Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Lilley and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness [V]]

My Lords, I support the new clause in Amendment 263, which has already been spoken to by my noble friend Lord Tyler and to which I have added my name.

Before addressing the issue of geographical indication schemes, I will say a word about the related issue of countries-of-origin labelling and express support for the relevant provisions in Amendment 254 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. My right honourable friend Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, recently raised this issue at Prime Minister’s Questions and received what might be interpreted as an encouraging response. Having drawn the Prime Minister’s attention to the fact that Orkney beef producers have their efforts to market a quality product undermined by the labelling legislation in this country, which allows beef from anywhere in the world to be labelled as “British beef” as long as it is packaged in this country, he asked whether in light of any future trade arrangements the Prime Minister would do something to close that loophole. In reply, the Prime Minister said that

“we intend to take advantage of the freedoms that we have—the freedoms that the British people have decided to take back—to make sure that Scottish beef farmers have the protections that they need.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/20; col. 805.]

So this evening the Minister has the opportunity to indicate that the Government will indeed give Scottish beef farmers the protections that they need and to signal a willingness to use this legislation to close a loophole in country-of-origin labelling, thus giving confidence and reassurance to producers and consumers alike.

I would have thought there was common ground that geographical indication schemes bring market benefits to a considerable number of products. Scotland has 14 protected geographical indications. The NFUS describes some—the Scotch beef PGI and the Scotch lamb PGI—as being of strategic importance to Scottish agriculture’s output.

I assume that in future the starting point will be Article 54.2 of the European Union/UK withdrawal agreement of 19 October 2019. It provides that persons who under EU law are entitled to use the geographical indication or the designation of origin

“shall be entitled, as from the end of the transition period … to use the geographical indication, the designation of origin”

concerned in the UK, and that they

“shall be granted at least the same level of protection under the law of the United Kingdom as under the … provisions of Union law”.

Can the Minister confirm how, with less than six months to go, that binding treaty obligation is to be implemented? Is there yet a United Kingdom register?

Of course, this ensures protection in the United Kingdom for a number of geographical indication products that are of importance to European Union countries and for UK produce currently given protection by these EU schemes. The object of this proposed new clause is to probe what continuing protection will be given to the United Kingdom’s geographical indications in the European Union and further afield after the end of the transition period. That is important, not least given the somewhat alarming reports referred to by my noble friend Lord Tyler.

In the Government’s response to a consultation paper on GIs published last year, Defra claimed that

“we anticipate that existing UK GIs will continue to be protected by the EU’s GI schemes after we leave the EU. This is because UK GIs are already protected by virtue of being on the EU’s various GI registers. That protection will continue automatically in the EU unless relevant entries are removed, which would require additional EU legislation.”

Can the Minister confirm that that remains the Government’s expectation, or are the kind of newspaper reports referred to by my noble friend founded and do they give rise to a matter for concern?

Moreover, GI protection has hitherto been afforded to UK products by way of free trade agreements with a large number of non-EU countries. In replying to the debate, can the Minister tell us how many rollover agreements have now been reached, what proportion of UK trade agreements with these countries represent and whether GI provisions have been agreed in each case?

That leaves the question of countries with which we have not yet managed to reach a rollover agreement or where there has yet been no EU free trade agreement to roll over. The USA springs to mind, where there is believed to be some scepticism of GIs in trade agreements. Will the Minister indicate whether the incorporation of GI protection for UK products will be a negotiating objective in any trade agreement with the United States?

Then, of course, there is the proviso of Article 54.2, which states:

“This paragraph shall apply unless and until an agreement as referred to in Article 184 that supersedes this paragraph enters into force or becomes applicable.”


On 2 April, the Financial Times reported:

“The UK is pushing to water down its obligation to recognise valuable EU regional food trademarks for products like Parma ham and Champagne”.


Is that the case? Can the Minister confirm that, in the absence of any agreement by the end of the transition period or if the agreement does not amend the provisions of Article 54.2, the United Kingdom continues to be bound by those provisions as a matter of international law?

I am currently within six or seven miles of two distilleries—Highland Park and Scapa—and my son-in-law works for the Tullibardine distillery in Perthshire, so before concluding I wish to say a word about one of the most valuable protected geographic indications, namely Scotch whisky. It has been defined in United Kingdom law since 1933 and has been protected in a US federal code as whisky

“manufactured in Scotland in compliance with the laws of the United Kingdom”

since the 1960s. Nevertheless, GI schemes have been of enormous benefit to the Scotch whisky industry. It is believed that the protection enjoyed in the United Kingdom as an EU GI is stronger than that provided under our domestic law. The provisions of the EU withdrawal agreement are therefore particularly important in that respect. It is therefore vital that the Minister makes it clear that the protection currently offered to UK GIs will be maintained through the EU withdrawal agreement or any further treaty agreement with the European Union and that, in seeking rollover agreements and other free trade agreements, GI protection, not least for Scotch, will be a negotiating objective. Sláinte.

[Lord Lilley [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. I support what he said about ending the absurdity of allowing beef to be labelled as British or Scottish if it is merely packaged in this country. I cannot understand why that has ever been permitted. If it was something to do with EU law, we should change it as soon as we are free to do so. I also agree with him on the importance of Scotch labelling. He mentioned that it began in 1933. I am old enough to remember that in the post-war period Japan started producing its own, supposedly Scotch whisky. One brand sold under the label, “Genuine Scottish whisky made from genuine Scottish grapes”. I do not know how successful it was.

I will focus on the issue of labelling, which is behind a number of these amendments. In principle, giving information to consumers is a good thing, but the proposals in the amendments raise several issues. First, why does labelling need to be compulsory? If food producers have adopted high standards, it is in their interest to publicise this if they believe the public would be more attracted to their product if they knew it was produced to high standards. Of course, they often do so, as another noble Lord mentioned in the case of free-range eggs; some two-thirds of our eggs are now labelled “free range”. I suspect, however, that what is actually sought by some noble Lords is not positive labelling about the virtues of a product but negative or pejorative labelling, or simply labelling it as coming from a country of which they disapprove—usually America.

The second issue is: will voluntary labelling work? Will people choose products which are produced to a high standard rather than the less expensive variety? The sad truth is that less than 2% of the poultry that people buy is labelled as organic; for pigs, the figure is less than 1%, and for cattle, it is less than 3%. In general, people seem to prefer the least expensive product as long as it is safe for them to eat, and that is perfectly reasonable. It is all right for Members of your Lordships’ House to sneer at people buying on the basis of price, but a lot of people have to. Food is one of the biggest items of their budget and they want it to be available to them as cheaply as possible.

The third issue is: would compulsory labelling be compliant with WTO rules? Very probably not, although there are some doubts about that. Historically, under the GATT rules, there were cases which suggested that it would not. Some think that under the rules on non- tariff barriers there might be arguments for introducing some labelling. It seems to me rather unlikely that compulsory labelling would be permitted, particularly relating to imports.

Fourthly, if there is a health risk, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, suggested, we should not deal with it through labelling or banning imports. If a certain type of product is a risk to the health of the consumer, it should be banned. The health regulations rather than the measures in this Bill are the appropriate way of dealing with it

Fifthly, will labelling protect UK farmers, particularly from US products—which is clearly what a lot of noble Lords want to achieve? That clearly depends on what the label says. If the label simply gives the facts and says, for example, in respect of poultry that if it comes from the UK, the maximum density under which it may be produced is 39 kilograms per square metre, and if, for the US, the label says that its rules are that, for young poultry, it has to be less than 31 kilograms per square metre, which is significantly less dense than ours, and, for larger birds, a maximum of 43 kilograms per square meter, which is not very different from ours, I do not know that that will convince people that American standards are so different or so much worse than ours.

According to Compassion in World Farming, the UK has some 800 US-style mega farms, as it calls them —for example, warehousing 40,000 birds or 2,000 pigs. The largest UK farm houses 1.7 million birds and the biggest pig factory houses 23,000 pigs. We have large- scale farming in this country; we have smaller-scale farms too, and they compete successfully with the bigger farms.