Trade and Agriculture Commission: Role in International Trade Deals

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of the Trade and Agriculture Commission in international trade deals.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I am delighted to see support from colleagues from across the House on this issue, including the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), a former member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and a very good one; the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies); and my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore), who are all current members of the Committee. I also thank my fellow Devon MPs, my hon. Friends the Members for East Devon (Simon Jupp) and for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who also join us.

I called for this debate because I am concerned about the lack of urgency from the Government in matters relating to the Trade and Agriculture Commission—both the non-statutory body and the statutory body. During the passage of the Agriculture Act 2020 and the Trade Act 2021, serious concerns were raised by me and many other MPs, as well as the farming sector and non-governmental organisations, about the potential impact of free trade deals on the UK’s high environmental and animal welfare standards. The creation of the TAC was important in reassuring us that the Government listened to those concerns. The non-statutory TAC published a report on 2 March this year, providing the Government with 22 recommendations on how best to advance the interests of British food, farming, producers, consumers and trade deals. Summer recess is upon us, Minister, and we are almost five months on from that report, but we are still in the dark about what the Government will provide in response.

I know the Minister is very capable, but I cannot understand why it has taken him and his Department so long to response to the Trade and Agriculture Commission. I have repeatedly asked the Trade Secretary when she will respond the report. As Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I first wrote to her on 29 April. I wrote to her again on 26 May after I did not receive a reply. I then received what I can only describe as a holding reply from the Trade Secretary on 10 June. To be blunt, Minister, the Trade Secretary’s reply says very little and I suspect was just an attempt to buy more time. In her reply, the Trade Secretary agreed that the UK’s approach to agrifood should be “bold and ambitious”—hear, hear, I agree—but refused to expand on the Government’s response to the exact recommendations made by the TAC or provide any date for when the Government will respond. I have since written to her again to press on this.

Perhaps our able Minister can update us on when the response will be published. It needs to be now. We have an agreement in principle with Australia, but we are not clear whether the Government have ever read the report and taken it on board before pursuing a trade deal that directly impacts on our farming sector and the quality of food, both environmentally and in animal welfare. It is also as though the Government intend to bypass the advice they commissioned. I am, to say the least, disappointed about that. During the passage of the Agriculture and Trade Acts, I was led to believe that the TAC would be a useful tool to help us during negotiations because it would clearly set out our trade policy. However, I received a response from the Minister very recently that stated:

“The role of the Trade and Agriculture Commission is not to advise on negotiations.”

Likewise, the Secretary of State has said that the TAC

“was tasked with providing advice towards an overall strategy regarding the UK’s future trade policy”

but was not

“set up to influence…trade deals.”

That is putting the cart before the horse. We should be basing our trade negotiations on an overall strategy, especially when those deals will set the tone for what will follow.

We urgently need a response to each of the 22 recommendations in the TAC report. In case Members have not read it, one of the most important recommendations was that we establish a list of core standards that would safeguard us in all future trade deals. That would prevent our farmers from being undercut by imports that have been produced in ways that we would not tolerate.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making compelling points. Can I suggest to him that in fact, with the agreement with Australia, the pass has already been sold? What other country with which we have now to enter into agreements is going to accept anything less than Australia has been given?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Bardell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing the debate. This time last week we were here talking about fishing. Today it is agriculture, dealing with many of the consequences of the promises that were made to the staple industries of many of our rural communities prior to our leaving the European Union. We are perhaps now seeing some of the disjunction between the rhetoric of the time and the reality of today.

The hon. Gentleman outlined the history of his and others’ interventions on the Trade Bill and the Agriculture Bill when they were before the House. I observe gently in passing that today’s debate illustrates very well the truth that Opposition Members and Government Back Benchers are never in a stronger position than when Governments are facing votes on legislation in the House. Perhaps if the resolve of some had been stiffened at the time, and guns had been stuck to, we would not be dealing with this problem today.

As the hon. Gentleman said, there is a need for a strategy. I fear that we may already have a strategy, and if it is to be seen in the agreement in principle with Australia, our farming and crofting communities face some serious problems. I would like to see at its heart a concern for animal welfare. Others have made this point, but let me repeat it for emphasis: Australian animal welfare standards are very different from those maintained by our farmers. Australia allows growth hormones in beef production. It continues to keep its poultry in battery cages. It allows the branding of cattle and the cutting away of healthy flesh from the hindquarters of lambs.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but he makes a point about hormone-injected beef. Alongside trade deals, agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary measures are signed to protect standards. If he asks any Trade Minister or departmental official whether we will see hormone-injected beef in this country, he will get a one-word answer: “No.” It is misleading to suggest that we will see such produce in our country.

[Mr Carmichael]

We are talking about the difference in standards. The problem that the hon. Member has, and many of his hon. Friends face the same difficulty, is that there is a fundamental unfairness in the Government’s approach. For decades, we have told our farmers that it is in their economic interest to go for top-end production, and raise the standards of animal welfare and environmental protection. Now they risk having the rug pulled out from under their feet. That is the question to which Government Back Benchers require an answer, and against which their actions will be judged at the next election.

To come back to Australian standards, the cap that has been set in the agreement in principle on imports is so high as to be meaningless. I come back to the point that I made to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton: when other countries go into negotiations with us they will expect the same opportunities as we have given Australia. We will hear from the Minister later, but it would appear that the Secretary of State is very keen to offer them the same opportunities. She seems to be on a mission to get more of such agreements. Her ideological commitment to free trade risks putting our farmers and farming communities at real risk.

Other Members have made the point that the TAC will need to have representation from across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is good that we have, as the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) said, people with practical experience, not just the posh men in suits, but as we enter into trade agreements the experts in relation to farming, fishing and foodstuffs are to be found among the devolved Administrations around the United Kingdom, and they have to be taken along with them.

Hill farming and crofting are the economic backbone of some of our most economically fragile communities to be found anywhere in the country. The money earned stays in those communities; it goes into the shops, the agricultural merchants, the vets and the post offices. It keeps children in schools; it keeps doctors, solicitors, accountants and others in practice.

That is why these trade deals will not happen solely in an international sphere; they will have real and immediate impacts in some of the smallest and most economically fragile communities represented here today. That is what the Government have to address. Their concerns are not fanciful; they are not confection. They are real and legitimate and they must be addressed.