Are the FSA consultancy fees good value for taxpayers money?
The Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) “Consolidated Annual Report and Accounts 2018/2019 shows on page 81, the “Consultancy spend in 2018/19 was £1,290,375 (2017/18 £450,981) relating to 14 suppliers with the greatest spend by one supplier being £590,110. This work included establishing a robust business case for funding to support the National Food Crime Unit”. Link to the report below.
Given that the Agency has some highly paid senior management (Chief Operating office and Directors) of which seven of these earn over £95,000 per year, it is incredible that one of these could not have produced a “robust business case” for funding to support this crime unit.
In terms of evidence to support a National Food Crime Unit the Agency should have more than enough, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), due to the horsemeat scandal in 2013. Both these Government departments were heavily crisitised at the time by members of Parliament. Link below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23321508
Yes, there is a definite need for a National Food Crime Unit to ensure that consumers are not subject to food fraud, either via supermarket products or when eating out from takeaways or in restaurants etc.
The FSA are presently dependent on the police (who many believe are already under resourced) to carry out fraud investigations on their behalf, when they believe the law has been broken, as they do not have this capability at the present time.
Given the FSA are under funded, if they wanted to carry out truly independent inspections, could some of the money spent on consultants, been better used towards setting up cost for a National Food Crime Unit or carrying out inspections that the FSA have failed to do? These and other problems identified with the FSA, were clearly mentioned in the National Audit Office in its report of June this year.(Pages 8, 9 & 14 etc.) Link below.
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Ensuring-food-safety-and-standards.pdf
On Saturday the 5th October this year “The Times” newspaper reported 15,000 restaurants failed hygiene tests. (Subscription required to view their full article).
The link below from “The Telegraph” newspaper highlights The Times story mentioned above.
The link below from the FSA in relation to various Houmous products being recalled due to the risk of products containing salmonella. These were from: Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons, John Lewis, SPAR, Sainsbury’s, Iceland, Safeway & Booker.
https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/alert/fsa-prin-48-2019-update-2
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