Lord Pack (LD)

My Lords, given my experience with polling, I wish to focus on one particular statement made by Defra which underpins this Statutory Instrument. In the de minimis impact assessment, it says that polling commissioned by Defra, from YouGov in 2022, found that “over half (57%) of respondents thought the use of gene editing in crops/plants for food production was acceptable, 16% were undecided, while 27% thought the use was unacceptable”. It is a little unfortunate that, as well as initially not having published the impact assessment online but only making it available on request, the department also initially seemed reluctant to share further details of that polling. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on this noted: “Defra has not published the survey”, and that remained the case even after the committee asked for information about it. As a result, I contacted the pollster directly and pointed out that, under its own industry regulation, it appeared to be required to publish the poll, which I am glad to say that it did—and to be fair I note that Defra has since added a link to the details of the poll to the impact assessment. But this sequence suggests an unfortunate reluctance to be as transparent as possible about the evidence being used for decision-making. Why should the details of a poll, paid for by the taxpayer and being used to justify legislation being put to Parliament, be obscured in that way? Now that we have the details of the poll, they pose further questions. In the poll, a full 52% said that they had not even heard of this technology. Moreover, of the 48% who had heard of it, only 3% said they were “very well informed” about it. As that is 3% of the 48%, it means that overall only 1.5% said that they were very well informed about the topic that they were being asked to give their views on. The specific question which Defra cited, whose wording we now know despite that earlier reluctance, is not an awful question, by any means, but its wording is problematic, given how Defra has chosen to use its results. The question wording provides positives about PBOs without providing any mention of possible drawbacks. There is an obvious and clear risk of skewing answers, if you ask a question on a topic about which only 1.5% say they are well informed and in that question provide only benefits and mention no possible drawbacks. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will address both these points. First, why was there the initial reluctance to publish full details of the poll? Secondly, can I press the Minister on whether a question in a poll where only 1.5% of people say that they are well informed of the topic, and with wording that provides only positives for the policy, really provides the solid evidence that the impact assessment presents it as being?