Light Touch Heavy Expectation

I’m very pleased to be here this afternoon; sorry was not able to attend whole conference; extremely impressive line up of speakers; welcome the opportunity to share a platform with Melanie and talk about an issue close to both our hearts – effective inspection and enforcement – the title taken from the recent reports written on the independent regulators and how they are responding to the Hampton agenda;

I’ll just make a few opening remarks;

The FSA has always been supportive of the regulatory reform agenda;

We believe that if regulations are made easier comply with, and enforcement brings businesses into compliance, more business will comply, and consumer protection – the FSA’s statutory duty – will increase;

And we are very supportive of the Hampton agenda;

We welcome Philip Hampton’s view that the FSA model is an example of a 'modern regulator' in which the regulatory body focuses on policy, principles and standard setting, with enforcement and inspections functions largely delivered by others;

I agree with Philip Hampton’s renewed emphasis on risk-based enforcement and improving business competence. This matched our own aspirations;

The risks are posed not only by those food businesses that wilfully break the law, but – perhaps more significantly – by businesses who do not have the knowledge or competence to produce food to consistent, hygienic standards;

Guidance for business
That is why first and foremost we put so much resource into providing high quality advice and guidance to businesses to help businesses into compliance. Such as through our flagship initiative Safer Food Better Business;

But we are also aware that guidance can encourage businesses to go beyond what the law expects. Whilst we welcome businesses who want to offer the highest levels of protection to their customers, all our guidance now has legal status paragraphs to make clear what is legal compliance and what is best practice;

Risk-based enforcement
Enforcement activity should proportionate to the risk. That is why frequency of inspection of food businesses is based on different risk ratings. For lowest risk-rated businesses we have introduced alternative enforcement strategies where businesses are be inspected less often and can self assess their risks;

Despite the overall figures shown in the Hampton Compendium Report inspection levels for low-risk premises have been consistently falling since 2003;

In June we introduced a new Code of Practice which replaces the inspection-focused approach with a more flexible one. Enables local authorities to use a wider range of interventions to allow them to direct resources at those businesses that present the greatest risk to public health and consumer protection;

We recognise that this new approach will take time to bed in and some LAs will take time to move to the new approach but we have produced comprehensive training materials for them;

Of course this new approach creates an interesting tension between consistency – which the old-fashioned tick box approach to inspection achieved – and enforcement activity which meets the needs of the business and is more outcome focussed. Personally I think the latter is more desirable and perhaps that is something we can discuss later;

Macrory sanctions
The final point I want to make – FSA Board agreed in June that we should work towards gaining access to the new Macrory sanctions. Agree with Philip Hampton that sanctions should be proportionate to the transgression. Waste of resources to try to prosecute a business for a minor offence, but it may mean that there are more sanctions imposed – something I’m not sure was originally envisaged. Perhaps something else for us to discuss.