Food and Drink, Veterinary Medicines and Residues (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Grand Committee

A final point to note is that the SLS Committee has drawn this instrument to the special attention of the House. However, this was on the grounds that the policy areas were likely to be of interest to the House. The committee adviser confirmed this was on a neutral basis and concerns about the instrument were not raised in this case. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her extensive introduction, and for her and her officials’ time at the briefing session. This is a further SI covering geographical indications, which we previously covered last week. Relevant EU law provides the framework to enforce this scheme and ensure that the UK remains compliant with the WTO and its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement—TRIPS—obligations, as the Minister said.

There are currently 87 GIs in the UK, ranging from Craster kippers to Cornish pasties, and a number of delicious cheeses, from Wensleydale to Stilton. It is likely that there may be further applications for GI status now that the UK and the Secretary of State will decide on what is a legitimate case and the evidence provided. Defra officials will obviously have a role in advising the Secretary of State on what constitutes legitimate evidence. It is reassuring that should an application be refused, there is an appeal process through the Ministry of Justice, which will be running the First-tier Tribunals. However, no doubt there will be a cost to this. Could the Minister say what the cost of applying for a new GI status and appealing to the First-tier Tribunal will be?

Currently, UK regional GIs are protected in the EU. However, this could change once the UK has left—the EU might change their criteria, and so some of our small producers might find that their produce is no longer accepted. I understand that there are some new applications for GI status in the pipeline with the EU. These are extremely unlikely to be agreed before exit day. Can the Minister say how many there are and what the process will be for these producers to apply once exit day has passed? Will their current application just be transferred to the Secretary of State for his consideration, or will they have to restart the process with completely different forms in this country? It is likely that this process could lead to a dilution in protections as smaller businesses may not have the means to robustly defend their WTO entitlements.

Before leaving the topic of GIs, I would like to comment on the logo. Quite clearly, the EU GI logo cannot be used once we are no longer part of the club, so a new logo is needed for the sole use of UK producers. Sub-paragraph 3 of paragraph 7.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to the new GI logo coming forward. In the meantime, the existing UK agri-food GI will be used for three years, and yet another SI will come forward for the implementation of this logo. When the change to this logo takes place, it will cost producers to update their packaging and their marketing administration—yet more bureaucracy and cost for many, including some very small businesses.

I realise that we are nearly at the end of this process of introducing SIs relating solely to EU exit, but it is two years since it was started. I would have hoped that someone in Defra might have trawled through the various instruments and grouped them together more coherently than is the case. Perhaps it would have been too much to ask that all SIs dealing with GIs be dealt with on the same day or that those relating to veterinary medicines be grouped together. However, we are where we are and I hope that we will never have to go through this laborious process again.

The provisions on veterinary medicines are fairly straightforward. I have just one comment, on paragraph 12.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum, in relation to those wishing to apply for a marketing authorisation where one does not already exist. As the Minister said, this will be subject to a fee. The EM states:

“This fee will be reviewed once a cost base has been established to ensure that the fee levels are appropriate”.


This appears arbitrary. Can the Minister say a little more about what criteria will be used for establishing the fees and whether there will be different levels of fee depending on what the veterinary medicine is and what it will be used for? Apart from this, I am happy to support this SI.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, my first concern is the same as that of the noble Baroness and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee: namely, that the regulations cover disparate things. I come to these matters at the first instance and know that some of them have been dealt with previously but that there are still some to come.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee pointed out that having SIs on different areas was not helpful to consideration by the House, but, much more importantly, it is not helpful for those who have to use them in the longer term. In other words, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has said, if all the GI SIs were in one place—even if not in one instrument then at least in related instruments—those who had to operate the system thereafter would be in a much easier place. Likewise with the veterinary measures, the veterinary profession, farmers and pet owners would know where to find the sequence of regulation which applies to veterinary practice and medicines post Brexit.

I appreciate that Defra has had an incredible throughput of SIs to bring to Parliament and congratulate the staff in Defra on doing so and on reducing them in number—I think that we were originally expecting about 900; by merging them in this way, they have brought their number down—but there were better ways, certainly in these fields, of merging them. I think that there will be some confusion down the line when we come to address them again.

I have a few questions, some of which have already been posed. There is no impact assessment for any part of this SI. In the broad sweep of the costs of Brexit, these figures may be rather low, but for the individual operator they are not necessarily so. A specialist food company which has a protected designation in international terms will have to come out of that, probably lose a chunk of its market as a result and then go through a process of registering with the UK system. There will not be a fee if it has previously been registered in Europe, but it will have to engage in changing its packaging and marketing and possibly change its logo twice. There is a significant cost to the individual producer.

My other point is a general point that relates to SIs that I have seen in other areas as well: it is not clear in these SIs—although I was grateful to the Minister for some clarification in the discussion that we had the other day—quite how the powers of the European Commission or the other European agencies transfer to UK agencies. In some cases, it will be obvious and straightforward—the limited amount of veterinary medicines that are cleared in Europe at the moment will come to the VMD. It is an existing organisation and we know how that works. However, GIs will be dealt with by the department. There is not a specialist operation. There is then the appeals process. The Explanatory Memorandum refers to a single-tier process with the department and the Secretary of State, and that is subject to a different appeals process. I understand that but it is not clear from the text of the SI. The drafters of these SIs need to make it clear to the practitioners who is responsible for what used to be an EU institution’s role.

On the geographical indications schemes, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, referred to the 87 UK products that we already have and she also asked how many were in the pipeline. Civil servants gave me an answer the other day but I recently looked at a list on the website showing that 14 are in the pipeline. That is rather more than I was given to understand was the number. It is important that those products do not have a duplicate process and that they are prioritised under the new system. The case will already have been prepared. They may not have got very far with it in Europe but the case will have been prepared.

The key issue in this circumstance is: what do the Government expect a UK designation to provide in terms of export markets? Because the rather discerning British consumer understands the EU designation, EU products have a benefit within the UK market because they will continue to have an EU designation. A reciprocal arrangement does not apply. We will have to invent, and invest in, marketing our specialist, previously protected products in Europe, as well as the new ones that are coming along the line, and the department may well have to look at promotional activity for these specialist products.

That takes me to the logo, which will be all important in establishing this new quality, both internally and externally. The interim arrangement seems to have been a bit of a problem. I am not entirely sure why it takes three years to develop a logo. Plenty of firms start up in various sectors and get a logo out in a matter of weeks. Therefore, I do not quite see why we need three years to do so. In any case, there will be a double cost to the producer—having to put the interim logo on first and then, in three years’ time, move to an approved UK logo. There needs to be some attempt at costing that.

Because agriculture and, to a large extent, food production are devolved, there is the possibility of having different logos and systems in each of the devolved Assemblies, even though there may be an overall UK recognition system. A lot of the produce is very local, and a disproportionate number of those products—the existing ones and the ones in the pipeline—come from the territory of the devolved Administrations. There might be some difficulty in reconciling the system with the devolved Administrations. It is possible that the Scottish Administration, and perhaps the Northern Ireland Administration, will want a somewhat different logo from the one envisaged as the UK logo under these changes.

On veterinary medicines, I accept that the profession has been fully consulted. It has told me, as it has told others, that it is pretty satisfied with the need for the regulations when we move. The issue again is: what is the reciprocity? If veterinary medicines which were previously recognised in Europe are now recognised by us, is Europe likely to recognise those which are approved only or primarily in the UK, or is that a matter for a long-term treaty or possibly an international arrangement?