Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be here in person to speak in this debate. I hope that today’s announcement in relation to the pandemic does not reduce the number of Members who decide to come here in person. Due to a technical error, I had to ask my Question this afternoon virtually from across the road. The Opposition Leader said that I sounded a bit fuzzy. I do not like to sound fuzzy; I like to be as clear as possible, and I want to speak clearly in support of Amendment 92A, to which I have added my name, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, rightly said. It would protect the UK’s speciality food and drink products currently covered very effectively under the European Union’s geographical indication scheme.

As Members know, I take every opportunity to speak up for Scotland and, in this case, its treasured food and drink products. They are really important to our economy, our community and our cultural heritage. The EU uses these geographical indications to protect and promote speciality food and drink products across the UK, including Scotland. Scotland’s prizewinning products include, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said, most famously our whisky and salmon, but also the celebrated Ayrshire early potatoes and traditional Ayrshire Dunlop cheese; coming from my old constituency, I have a particular interest in that.

Under the current scheme, the quality of local ingredients, the method by which they are produced and the traditions adopted in certain geographical areas associated with these products are heavily promoted. That has helped the products to achieve competitive advantage and a very strong positive brand identity both domestically and globally.

The UK Government have said that they will put a UK GI scheme in place after we leave the EU but, as always with this current Government, there are still a number of questions and uncertainties over how the scheme will look and whether it will be able to guarantee protections for Scottish and UK producers alike. Indeed, it is not beyond this Government, while negotiating a deal with other countries, to forget about this issue. The EU protected GIs and firmly believed in them; it was strongly supportive of them. However, I understand that the United States is less in favour of such schemes and their protection, which means there is a substantial danger that the Government might be persuaded—or indeed forced—to water down GIs to negotiate a trade deal with the US.

Food and drink producers across the UK face huge challenges anyway because of the pandemic. Their difficulties are enormous, so they require greater certainty. I ask the Minister, and here I reinforce the question put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace: how will the Government ensure that? I hope the Minister, for whom we have the greatest respect, will give us an indication of how the Government will ensure that these products will remain properly protected when we take over the responsibility on 1 January 2021.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. He is not responding so we will move to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.