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Title of the regulatory proposal
The Food Standards Bill.
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Purpose and intended effect of the proposal
The Bill has been drawn up in the light of public consultation on the draft Food Standards Bill, which was published on 27 January 1999 as Command Paper Cm 4249. The draft Bill was itself produced following consultation on the White Paper, The Food Standards Agency: A Force for Change, which was published in January 1998. The Food Standards Committee of the House of Commons examined the draft Bill during the public consultation period, publishing its report on 31 March 1999.
The purpose of the Bill is to establish a Food Standards Agency, the main objective of which will be to protect the public health from risks connected with the consumption of food, and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers of food. The establishment of the Agency is intended to address factors contributing to the erosion of public and producer confidence in the current system of food controls. The Bill also sets down the main functions that the Agency will discharge and provides a range of powers that will enable it to take effective action to protect the public at any stage in the food production and supply chain.
The Bill creates a UK Agency which will advise and report to the devolved authorities, as well as UK Ministers. It includes provisions to ensure that the devolved administrations can properly exercise their own functions and that their views are fully taken into account.
The Bill contains an enabling provision that would have cost implications outside Government. This is the power to make regulations establishing a statutory laboratory scheme for the notification of test results on food-borne disease. Regulations made under this provision would provide a mechanism for obtaining more reliable information about the prevalence and incidence of different types of food-borne illness. This would be achieved by requiring laboratories to notify the results of tests done on human samples to establish the type of food-borne illness. The precise costs associated with a statutory scheme would be examined in a separate RIA once the necessary regulations were drawn up. Since these regulations would build on an existing voluntary system of notification, they are not expected to impose a significant new burden on laboratories.
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Risk Assessment
Establishing a Food Standards Agency will strengthen the arrangements in Government for dealing with food safety and standards. The Government believes that reorganising this work into a single department with significant powers and the scope to act throughout the food chain will represent a critical step in reinforcing public confidence in food. In particular, it will directly address the risk of any conflict of interest arising as a result of a single department having simultaneous responsibility for protecting the interests of consumers and for promoting the interests of the food industry. In addition, it will reduce the fragmentation between the various government bodies involved in food safety and will promote a greater consistency in the enforcement of food law. The general response in public consultation suggests that there would be a significant risk to public confidence if the Government failed to introduce these changes.
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Options
Creation of a Food Standards Agency will implement a Government manifesto commitment. The proposals have been the subject of extensive public consultation at White Paper and draft Bill stages, both of which have been scrutinised by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. The Government has concluded that the proposed legislation represents the appropriate response that will bring its proposals concerning the Agency to fruition.
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Issues of equity and fairness
Establishing the FSA is a Government Manifesto commitment and responds to public concerns. No issues of equity or fairness therefore arise from the general proposal.
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Benefits
Some of the benefits associated with the Agency are already being experienced as a result of interim work to strengthen food safety arrangements. These include better co-ordination of work within Government through the creation of the MAFF/DH Joint Food Safety and Standards Group, and moves to provide more and better information to the public (for example through the publication of brand names in surveys of chemical contaminants in food). However, creation of the Agency itself is expected to have the following additional benefits.
Consumers and the general public will benefit from:
- an authoritative and independent structure with a statutory duty to protect consumer health and with the powers necessary to take action at any stage in the food production and supply chain;
- statutory guarantees that the Agency will act in a responsible and balanced manner and in the light of the best available science;
- greater openness and transparency in the decision-making process on food safety and standards and an opportunity to make their voice heard;
- a clearer understanding of who is responsible for food safety, ending concern about conflicts of interests in Government;
- a clearer statement of the Government's principles and objectives in promoting safe food;
- better information about food safety and standards to enable consumers to make informed choices.
Food producers,
manufacturers and
retailers will benefit from:
- increased consumer confidence in food safety and the effectiveness of the system for promoting it;
- clear and open decision making processes on food safety, requiring effective consultation with those affected and taking full account of costs, benefits and risks;
- statutory guarantees that the Agency will act in a responsible and balanced manner and in the light of the best available science;
- a single point of access to food safety and standards issues dealt with by the Government;
- more consistent and effective enforcement of food law and therefore a more equitable basis for competition.
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Compliance costs for business, charities and voluntary organisations
The Agency will be required by the terms of its founding legislation to take account of the risks, costs and benefits of a proposed course of action, consulting interested parties wherever possible. The Food Standards Bill provides primary powers for the Agency to carry out its functions rather than directly imposing a regulatory burden. It is not possible to anticipate how precisely the Agency will choose to exercise these functions and therefore what impact its decisions and advice to Ministers will have on businesses, etc. In some cases the Agency's advice will be implemented through secondary legislation made by Health Ministers, which will be subject to RIA as necessary.
Like any other department of Government, the Agency will be fully accountable to Parliament at Westminster and the devolved legislatures for its activities and expenditure and will be required to meet high standards of efficiency in its use of resources.
Business sectors affected
The work of the Agency, with its remit across the whole food chain, will potentially affect the entire food industry and ancillary businesses, from food producers, through manufacturers and processors, to retailers and caterers. Regulations made under the enabling power on notification of the results of tests to identify food-borne disease could have cost implications for some private sector laboratories.
Compliance costs for a 'typical' business.
None are expected to result directly from the Bill. Compliance costs arising from regulations made under the Bill's enabling provisions would be the subject of detailed RIA.
Total compliance costs
As above.
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Consultation with small businesses
Small business representatives have been consulted on the proposals, both as part of the public consultation process and in direct discussion.
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Other costs (e.g. to citizens, the environment, Government)
With the exception of those that are already recovered through existing charges, the overall costs of the Agency (including new costs) will be met both through the taxpayer, following the transfer of existing food safety and standards budgets from those Departments that currently have responsibility in these areas.
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Results of consultations
Public consultation on the James Report, the White Paper and the draft Bill showed widespread support for the broad thrust of the Government's proposals from across the whole range of stakeholders. There was however some disagreement on specific aspects of the proposals, in particular whether the scope of the Agency's work should include nutritional matters and whether the Agency should obtain funds through a new levy on food premises. In the light of public consultation, the Govenment has decided not to proceed with its proposal to raise a levy, and the relevant enabling powers have therefore been removed from the Bill.
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Summary and recommendations
The proposals for a Food Standards Agency represent a significant overhaul of the system for managing food safety and standards. They build upon the changes that the Government has already made to modernise and open up the existing arrangements. Creating an authoritative body with the scope and powers to deal with all aspects of food safety at any point in the chain will provide the means to drive up standards coherently and in a way that commands general confidence.
It is not possible to quantify in purely financial terms how the Agency will benefit its stakeholders, or to identify what new burdens may arise from its future decisions and practices. The Agency will however be required to act in a responsible and proportionate manner, taking full account of risks, costs and benefits and consulting those who may be affected by its decisions wherever possible before acting.
It is on this basis that the Government recommends that primary legislation be introduced to establish the Agency.
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Enforcement, sanctions, monitoring and review
In terms of its accountability, the Agency will be required to act in an open and consultative manner and to publish a statement of the general practice and objectives that it aims to adopt in carrying out its duties. The Agency will also be answerable to Parliament at Westminster and the devolved legislatures through the Secretary of State for Health and his counterparts in the devolved administrations, who will have powers of direction where the Agency fails seriously to carry out its duties. These powers are laid down in clause 24 of the draft Bill. The Agency will produce an Annual Report and Business Plan and will be expected to meet specified performance targets relating to efficiency and quality of service.
Once the Agency is established, general enforcement of food law under the Food Safety Act 1990 will continue to be the responsibility of Local Authorities. The Agency will however have a co-ordinating role in this work, setting standards for enforcement and auditing enforcement authorities against those standards. It will also be able to take action on behalf of Ministers in default of, or in substitution for, an enforcement authority which is shown to have failed in the delivery of an effective service.
