I thoroughly endorse that question. This is probably not the night to go into that area, but the fact of the matter is that, to the best of my knowledge, the meat industry remains subsidised by the taxpayer. We have never got full cost recovery. It is
a huge industry—£6 billion—so we are not talking about a few little abattoirs. The industry has been subsidised for years, with a free management service provided by the Food Standards Agency. However, that is not my purpose.
Regarding the clause stand part notices in this group, it is always good to be learning new things: I did not know that you could not put an amendment down to take out a part of the Bill—it is not something that I had ever tried to do in the past—but you cannot do it, so you need to list the clauses. The reason for doing so is given in the19th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, paragraph 30 of which suggests that Part 3 of the Bill is quite unusual because it
“provides for the regulation of food and feed produced from PBOs. It consists of skeleton clauses: the provision on the face of the Bill is so insubstantial that the real operation of Part 3 would be entirely by the regulations made under it.”
I will not go through the whole report at this time of night—there is no need—but I will highlight a couple of paragraphs from the committee’s report. The memorandum supplied by the department is referred to, which justified these clauses which are so insubstantial. Paragraph 35 of the committee’s report says:
“We find these justifications far from convincing.”
It points out that the Guidance for Departments on the Role and Requirements of the Committee states:
“Skeleton legislation should only be used in the most exceptional circumstances. Where the government decide that such exceptional circumstances apply, the delegated powers memorandum should make an explicit declaration (‘a skeleton legislation declaration’) that the bill is a skeleton bill or clauses within a bill are skeleton clauses. Such a declaration should be accompanied by a full justification for adopting that approach, including why no other approach was reasonable to adopt and how the scope of the skeleton provision is constrained.”
That is paragraph 9 of the guidance to departments—something that Defra has clearly decided to ignore in this case.
8.15 pm
The committee’s report says that the delegated powers memorandum
“states that clauses 26 and 28 cover subject-matters ‘of great interest to Parliament’—and it acknowledges the interest that Parliament is likely to have in regulations made under clause 27 —but it fails to include a skeleton legislation declaration or a full justification for the skeleton provision in those clauses.”
The conclusion of the Delegated Powers Committee is that it considers that
“the Government have failed to justify the inclusion of skeleton clauses in Part 3 of the Bill that leave it entirely to ministerial regulations to determine the substance of the regulatory regime that is to govern the placing on the market of food and feed produced from precision bred organisms”.
The Minister has to justify the placing on the market of that food and feed. Feed never gets the pressure that food does—it is not politically sexy—yet one-third of the crops we grow are for animal feed.
In the past, we have had lots of problems of misusing feed. We are waiting for another crisis—and then of course people will take an interest. The reason why the FSA was set up is that there was a crisis that was not dealt with because the department was too involved in
providing benefits to the producers and forgetting the consumers. In this case, consumers are entitled to know and trust that the food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms is safe, but how can they if we are just dealing with skeleton clauses and we have government by diktat? Of course, that was the title of a report last year and it is what we have—Government by Diktat. Could the Minister explain to us why they have decided to introduce skeleton clauses but not admit in the delegated powers memorandum that those clauses are in the Bill?