Free Trade Agreement: New Zealand

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, notwithstanding what the noble Viscount has just said, and I am grateful to him, this is not yet a done deal. It is aspirational, and I would be grateful if he would recognise the need for small farms, especially up here in the Yorkshire Dales, where I live, which are the lifeblood of our food industry, to get a fair deal from this proposal. As we have heard, we have extremely high animal welfare and food standards in this country, so will the Government promise to prevent anything entering the UK from New Zealand or elsewhere which does not comply with those standards?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Yes, we are continuing to give reassurance to UK farmers, and I hope that we will succeed in the end. The noble Baroness makes a very good point about standards. The Animal Protection Index, for example, ranks both our countries highly compared to others around the world across a range of animal welfare indicators. Both the UK Government and the New Zealand Government have a long-standing recognition of the sentience of animals. The UK and New Zealand already have a veterinary equivalency agreement, meaning that we already trust and recognise its animal health standards as equivalent to the UK’s.