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Farm Animal Welfare

I am happy to accept that it may have been one of the reasons why the EU was eventually persuaded to apply the same rules across the whole Union. That brings me conveniently to the issue of eggs, on which the hon. Gentleman concentrated, and on which I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions. As the hon. Gentleman said, the EU has banned conventional battery cages from 1 January 2012. Working backwards from that date, and bearing in mind the lifespan of a chicken, we can see that the eggs from which the last batch of chickens in cages will hatch will be set to incubate next spring, so we are not far away—one or two other things may hatch next spring, but we shall see. The eggs will be incubated next spring, and the pullets will grow up and be put into cages about this time next year. They will be the last batch to go into battery cages. The time scale is therefore tight, and I am already concerned about two things. First, quite a lot of British producers have not yet invested in alternative systems, and they are going to find life very difficult. Many of them have been to see me, as I am sure they have been to see the Minister, to press for derogations. Personally, I am not particularly supportive of derogations, because there has been plenty of notice, but—this is a big but, and it prompts my request to the Minister—producers are now telling me that a number of countries actually have derogations, Poland being one example. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us details of the derogations that the EU has granted to allow some countries to continue using conventional cages, because such measures will fly completely in the face of attempts to raise standards. That will mean, given the single market, that we will still be able to import eggs produced in conventional cages, and our producers, who will have made the necessary investments, will be at risk of being undercut. This is therefore a serious issue, and I hope that the Minister can address it. My view is that there should be no derogation and that animal welfare should be improved across the whole EU at a particular stage to minimise unfair competition. As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams), who has just left the Chamber, said, a significant amount of egg is brought into the country in powdered or liquid form. Quite a lot comes from the United States, and it also comes from elsewhere in the world. I am not suggesting that it will be easy to deal with the issue, and I do not know whether such products have the levels of traceability that we would like, but it is a pretty clear bet that they will be from caged eggs, which will be a significant part of the cost of production. Let me move on to the labelling of food before trying to draw the different threads together. The House has been debating food labelling for many years, and certainly since the era when the changes in pig welfare that I mentioned were made. Governments have frequently said that they are working with industry to improve things, but as Conservative party studies have demonstrated—we referred to this earlier this year—the public are clearly still being misled. People will say that is unlawful and that the law bans misleading labelling, but I am not sure whether the Minister could point to any prosecutions. Public surveys in which members of the public have been shown labels show that people are clearly confused by them. The Minister's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), was quite struck by how deceptive labelling was when she and I did a Jamie Oliver programme about the labelling of pigmeat products. Nothing has really changed. We now find that the Food Standards Agency, dealing with EU regulations on the Government's behalf, is voting against EU proposals that would help to clarify food labelling legislation. On the DEFRA website, we read:""The Food Standards Agency…advises that if meat is described as British it should be made clear where the animal was reared and slaughtered and where processing took place"." Frankly, that is not good enough. If meat is described as British the animal should have been born, reared and slaughtered in this country. There should be no scope for misleading people about that, which is why my party has committed itself to legislation—although our campaign has been so successful that a large number of supermarkets, including Tesco, have voluntarily set about altering a lot of their labelling. We are obviously very pleased about that. That approach is essential, because the only way the consumer can exercise choice, whether on price, welfare standards, country of origin or anything else, is by being correctly and properly informed about what is available, and sure of buying what they think they are buying. Once that has been got right, there is an opportunity for the industry to market its wares and exploit the higher welfare standards and, indeed, to be negative about the standards of some imports. It is for the industry, not Government, to grasp that opportunity, but Government should create the framework that enables it to happen. The debate is about public procurement, and as the result of much pressure in the past few years the Government are moving in the right direction on that issue. It would be churlish of me to deny that. However, I do not think that they have a great deal to be complacent about, because there is a long way to go. I shall refer to some figures in a moment, but it is important to note that when comparing Departments one is dealing with widely differing budget levels, and it is necessary to be a bit careful. I found one table on the Department's website, headed "Comparison of average total percentages of commodities of UK origin". It gives the total average of each commodity—meats, vegetables and so on—for 2006-07 and 2007-08, and demonstrates a 2 per cent. increase on the total average. It is an average of averages, and I know that you, Mr. Key, are wise enough not to take too much notice of averages of averages. It is fairly meaningless, and, when one adds to that fact the massive difference between the budgets of Departments, clearly, averaging averages is even more absurd. The same website has a table of contracts specifying certain objectives. The total value of food provided under catering contracts for the Department for International Development, for example, was just £280,000—one of the lowest amounts. For the Prison Service the value was £1.72 million. For the Ministry of Defence, obviously, the figure was considerably more, and for the NHS it was several million pounds. Thus 100 per cent. of one Department's food budget would, in the wider context of public procurement, mean nothing by comparison with the budgets of the big Departments. That leads me to some percentages. If we consider some individual commodities—concentrating on the animal foods sector, because we are debating welfare—we find that just 15 per cent. of poultry meat for the Ministry of Defence is of UK origin. The figure is 0 per cent. for bacon, and 19 per cent. for mutton and lamb. Those figures are atrocious, and they are percentages of a very large budget. I quoted the figures pertaining to DFID's very small budget, but actually even its percentages are not very good: just 28 per cent. of its poultry meat, 87 per cent. of its mutton and lamb and 15 per cent. of its bacon are of UK origin. In the Department for Children, Schools and Families just 33 per cent. of poultry meat, 9 per cent. of beef, 0 per cent. of mutton, lamb and bacon, and 6 per cent. of pork are of UK origin. Those are horrendous figures. What should be done about that? Mention has already been made of the little red tractor, and I make no apologies for the fact that we believe it is completely wrong and immoral to spend British taxpayers' money buying food that is produced to standards that would not be allowed in this country, because Parliament has set rules about how farmers must produce food. We can argue about the adequacy of those rules, and the hon. Member for Sunderland, South and I may differ slightly on that point, but the fact is that we have passed laws about welfare standards in this country, and we import meat that may not meet those standards. That is unacceptable and immoral, and it should change, which is why all public procurement contracts must be moved towards requiring farm assurance—little red tractor—standards. I know that we cannot insist that the food should have that mark, because that could be construed as insisting on UK provenance, but we can ensure that the food is produced to the same standards. That is the best way forward, and it is why we are committed to that approach for all central Government budgets. We are currently considering how to extend it through the devolved area of schools and hospitals. We believe, because of our principles of localised decision making, that they should make their own decisions. The hon. Member for Sunderland, South and other Members referred to the good examples of public bodies, such as schools, some hospitals and at least one or two local authorities, which have gone about doing what we would all probably propose, demonstrating that, contrary to the argument constantly put forward by central Government that we must bulk-buy because it is so much cheaper—I do not blame the present Government uniquely—when devolved power is driven down to local bodies, those bodies can procure food just as cheaply, and probably to a higher standard. There are many good schools in my constituency, but I want to mention St. Mary's primary school in the city of Ely, which took responsibility for its catering back from the county school food service. It gave the budget to the school cook—none of this arty-farty food technician nonsense—and she goes out and buys food locally. It may not always be of local provenance, but it is good quality food. She has substantially increased the uptake of school meals, which are much nicer. The quality is good and the cost is no more than it was under the old centralised system. It is excellent, and I go there at least once a year to have lunch with the children. Other schools are following suit, and indeed another Ely school asked St. Mary's for support with its catering, because of that success. There are countless other relevant examples. The county of Cornwall, which I accept is run by a different party from mine, has done a great deal to source Cornish food for its requirements; it can be done. However, it can be done only with a dramatic change of mindset among bureaucrats at all levels, so that they say "Let's devolve and give responsibility to the people in charge, who will actually prepare the meals." In that way we shall make substantial strides towards ensuring, as everyone has said, that the £2 billion of taxpayers' money that is being spent really creates the example we expect others to follow.