Lord Rooker (Lab)

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, just said. I do not intend to repeat the technical aspects of it, but I hope I can deliver the lay man’s common-sense view of it—backed by the science, because that is what we are about. Precision breeding is not genetic modification, whatever anyone might say. In 1998, I was the Food Safety Minister before the FSA existed, when the campaign was laid against GM foods. In fact, this technique was not available then; if it had been, we would probably not even have tried to go down the road of GM. The American population has been the sitting duck sample of GM food technology for 30 years and, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever died from any of the food. I am also quite critical of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I feel really sad about this, because its report is biased and does not take a full range of evidence. I am not going into further criticism, but I think this report deserves criticism. It is a shame, because they are normally incredibly good. It is just as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said. It has been a long time since I went to Norwich to the John Innes Centre and the other laboratories and saw the amount of time spent on traditional breeding. If you look at it fully, traditional breeding is gene editing, but they did not know that they were doing it. That is the problem: it is randomised, so they are not certain about it. But the products that come out are safe; the science says they are safe and the FSA says they are safe, and that should be good enough for most of us. I do not hide behind organics. Anyone would think that organic farmers do not use antibiotics or medicines for their animals. They do. The idea that they are completely natural, with no scientific input at all, is absolutely preposterous. We basically had this debate when we put the legislation through in 2023. The other place probably has not spend as long on it as this House, from the experience I have in both Houses. Most people—including me, before I went into MAFF—are completely ignorant about the breeding of plants: the technology, the randomised nature of it and the hit-and-miss view of it. The time spent on it is enormous, and is happening all the while. The fact is that breeding is taking place on a regular basis, and we do not worry about it. The products are safe. They are not labelled. That is my criticism of the report: if you cannot check that it is different, how can you label it? I would be much keener on having the methods of slaughter of animals labelled, but everybody is against that. That is more practical. In this case, if you cannot tell the difference, how can you possibly label it? It is scientifically preposterous. I do not deny that there are scientists who take an opposite view. We had this happen 20-odd years ago, when a scientist told us that something was wrong with potatoes and GM technology. He was checking raw potatoes. I think the advice is, basically, do not eat raw potatoes because the chances are they will kill you. There is a real problem here with some odd scientists. The general scientific community—I hope I am not going to be contradicted in a moment—is generally in favour of this system. It is safe, it is an advance on the science, it helps consumers and it helps the environment. I cannot see what the problem is or the need to slow it down.