My Lords, much has been said during our debates about the strength of the food and public health measures in the Bill but also about the fact that the Food Standards Agency is going to have a role to play in ensuring that any precision-bred organisms that reach our supermarket shelves are adequately regulated.
Our concern is about the wording as it currently stands because, although it confers on the Government the option to create a provision for regulating the placing on the market of food and feed produced from precision-bred organisms, it does not make that mandatory. In other words, although the Bill makes the regulation of precision-bred food and feed a possibility, it leaves it open to the Government not to take up that power should they not desire to do so.
That is why I have added my name to Amendment 57, of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, which would change that subsection’s language from “may” to “must” so that the Government would be mandated to take up the power; it would not be an option—and likewise with her Amendment 58. I thank her for her thorough introduction to her amendments.
We also support Amendment 60, in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. This part of the Bill proposes to introduce powers that will empower the FSA to create a proportionate framework for regulating precision-bred organisms. If approved, the framework will form the basis upon which precision-bred food and feed products are to be authorised and placed on the market in England. That is one reason why I tabled Amendment 63; I felt it was important that we understand what preparatory work has been undertaken on the planned food and feed register and whether there is likely to be any further consultation on it.
As my noble friend Lady Jones has said, the FSA is already under financial and resource pressures. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked an important question: what happens, what are the implications, if there are no new resources for the FSA? My noble friend Lord Rooker raised some serious and important points and questions that need to be answered. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those points.