No, my hon. Friend makes a good point, and certainly there was a lack of prosecutions. Where penalties are imposed, they tend to be of a very low order. Some of this large food fraud involves large criminals, probably acting across-country. They get involved because profit from food fraud is equal to that from drug smuggling or human trafficking, yet the chances of being caught are a lot lower, and if they are caught, the penalties are a lot lower as well.
Despite the Government’s having implemented many of the recommendations already, research done by Which? that tested 60 takeaway lamb curries and minced kebabs found that 24 of them had been mixed with other meats such as beef and chicken. Worryingly, seven of the samples did not contain any lamb at all. That is particularly worrying to me, given the area I represent and our dependence on the lamb trade. I was very pleased that recently our local authority prosecuted a restaurant that was advertising Welsh lamb, but in which inspectors found nothing but New Zealand lamb. That is obviously a fraud of its own kind—only on a small level, but even at that level, local authorities must take action.
Since the publication of the Elliott report, Which? has conducted another poll through Populus, and it shows that there is still concern among the public. The fieldwork for that research was conducted between 5 and 7 September, and the poll shows that, even after the publication of the Elliott review, over half of people are worried that a food fraud incident will happen again, a third are not confident that the food they buy contains exactly what is stated in the ingredients list, and, a year after the fiasco, nearly a quarter say that in the past 12 months they have changed the type of meat products they buy because they are worried about food fraud.
We welcome the publication of this report. The Government have accepted all the recommendations, but one thing that will give us cause for concern is whether the resources will be available to carry out all the recommendations, and if they are carried out, whether that will be at the expense of other good work that needs to be done in this area. In general, however, I welcome the report and the Government response.
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