect the fact that if they do not put that information in, the passports cannot serve as the sort of check and balance that we need. It is wrong to falsify a document such as a passport. Its purpose is to protect to the public, but there is evidence of occasions on which people have falsified them.
We have a very complicated system of issuing horse passports. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) discussed it, and the hon. Member for Ogmore did not seem to recognise that his Government set it up. I understand why they set it up, because there are EU rules on the matter. Each breed society can issue a passport, because they keep the stud book and therefore, there is a proliferation. If we can take action to ensure that there is no duplication, it would be a good thing. Let us look at that, but again, I emphasise the point that if people want to defraud the system, they might do so.
Our job is to try and pick that up, but let us not pretend that we can stop anyone from trying to defraud the system—sometimes they will.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon North on securing the debate. I hope that it has been helpful in outlining some of the actions that we are taking. We will take more, because we need to make sure that the consumer is best served by labelling, and that what it says on the packet is what they get on their plate.