UK-African Investment Summit

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a range of tools in that respect, but it is mostly done through our ODA money. There is a lot of support particularly for women and girls. I refer the noble Baroness to the White Paper that was published towards the end of last year, which addresses precisely the point of trying to increase female empowerment and supporting women and girls; if you are doing the right thing for them, you are usually doing the right thing for everyone. The most important aspect of raising Africa out of poverty is to see more stability in the region. There are some horrendous conflicts going on, and we are active in trying to resolve them.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, some of your Lordships will remember the great tomato shortage of last year when our supermarket shelves were bereft of those crimson globes. What noble Lords may not know is that we were still imposing tariffs and quotas from our largest source of tomatoes, which is the Kingdom of Morocco—quotas and tariffs that we inherited from the EU that were designed to protect Spanish growers but that serve no function even from a protectionist point of view because Moroccan tomatoes are counterseasonal to our own. Will my noble friend the Minister give us some hope that we are going to end these ridiculous restrictions, not as a favour to our allies in Morocco, although they are old allies, but as a favour to ourselves that may incidentally benefit our good friends in the Kingdom of Morocco?

Imported Beef

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I can assure the noble Baroness, who knows a lot about these matters, that animal welfare and environmental standards will be absolutely at the forefront of all future trade negotiations. I just say that these deals balance open and free trade with protections for the agricultural industry. Australia and New Zealand will remove customs duties on 100% of tariff lines for originating products in line with agreed treatments that will be set out in respective tariff schedules on the day the agreements enter into force. There are huge opportunities, particularly for the dairy sector. Imports of dairy products into Australia and New Zealand have increased by around 30%, and I hope our farmers will be able to benefit from that.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister confirm that all beef sold here has to meet the same standards, whether it is imported or domestic? Will he further confirm that no country has ever tried to export its production standards, and that if we were to insist that every bit of imported beef met our production standards—as some in this House seem to want—that would rule out a trade deal with the EU, which does not always match our standards, let alone with the rest of the world?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that there are some different standards in the EU, and we have worked as members of the EU and will continue to work with the EU and other countries through the World Organisation for Animal Health and the World Trade Organization to create greater and higher standards of animal welfare that more reflect what we have here so that there is a much more even playing field in trade across the world.

Water Companies: Sewage Discharge Monitoring

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is not the only person who refers to Feargal Sharkey as his friend. He is someone I know and worked with when I sat on the board of River Action, which was set up to clean up rivers such as the Wye, part of which is ecologically nearly dead. That is why there is an absolute priority in my department and in this Government to make sure we are making these changes and restoring our rivers.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, have my noble friend or his department seen any assessment of the impact on rivers or consumers if, as some in this House want, the water companies were nationalised?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I have. An independent piece of research said that water bills would be considerably higher if we had not privatised all those years ago. We know that if water companies were in public ownership, the heads of those utilities would have to sit in the queue behind the health service, education, the police and all the other priorities of public spending, and our environment and water customers would get the crumbs at the end of the queue.

Ukraine War: UK Food Security

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There is a measure in the Agriculture Act that requires the Government every three years to produce a report on our self-sufficiency, which we did at the end of last year. It has remained relatively constant, and we are not complacent. At the moment, we are 88% self-sufficient in wheat. The remainder, mostly milling wheat, comes from Canada, and is therefore not affected by this problem. We are 100% self-sufficient in poultry, eggs, carrots, swedes, soft fruit, liquid milk and lamb, and 86% in beef. However, we have a requirement from the population; for example, we have seen an increase of five times in the amount of rice that we consume. We have to address that, but this Government are very keen to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support self-sufficiency.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has made the welcome announcement that we are abolishing all tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian imports, including agri-foods. Will my noble friend the Minister join me in urging other countries to make the same gesture, especially our allies in the European Union? Following the blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, all its goods exports must now transit across EU territory.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Supporting our friends through liberalising trade is an important way in which we can help a country such as Ukraine. It is just part of a wide range of support that we are giving over and above our defence support; we will continue to do so.

Hunting Trophies

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord knows the length of time it takes for legislation to get on to the statute book, but once it is there, imported trophies will be banned. I would expect that, if the Bill comes in in the relatively near future, by this time next year the noble Lord’s ambitions will be realised.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, has my noble friend the Minister made any assessment of the possible unintended consequences of this legislation? In the late 1970s, Kenya banned trophy hunting and saw the number of its elephants plummet. South Africa and Rhodesia, as it then was, went the other way and said that, if you owned land, livestock on that land was your property. As a result, local people treated large animals as a renewable resource rather than a pest. Can my noble friend confirm whether the Government have assessed whether there might be increased pressure on the habitats of rare species as a result of this legislation?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

As part of the consultation, we heard from a number of different organisations and Governments, including those of South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Canada, Zambia and Botswana, all of which support trophy hunting as a conservation tool. There is a wide-ranging debate about the value of well-managed conservation hunting and the impact it can have on increasing the number of rare and endangered species as against badly managed hunting, which sees large amounts of rare and endangered species killed and has no value to conservation.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hannan of Kingsclere and Lord Benyon

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have intervened in the Committee stage of a Bill so I hope noble Lords will forgive the solecisms and infelicities that follow. I am afraid that listening to the response to the first two blocks of amendments has left me convinced that this is a badly drafted and badly conceived Bill, so much so that I think it will be taught eventually at politics A-level as an example of what happens when you have pointless virtue-signalling legislation.

Let us recall why we are here. A tranche of EU law was being moved over. This was not part of it, so it was not included in the read across on to our own statute book. A press release then went out saying, “Ah, this means that the Conservatives have voted against animal sentience. They have said that animals are not sentient.” On the basis of this absurd press release, the Minister in another place was panicked into saying, “Oh no, no, we will legislate.” It found its way into the manifesto and here we are with this—as my noble friend Lady Fookes says—rather skeletal, emaciated, haggard, malnourished Bill that can be expanded almost at random in any direction.

I have to say that almost all the amendments in the first two blocks have been about seeking to define, circumscribe and guard against these opportunities for mission creep and unintended consequences, whether it is to do with the composition of the committee, its powers, its relationship with the Animal Welfare Committee or specific protections for religious freedoms, medical research and all the rest. If my noble friend the Minister—who I really feel for: this is his baptism in this place—means it when he says that this is only an advisory committee and is not going to be policy-making and so on, what can be the harm of accepting or replicating in the form of government amendments some of the ideas that would simply ensure that this statutory body does not exceed its remit?

I finish by echoing the point from my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: we would like to see some recognition from my noble friend the Minister that we are not just expected to take all this on trust and that the legislation will be drafted in a way that does not allow for almost unlimited growth and producer capture.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for his sympathy, though I wish my noble friends would stop sympathising with me. If they are confused, this is my I-am-enjoying-myself face.

I have tried to give some reassurances. I may have satisfied some noble Lords but I clearly have not satisfied him and I will have to do more to do so. I have already said that we will publish more detail before the next stage of the Bill and I am sure that he and others will take great interest in that.

I respectfully disagree with him. I think this is important to people. I hope that when it is up and running—and has tackled a few pieces of complicated government policy and nudged the tiller of those involved in the legislative process perhaps to change things in a way that reflects the impact that policy would have on animals—he will see that this is not a paper tiger, a white elephant or whatever words I am putting into his mouth, but something of value.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the debate on this amendment shows the fundamental problem of what is involved when an accountable Government pass some of their responsibilities to an appointed committee. The debate on this amendment, as on the previous one, has resembled nothing so much as one of those US courtroom dramas where people argue about who should serve on a jury because they assume that the opinions will be dictated by the position of the selected juror. If we are picking people or excluding them on the basis of their professional or political affiliations, we are effectively substituting what should be a democratic decision and passing it over to people. The only difference between them and parliamentarians is that they are not really accountable to anyone.

My noble friend the Minister said, in his answer to the amendment about Members of this House serving on the committee, that politicians are not known for their strict impartiality. That is perfectly true, of course, but the idea that anyone else is strictly impartial strikes me as rather questionable. We all have our assumptions and our prejudices—indeed, experts more than anyone, if by “expert” we mean anyone who has spent their entire career in one particular field. They are the last people to be relied on to take a view in the round.

It is fine to have advice on a narrow point, but I think the concern of this Committee is that we will stray into policy-making. That is why I want to reiterate the question asked by my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising about a sunset clause. I think that would reassure a lot of Members of this Committee. My noble friend the Minister did not answer it. Perhaps he thought it was offered in a frivolous spirit, but it was a policy of the coalition Government in which my noble friend served very ably as a Minister that there should be sunset clauses when new regulation is proposed. Would that not be a guarantee—a backstop, if you will—that if this committee strayed beyond giving narrow, technical advice into setting policy, there would be a way of doing something about it?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I apologise if I did not answer that point; I am conscious that I did not. My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked: if a committee is created by statute, how do you uncreate it? The answer is by primary legislation. Once this is established in statute, the only way is to unmake it by legislation. I do not think a sunset clause would give much confidence to the people we would want to serve on the committee if they felt that it was in any way a temporary feature.

My noble friend made another, wider point about whether advisory and expert committees have any place in government. I yield to his undoubted abilities as a parliamentarian, but as a layman on most of what I deal with—despite coming from a background which has put me in touch with many areas in my ministerial responsibilities—I rely on experts to inform me about how I take forward the day-to-day warp and weft of government, including legislation. Experts have a distinct place in our legislative process and in how we form policy, and therefore I respectfully disagree with my noble friend.