LONDON - No disciplinary action will be taken against any serving civil servants over the BSE disaster, the British Government has said in an interim response to last October's BSE Inquiry report.
Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, insisted the decision was the right one, despite the report's scathing criticisms of former ministers and civil servants who are still working.
"There isn't one person who is to blame for this," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.
"It was an institutional failure and a political failure right across government."
He insisted, however, that it was wrong to believe nothing had changed since the crisis. "The first thing that has changed is the Government," he said. "They [the Tories] were thrown out of office, at least in part, because of the way they managed the BSE crisis."
Mr Brown said yesterday's first formal response to the BSE inquiry "takes the opportunity to set out how the Government is taking the lessons and comments of the report as a spur to developing the action already under way". He said the Government had become more open and receptive.
The 16-volume Phillips report said that while there had been no cover-up when BSE began, there had been an "embargo" on passing information in its first six months.
The report also named and criticised civil servants and ministers, generally for failing to act on warnings or reassuring the public about safety without scientific proof. Among those were Keith Meldrum, the former chief veterinary officer, and Douglas Hogg, the former agriculture minister.
Mr Brown admitted that public confidence in food safety had plummeted, and drastic steps were required to rebuild it. "The Government recognises that its efforts to build and sustain trust through openness cannot succeed unless it is fully prepared to acknowledge uncertainty in its assessments of risk."
The Phillips report was highly critical of repeated claims by the Government in the Eighties and Nineties that beef was "safe" to eat, without measuring safety.
The response is being released for public discussion before a Commons debate on BSE next week. It will go for internal discussion until the end of May.
Colin Breed, Liberal Democrat agriculture spokesman, called for increased transparency in Government dealings. He said: "An endemic culture of secrecy in Whitehall has hampered efforts to tackle public health issues. Government departments must learn to be more open."
The 102-page response, which is available on the internet, sets out plans to ensure lessons are learnt from the scandals and to rebuild faith in food safety.
It says: "The whole approach and behaviour of departments and individuals will need to change to ensure that the lessons identified by the inquiry are properly absorbed and implemented.
"A balance needs to be struck between intervening too much, forgoing benefits and stifling people's freedom of action, and failing to help protect them sufficiently from actual or potential hazards."
But the Government added that it had already taken steps to improve the situation, such as setting up the Food Standards Agency in April 2000 and improving arrangements for other departments to communicate with the public.
Consumer groups said other European countries now suffering from their own BSE crises should learn from the lessons in the report, which was produced by a team chaired by Lord Justice Phillips and took nearly three years to complete.
"The Government is again under pressure from the meat industry to deregulate," said a spokesperson for the Consumers' Association.
"A deregulated or self-regulated industry will not improve actual or perceived food safety in the UK. While producers need to have responsibility for safety, this must always be backed up by rigorous, independent enforcement."
Officials who ignored BSE escape censure
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