Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introductory remarks to these two statutory instruments. I fear that I may fail his questions on the geographical applications of the SI. As with many statutory instruments that we have debated recently, the first—on animals, animal health, feed and food, plants and plant health—corrects errors in previous SIs.

The Explanatory Memorandum says in paragraph 7.2 that SI 2016/2031 will be reintroduced. Having been removed, it was considered redundant, but the removal appears to have left no mechanism available to enforce the regulation. The SI refers to three months’ imprisonment in all three devolved Administrations for non-compliance with the regulation. If there is no enforcement mechanism, can the Minister say how the prison sentences are to be applied and carried out? No doubt I have misunderstood this section of the SI.

Paragraph 7.4, as regards the OCR, refers to a designated competent authority but also states

“where no competent authority has been designated, the appropriate authority will be assumed to be the competent authority.”

Can the Minister say what qualification is needed to be classed as a competent authority, what is needed to be an appropriate authority, and who or what this is likely to be?

Paragraph 7.8 of the EM refers to Article 139, non-compliance and penalties for non-compliance, but states

“there are no powers to create any penalties to fulfil this requirement.”

In that case, is there any relevance to this SI?

Paragraph 7.13 refers to transporters, organisers and keepers of animals keeping a journey log, as set out in “Annex II”. I could not find any such annexe either in this SI or the Explanatory Memorandum. Can the Minister point me in the right direction for this?

I turn now to trade in animals and related products. This appears to be a much simpler SI. I note in paragraph 6.2 of the EM that the Welsh Government are producing an equivalent version. Can the Minister say whether this will be compatible with the one that we are debating this afternoon, or whether it will be radically different? Some difficulties could arise if it were different.

The instrument as a whole refers to animals and animal products. Might those products include ivory? What inspections and checks are taking place to ensure that ivory products do not slip through the net and enter the country illegally? Paragraph 7.2 covers the import of live animals and products of animal origin from the EU. Although this appears to relate only to imports, the wording allows the European Commission to make changes to legislation for intra-European movements of live animals. Is it possible that this could be used to export live animals to the EU? Could this also be used to circumnavigate the UK’s ban on the export of live animals? I should be grateful for the Minister’s comments.

Finally, the last sentence of paragraph 7.5 states:

“Movements from Northern Ireland or the Crown Dependencies are considered internal movements and are not affected by the modifications.”


Given the close proximity to the coast of France of the Crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey, is it possible for live animals to be exported via this route? I look forward to the Minister’s reassurance on that point.

Despite my comments, I am content for these two SIs to pass and await the Minister’s comments.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, we also support these SIs but, like other noble Lords, I have a few questions and points to make about them.

I am concerned by the number of SIs where we have seen errors—and I have raised this on a number of occasions—when bringing former European legislation into UK law. We know that five particular SIs are referenced in paragraph 3.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations, all originating from 2019 or 2020. It is concerning that we are still seeing this number of corrections happening. I have asked the Minister before to reassure us that it is not going to keep happening but, unfortunately, it seems to keep reappearing. We ask again for reassurance that this is being sorted out and we are not going to keep having statutory instruments to correct previous instruments that we have already passed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the issues with paragraph 7.2, outlining the penalty regime. As she pointed out, the penalty regime was considered redundant in 2020, which now means that there is no mechanism fully to enforce the plant health regulation as the existing penalty regime cannot be amended or added to. Can the Minister let us know what the practical impact of this has been, and what is the current situation going forward?

We also know that other areas have been corrected, including the accidental deletion of a requirement on the Secretary of State to charge fees in connection with certain functions carried out under the official controls regulation. It worries me how much the Government are trying to achieve in such a short space of time, and this is one of the reasons we are seeing so many errors. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister can confirm to the Committee that he is keeping a very close eye on the department in these areas, so we have as few errors as possible. We completely support the fact that we need to avail ourselves of opportunities to regulate ourselves differently, now that we are out of the EU, but we worry about the lack of legal clarity in the short to medium term while these errors keep taking place.

More positively for this SI, we are pleased to see that paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum notes that the devolved Administrations were consulted on the changes and consented to them. We welcome that collaborative approach being taken to relations with the devolved Administrations.

Very briefly on the second SI, the Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment and Legislative Functions) Regulations 2022, I reiterate what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, about the Welsh Government’s equivalent instrument. It would be helpful to have an update on what that says and how it works with what we are doing in Westminster.

The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments reported on Regulation 9(5) regarding defective drafting around the definition of “enactment”. The question was whether this regulation can be used to amend Acts of Parliament. Again, clarification is needed but, also, what is the purpose of this power? Could the Minister give an example of how this would be used in practice?

Finally, I draw attention to some other questions noble Lords asked, particularly on live animal exports, which both noble Baronesses mentioned. It is important that we have clarification on the implications for import/export with the EU, compared to our legislation on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, also asked an important question about whether this will be retained law as we bring forward other legislation. The questions on food inspections were also important.

This worries me particularly because of the number of errors. It is important, when we put through these SIs, that we have real clarification on some of these issues. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their interest in these instruments and their contributions. As ever, I will try to respond to all the points raised.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh raised some important points. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is part of the Government’s commitment to taking the necessary steps to put the UK statute book on a sustainable footing, following the exit from the EU. While the department assesses its retained EU law and plans for the REUL Bill accordingly, these statutory instruments ensure that the current legislation is operable. This is the last opportunity to make these technical fixes before the powers from the European Union (Withdrawal) Act to make these modifications expire at the end of this year.

My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised important points about designated competent authorities. The official controls regulation provides that the competent authority will be the appropriate authority—the relevant Minister in Great Britain—or any other authority to which such functions are conferred. The designations of competent authorities are set out across various pieces of secondary legislation or dealt with administratively, and vary across the different areas within the official controls regime. Amendments to Articles 3 and 4 of the official controls regulation do not alter any existing designations, but make the process for designating a competent authority clearer and ensure that the appropriate Ministers do not need to designate themselves as competent authorities.

My noble friend raised some very important points about live trade, which I will come to. The Food Standards Agency is an increasingly important body since we left the EU. She is right that it is now directly responsible for food safety and for working with local authorities to make sure that they have the necessary skills, understand the changing legal environment and are able to carry out their functions effectively to keep us all safe.

My noble friend is right to talk about meat imports. We have recently changed the rules to allow a much smaller amount of permissible material to be moved in an attempt to tackle the threat of African swine fever—a serious risk rampaging across Europe, which we are working really hard to prevent ever coming to these shores. We have exercised thoroughly with Defra and its agencies to work out how we would deal with an outbreak, but it is one we want to prevent happening in the first place.