Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I follow an excellent speech. The six sub-committees of the European Union Committee of the House of Lords have produced a collection of authoritative documents that have revealed in detail the nature of Britain’s relationship with the European Union. I have counted 17 such documents that are addressed specifically to the problems of Brexit, and there are more to come.

The reports demonstrate the complexities that an advanced industrial nation faces in the context of a global economy, where there are numerous interdependencies of trade and production; they have also served to highlight some startling deficiencies in the knowledge and intelligence of the incumbent British Government. However, to be fair, such shortfalls are inevitable in the complicated modern world. It seems that the sub-committees have processed and revealed far more information than the Ministers in charge of Brexit negotiations are capable of absorbing. Even the civil servants charged with advising the Ministers may be severely challenged. Therein lies one of the major hazards of Brexit.

The first matter on which to focus our attention is our trade in agricultural products with the EU and the rest of the world. The EU is our largest single trading partner in agricultural products. Of our agricultural exports, 80% go to the EU and 97% to countries in a wider free trade network, which includes the countries with which the EU has a free trade agreement. Likewise, 94% of our imports of foodstuffs and agricultural produce, which considerably exceeds the value of our exports, come from such countries.

The EU trading arrangements are based on a commonality of interest among the member nations, though their basic feature is unrestricted free trade among those nations. The EU has established numerous free trade agreements beyond Europe, while maintaining tariff barriers that have been designed to protect European agriculture and industry. The British Government are keen to maintain the benefits of our free trade with the EU while seeking to promote our trade with other nations through further reciprocal agreements. In the somewhat discredited phrase, the aim has been to have our cake and eat it. It is a fallacy to imagine that we could easily negotiate a more profitable trade in agricultural products with the rest of the world, as the Foreign Secretary has asserted. As examples of products that could be targeted for greater exports, he cited haggis, which the US has banned on health grounds since 1971, and Scotch whisky, on which India imposes a 150% duty. Those are hardly significant opportunities.

The process of negotiating trade deals is lengthy and difficult. At the heart of any such negotiations are the tariff rate quotas, which provide favourable reciprocal trading relationships at reduced tariff rates within limits governed by the values and volumes of the trades. Our Government have blithely assumed that they could acquire a proportion of the EU quotas determined by previous volumes of trade. As we have heard, that proposal has met with strong resistance from those with whom we would seek to increase our trade. The UK has been told that such an arrangement is unacceptable to the US and other WTO members, who wish to force the UK to open its market further to their farm products. Several witnesses who contributed evidence to our sub-committee warned that this would be the likely outcome. Many commentators regard it as unlikely that, after Brexit, the UK will be able to retain access to the free trade agreements of the EU with third countries. The nightmare is that we shall become subject to conditions of free trade in respect of imports, while being restricted in our exports.

The greater access to our markets of agricultural producers in the third world might result in lower prices for our consumers, but it could devastate our agricultural industry. In return for allowing our industrial imports into the US, we would have to allow the import of US agricultural goods that are produced to very different standards and by very different methods from our own. The EU imposes stringent standards on food safety, animal health, the use of pesticides and a wide range of agricultural practices. If Britain were constrained to pursue a trade policy outside the EU network, many of the standards that we impose on imports might have to be disregarded. To be competitive in overseas markets, we might have to lower our standards, which would severely prejudice our chances of maintaining our volume of trade with the EU. Merely to incorporate raw materials in our products from sources that are not regulated by EU standards would prohibit our trade with the EU.

Next, I turn to the restrictions on the freedom of movement of labour that are the objective of many Brexit advocates. British agriculture relies greatly on workers from the rest of the EU. There is considerable reliance on seasonal migratory labour for harvesting and fruit picking, but many permanently resident EU migrants are employed throughout the agricultural and food processing industries. Some of the facts and figures are surprising. We have been told that 40% of staff on egg farms are EU migrants, as are 50% of workers in egg-packing factories. In poultry meat factories, the figure is 60%. In recent years, nearly half of the veterinary surgeons registering in the UK have qualified from veterinary schools elsewhere in the EU. We have been told that 90% of the vets working in slaughterhouses are EU nationals from abroad. Vets can be described as skilled workers, in contrast to fruit pickers and abattoir workers. However, our witnesses have been unanimous in declaring that it is unhelpful to make such a distinction in agriculture. Fruit pickers may not have qualifications relating to their job but they are skilled nevertheless, and they cannot be replaced readily by casual untrained labourers. Our agriculture depends on them. Whereas some Ministers recognise the truth of that, the message coming from the Government is that the immigration policy after Brexit will be based on the skill levels of immigrants.

There is much more that can be said but I am conscious that our time is limited. I am happy to see that others have raised some of the many issues that I have neglected.