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Public Analysts Service

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley), I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on securing this debate. Broadly, I would also like to congratulate him on all the work that he does in this place in advocating on behalf of scientists and scientific services in this country. Over many years, he has fought for their cause and pointed out how valuable they are to our society. He has played a part in trying to recruit more of our youngsters to a career in science and has highlighted the importance and value to our society of scientific services. Here he is again today, reminding us of the importance of a scientific service—the public analysts service, on this occasion—and rightly drawing it to our attention because it is in serious danger of being overlooked to death. He is right to draw attention to its parlous state and to ask us to take action to try to prevent disaster in the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central mentioned Duncan Campbell of the West Yorkshire analytical services. In preparing for this debate, I came across an article that he wrote for the New Scientist on 15 November 2008 called "Fears for food" in which he states:""The few of us that remain are very busy, but I'm not sure for how much longer. Every year the local authorities that take samples for enforcement purposes spend less on having food analysed."" That is a description of a worrying situation from an individual analyst, but I have read a briefing provided for us by the Association of Public Analysts which states that that is the situation across what remains of the service. It is a very worrying briefing. I was not prepared to speak on the basis of just one briefing and so did further research. One of the surviving analysts laboratories is in Stafford, in my constituency. I visited it and met the staff and senior management there. Again, from my own investigations and discussions, I can confirm that there is a worrying situation that needs to be addressed. The briefing from the APA states:""The uncontrolled and potentially terminal decline in the Public Analyst Service is not being addressed adequately."" What we need to do today is to insist that it is addressed adequately, and that steps are taken to reverse the decline. Basically, we need this vital public service now more than ever, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central made clear earlier. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East said, services are not organised in a strategic way. The Food Standards Agency is the competent authority for implementing food safety laws, but local authorities have responsibility for appointing public analysts. Beyond that, apparently no one has the legal duty actually to provide a service. That is a worrying situation. The upshot is that there are now just 41 qualified practising public analysts employed in 21 laboratories throughout the entire United Kingdom. Let us take the example of the danger from food poisoning, which is one of the serious public health problems that we face and which the service works to protect us from. Food poisoning is believed to be widely under-reported to general practitioners in this country. It is estimated that in 2007 there were 850,000 UK cases of food poisoning, resulting in more than 19,500 hospitalisations and more than 500 deaths. This is a matter of major public concern. The main hazards in food processes come from contamination; for example, bacteria that cause disease. The vulnerable groups who are most at risk from food poisoning are the elderly, the sick, babies, young children and pregnant women. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, Central mentioned that the UK's largest outbreak of E. coli 0157, in Scotland in 1996, resulted in the deaths of 17 elderly people. Another major outbreak of the same pathogen in Wales in 2005 led to the death of a school child. The FSA is the Government Agency set up to protect public health and consumer interests in respect of food, but although policy responsibility for food hygiene rests with the Government and the FSA as its agency, enforcement is primarily at local level by local authorities. In 2007, the Rogers review set national enforcement priorities for local authority regulatory services. It identified hygiene of businesses as one of the top five enforcement priorities for local authorities and gave two reasons for that: the high impact on public health and the potential losses to the economy if things go wrong. However, because of the situation described by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East, we see inconsistencies in levels of enforcement by local authorities. For example, in 2006-07, fewer than half of all local authorities—about 46 per cent.—achieved all their high-risk planned inspections. When we consider how much they spend on their inspections and sampling, we find that the average spend per local authority is about 10p per head of population in a year, but some are as low as 2p, which demonstrates how poor it can be. As my hon. Friend said, some local authorities carry out no samplings in an entire year. In 2007-08, for example, eight English local authorities did not carry out a single test. I have mentioned food poisoning, but challenges are also presented by food fraud and misleading labels. According to the consumer group Which?, food fraud in the UK is estimated to be about 10 per cent. of the total sale of food product—or £7 billion-worth of food products a year. When Channel 4's "Dispatches" investigated food labelling, it found that misleading claims over salt and fat content were widespread. One test of six chocolate puddings—I will not embarrass the supermarket that sold them—showed that they contained, on average, 45 per cent. more fat than was stated on the label. One sample exceeded the amount quoted on the label by 64 per cent. From another supermarket, six samples of a chicken curry ready meal were found to be much fattier than the shoppers were led to believe. One had a third more fat, another had 91 per cent. more fat than the label stipulated. Therefore, whether it is food safety, healthy eating and tackling obesity or protecting lawful businesses from unfair competition, the public analysts service is vital to UK national interests. Yet the sampling activity by local authorities across the UK has fallen sharply and continues to do so. Those involved in the service can only see the decline continuing into the future. In recent times, the service has responded positively, which has been a crucial element in our defence against recent food scares, such as the melamine in milk products of Chinese origin and the dioxin in pork and beef from Ireland. The association's briefing warns us—the parliamentarians here—that the service at its current levels of staffing and equipment would struggle to react appropriately to any major new food scare in the future. That is a very sobering warning for us to take notice of in this debate today. In Staffordshire, we have seen this pressure coming for years. The response has been proactively to get away from the terminal decline. We have formed a formal partnership with a service in Leicestershire, which has enabled us to stabilise, cut overheads and costs, take additional work and attract new contract work to maintain a sufficient critical mass of work to keep the laboratories in Leicestershire and Staffordshire going. Such a strategy has been successful so far. For the purpose of this debate, I spoke again to the leaders of the service in Staffordshire, and they told me that they remain of the view—despite all that they have done—that without the FSA taking a strategic position to drive up the future level of food sampling and examination across the country, the service will continue to decline, leading to a complete breakdown of the service in the foreseeable future. That is a very serious warning from my own local authority about the catastrophe that will take place in the future if we do not act. I say to the Minister that we need a better, stronger national strategy that provides firm links between the policy, its implementation and its enforcement. Perhaps we could have a regional structure for properly resourced, independent laboratory services and a realistic amount of inspection and sampling at the local level. Finally, I say to the Minister, do not allow the service to decline any further. Do not run the risk of it becoming the Achilles heel of the UK's very valuable food sector and our vital national interests of food security and safety.