Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 14th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 15 in my name, and I support other amendments in this group, notably Amendment 16 in the name of my noble friend Lady Willis of Summertown, as well as Amendments 18 and 29.

I am grateful for the support of the noble Lords, Lord Randall of Uxbridge and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, alongside my noble friend Lady Willis, for Amendment 15. My intention in tabling it was twofold: to understand how the Government expect the CPTPP agreement to operate in the context of the commitments that they have made on forest risk commodities and how they will ensure robust monitoring and enforcement with the new countries that we will trade with in that bloc and, linked to this, to query when the Government will enact the forest risk commodities regulations under Schedule 17 to the Environment Act 2021.

On the latter point, I welcome the announcement at the weekend by the Environment Secretary on some of the content of the regulations. The letter that we received from the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, yesterday said that they will be brought into force as soon as parliamentary time allows. These announcements suggest that the regulations are imminent, so I hope the Minister can now clarify for us exactly when they will be brought in. Will it be January, before he comes back? If he cannot tell me that, can he confirm that the regulations will at least be in place before we accept the rest of the agreement? That is a crucial point.

It is critical that this happens as soon as it can, not least because, following the Financial Services and Markets Act earlier this year, in response to an amendment passed by this House, the Treasury is required to assess the extent to which regulation of the UK financial system is adequate to eliminate the financing of prohibited forest risk commodities. This review can happen only after the regulations in Schedule 17 are laid.

Moreover, the Environment Act received Royal Assent over two years ago and the consultation on this research closed over 18 months ago. In the meantime, Global Witness’s research in November showed that the UK’s direct imports of forest risk commodities such as beef, soy and palm oil directly contributed to areas of deforestation nearly twice the size of Paris. This has happened during the Government’s two-year delay. In that time, the EU has introduced its own rules, which have much wider scope, and has really moved forward with some ambitious thresholds.

This is important and relevant to today’s debate, because evidence shows that some countries that are parties to the CPTPP may engage in both illegal and legal deforestation. Indeed, although Schedule 17 regulations need to be implemented quickly, because we do not yet have any environmental requirements for what is imported, they are not perfect. They cover only illegal deforestation at the moment, which would not address the risk of the whole CPTPP treaty incentivising the production of deforestation risk commodities in countries where national laws are not sufficiently robust on deforestation or the rights of indigenous peoples, as was the situation in Brazil, as we knew, and is certainly the situation in Peru, from where we import quite a lot of stuff.

Will the Minister comment on how his department has reviewed this risk and what action we, the UK, will take to minimise it under the new agreement? With the Schedule 17 regulations expected imminently—but, as I said, I am looking forward to the clarification—could he also confirm that any forest risk commodities prohibited by the regulations will be prevented from entering our country, and how? Without having sight of these regulations, it is unclear how they will interact with the provisions of the CPTPP, which is what my amendment is aiming to clear up. Also, can the Minister confirm that, if these regulations are expanded or strengthened in the future, the agreement will not prevent the implementation of strengthened regulations? It is critical that we ensure that UK trade does not contribute to global deforestation, whether legal or illegal, but especially not illegal.

Turning to other amendments in the group, I am very supportive of Amendment 16, to which I have added my name. The health implications of some of the pesticides used in many of the countries party to this treaty are truly appalling. If anyone wants to go online and look up what kind of things will be coming in on fruit and veg and other products, they will find it scary. In Britain, when we were in the EU and still today, we had and have rigorous rules in place to prevent our children and ourselves having access to these pesticides, which are carcinogenic, affect fertility and do all sorts of weird and awful things. This is something that we have proudly fought for and should proudly uphold. Anything that allows stuff to sneak through under the wire has to be stopped; otherwise, it is not just a question of what it will do to our health but also completely undermines our high farming standards, which we all agree are terrific and have to be maintained.

I am also very keen that we support Amendment 18 on the assessments and procurement provisions, particularly in the Bill. That is something we should do for every trade agreement—and we should always go further and do comprehensive environmental impact assessments on detail, so that we understand our footprint. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response to the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol.

Notwithstanding the TAC’s limited resources, it has a really narrow remit and is not tasked to do this. I hope I have made clear the importance of understanding the climate and environment footprint in joining the CPTPP, as well as the health implications, which the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, will outline in a second. I look forward to hearing what plans the Government have.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I shall speak to Amendment 16 and to Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on which we have just heard her speak. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lords, Lord Randall of Uxbridge and Lord Curry of Kirkharle, as well as the noble Baroness, who have added their names to my amendment.

In introducing my amendment, I pay tribute to Amendment 34, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, on mitigating risks to the environment of food safety, which I support as highly relevant to the amendment that I have tabled and will talk about briefly today. Amendment 16 would ensure that the pesticide testing regimes at the UK borders are fit for purpose, when we have an increased number of food stocks for animals and humans arriving from CPTPP member countries. It specifically aims to ensure that our testing regimes are robust enough to monitor and prevent those foods that have these pesticides on them—because they have been used in the production of the food type—entering the countries.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, just said, our UK pesticide standards are some of the strongest in the world, and we should be very proud of that. In fact, they are stronger than those of all other CPTPP member countries. If noble Lords have not seen it, I recommend the Toxic Trade report, published in 2021 by the Pesticide Action Network. It revealed that 119 pesticides were banned from use in the UK but were still permitted in CPTPP member countries. Even more worrying than this, 67 of these are classified as highly hazardous pesticides, a UN concept that identifies pesticides that cause significant human harm.

I shall give two examples from when we ask whether we are over-worried about significant human harm. The first is Chlorpyrifos, an insecticide. To give noble Lords a hint of its problems, it was originally developed as part of a family of nerve agents during World War II and is now one of the most toxic and widely used pesticides globally. It is used by our CPTPP partners in Australia, Chile, New Zealand and Peru. What does it do? It has been identified through scientific research as a developmental or reproductive toxin. I checked through the good research on this, which demonstrates that it can permanently and irreversibly damage the developing brains of children. It is also a suspected endocrine disruptor, which means that it may interfere with the body’s hormone functioning. It is a cholinesterase inhibitor, which means that it may interrupt normal nerve signalling in the body. For all these reasons and due to this scientific evidence, it was banned by the UK and the EU in 2019.

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I am very open to being tested on the quality of border control and resourcing. That is a very healthy debate that this Government are absolutely comfortable having. We believe that the resourcing is at the right levels, but clearly these are sensitive and complex issues, technology is changing continually, and threats are changing too, as new products and developments require us to be adaptable and versatile. I am not unwelcoming in terms of the principle of ensuring that we have the level of resourcing to ensure that we have the right controls, but there is no issue in terms of changes to our safety measures on account of our FTAs.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

The point I was making, which I think is being followed up, is that there is a two-tier system. Right now, the Bill as constructed does not acknowledge that two-tier system. The problem lies in that two-tier system and the fact that all of these things that will be coming through with the pesticides on them will go through the risk assessment because they are not on the annexes, which they would be if they went into the first tier. It is those annexes that need to be looked at. I do not think that anyone is doing scare tactics, but I think there is a very big risk here that, as we get huge amounts of wheat coming in from Australia, there may well be pesticides on that wheat that we as consumers do not want to eat. I am not sure right now how the present system will address that.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising those points, and I am happy to provide further reassurance in terms of how we control our borders. We already import products from Australia and have done for many years; the Australia-New Zealand FTA does not make any difference to that. In fact, I can turn now to the protections we have for our agriculture sector. I follow on from comments I made in the Australia-New Zealand trade treaty debates that protecting our farming community is absolutely paramount for us. We are very sensitive to the effects that global trade flows can have on industries and communities, and it is completely right that we do what we can to ensure that we take a very gradual and phased approach to the changes of our quotas.

However, I would say that for the CPTPP, the impacts on agriculture are significantly less significant—I am sorry to have not presented a particularly clear sentence in that instance—than they are for the Australia-New Zealand trade deal, in the sense of the areas where we have increased the tariff rate quotas, in particular areas such as whole shell eggs, pork and other products, which are not at significant import volumes from countries such as Mexico, Vietnam and so on. We have phased in our tariff rate quota allowances over 10 years; we have taken a very measured approach.

I spoke recently to the president of the National Farmers’ Union, and she was very pleased. I asked whether I was able to repeat her sentiments, and she said I was. She felt very comfortable and pleased with the way we have negotiated tariff rate quotas at the levels we have ended up with. I will defer to my colleague, if she wishes to make an intervention.