The Food Supplements Directive

Mr. David Amess (Southend, West): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) on his speech. He echoed many of my concerns on these issues, but I particularly want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick), because there is no doubt at all that, although people might smile gently as he gets to his feet, he has done all constituents and hon. Members a great service in bringing this very important subject to our attention.

The Minister has popped out of the Chamber briefly, so I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), will pass on my remarks. In her speech, she sought to charm and reassure the House. There is no doubt at all that she succeeded in charming the House, but I have to tell her that she did not reassure hon. Members.

I should also like the Under-Secretary to pass on to the Minister the fact that I had not realised until now that she was a highly accomplished joke teller. In fact, so good were her jokes that I shall include them in after-dinner speeches in the future. She told the House that the Government are not about the nanny state. Well, I had to scrape myself up off the floor. For goodness' sake, if the Government are not about the nanny state, they are not about anything. They interfere in anything and everything. That is why the country is such a mess, and the sooner my colleagues get their act together and replace them with a good Conservative Government, the better for all of us. The Minister then had the nerve to talk about the Government's creativity. We all applaud their creativity in reannouncing things time after time and in duping the general public, but she certainly did not reassure the House.

Unless the food supplements directive is changed, it will result in the loss of up to 300 currently available safe nutrients. That is certainly causing great distress to my constituents. Unless the traditional herbal medicinal products directive is changed, it will result in the loss from the United Kingdom market of a wide range of safe and popular herbal remedies, as the hon. Members for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) and for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) said. That is a very serious matter, and many of our constituents our worried that a large number of products that are mixtures of nutrients, vitamins and herbs could be lost.

I would like the food supplements directive to have a derogation from legislation so that the United Kingdom may continue to allow products to be sold, provided that it is satisfied that they are safe and appropriately labelled, even if they fall outside the technical restrictions of the directive. Furthermore, there should be added to the list of 300 permitted nutrients and nutrient sources those that are currently missing but that are accepted as safe by the UK authorities prior to the deadline of July 2005.

On the first of the directives, my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth has blown the Government's position out of the water, following his conversation with one of our representatives in the European Parliament. I would like active lobbying by the Government to ensure that maximum permitted levels for nutrients are set at acceptable levels, not the restrictive ones preferred by France and Germany.

On the traditional herbal medicinal products directive, I would like a derogation from the directive to allow the United Kingdom to introduce national rules to permit the continued sale of products that are safe and appropriately labelled, but which may otherwise lie outside its restrictive scope. Furthermore, the completely arbitrary period for which a product must have been on the European Union market before being allowed registration should be abolished. Finally, I want an end to attempts by the Medicines Control Agency to regulate herbal remedies as though they were pharmaceutical drugs, thus reducing compliance costs.