Contrary to the implication that I made at Second Reading, I am with the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Cameron, here. If you cannot check it, you cannot label it.
There is a fundamental point here—and I quoted the late Professor Burke. I know from experience the very reason the FSA was set up, and the Minister needs to send an edict round his colleagues: we do not want any Minister to ever claim that gene-edited food is safe, because the public will not believe them. That is the reason the FSA is there. It is a pity, because we have some Members of this House who have personal experience of this. They could destroy the food industry. The public will believe the scientists and the officials from the regulatory authorities; there is abundant evidence for that over the last 20 years.
If the Minister wanted to wreck gene editing and the food industry, he would give the nod to Ministers to say, “We’ve got this new policy—it will go down well with the public, and there are a few votes in it. You get down there and tell your local people”. It is
fine for Ministers to do what the Minister is doing now—legislating—but they should have no role whatever in promoting and explaining. Legally they have no role, because legally the responsibility is with the Food Standards Agency, but you have to spell that out to Health Ministers—you had to spell it out even to Labour Health Ministers that they had no role. They do not like it, because there are no levers to pull, but it is just one of those things.
However, in terms of confidence for the food industry, which has been restored in the past 20 years after some rocky incidents, it is fundamental that the Minister gets across to his colleagues that Ministers should not pontificate on safety and the other aspects of food. They are going to have to pay for this, by the way, because resources are needed for both the FSA and the other regulators, including the scientific committees, to explain things to the public and defend the situation in a way that the public will believe. They will not believe Ministers; I can tell you that from my own experience. I kept out of it in the horsemeat scandal. I left it to the officials and the scientists. No one was going to believe a hack politician who was previously a Minister. It is true that it was a very difficult situation, but the public will not believe Ministers. It is as simple as that.
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