Trade Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I had very much hoped to give three loud cheers to the Government for putting down this amendment but, at the moment, my noble friend has one and a half cheers. But I am extremely grateful to the Government for at least putting down this amendment.

A number of points have been raised, and the point which struck home was that made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, who said that public expectation is high for the TAC. She is absolutely right. I fear that the TAC, as proposed in the amendments before us, will turn out to be a peely-wally TAC. As a result, it will give the Minister every opportunity to use the proposed new clause in Amendment 36 to repeal it by statutory instrument. That will lead to a huge loss of public confidence in the Government and in agriculture, which has been a matter of so much debate.

We brought the Government to this state, kicking and screaming, through the hard work on the Agriculture Bill. Could my noble friend tell me what membership he envisages for this commission? The point has been made that it is a bit vague, but unless the commission has experts and access to experts, it will not be able to report to the high standard that we hoped and expected of it. Can the commission do work other than looking at trade deals once they have been negotiated? Will there be a lull? If a negotiation is going on, the commission can look at it, and that might bring up other bits of work that it ought to do for future trade deals. But the Government could turn around and say to the commission that because there is no trade deal under negotiation, sorry, your job is finished. Could my noble friend be more specific on the workload he expects of the TAC?

The next point I want to raise was also raised by my noble friend Lady McIntosh when she introduced Amendment 7. It is on the wording of the proposed new subsection (2)(4A)(a) in Amendment 34, which refers to “human life or health”. What happens around food security that affects people’s health? Will it be covered by the work of the commission? When we were discussing the Agriculture Bill, the quality of food that would be produced by and imported to this country was a huge concern. It affects human health and, if the TAC is not allowed to look at human health, will aspects of that be omitted?

My last point concerns the shortness of the TAC’s life. Is my noble friend convinced that he will get the right quality of people to serve on it, given that it is an intermittent body, with every likelihood that a Minister could wake up one morning and lay a statutory instrument for its demise? Before a Government decision is made and such a statutory instrument is laid, will my noble friend confirm that he will consult all relevant interested parties and publish their advice? If that is not the case, I fear that the TAC will not produce the quality of reports that we want and will not continue in existence for as long as many noble Lords have anticipated. I hope that my noble friend can change my one and a half cheers into three cheers.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, as always, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I greatly agree with what he said and want to amplify one of his points. I also support Amendment 7, but do not think that it is finished business yet.

When the Agriculture Bill passed through Parliament, many noble Lords advocated amendments about the UK’s food standards: that they should be written into law to protect us from lower food standards in the future. This was backed massively by the public, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and many other noble Lords have said. Some 2.6 million people signed a number of related petitions, and 260,000 people took the trouble to write to their MP because they were concerned about this. The Government have instead opted to put the Trade and Agriculture Commission on to a statutory footing, extending its lifespan and requiring it to look after these important matters. Is this enough? I think not.

We know that trade deals can put huge pressure on food standards and lead to the import of food produced to lower—or indeed higher—standards. Evidence shows that a number of prospective future trading partners want the UK to lower its food and animal welfare standards and to allow the import of currently banned products, including the well-known examples of chlorine chicken and hormone beef as well as others such as products containing residue of pesticides.

The TAC was formed by the Government in response to consumer and farming concerns. Its main aim is to consider the development of the Government’s trade policy, to reflect consumer and developing world interests and to consider how we engage with the WTO on animal welfare. However, as it stands, it will relate only ever to broad farming, food, environmental and animal welfare concerns. Food safety is considered, but not public health.

However, we now have it on a statutory footing and have expanded proposals for membership to include experts on trade, animal and plant health, and animal welfare. This is welcome but not enough. The Government’s amendment categorically excludes the TAC from considering the impact of agri-food trade on human health. Its reference to what the TAC reports on states that, in preparing the report for Parliament, the Secretary of State for International Trade must

“request advice from the Trade and Agriculture Commission … except insofar as they relate to human life or health”.

If the TAC is limited to thinking about health very narrowly, within the confines of a sanitary or phytosanitary source, wider considerations such as impacts to diets, antimicrobial resistance or pesticide residues will be lost. If it is not the role of the TAC to consider this, who will consider it? We all know the long impact of bad diets—those heavy in sugar, fats and salts. We have seen this as Covid has torn through our communities this year. We legislate very well and effectively that food will not kill you today, but we have nothing on food that will kill you tomorrow or, more to the point, in your children’s tomorrows.

The Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics published a report just last week showing how future trading partners for the UK are giving livestock antibiotics to make them grow faster, a practice which has rightly been illegal in the UK and across the EU since 2006. When I raised this in this House the other day, the Minister was emphatic that we have good antibiotic rulings. However, in 2022 the EU will ban the importation of meat and dairy produced in this way but the UK Government have not yet committed to this. This new report shows that, overall, farm antibiotic use per animal is about five times higher in the US and Canada compared with us, with use in United States cattle being about seven times higher. Antibiotic use per animal in Australian poultry is 16 times higher than ours. These are very serious facts.

Where is public health? Somewhere between the Agriculture Bill, the Trade Bill and the TAC. Why is it not in a leading role as we go forward in these crucial debates? I understand, although I might not agree, why the Government chose not to put public health right at the top of the Agriculture Bill as a public good. I know it is impossible to recompense people for growing food which has a monetary value, but I do not feel reassured about where this is going to be. I am also not reassured that it will be left in the hands of the Food Standards Agency, much as I admire it, because I do not understand its relationship to the Trade and Agriculture Commission. At the moment we do not have a public health expert on that body. This is slithering through the cracks; if we do not catch it now, in future it could have very serious consequences for us all.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my interests are as recorded in the register. It is a great honour and privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Boycott, whose contributions are always thought-provoking and based on her immense knowledge of food and agriculture. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for her amendments and continuing commitment to the Trade and Agriculture Commission’s purpose, in the Agriculture Bill and this Bill.

I will speak to Amendments 31, 34, 35 and 36 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone of Boscobel. I very much welcome these amendments and congratulate the Government on introducing them into the Bill. The future of the Trade and Agriculture Commission was the subject, as has already been mentioned this afternoon, of much debate on the Agriculture Bill. The amendments to that Bill—Clause 42, which the Government finally introduced under pressure—complement the amendments we are considering this afternoon.