Volume 15: Government and Public Administration
7. Reducing regulation
Deregulation and BSE

7.12 The Deregulation Initiative was an important factor in policy-making during this period. The evidence received by the Inquiry does not suggest that it had any significant impact on the Government's approach to BSE or on the nature or timing of the measures it took to control the disease. However, it may have coloured perceptions of how such measures ought to be enforced.

7.13 In his oral evidence, Mr Carden commented:

The MAFF Ministers certainly saw the food area as one where regulation was quite thick on the ground and they felt there should be some possibilities for lightening the burden . . .

But he added:

. . . strictly in relation to BSE, that was not the line of thinking. I found Mrs Browning, the Food Minister . . . very ready to recognise that in those areas where there was an acute need to protect public safety . . . the answer was regulation tightly drawn and strictly enforced . . . the attitude I remember is some sort of ruefulness that here in this area the line to be followed was the antithesis of deregulation. ¹

7.14 The issue of deregulation arose in 1993 in connection with the proposed national Meat Hygiene Service (MHS), when the Secretary of State for Wales, Mr John Redwood, questioned whether 'establishing another body' was the best way of achieving what he acknowledged were necessary improvements to cost-effectiveness, accountability and consistency in carrying out meat hygiene functions. ² This intervention engendered some debate and, on the face of it, could have been part of the reason why the MHS did not start work until April 1995. As the account in vol. 6: Human Health, 1989-96 shows, this was not in fact the case.

7.15 However, several witnesses told the Inquiry that the enforcement of the BSE control measures by local authorities ³ may have been affected by two factors related to deregulation. Firstly, there was considerable media criticism of what was perceived as 'overzealous application' of the rules:

It was a ball that I cannot remember who . . . started rolling but once it had started rolling it became pretty difficult to stop and local authorities were being portrayed in national newspapers in regular features as being the bureaucrats from hell. ⁴

. . . a series of articles around this time [which] very much portrayed local authority enforcement officials as 'little Hitlers'. ⁵

Secondly, the Government was putting out 'signals' that Regulations should be enforced with 'a pretty light touch'. These witnesses made the point that 'following many of the food scares of the late 1980s . . . a quite robust' Food Safety Act had been put in place in 1990, which had:

. . . tried to, in a sense, push the pendulum towards regulation, but a couple of years later the Government was clearly signalling in various ways that a pretty light touch in applying this and many other regulations ought to be used. And frankly it did contribute to a considerable level of confusion and concern in the regulatory enforcement community generally about what they were supposed to do. ⁶

7.16 Other witnesses identified:

. . . a constant conflict which existed throughout that period between seeking deregulation, but at the same time seeking the highest possible standards. ⁷

7.17 The report in 1993 of a review of hygiene and structural requirements in certain slaughterhouses concluded that State Veterinary Service (SVS) officers were not always consistent in their advice to plant owners and operators. MAFF veterinarians responsible for meat hygiene issues told the Inquiry that the relevant Regulations implemented a European Directive aimed at improving standards, but that they did not always specify the standards required, relying instead on the interpretation of terms such as 'adequate' and 'sufficient'. Mr Peter Hewson, an SVS Superintending Hygiene Adviser, noted that:

. . . there was a wide understanding, Europe-wide, of the standards which were required of the slaughterhouses.

However:

Ministers were insistent that [there] was no gold-plating, and slaughterhouses should not be required to do more than was the legal requirement . . . I think there was some confusion amongst staff, because it was very difficult with legislation, which on the one hand could be very prescriptive and on the other hand had to be very general, to actually advise . . . as to what each sentence of the Regulations actually meant. ⁸

To this Mr Simmons and Mr David Taylor added:

It is worth pointing out that we were also working in a culture in which Ministers had made public announcements where they said that veterinary officers will be sensible, pragmatic and flexible in their interpretation of the legislation when it comes to licensed slaughterhouses. That message could not be ignored. ⁹

In 1992, we were given a very definite political steer by the then Minister. . . to the effect that the public was more concerned with over-zealous implementation than with - and I think it was public health issues, or something of that sort. ¹⁰