EU: Trade Agreement on Banana Imports

Baroness Howells of St Davids Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howells of St Davids]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, for raising this debate. I feel sure that Lord Pitt, wherever he is, will be pleased to know that the noble Baroness remembered his contribution on this topic some years ago. I know that his wife and family will be very pleased, too. I am unclear as to whether I should declare an interest. My grandfather was fortunate enough to purchase the estate on which his great-great grandfather was enslaved. Our family became growers and exporters of bananas.

Despite the lack of landmass and the loss of markets in spices and sugar cane, with its by-products of rum, sugar and molasses which had brought wealth to the islands, bananas remained the only real export after the islands became independent nation states. It is our belief that Caribbean bananas are the best in the world, but their history has been well told this evening.

Since the formation of the common market, meeting upon meeting has been held to decide what is to happen to the banana. Most of those meetings have done one important thing—not so important to us, but important to Europe: weakening the sale of bananas and, in some cases, the obliteration of their position in the Caribbean as a wealth-producing entity.

For well over five decades, bananas became the main source of revenue in the Caribbean. They kept the islanders in employment and were to some extent the mainstay of political stability. The growing of cannabis in the islands has already been referred to. What else can they do? Illegal it may be, but everything else has been taken away. I urge the British Government, in their meetings with the EU, to look one more time at this issue.

Small farmers could depend on the Geest boats coming in to collect bananas, which not only maintained their living standards but kept whole villages in employment. Wholesale love and care was lavished on bananas to get them ready for export, so that Britain would get the best quality.

At that time, preferential treatment was given to all the ACP countries. That treatment was in recognition of the relationship which the United Kingdom had with those small island states when they were colonies. During the past 20 years, the Latin-American countries, spurred on by their US-based companies, have made complaints to the World Trade Organisation about what they describe as preferential treatment for ACP countries. In 1996, Guatemala, Honduras, the USA and Ecuador issued a legal complaint citing three areas of dispute. They talked about the discriminatory tariff allocation and unfair licensing procedures—countries were expected at that time to import ACP/EU bananas in order to export bananas from Latin America into Europe. The procedures were said to contravene the most-favoured nation rule.

There began a series of meetings, got together to discuss bananas. Most of this was done without the input of the Caribbean or even the African countries. We heard of the imposed deadlines for exploration of preferences, ending with the EU adopting a two-stage approach to what they saw as a problem. At the end of those lengthy discussions, the Caribbean was forced to agree to an economic partnership.

Other Members have mentioned the various conventions that we have. Then came the Doha ministerial meetings and the creation of the ACP group, which signed up to a comprehensive EPA covering goods, services, trade-related rules and development co-operation. Throughout those years of negotiations, ACP Governments and campaigners expressed serious concerns about the feasibility of free trade between an established, wealthy trading bloc like the EU and the poor economies of the smaller nations. They were right to point that out.

I know I am running short of time. Although the homelands have made lots of strides, one thing that has happened is the new tax on air travel. That has brought the countries down.