This is true devolution, making sure every head teacher is in charge of that irschool providing a great education for our children. Finally, pauline latham. Thank you, mr. Speaker. My constituent jackie has been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She has shown courage in her fight against the disease but unfortunately jackie did not get the support or compassion of her employer who wanted to dismiss her through capability procedures. Shocking. Now her former partner, andy bradley is trying to get the house they own together repossessed leaving her homeless while dying. Would the Prime Minister agree with me that we require better protection for working people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness . Will he join with me and jackie in supporting the changes as outlined in the dying to Work Campaign . I think the point my right honourable friend makes are absolutely right. I will look very carefully at the case she raises. The truth in all of these things, as well as having clear rules you also need organizations, whether it is employers, whether its Housing Associations or landlords or indeed trade unions to act with genuine compassion. To act with compassion and think of the person, the human being at the other end of the telephone. Order. [shouting] here on cspan2 well leave the british house of commons and members move on to conduct other business. Youve been watching Prime Minister questions time normally airses live 7 00 a. M. Eastern. But for the immediate future you will see the program at 8 00 a. M. Eastern time due to daylight savings time. See later at sunday 9 00 p. M. Pacific on cspan or watch it anytime on cspan. Org. This weekend the cspan cities tour hosted by charredder Communications Cable partners takes you to montgomery, alabama to explore the citys history and literary culture on booktv. We show you a house that was the turning point for scott and zelda. When they moved here, the idea was to regroup. This house was a landing pad. It was a regrouping, as ive said stage. And it wasnt the sort of place where youre going to find scott and zelda engaging in domestic activities if you will. It was the sort of place where they would be planning their next move. On American History tv so what happens in the 1958 campaign is, you know, wallace really does try to reach this racial moderate and really tries to campaign for the poor and working class alabamaians to campaign for progressive improvement. He gets the support of the naacp in the initial campaign. Unfortunately he loses by a pretty significant margin to John Patterson. And he completely is devastated by this loss. Wallace, you know, all he wants to be is governor. He is really upset by this loss and he considers it, a failing. And so, you know, when people ask him what the takeaway from the 1958 campaign is, he says you know, i tried to talk about progressive improvements. I tried to talk about good roads and good schools. And no one would listen. But when i started talking about segregation, everybody stopped and started listening to me. Watch the cspan cities tour, saturday at noon eastern on cspan2s booktv. Sunday afternoon at 2 00 on cspan3. Cspan cities tour, working with our cable affiliates and working with cities across the country. Earlier this week House Republicans released their 2017 budget resolution. The 155page budget promises to cut 7 trillion from the federal deficit for 10 years. It is opposed by the House Freedom caucus. Members of the House Budget Committee meet for a markup expected to last most of the day. Well bring you gavel to gavel coverage starting at 10 00 eastern live on cspan3. Yesterday the senate began debate on a bill about genetically modified food. One of the senators speaking was california senator Barbara Boxer who talked about the importance of clearly identifying gmo foods. Heres a look. Mr. President , i rise to speak about a very important issue for the american people. What they see their families feed their families. Here is a photo of a dad, pretto typical photo of a dad taking his two kids shopping. You can see he has got one toddler there. He has got one infant in the cart. How well i remember doing this with my own kids. Then watching my kids with their kids. It is kind of a tradition. So we have a couple of questions we have to ask ourselves when we look at a photo like this. If this dad wants to know what ingredients are in the food thag he gives his kids, he should have a right to know that. That is my deep belief. He has a right to know that just, as they do in so many countries all over the world. And the bill thats going to come before us called the safe and accurate Food Labeling act is anything but that. I would call it the nonlabel act. It is a nonlabel. There is no label required. It is a totally voluntary system. Its a no label label. T even if somebody in three years did what senator roberts explains you still would not have a true label. I think its an embarassment, is think its an insult to consumers and its a sham. The goal of the bill, and i hope we vote it down, is to hide the information from consumers. It is going to make it harder not easier, for consumers to know if theyre feeding their families jenettelymodified organisms, gmos. Here again is our typical dadeye and he has got his kids in the cart. Theyre shopping. They have had their outing and he picks up a product. He wants to see the ingredients, including whether it has been w . Genetically modified, and guess what . There is no gmo label. So what are his options . Well, in three years maybe el have an option and the option is going to make it literally impossible for him to know whats in his food because it will be either a barcode, so he will have to have a smartphone. Even when he puts the smartphone up against the code, they dont really have to tell you easily whether it is gmo. It will have a whole bunch of other information. Or he is going to have to call a 1800 number. Can you believe this . A man going through the grocery store. He has 50 products in his cart, going, wait a minute, kids. Just a minute. I have, have many so chips and he calls 1800 and tries to find out and he gets probably some person answering him in india, which is usually what you get. You go round the mulberry bush. How embarrassing is this . If he is lucky he gets some products from companies that really are being fair about this like campbell soup. Theyre doing a very smart, voluntary label. It says partially produced with genetic engineering. For information visit and they have a dotcom site. So campbells, if he is lucky, if he has enough products iner there that has, that has a label, he may find out more information but its totally voluntary. T its totally voluntary. But i want to say thank you to campbells for being up fronthe and putting the information right on the label. Look, as a mom, as a grandmom, i want to know whats in the food and because of work weve done before you do have to list how w much sugar which is so critical as we come boot diabetes andsomi everything. Ha sometimes you read that you sugar content you think, oh, my god, i want to get something else. And you can see how many carbs, how much fat. Why cant you find out if the product is geneticallymodified . I think it is fair. I call the roberts proposal the nonlabel label because it makes you believe you will have a label but there is no label, the groups, the consumer groups call it the dark act, the dark act. S because the label is voluntary. Y there will not be one for three years and they will figure out a way to put it off indefinitely. So information even if we move out three years and they decide they have to make something mandatory, information will be hidden by websites, or phone numbers, or these qr codes that are so problematic. This busy dad will have to stop shopping for every item on his list. He would have to pull out his phone. He will have to make a call or go to a website or scan appen. Barcode. You dont have to live too long to know that will not happen. K, this dad is so not going to do that. He has two kids and by now theyre screaming get me out of here and wheres mommy . All this notion that this dad is now going to deal with all of this, i dont care how much of a super dad you are, you will not make 50 phone calls to 1800 numbers. You will not press and look at 50 bar codes to find out whether the product has gmo. Youre just not going to do it. It is not going to happen. N if the kids are going to be melting down. Even if he doesnt have kids with him, he has got other things to do, by the way, like live his life outside of a supermarket. Ar he will want to get back home. He will want to get back to work. It makes no sense at all. And by the way, this dad, and i would ask senator reed to take a look at this, if this doesnt remind him of one of his kids, take him his grandkids, this dad is going to be expected, senator, to, if he has 50 products and he wants to finds out, he either has to have a smartphone, put it up against the barcode, and then find a whole bunch of information. I could call a 1800 number. Or he can call a 1800 number. We know what happens then. K he will be transferred around the world. So americans should not have too run through hoops. Life is difficult enough already not to have to do so this thing is a sham. It is an insult. Its a joke. And why are they doing it on the other side of the aisle . Because theyre beholdened to special interests who dont want to label gmos. Who are afraid if people know that the food is genetically modified they wont buy it even though there is no proof of that at all. 64 countries require labels. Do you have the list . 64 countries today require simple labels and many of our products are sold in those 64 countries. Let me tell you some of these countries. Mr. President , i ask unanimous consent to place in the recordm. The 64 countries that require gmo labeling. O without objection. The and im going to name some of these countries that require the labels, so in other words, our companies have got to put the label on if they want to sell, letting people know if their food is genetically modified. Australia. Austria. B belgium, bolivia, brazil, cypres bulgaria, china, croatia, cyprus, denmark, el salavador, estonia, finland, france, germany, greece, hungary, iceland, india, ireland, italy, japan, jordan, kenya, latvia, s mali, malta, netherlands, new zealand, norway, peru, poland, portugal, romania, russia, saudi arabia, senegal, slovakia, south africa, south korea, spain, sri lanka, switzerland, taiwan, thailand, turkey, ukraine, united kingdom, vietnam. I left some out but they will be in the record if anyone wants to see them. Why is it that consumers in russia have more information than our consumers, the greatest country in the world . Ld this makes no sense at all. And why is it that our companies are up in arms as they have to put the label on in these other countries, they can put the label on here . Thinks, w now, if we care at all about what the public thinks we should vote no on the roberts bill. 90 of americans want to know if the food they buy has been genetically engineered. 90 . Thats a majority of republicans. Thats a majority of democrats. Thats a majority of the independents. I think other 10 are working for the Big Food Companies who dont seem to want to share this. Millions of americans have filew comments with the fda, urging the agency to label genetically engineered foods so they can have this information at their fingerprints. Fingertips. The bill also preempts any state, any state in the union from doing a label. Now i dont like the notion of every state doing a label. Has thats why i support my bill which has about, i forget how many sponsors do we have . 14 sponsors, that simply says to the fda, write a label, and make this the law, or the merkley bill that comes up with four labels. Senator merkley will talk about this. T and we say that would in fact be enough so that states wouldnt be able to act this says no state action and were going to keep the status quo for at least three years, no labeling. Oing t even after that three years there is no labeling at all. There will be bar codes which is confusing. 1800 probably take to you india, trying to figure your way threw it all. I have long believed in the power to give consumers information. I think youre all familiar with the dolphin safe tuna labeling law. Im proud to say that i wrote that law. And that law has been in effect since the 90s and people liketh it because guess what . They see a smiling dolphin on the tuna can, they know that doe tuna was caught in a way that does not harm the dolphin many because when we found out so many years ago that the tuna schools swim under the dolphins and the Tuna Companies were per seeing on dolphins, pullingi nets on dolphins, pulling them away, catching the tuna and the dolphins would die by tens of thousands. So the schoolkids in those years said, at that time, i was a house member, congresswoman boxer, we dont want to have tuna that resulted in the death of all these dolphins. So we created the label. The Tuna Companies were very helpful just like campbells soup has been very helpful in labeling their can with ge. When you have the Companies Come forward its very helpful. And so we passed the bill. Everybody said, oh, is it going to be terrible . No one will buy tuna. Actually people started buying the tuna because they changed the way they fished for the tuna. The dolphin werent harmed. Ar we have saved literally hundreds of thousands of dolphins over the period of time that that label has been in effect. Now, this label, all were saying is, let us know. Let us know. What we do know is that many of these genetically engineered products as theyre growing in the ground they have to, they require huge amount of talked about that. Na that thats one issue is that has grown in importance to parents because they dont want to give their kids food covered in pesticides if they have an option, if they have an option. So the power that we give the consumers is critical the power to know, simply know the truth. To me power is knowledge. E to me it is respect. You tell people the truth. You dont give them a sham bill and say, well, we dont do anything for three years but then well have a barcode. Then well have a one 800 number. No, pretty simple. Require a label. Require a label. A label is simple. A label works. And, senator merkley, i see youre on the floor and im finishing up. We have various ways we can do the label. One way to give it to fda. Tell them to come up with it. Senator merkley has proceeded, in a way to attract more support. He is given four options all of which are very good. And all of which we immediately give you the information that you need. Now, in 2,000, when i introduced the first senate labeling of ge foods my legislation had one supporter, and it was me. I had no other supporters back then. It was so long ago. 2000. Now 14 senators are cosponsoring the bill. And i am so proud to cosponsor senator merkleys bill, biotechnology Food Labeling and uniformity act, which again wili put forward four options for companies. So there are reasons that people want this information. And not one of us here could decry or should decry what our people want. Either they want to know if the foods contained gmos because ofo prevalence of herbicide resistant crops . We know from the usgs that of growers sprayed 200 Million Pounds of roundup. A pound of herbicide for every person in the country. That is what they spray on foods that contain gmos. Whatever the reason americans deserve to know what is in the food theyre eating. Me some want to know it just to have the information. Just to have the information. Now, some in the food and Chemical Industry say adding this very small piece of information was would confuse or alarm consumers. Me this is an old and familiar argument raised by virtually every industry when they want to avoid giving consumers basic facts. In fact in 2014 study from the journal of food policy shows there is little evidence that mandatory labeling of ge foods signaled consumers to avoid the products. There is no proof of that. The fda requires labeling of more than 3,000 ingredients. Additives and processes. Mu orange juice from concentrate must be labeled. Consumers should be able to choose the product they prefer. If they like it from concentrate, fine. If they prefer it in a different fashion, fine. Theres no reason they cant also require, they cant also have the knowledge that the food theyre buying is ge, genetically engineered. The world certainly moved ahead of us. The roberts bill would take us way back into the dark. That is why consumer groups call it the dark act. This weekend the cspan cities tour hosted by our charter Communications Cable partners takes you to month comery, alabama, to explore the citys history and literary culture on booktv. We show you a house that was the turning point for scott and zelda. When they moved here, the idea was to regroup. What this house was a landing pad. It was regrouping as i have said stage. And it was the sort of place where youre going to find scott and zelda engaging in domestic activities, if you will. It was sort of place where they would be planning their next move. On American History tv so what happens in the 1958 campaign is that you know, wallace really does try to reach this racial moderate and really tries to campaign for the poor and working class alabamaians, campaign for progressive improvement. And gets the support of the naacp in his initial campaign. But unfortunately he loses by a pretty significant margin to John Patterson and he completely is devastated by this loss. Wallace, you know, all he wants to be is governor and he is really upset by this loss. He considers it a failing. And so, you know, when people ask him what the takeaway from the 1958 campaign is, he says, you know, i tried to talk about progressive improvements. I tried to talk about good roads and good schools. And no one would listen. But when i started talking about segregation, everybody stopped and started listening to me. Watch the cspan cities tour saturday at noon eastern on cspan2s booktv. And sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan3. The cspan cities tour, working with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. Secret Service DirectorJoseph Clancy says his agents