Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Amendment) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, who has reflected some of our shared interests as a fellow member of the APPG on horticulture. I thank the Minister for his detailed introduction to these statutory instruments. He made clear the complexity of what we are dealing with. It is clear that we are far from the frictionless trade that we were sometimes implausibly promised by the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, referred to some of the difficulties being encountered now on the border.

I would like to begin with this question to the Minister. The Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Amendment) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations were made on 21 December and laid on 22 December. Can he make it clear how well they have been communicated to small businesses and to academics—the people who have a real interest in this area? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that people understand what is actually going on, if they do not have time to spend their entire day focusing on the fine details of statutory instruments?

I pay tribute Friends of the Earth, which prepared two excellent briefings on these statutory instruments that I relied on quite heavily. I have a question about the use of the negative statutory instrument process. Regulation 2 of the official controls regulations allows regulations to be made on special import conditions on animal and related products, and Regulation 13 gives the Secretary of State and Welsh Ministers special powers to make regulations concerning meat and bivalve production by negative statutory instrument. It appears that similar procedures in the European Commission operate in a much more democratic way, so could the Minister comment on how this squares with the taking back control agenda if Parliament has less oversight than we see in Europe?

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to the European Union Reference Laboratory for Animal Proteins in Feedingstuffs. I would like some reassurance from the Minister that there will be continual ongoing skills and knowledge sharing, and that we have a real sense that we are still right up at and contributing to the cutting edge, co-operation obviously being much more useful than competition.

Finally, I come to the plant health amendment regulations 2020. Again, my question relates to transparency and openness. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, both referred to the question of openness in the reporting of the UK plant health risk group’s proceedings—both minutes and agendas, one would hope. The comparable EU body, the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, does this with commendable regularity and openness. Given that all these meetings are, I am sure, now conducted by teleconferencing, as most of us in your Lordships’ House now operate, I see no reason why they should not be broadcast for anyone with an interest. There is, of course, a great deal of interest in issues around plant diseases, invasive species, diseases like Xylella, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, referred to, antibiotic resistance, and the risk of importing it and antibiotic-tainted meat. Has the Minister considered whether the plant health risk group’s meetings could be fully conducted in public by means of Zoom or similar so that they are available to everyone?