Waste: Incineration

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

It is a really important point that the noble Lord makes. If we are moving to a more circular economy, as this Government want, we have to see less residual waste being generated —in fact, less waste as a whole. There is a statutory target to effectively halve residual waste by 2042 from 2019 levels, but there still will be an estimated 17.6 million tonnes of residual waste to manage in 2042. Therefore, we have to look at the bigger picture. How do we actually reduce waste overall?

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, is not the biggest incinerator in the country the Drax power station? It receives eye-watering subsidies for burning wood that has been transported across the oceans, creating emissions, which has had to be dried and cut into chips, also making emissions, and which emits, on being burned, more CO₂ than coal. This is justified on the grounds that, over the next half-century to a century, trees replanted in those forests will absorb CO₂. If we can take this leisurely approach to reducing CO₂, is there really a climate emergency?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I do not consider the Government to be taking a leisurely approach on this aspect. What is really important is that we look at how we decarbonise our energy from waste facilities going forward. We have consulted on expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to waste incineration and energy from waste, and we are taking on board the responses to that and will bring forward detailed final policy in due course. We plan to include energy from waste under decarbonisation readiness requirements.

Right to Roam

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

As a resident in Scotland, I would not necessarily agree with everything that the noble Lord has said. It is a devolved issue, and Scotland is entitled to make its own decisions on this.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, as a young boy, walking in the countryside and coming across a sign saying, “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted”, my father assured me that it was a bluff. There is no law against trespass in this country, as long as you do not do damage to crops, livestock or property. That was why Mr Fagan, when he climbed over the wall into Buckingham Palace and got into the Queen’s bedroom, could not be sued for trespass but had to be convicted of stealing half a bottle of wine.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I am not entirely sure what the question was, but if my noble friend wants me to agree with him about Mr Fagan, I am very happy to do that.

Biosecurity and Infectious Diseases

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on securing this debate, introducing it so comprehensively and demonstrating its importance. The Government’s Plant Biosecurity Strategy for Great Britain says:

“Since our departure from the EU, the number of plants and plant products entering Great Britain that require inspection has increased significantly”.


I want to explore why, what those inspections will involve and how effective they are likely to be.

As I understand it, before we left the EU in January 2020, we relied on plant passports for higher-risk plants. These were issued by growers who themselves were subject to inspection from time to time. Henceforth, all consignments that used to come with a plant passport must be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate issued by the exporting country’s plant health service. We also recruited 200 extra inspectors, presumably to carry out our own additional inspections. Does this requirement for increased inspection reflect a new and enhanced threat?

The Forestry Commission says that there seems to have been an increase since 2002. Indeed, there has been one new outbreak affecting trees every year, although there were far fewer before that date. As far as I can see, there is no evidence of any recent acceleration, but I may be wrong. When new controls were announced as coming in shortly, the Government cited African swine fever and another disease, whose name I forget. I certainly see signs in France and Italy about the danger of African swine fever. If there are specific threats, should the checks not be focused on those? Is that the intention, or will we spread the checks more widely?

Are we introducing these controls simply in retaliation because the European Union applies its SPS rules to us? We know that its SPS rules quite often go beyond what is required for health and are somewhat protectionist in their intent. If so, I would counsel against that. Tit for tat is always a bad approach. We should threaten to do things only if it is part of a bargaining strategy with a realistic prospect of us reverting to a situation of mutual recognition, which we had before leaving.

Will the controls be a significant burden on trade? I understand—and I am grateful to the CEO of Fera for this information—that in 2021 a quarter of a million consignments were notified to the PHSI, 30,000 were tested and 6,000-plus were found to contain pests, with more than one pest or problem in some, so there was a 2.5% success rate, as it were, in those consignments assigned. In future, will we be testing a far greater number? Are we expecting any great increase in effectiveness as a result, or are we doing it simply because, as is so often the case, regulators have a natural desire to increase their powers and budgets? Some of the lobbying I have received certainly has a whiff of that about it.

Let us suppose that what is being proposed and introduced is necessary, will be effective and will not induce a great extra burden on our businesses. In that case, we should all welcome it as a great Brexit benefit—something we could not have done while we remained a member of the EU.

Climate Change

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My experience of this is that it is not quick enough. The River Thames is the conduit for water for a number of water companies in the south- east and it needs a reservoir in its headwaters. That has been being planned now for more than a decade and a half, and we want to see it built. It is unlikely to be built within the next decade because it is an incredibly complex process, but we are also looking at trying to move water more effectively. We can now move water from Yorkshire to Ipswich and from parts of Wales into the south-east of England—I know that is a controversial issue and I do not want to unleash the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on that one. We are looking to use technology to move water more effectively.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that, in contemplating how we prepare for the future, we should take into account the science, as prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is summarised in table 12.2 of Working Group II. It says that, though of course the temperature is expected to rise if we follow the most extreme scenarios, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has forecast, there is not expected to be, nor is there any sign so far of, any increase in droughts, floods, landslides or fires.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is happening!

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Deny the science if you will.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My experience in talking to members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Royal Society and some of the best experts in the world on this is that there is a very real danger. While I respect my noble friend in so many ways, I feel I will listen in this case to members of the Royal Society and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, because they are the guardians of knowledge on this.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I was going to say what a privilege it was to follow such a brilliant speech from my noble friend, but I am sure we all know how brilliant it would have been.

I will try to be brief; I find the idea of shooting a noble animal and displaying its head, tusks or hooves on the wall in one’s home somewhat repugnant. But if I did wish to ban this practice—and the fact that it is repugnant does not necessarily mean it should be banned—I would begin by banning it at home, and stopping the export of trophies from this country, thousands of which are exported every year to other countries. This Bill does not do that; it leaves us free to do these things within our own country and export these things to other countries but simply bans the importation of trophy animals from abroad, in practice from developing countries.

I respect the passionate animal lovers in this place, not least my noble friend Lady Fookes, who automatically supports any measure to protect animals. But it is another aspect of this Bill that I take issue with. I have been struck time and again, since I have been in this place, by the residual imperialism of the attitudes that prevail. Now, one might expect that there might be a certain nostalgia for empire to linger on in the right but, although we hear incessantly from our liberal intelligentsia about the need to decolonise our minds, institutions and history, and lay down and check our white privilege, it is above all on the progressive left—who I confidently predict will support this Bill unanimously—that these neo-colonialist attitudes linger on and who most need to check their own white privilege and decolonise their minds. This Bill absolutely epitomises that; it assumes that Africans do not know what is in their own interests and cannot run their own countries, and that we have a right to tell them how to do so.

In Bleak House, Dickens ridicules this sort of thing as “telescopic philanthropy”, a misguided and patronising obsession with far-off problems about which his anti-heroine, Mrs Jellyby, knew little. Indeed, in some ways this Bill is worse than Mrs Jellyby’s telescopic philanthropy; she may have ignored poverty at home, but at least she wanted to relieve it abroad. But some of this Bill’s advocates are guilty of telescopic misanthropy; they are solely interested in signalling their virtue to their friends, even though the result of their actions can only be to impoverish people far away and put at risk the survival of the creatures they claim to want to protect. They accept that it will deprive some poor people of their income. One very thoughtful letter I have had from an advocate of this Bill said “Oh, it’s only £200 million that will be lost”, but £200 million goes a long way in a poor country. But that is tough—if they lose their income, it makes liberal white people feel good, and they patronisingly tell Africans who lose their jobs that they can still rely on our aid programmes, which makes white liberals feel better still.

The Bill’s advocates also ignore the fact that it will remove the incentive to protect and conserve these animals from the two great threats they face—poaching and habitat loss—and that therefore some species will be made at greater risk of extinction as a result of this Bill than would otherwise be the case. It is time we recognise that our former colonies are sovereign independent countries; they are the best judges of their own interests, and they have every interest in preserving endangered species. It really is time we help the intelligentsia in this country rid themselves of their liberal imperialism, lay down their white man’s burden, and focus on problems which are our own responsibility.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

It is slightly unfortunate that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is not in his place, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, and all the assorted Ministers we have had responding to the Bill, will commit to publish a weekly or fortnightly list of regulations which have been amended, repealed or replaced—and, I hope, also some which have simply been assimilated. That will allow us all to see how this work has progressed—not just in Defra but in other government departments; the MoD has claimed that it is practically finished—and enable us to judge the progress of this work and, indeed, to take a position and a view on the effectiveness of this review of EU legislation. I ask for that as a parting gift from Ministers as we come to end of Committee, at some stage this evening, we hope.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young, with whom I share the honour of serving on the Environment and Climate Change Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, whose amendment I wish to address. However, before I do, I say that I do not think that anybody in this Chamber wants to tear up necessary environmental protections that maintain the standard and beauty of our environment. Certainly I do not, and I do not think that the Government have any such intention.

However, some of us want to change those regulations in a way which would improve them and make them less onerous and less burdensome. I fear that the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, would prevent that, because it says in proposed new subsection (2):

“No provision to which this section applies may be made … unless … the provision … will contribute to a significant improvement in environmental protection.”


Therefore, no change may be made unless there is some improvement—even to a regulation which could be made less onerous but where there is no scope for improving the standard of environmental protection or where any additional environmental protection would be unnecessary and not cost effective. This could freeze the whole thing.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, interprets her amendment in a way that she did not in her speech, that improvement can be making a law less onerous, then that would be an excellent and wonderful thing, because there is considerable scope for making environmental protection less onerous than it is now. Current rules can be cripplingly expensive, mind-bogglingly complex and hugely time-consuming. Moreover, those failings can prevent environmentally desirable developments.

My eyes were opened and the scales fell from them when I read an article by Sam Dumitriu—you only have to Google it and you will find it. He points out that the proposed Norfolk Boreas offshore wind farm, which is necessary and desirable for environmental reasons, as I am sure all noble Lords would agree, to reduce our emissions, needed to produce 1,961 documents just to get approval, with a total of 13,275 pages. That is more words than the entire works of Tolstoy and all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. That probably could be streamlined and made easier without undermining the protection of the bit of sea where that windfarm is proposed to be.

Let us take Sizewell C nuclear plant. Some people object to nuclear plants, but those who want to reduce carbon emissions think that they are a very necessary part of our energy mix. It will be built alongside an existing nuclear plant, so you would think that most of the environmental obstacles had been overcome. It is desirable to reduce CO₂, but it had to produce environmental applications running to 44,260 pages, most of which referred not to land but to any impact that it might have on the sea and maritime areas nearby.

It is difficult to put a cost on, because the people who have had to go through these processes are in the private sector, but a freedom of information request by New Civil Engineer magazine revealed that the highways agency, when applying to build a 23-kilometre road, had to produce 30,000 pages of environmental application, costing £267 million. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, does not want any extra roads, and I respect that, but I think that she would agree that if you are not going to build the road, then just stop it, save £267 million and spend it on something worth while rather than on a process of applying for environmental protection which is just mind-bogglingly expensive.

For each of those cases, I do not know how much regulation was imposed on us by the EU and how much by our own volition. From listening to noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have spoken in these debates, almost all assume that all environmental protection of a worthwhile and onerous kind comes from the EU. I would be grateful if the Minister, not necessarily in the reply to this debate but subsequently, can tell us to what extent EU law is feeding into these hugely onerous, costly and time-consuming things that prevent us doing what is necessary for the environment and would help us to meet net zero.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Since my wife is always accusing me of verbal pedantry, I suppose I should feel some sympathy for the noble Baroness’s opening argument, which seems semantic in essence—that the words “precision breeding” in the title of the Bill do not accurately describe genetic editing. However imprecise the wording may be, no one can doubt that gene editing is more precise than relying on random variations of natural breeding, let alone the radiative mutations that used to be permitted. I just suggest to the noble Baroness that a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, and that this Bill, under any other name, would be as good.

I cannot claim the expertise contributed by many noble Lords in this debate but, for 35 years, I have had the honour of representing Rothamsted agricultural institute. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has the even greater honour of being on its board. It is one of the oldest agricultural research institutes in the world and it is world-leading. It aims to bring the best of science into practical application. I spoke to people there this morning and gathered that they are immensely supportive of this Bill. Someone said it removes the roadblock that an EU legal ruling has provided, which has prevented the institute implementing and gaining practical benefit from scientific developments that have already been made. Only a couple of weeks ago, it planted the seeds in a second trial for gene-edited wheat. I am informed that normally when wheat is cooked it can produce acrylamides, which are potential neurotoxins. This variant will produce fewer acrylamides and will be less toxic; it will be safer and healthier for users if all goes well. That is an example of how this sort of technology can be good for the health of humans, as well as for plants, animals and the ecosphere.

As the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said, we are having to change the law because we inherited law from the European Union that was based on the precautionary principle. I only wish that Viscount Ridley were here to contribute to this debate. He has often analysed the precautionary principle in the past and said it boils down to saying that you must not do anything for the first time. The principle has been around in Europe since long before the European Union was thought of. When tomatoes were first brought from South America to Spain, people said, “They are obviously deadly poisonous. You must not eat them. That red colour signifies their danger.” For two centuries, no one ate tomatoes—they were grown only for decorative purposes—until a couple of old souls tried them and found them tasty and nutritious. They are now a major part of our diet.

We must avoid adopting the principle that we must not do anything alien, new and untested, particularly now that we are in a position to understand the science of what we are doing and to know that gene editing is not only essentially natural—doing what nature does but in a more targeted and specific way—but potentially safer. It focuses on benign and beneficial changes, which will increase yields; reduce reliance on herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and artificial fertilisers; and enable crops to adapt more to climate change. It will do so, I hope, with precision and without damage to the environment.

By contrast, nature is not benign. It does not produce only mutants that are naturally beneficial. They can be harmful and dangerous. They often harm the particular organism that has mutated. I am told that, if the potato were now introduced as a new, freshly developed artificial product, it would almost certainly not be allowed in any country in Europe and probably not here: when potatoes turn green, they produce alkaloids that can be toxic. Peanuts would certainly not be allowed if they had been produced by artificial means. However, with this technology, there is every chance that we will be able to produce variants of peanuts that will not produce toxic anaphylactic shock. This would greatly benefit the many people who are potentially allergic to them.

In the past, we have allowed radiation-induced variants. This involved putting seeds and plants into nuclear reactors and bombarding them, producing millions of variations and hoping that some would turn out to be beneficial. That is a far more random process than anything that we are talking about here. Golden barley, much loved by brewers, was produced by that process and contains literally millions of variations from the original, natural barley from which it was produced. We now have 25 years’ experience of various scientific approaches to genetic modification and editing, and no one has suffered or died. None of the fears and concerns that people have expressed has, as far as I know, been observed in practice. We can therefore proceed in the way that the Bill suggests that we should, and that way should give us all confidence.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned how he had been vilified as a result of the Daily Mail campaign against “Frankenstein foods”, one of the most effective images ever conjured up. I am ashamed to say that, at that time, the party of which I was deputy leader played along with that and thought that there were votes to be gained from expressing opposition to those foods. I was certainly not supportive of that particular approach. I am glad that we—and the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats—have accepted, in principle, that we should go along with the scientific approach of allowing gene editing.

One can understand that naturally people are concerned when something new, strange and unknown comes on the scene. However, I am sad that the hostility stirred up then by the Daily Mail and others was allowed to stop not just gene editing but genetically modified organisms over a generation. For example, it prevented golden rice, which was genetically modified to produce more vitamin A. If used in developing countries, it would have saved millions of people from blindness. However, until very recently, it has not been available—I gather that it is in the final stages of approval in the Philippines and one or two other countries. We should be ashamed of allowing such hostility to build up without examining the science behind it and reassuring ourselves that there was virtue involved, rather than risk.

I very much hope that the Bill will go through. Of course, it may require some of the amendments that have been suggested. I hope too that, when it has been shown to work effectively and not result in the things that people fear, it will pave the way for us to allow other forms of genetic modification as well, to the benefit of humanity and this country.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions and Simplifications) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, unlike all those who have spoken from home, I am old enough to have been vaccinated and feel relatively secure in this place, but it is comforting to know that many of them are so much younger than they look.

As is usual with debates on agriculture, this debate has been dominated by those speaking for the landed interest—farmers, landowners and, to a limited degree, environmentalists. It is right that we should hear their concerns. We want a healthy agricultural sector and a beautiful environment. However, we rarely hear from consumers and taxpayers, so I will say a few words from their point of view.

I understand that the Government are bound by the pledges made during the election and the referendum to maintain agricultural payments at the level set by the EU for a number of years. Instead of making direct payments to farmers and landowners, the Government intend to phase them out, replacing them with payments to farmers for providing public goods, maintaining the environment and protecting biodiversity.

This raises a number of questions. First, should we continue the same level of spending that we have inherited from the EU? Virtually all speakers so far have assumed that we should or will do so. That raises a second question: what level of environmental goods do we want? It would be an extraordinary coincidence if the cost of the environmental and public goods we think that the taxpayer wants and is prepared to pay for were exactly the same as the previous level of subsidy, inherited from the EU. After all, we used to get a beautiful landscape as a by-product of farming. It was by accident, not design, and certainly not the result of paying farmers over the centuries to farm in an aesthetically enjoyable way. The presumption must be that we do not need to spend all the EU subsidy on environmental goods indefinitely.

The third question is whether these payments are really intended to provide an income roughly equal to the loss of direct subsidy payments. Farmers and several noble Lords seem to assume that they will, but if the payments for environmental goods are equal to the additional cost to farmers of providing the environmental benefits, they will not replace the subsidy income they have lost. For example, if payments compensate for the loss of income resulting from land taken out of production for reasons of biodiversity or otherwise, they will not also offset the loss of subsidy income. Likewise, if the payment equals the opportunity cost to farmers of their or their employees’ time spent on environmental goods instead of on farming, it will not provide any net income to compensate for the lost subsidy. Similarly, if the payment simply meets the cost to farmers of resources and equipment that they have to buy in or hire to provide environmental goods and services, they will not provide any replacement of the lost subsidy.

However, farmers and most noble Lords who have spoken assume that these environmental payments will replace the lost direct subsidy or a significant part of it. They in effect assume that they will be paid for environmental goods above the cost to them of providing those goods, and probably that they will be paid for providing environmental goods and services which they would have provided anyway as a by-product of farming. We should doubtless be grateful for that, but we should not necessarily expect to pay for it.

I hope that in this and the other House we will look at the long-term costs of subsidies to farming and see whether they can perhaps be phased out. I happened to become a good friend of the late and sadly lamented Michael Moore, the former Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand, who phased out, very dramatically, all subsidies for agriculture in New Zealand. We should learn some lessons from that experience. The first lesson he told me was not to do it as dramatically and overnight as New Zealand had to in the crisis that it faced—any phasing out of subsidies should be sensible and over a period of time.

However, we should recognise from New Zealand’s experience that the taxpayer’s interests and agricultural interests are not always as diametrically opposed as they might seem ex ante. Although the abrupt removal of subsidies in New Zealand dramatically reduced average farm incomes, within five years they had reached and exceeded the average incomes before the subsidies were removed. It seems that a lot of the subsidy that was previously given to the agricultural industry in New Zealand—it may be the same here—ended up not in the incomes of farmers but in the margins of suppliers of fertiliser and other agricultural products. In the long run, when farming not for subsidies but for the value of the products produced, the productivity growth of agriculture was greater and the opportunities for increasing productivity were much greater than people had supposed.

UK Shellfish Exports

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

The noble Baroness has hit on why we wish to have discussions with the Commission. It interprets the matter as being one of public health. The point is that all molluscs exported from class B waters have to be depurated. That is undertaken by businesses near to the market on the continent, and it is on that we are seeking redress. The Commission made it clear in September 2019—and I can put copies of the correspondence in the House Library along with the letter to the Commissioner—that molluscs exported for purification can be certified. We therefore think that there is an issue that we need to clarify.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, is not this and other measures taken recently by the EU to punish the UK for leaving its jurisdiction a flagrant abuse not only of the EU’s own laws but of several international laws such as the WTO SPS agreement, which states that WTO members

“shall accept the sanitary or phytosanitary measures of other Members as equivalent, even if these measures differ from their own”—

ours, of course, are identical—as well as the recent TCA, which states that each party shall ensure that SPS measures

“are not applied in a manner which would constitute arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against … the other Party’s territory where identical or similar SPS conditions exist”,

which they do in this case? I hope that my noble friend will make this lawlessness apparent to this House, which always maintains the importance of upholding international law.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

Again, my noble friend is correct to raise this point. It is why the Secretary of State wrote to Commissioner Kyriakides yesterday. We wish to meet her and her officials, because we simply do not understand the legal interpretation of what has come out of the Commission very recently, which is entirely contrary to what we had been told previously.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

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

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and to be reminded of our debates on the Trade Bill—it seem so many aeons ago—and the amendment which, as I recall, was not adopted in the other place in its revised form.

I have been reflecting for some time on how, if I was still a Minister, I would deal with the three related and important amendments before us: Amendment 93 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on which I will focus; and two amendments in a later group, Amendment 97 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Amendment 101 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, who for many years has been a towering figure in farming. They raise some similar issues, and they all have lots of supporters and some detractors, led by my noble friend Lord Trenchard.

I am a supporter of the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, GATT. Having been trained as an economist, I know that trade brings great benefits in terms of world prosperity, as is convincingly explained by the theory of comparative advantage. This is particularly important when we face recession and the shock of the Covid pandemic affecting, I am afraid to say, every corner of the globe. That is a very different background from that when we were debating the Trade Bill. We must support the WTO and have regard to its rules. The Minister suggested in Committee that provisions of the kind we see in Amendments 93, 97 and 101 might be incompatible with them. We could be ushering in a new argument with the WTO and major problems of compliance, which would be particularly unfortunate given the current problems with the WTO—in particular with the Appellate Body, referenced by my noble friend Lord Trenchard. It is not easy to see a way round this, and there is a severe difficulty in establishing equivalence in order to implement the necessary criteria for maintaining standards, so we must tread a careful path.

Since this Bill was first presented in the other place, the Government have come a long way. They have established the Trade and Agriculture Commission, in which Red Tractor is involved—I should again register my interest as its chair. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, was kind enough to mention it and the importance of high food standards in the UK, which I endorse. The comments of Henry Dimbleby, quoted by my noble friend Lady McIntosh, were also interesting and relevant.

The new trade commission, which we will discuss later, is a victory for the farming unions who fought for it, as they felt that their interests were being ignored. It has wider value as an excellent sounding board for Liz Truss, the Secretary of State for International Trade, and her teams on a swathe of current trade negotiations. The widely welcomed Japan agreement is the first green shoot and, to pick up the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has not bent the rules.

In closing, I shall revert to my question about what a Minister might do. I would try to address the substantive issues, without coming down in favour of one approach. I would build on what has already been done, by, for example, agreeing to extend the life of the Trade and Agriculture Commission for a few months and by planning some wider consultation to bring in the voice of those who might feel excluded from the commission once it has published first its interim and then its final reports. Among other things, I would do more to reassure, by repeating the promise the Government have made that they are not planning to change food regulations to let in chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef. Such undertakings could not be reversed in the other place, and I rather agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes that we do not always need to make amendments to have concerns addressed. I also agree with her that science and innovation matter a great deal.

The UK benefits greatly from the international order and enduring economic ties, especially free trade. This is the future and we must tread with care. Before there is a vote on any of these important amendments, the Minister may want to comment on whether they could fall foul of WTO rules.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Trenchard and agree with what he, and my noble friends Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, have said. However, listening to this debate, I have occasionally felt the House has been transported back to the debates on the corn laws in the early 19th century. Then, as now, landowners, supported by their friends—romantic believers in an unchanging rural England—argued that we should prevent the import of cheap food, protect the labouring classes from their predilection for it and require them to eat more expensive food and that if we did not, it would mean our farming industry would be destroyed, our fields would remain untilled and our agricultural capacity would be permanently diminished. We know, of course, that the protectionists lost and the free traders won. Most people look back and think that was one of the great victories for progressive legislation in this country which raised the well-being of the labouring classes, although it may have diminished rents of landowners for a time. I hope we will bear that in mind as we consider these amendments.

It is generally accepted that WTO rules permit us to ban foods based on their risks to human health. So it should, as long as those rules are scientifically based. It is also generally accepted that WTO rules do not, unless in rare and exceptional circumstances, permit bans on imports based on the production processes used if they do not have an impact on human health. That is why the EU ban on US poultry washed in peracetic acid or very dilute solution of chlorine is based on the supposed risk to human health, not on the welfare of chickens. We all know the scientific basis for the allegation of risk to human life is tenuous, otherwise the population of North America would not be so large. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and others, want a standard based on the welfare of poultry, not on the welfare of humans. However, to do so would be contrary to WTO rules. Paradoxically, they are asking us to set aside an international treaty, albeit for specific and limited purposes. There are reasons the WTO has these rules. First, when countries prohibit the import of goods, particularly food, based on the alleged inferiority of standards in other countries, it is usually done for protectionist reasons and not for the reasons they give. Secondly, it is extremely difficult to enforce rules about standards applied in another country, unless you adopt quasi-colonial controls reaching out into those countries from more developed countries, which many countries in the world do not want to see themselves subjected to. The WTO recommends where possible we adopt international standards, as my noble friend Lord Trenchard said, such as Codex Alimentarius and so on, as long as they are based on sound science.

I hope that the House will think twice before going back more than a century to introduce protectionism, flout international law and do something where the sole purpose is to raise the cost of food.