Draft Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 Draft Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Monday 17th May 2021 General Committees

[The Chair]

Before we begin, can I remind Members to observe social distancing and to sit only in the places which are clearly marked? I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Committee unless you are speaking. Hansard colleagues would be most grateful if Members sent their speaking notes to [e-mail].

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the draft Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The two statutory instruments make amendments to fees for plant health services. The draft Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 amend the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) Regulations 2018 to extend the current regime of charging for plant health import checks to apply also to checks carried out on consignments from EU member states, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

It is normal Government policy to charge for many publicly provided goods and services. The standard approach is to set fees to recover the full costs of delivery, which ensures that businesses bear the costs of any measures to prevent harm that they might otherwise cause by their actions or non-actions. We should remember that most serious plant pests and diseases that arrive and spread in this country do so via the commercial trade in plants and plant produce.

The Government have worked closely with individual operators and industry bodies including the Horticultural Trades Association, the Fresh Produce Consortium and the National Farmers Union on developing our approach to dealing with imports from the EU. To give businesses time to adjust to the new arrangements, the fees for documentary, identity and physical checks on higher risk goods and for documentary checks on other goods will not be applied until June, even though checks have been carried out since 1 January. Fees for identity and physical checks on the remaining regulated goods from EU member states, Switzerland and Liechtenstein will be applied from March 2022.

Under the 2018 regulations, there is a single combined fee for a documentary and an identity check, reflecting the fact that both were previously carried out on 100% of consignments. The frequency of the identity check is now linked to that of the physical check. A commodity subject to 50% physical checks will now get 50% identity checks, so it is appropriate that we should lower the associated fee. The draft regulations separate the identity check fee from the documentary check and amend the fee to avoid over-recovery.

I am afraid that we had to rectify a minor technical drafting point in the draft regulations, which was discovered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs after they were laid before Parliament. There is a correction slip that ensures that the published version does not contain the minor drafting point. The instrument we are looking at is therefore entirely accurate. The draft regulations apply to England only. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are following the same phased approach for inspecting EU consignments and applying fees to recover the costs of those inspections.

The draft Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021 amend the Plant Health (Fees) (Forestry) (England and Scotland) Regulations 2015 as well as the 2018 regulations. The two sets of regulations set fees for the pre-export and export certification services required to comply with third country entry requirements relating to plant health controlled material. All businesses that use those services are charged a fee to recover the cost of delivery. The Northern Ireland protocol means that Northern Ireland remains in the EU plant health regime, so all movements of regulated plants between Great Britain and Northern Ireland must meet EU third country requirements, including being accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate. If the related fees were not amended, they would apply to movements of regulated plants between England and NI, so the amendments provide an exemption from the payment of fees for pre-export and export certification services for goods moving from England to NI.

The regulations apply to England only. Scotland has made parallel legislation and Wales plans to do so. The amendments introduced by the instrument do not include any policy changes. The instrument ensures that the current policy for intra-UK trade is maintained and that services for phytosanitary certification should not be an additional financial burden to businesses when moving goods within the UK internal market. I commend both sets of regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

I do lead an exciting life, never more so than when on the JCSI, which I have enjoyed serving on for many years. I am pleased to be able to answer the hon. Gentleman’s points. I refer him, politely, to the schedules to the statutory instrument, which set out the fees for individual categories of commodities, and will give him a pretty good idea of where those fees will be placed.

We continue to provide support to help businesses. We ran an extensive communications campaign, provided one-to-one support to the largest traders, hosted webinars for thousands of small businesses and provided £84 million to expand the customs intermediary market before bringing forward these SIs. We have listened to the concerns of industry to ensure that the new requirements are practical and proportionate, as well as risk-based. The import controls on plant health EU-regulated goods are being phased in over 14 months from 1 January this year, in order to minimise disruption wherever we can.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am sure we have all read the schedules in detail. As fascinating as they are, they do not come to a conclusion about the overall cost. There may be an indication of the individual licensing costs, but we need to know how much is done to get any sense of the overall cost to industry.

[Victoria Prentis]

I will come on to that in due course. Briefly, I reassure the hon. Gentleman, while I am on the subject, that we carried out extensive consultation and work with industry before bringing in these fees; we discussed a great deal with the trade and had a formal consultation throughout 2020. The British Society of Plant Breeders and the Agricultural Industries Confederation, which he mentioned, were both fully involved with this.

Information on fees was published on gov.uk and the plant health portal in December last year, and DEFRA emailed all businesses that we had contact details for through our arm’s-length body, the Animal and Plant Health Agency. That was followed up in March this year with a more detailed breakdown of the new fees, which was also added to the portal.

On the impact assessment, the answer is simply that the result of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2019 was of course that we left the single market, and the amendments in the draft instruments reflect that change. They arose as a direct consequence of the terms of the 2019 Act and do not in themselves reflect any change in plant health policy. We have therefore not felt it necessary to provide an impact assessment formally. However, we carried extensive consultation with industry, as I think was proper, during the course of last year to prepare for the draft instruments.

Physical inspections of high-priority plants and plant products will move from places of destination to border control posts from 1 January next year. Physical inspections of lower risk plants and plant products will start from March next year. We are doing and have done a great deal of work to get ready for January 2022. We will identify any ports or authorities with residual concerns and ensure that any response is pragmatic, tested and can be operationalised. On the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about biosecurity, we acknowledge the difficulties facing those who export regulated goods to the EU or move them to NI, and we will continue to engage with the European Commission to ensure that we develop helpful, practical arrangements that take into account biosecurity to contain the threat.

As I described, the draft instruments make necessary amendments to our fees and charging regime and ensure that trade between England and NI is not subject to additional costs. I therefore commend both instruments to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

DRAFT PLANT HEALTH ETC. (MISCELLANEOUS FEES) (AMENDMENT) (ENGLAND) REGULATIONS 2021

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Plant Health etc. (Miscellaneous Fees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2021.