Common Organisation of the Markets in Agricultural Products (Fruit and Vegetable Producer Organisations, Tariff Quotas and Wine) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2021
Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Pitkeathley
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her helpful introduction to these regulations. They are, as she says, broadly technical in nature, correcting, in that now familiar phrase, “errors and deficiencies” in previous SIs. While I cannot claim to have reread all the previous SIs that are corrected here, I looked back at the Common Organisation of the Markets in Agricultural Products (Producer Organisations and Wine) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (S.I. 2020/1446), as the EM suggested in paragraph 7.5 that they should be read in conjunction with each other. Then I discovered that the earlier SI was correcting errors and deficiencies in a previous SI. Now we seem to be correcting errors and deficiencies in previous errors and deficiencies. It makes one wonder how the organisations affected by these changes ever keep abreast of the layers of these amendments. I am sure that the Minister will agree that this is far from an ideal situation.
Given where we are, I have a few questions to follow up. Some of them have been raised by other noble Lords in the debate. First, the Explanatory Note states:
“There is doubt as to whether the amendments made by Part 4 of those Regulations came into force, as intended, on IP completion day”.
Further on, it states that part of the earlier SI
“may not have existed due to the error in the commencement provision”.
Again the Minister explained this in her introduction. What has been the impact of these errors? Have businesses or producer organisations been adversely affected by the fact that these regulations have not been watertight and might not have been introduced in a timely way? Is there any recourse to compensation when errors are found to occur in this way? For example, has there been an occasion when the fruit and vegetable aid scheme might have been invoked because of market failure but payments were unable to be made?
Secondly, this SI seems to require the head office of a producer organisation to be sited in the nation where the majority of its marketed production takes place. Does this change the provision for transnational producer organisations that we have previously discussed? Will they still be able to access funds in the UK even if their head office is elsewhere?
Thirdly, I shall pick up an issue raised by other noble Lords about the market for established wine designations and GIs for UK wine, particularly the implications of the trade and co-operation agreement which was signed in December after we had agreed the previous SI. Do we now have an established UK process for approving new designations and retaining the reputation of UK wines, which was envisaged at that time? In the previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said:
“Our aim is to ensure that imports of third-country wines continues unaffected while continuing to increase domestic wine production.”—[Official Report, 18/11/20; cols. GC 710-11.]
Do UK wines now have the flourishing market in the EU and third countries unhindered by tariffs and red tape that was envisaged at the time by the Minister? Have the Government now reached an agreement with the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, which at that time was very unhappy with the certification process for shipments of EU wines into the UK, which it felt to be overburdensome? That point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has scratched, so I call the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield.
Timber and Timber Products and FLEGT (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020
Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Baroness Pitkeathley(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of this revised SI. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her contribution and very helpful questions. Obviously, we are keen to have in place a robust and comprehensive licensing scheme for the import of timber. As the noble Lord and the noble Baroness said, we are all too well aware of the devastation that can be caused by illegal logging on biodiversity and global attempts to mitigate the impact of the climate change emergency. It is good that the EU has taken a stand on this and it is important that we replicate the provision when we leave the EU.
The Explanatory Memorandum makes clear that the EU has entered into a number of voluntary partnership agreements with certain countries to implement a licensing scheme. Does the Minister believe that this licensing scheme is sufficiently widespread to cover all potential timber-exporting countries we might deal with in the future, or is it the UK’s ambition to expand the reach of these licensing agreements so that other countries become partners with us? If the EU makes new or improved licensing agreements after we leave the EU, is it the UK’s intention to mirror those new agreements in UK law as well?
The Explanatory Memorandum also makes clear that it is necessary to have slightly different provisions for Great Britain and Northern Ireland to respect the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol. It says that any voluntary partnership agreement entered into with a third country by the Government will automatically be extended to Northern Ireland, even though Northern Ireland will technically be subject to the EU regulations. So, following on from my earlier question, if the UK entered into a new agreement with a country that does not have an equivalent agreement with the EU, could the Minister clarify what impact this would have on Northern Ireland and the flow of cross-border trade on the island of Ireland?
Finally, I return to the vexed question of errors—and I am sorry to return to this issue. It is interesting that I call them “errors” and the Minister calls them “deficiencies”—we could argue on the head of a pin about the difference. Either way, when we debated the INSPIRE (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations on 9 September—which also was correcting a number of errors—I asked the Minister what lessons the department had learned from these recurrent mistakes and what processes had been put in place to overcome them. At the time, the Minister chose not to respond to those questions, so I am giving him the opportunity to address them today. Could he perhaps also write to me with the total number of Defra EU exit SIs that have already come into effect only for errors to be identified and revisions needing to be made? I raise the issue now because, as the Minister will know, we have a heavy couple of months ahead, with hundreds of pages of SIs still to be considered. The last thing that we want to be doing is correcting previous mistakes on top of that. Perhaps the Minister could therefore tell us what improved checks have been put in place to avoid that. I look forward to his response.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, I will try calling the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, one more time to see whether we can connect with him. Lord Bhatia? No, we are still having trouble with the connection. I call the Minister.