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JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first MPs are going
to discuss food this week. How safe is it? Have we really put the tragedy
of mad cow disease behind us? Can we trust politicians and civil servants
to let us know if there are problems in future and to put the interests
of food safety above everything else? Is there really a new culture of
openness in Whitehall? On Friday the Agriculture Minister Nick Brown gave
the government's response to the inquiry into BSE but he left many of those
questions unanswered. Mr. Brown is in our Newcastle studio now. Good
afternoon Mr. Brown.
NICK BROWN: Good afternoon John.
HUMPHRYS: You're going to be using,
as I understand it, the BSE and the way the Tories handled it, to attack
them during the election campaign when it arrives, but you have a problem
here don't you, because you don't seem to think anybody is to blame, that
is to say, nobody is being punished for it, therefore we can assume can
we not, that nobody is to blame. Why isn't anybody being punished? It's
a question an awful lot of people want answered.
BROWN: Look, firstly I think the
electorate made their mind up on the Conservatives' handling of the BSE
tragedy at the last general election, the nineteen-ninety-seven general
election. The whole purpose of the government's interim response to Phillips
is to look forward, not to look backwards, and to make sure we put arrangements
in place so that something like this never happens again, or at least we've
taken every step we possibly can to avoid it.
HUMPHRYS: But I think if I were
a farmer whose livelihood had been destroyed, or even more, much more,
if I were the parent of a child who had died, I would say fine, that's
a perfectly good politician's answer, but I want somebody's neck on the
block for this, I want somebody to be punished for it, it's a completely
human response isn't it?
BROWN: It is a completely human
response. Look I don't intend my answer as a politician's answer, what
the government is doing is responding to the Phillips Enquiry, and Lord
Phillips was very clear on this question of allocating blame. He found
institutional failings which went right to the heart of government and
he found political failings as well, which is an indictment of the previous
government and the Conservative Party, but what he said on the question
of allocating individual blame was something like this. He said anyone
who has come to our Report looking to allocate blame will go away disappointed.
That was his finding, that's the finding to which the government has to
respond.
HUMPHRYS: But why, why do you have
to...
BROWN: ...now let me finish the
point. There are five serving civil servants who are criticised in Lord
Phillips Report, we've asked a Civil Service Commissioner to examine whether
those criticisms are serious enough to warrant disciplinary action, the
Commissioner has examined the case, has come back to permanent secretaries
and said that the answer to that is no. And given what Lord Phillips has
said, it's not surprising that the answer, when it comes to allocating
individual blame, is as it is.
HUMPHRYS: But somebody must have
been responsible.
BROWN: Well, you know, I think
it is very easy to say that. That is not the findings of the Phillips
Report and the government has a responsibility to find, to respond to what
Lord Phillips actually said, rather than what might have been more politically
convenient to have had him said, if you are looking at it from a narrow
sectarian party point of view.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's try not to
do that.
BROWN: Let me just say, I think
it is wrong to look at it from a party political point of view. This is
an issue of overwhelming importance, it goes to the heart of the way in
which we are government, it runs to structures of government and it is
there that the response should come. To turn the issue into a fight between
Conservatives and Labour along party political lines is a mistake.
HUMPHRYS: Oh no, I certainly wasn't
trying to do that, quite the opposite...
BOTH SPEAKING TOGETHER
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, and it might
well have been that it was civil servants whose necks should be on block
let alone -- politicians get punished at the polling booth apart from anything
else...
BROWN: ...I think that's exactly
right...
HUMPHRYS: ...yes, but civil servants
don't, they're still in their jobs.
BROWN: You know, all I can do is
to repeat what I've just said. Phillips looked at this question very thoroughly,
his findings are very clear, just in case there was any ambiguity about
it, we asked a civil service commissioner to examine the position regarding
the five serving civil servants and the outcome is as it is.
HUMPHRYS: Alright. The one thing
that Phillips was very, very clear about indeed, was that there had been
a culture of secrecy and that we didn't know enough about what was going
on when it was happening, that's the important point, when it was happening.
The problem you face now is that, the problem that we face now is we still
cannot be sure that, if there were, God forbid, to be another BSE or something
like it, we would for certain know about what was going on, because of
course, we are going to have a Freedom of Information Act, but what that
means, it's been so weakened, that ministers do not have to disclose the
advice that they get, so next time around we may be none the wiser.
BROWN: No, advice to ministers
is one thing, the scientific advice on which ministers are being advised,
on which we are making our decisions, is quite another. And John I give
you this pledge, the scientific advice that informs the ministerial decisions
that I make is all going to go into the public domain. Moreover, the
government has set up now the Foods Standards Agency, which meets in public
to formulate its advice to ministers, and they put that advice in the public
domain. These are very powerful safeguards.
HUMPHRYS: Well, alright, let's
assume that there is a problem. Might be something as serious as a BSE,
it might be something much less serious. But there is a problem. And
a middle ranking official, may or may not be scientist, comes along to
perhaps a senior official, perhaps to a minister himself, or herself, and
says, look, there's a problem here. I'm worried about this. Do we, the
public, get to know about that, at that time?
BROWN: Well, I assume the meetings
that I have as minister, are going to end up in the public domain, unless
there is something commercially confidential, or some other very good reason
why they should not. I intend to put all the scientific evidence on which
ministerial decisions are based, into the public domain. We publish a
great deal of information already, on the Ministry's internet site, and
as you know, I bring journalists in, specialist journalists, from time
to time, to brief them on some of the background to the more complicated
things that I end up having to deal with.
HUMPHRYS: So, but it's more than
just the scientific information obviously, because, I mean, we are not
necessarily, probably certainly not capable of divining of what that might
or might not mean, you'd have to be a scientist to do that. Are you saying
that if one of your officials comes along to you and says, look minister,
I've looked at this, and I've got some worries about it, here is what I
think you ought to do, you will tell us that? Without any doubt at all?
BROWN: If there is something to
worry about. Obviously the first question I would ask, and any minister
would ask, is why, what is the basis for the concern, and if that basis
is founded on a scientific study or some other contestable piece of technical
information then the information itself goes into the public domain.
HUMPHRYS: So, we could go along,
any journalist could come along to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food at any time in the future, and say: Look, tell us about what has
been going on in relation to x, y or z, whatever it may be, and we would
have access to the papers, we would have access to the advice which you
had been given. We'd know the whole picture.
BROWN: As far as the scientific
advice that informs ministerial decision-making goes, you don't have to
come along to the Ministry. You can access it all on the Ministry's internet
site.
HUMPHRYS: I was talking about more
than. I was talking about more than just the scientific advice.
BROWN: When it comes to the advice
that informs decisions over whether - take a controversial issue, whether
French beef should be imported into the United Kingdom, but that's a legal
question rather than a scientific one, although the food safety advice
comes from the Foods Standards Agency, and that is in the public domain.
The legal advice is in the House of Commons library, so that you can see
it there, every parliamentarian can see it there as well, in other words
it's in the public domain.
HUMPHRYS: But if one of your ministers
came along and said: It's a tricky area this minister, you know, it could
be very politically damaging for you, we think you ought to do this that,
or the other, would you tell us about that, and could we then come along.
I mean could I now come along and say, BSE in milk for instance, one
example, and I know there is stuff on the Internet as you rightly say,
scientific stuff on the Internet, but could we come along and say: Let's
have everything on that since the Election, since you've been in power.
BROWN: John, I'm quite happy for
you to have absolutely every bit of information we have about whether or
not BSE can be found in milk. The advice to me is that it cannot, but
we're still looking, but if you want to go through the research that's
been carried out so far I'm quite happy to have you talked through the
Ministry's research programme by the people who've undertaken it. There
are two choices for ministers on this question of secrecy. Either you
do what the last government did, which is to keep things - play the cards
very close to your chest - keep things secret in order to prevent there
being a panic when the science isn't certain - that's the approach the
Conservative Party took.
Phillips says they were
wrong to do that, and even if the science isn't certain, governments should
trust the public and I strongly agree with that. It is better to say there
is a debate around this area, we don't know for sure, but this is what
we know so far, and if the debate seems to be moving in a particular direction
as it clearly did with BSE, remember the discovery of the TSEs in cats,
the discovery that it was possible to get the condition into a pig by injecting
it in laboratory conditions into the animals' brains; all of these were
clear signposts that it's possible for the condition in cattle to jump
the species barrier. Now that should have gone into the public domain
and it should have alerted ministers to the need for powerful protection
measures.
HUMPHRYS: But what if your official
says to you: Look, this could - we don't think there's a great deal in
it actually, but there's enough in it for some of our scientists to be
a bit worried about it. However if this gets out it really could rock
public confidence in lamb or milk or whatever it happens to be, would you
tell us that?
BROWN: Well, your example about
sheep is actually quite a good one. There is a theoretical possibility
that BSE was present in sheep at least at their period of greatest infectivity
in the late 1980s, early 1990s, although of course we haven't found it
there, and there are no mad sheep. There are sheep suffering from scrapie,
and as you know the theory is that scrapie could possibly mask the condition,
the BSE condition in sheep.
We have said what the
theoretical possibility is, we're conducting continuing research into it,
both into whether it was present historically and whether we can find it
now. So far we haven't but we continue to search, but moreover we're devising
a contingency plan if anything is ever found and all of that work is being
put in the public domain. Moreover, I have on an extreme precautionary
principle devised a scrapie eradication programme which is to genotype
the sheep so that we eliminate scrapie, and although scrapie is said to
be no harm to humans, and I'm sure that that's right I want to eliminate
it anyway just in case on the very extreme possibility that it masks BSE.
Now a
previous Conservative government would not have wanted to discuss that
in public. I'm quite confident that in spelling out the nature of the risk
and what the government's doing about it, that will act as a reassurance
to the public rather than a source for food scare stories.
HUMPHRYS: If you were entirely
serious about this would you not follow the German approach., They now
of course have a new Agriculture Minister, and their slogan, if that's
what it is, their policy I suppose, is class not mass. In other words
we're much more concerned about the quality of the food we produce than
the quantity of the food we produce. You are still, because of course
you still support intensive agriculture, with all the potential risks,
and I emphasise the word potential that that involves, you're still more
concerned with mass than class aren't you?
BROWN: John, I am passionately
committed, you and I have discussed this before, to the reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy and to shift that policy away from the production supports
which of course, do as you say, which underpin mass production rather than
look at the environmental issues or indeed get farm businesses closer to
the market place. And I am strongly committed to the reform process...
HUMPHRYS: Well give us a target
then like the Germans have..
BROWN: John, let me finish. I've
got the disadvantage of hearing you down the line from Newcastle...
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, of course I apologise..
BROWN: I've got the disadvantage
of having to work with the Common Agricultural Policy as I found it. I
believe there should be a Common Policy across the European Union but not
as currently structured and you and I don't disagree on these matters as
much as it may seem.
HUMPHRYS: Well it's my job as you
know to ask the questions. What..the reason that I raised the Germans and
I'm sorry if you couldn't hear me down the line there. Is that they have
actually set a target. They have said twenty per cent of organic food,
effectively organic food by the year 2010. We don't have that sort of target
do we?
BROWN: No, but I was discussing
the possibility of having an action plan with the Soil Association earlier
on this week. I'm not going to set targets, it's not for Government to
tell people which type of food they should eat, the government's responsibility
is to ensure that it is safe and that the trading practices within the
food industry are proper and as they should be. However, the government
is committed to seeing organic farming flourish and we're doing it for
three reasons: it's good for the environment; it's what consumers want
and it's an economic way forward for farmers. The last Conservative government
was spending half a million pounds a year on this when they left office,
we're spending a hundred and forty million pounds over the next seven years
and what's more, we're looking at whether we can devise an on-goers scheme
as well as a conversion scheme for the future. So we are keen on supporting
organic farming but not telling people that they have to eat organic food
or setting artificial targets.
HUMPHRYS: Giving them a choice
is not telling them they have to eat and a hundred and forty divided by
seven isn't actually all that much is it. The short answer is you're not
prepared to go as far as the German government has gone.
BROWN: We certainly go further
than the German government currently goes although you are right that the
arrival of the new minister means a change in policy. It is not possible
I think to support organic farming alone without looking at the structure
of the Common Agricultural Policy and supporting more radical reform of
that. I believe that that should be done and I hope that German policy
evolves in a similar direction.
HUMPHRYS: Nick Brown, thanks very
much indeed.
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