Food and Farming (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this SI and for her time, and that of the officials, in the briefing last week. This is something of a catch-all statutory instrument, clearing up elements omitted from the previous SIs we have debated on: geographical indications for wines and spirits; minor amendments to GMOs, veterinary medicines and residues; and common agricultural policy direct payments to farmers. Tomorrow, we will debate more SIs related to agriculture. I will not make the obvious comment about the efficacy of debating them all on the same day. I have great sympathy and support for the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. Hopefully, this will be the final SI in the process of tidying up those elements missed out of previous legislation.

There is also relevance to the devolved Administrations: Regulations 9 and 11 apply only to England and Wales, and 10 and 13 to Northern Ireland. I have only a few comments to make, as most of the issues have already been debated at length.

Regulation 3(21)(i) makes amendments in Annexe II of the EU regulation,

“in the section headed ‘Other spirit drinks’”,

where there are references to “Rum-Verschnitt” and “Slivovice”. All this is very interesting, but I cannot see its relevance. I do not know an awful lot about Rum-Verschnitt, but I know that Slivovice is produced in the Balkans, in Bosnia, and I would like to know why these two spirits should get a specific mention. Perhaps the Minister could say.

On page 12, in Regulation 5, we come to the crux of the matter. As the Minister has said, this relates to Tennessee whiskey and bourbon, currently imported from the United States. It also covers spirits produced in Mexico, tequila and mescal, which will be added to the list along with Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. I am pleased that this SI will make it possible for these spirits to continue to be freely available in the UK. While I am not personally a bourbon drinker, my husband—whose relatives all live in the Deep South in the USA—is, and I would not want him to have difficulty getting hold of his favourite tipple.

Such is the nature of this wide-ranging SI that it covers Irish cream and Somerset cider brandy—I have read it, and that is what it says. I had better look in my drinks cupboard to see what I have and whether I will readily be able to purchase further supplies in future. It would have been extremely helpful if the Explanatory Memorandum had listed the drinks covered in annexe III, referred to in the SI.

As the Minister said, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee felt that the regulations went beyond what is required to maintain the operability of the law after EU exit by conferring a new duty on the Secretary of State in respect of GIs which,

“could have a considerable commercial and economic impact”.

I agree with this statement and remain concerned that many of the catch-all SIs that cover such a wider range of topics may have implications for many regional producers.

Defra has indicated that it will bring forward guidance. The Minister has told us that this will be published before exit day and will be on the Defra website from exit day. I hope this guidance has been written and has taken account of the various permutations currently under discussion in the other place. There could be serious implications for some of our most revered wines, spirits and produce if the guidance is not clear and readily available.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, may I add my thanks to the Minister and to her team of officials who met us last week to go through the issues contained in this SI? It was helpful. It may have shortened what I was going to say; it may not have done.

I start with a question about GMOs. The Minister has explained that certain corrections have had to be made to legislation that had already been passed, and that this is a bit of a tidying-up procedure. We accept this, because we know that there has been pressure to produce a lot of these SIs very quickly.

I suppose it is necessary to ask the Minister about impact assessments. These SIs—I am talking about GMOs in particular now—will surely add some existing burden to UK authorities as well as to the devolved Administrations. In Northern Ireland, I assume that the decisions will be made by civil servants, as there is nobody else to make them. Is this right? It does not seem satisfactory but, in the absence of a functioning Administration, the whole situation in Northern Ireland is not satisfactory. I presume this is all that can be done.

Can I ask one specific question? If in future we wanted to tighten up the regulations about GMOs, would it be straightforward? Would there be any implications for trade with the EU? I assume that the reverse would not apply. I hope we would not want to liberalise our regulations but, if we did, it would run counter to EU practices.

I turn to the question of direct payments. I have some sympathy with the Minister here. For a time, I was a junior Minister in Northern Ireland and agriculture was one of my responsibilities. I will not bore the Committee with anecdotes about Agriculture Council meetings in Brussels, amusing as some of them were. Although it is not quite on the same subject, I will say that we consistently had tremendous support from the Irish Government. Whenever an issue came before the Agriculture Council—and there were many—the Irish Government went out of their way to be supportive of the British Government. I should like this to be on the record. I presume that the corrections that had to take place were as a result of oversights. We will move on from there.

Finally, I turn to the question of wines and spirits. In the briefing with the Minister, we spent a little time talking about tequila and mescal. These are two alcoholic drinks which I have never touched. I did my best to find some tequila before today’s Committee, but I failed. I wonder if the Minister would care to buy me a tequila at some time in the future—or allow me to buy one for her. We are talking about retained EU legislation on wine and spirits. I understand that the issue is about the geographical origin of products. We have been talking about Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. I understand that the Mexican drinks will come on the scene at some point in future when further negotiations have taken place. So we are going ahead with some of these drinks and the others will presumably follow.

My understanding is that geographical indications are used to identify a product whose quality, reputation or other characteristics are linked to its geographical origin. This will now be the responsibility of the Secretary of State, having previously been an EU responsibility. I assume that the question of geographical indication will cover many products in addition to those covered by this SI—this is a fairly common thing. It is right and proper that we should continue to co-operate with the EU and retain as many of the existing EU regulations as possible in practice.

I am not quite clear why these regulations would replace the current annexe with a shorter list. I hope I have this right. I understand that only UK spirit drink GIs would be automatically protected in UK law after exit. In contrast, UK GIs for spirit drinks will continue to be recognised by the EU as third-country GIs after exit, including in a no-deal scenario. I am not quite clear if I have understood that, and maybe the Minister will be able to clarify it.

The questions are: how prepared are we to operate our own GI systems? Can the Minister assure the Committee that the department will have the necessary staff and resources, and of course the expertise, to run the new system? The Government have stated that Defra will publish guidance on how to apply to the UK GI scheme in March 2019, which is this month, so can the Minister give an update on the completion of that guidance? Lastly, what consultation has the department undertaken with the devolved authorities over the design and implementation of the new UK GI scheme?