Trade Bill

Baroness Henig Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 9, 15, 25 and 26 which are in my name. I also want to support the many other excellent amendments which are contained in this group. As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has already said, this seems to be an area that is causing widespread concern. I hope the Government can see sense and perhaps rewrite the Bill to accommodate our concerns. In fact, I have quite a lot of concerns about the way the Bill is written; I wonder whether it needs a fairly substantial rewrite in some places. We will come on to that later.

The starting point for me in approaching this Bill is to recognise that trade deals and free trade agreements are entirely different beasts from those of times gone by when it was simply a question of reducing tariff barriers between nations or ensuring physical access to each other’s ports.

Modern trade deals are deeply political, needing decisions and agreements about interacting with one another’s laws and even overriding national laws. Trade deals are of great concern to many environmental and social justice campaigners because they can be used as a bulldozer for corporate interests to override the rights and interests of communities. As we transition from our established position in the European Union to an uncertain and undecided future, those concerns are front of mind for many of us. I first tabled some of these amendments in October last year. When I did that, even though there were then six months to go to Brexit, it felt as if time was running out. Now, only two months away from Brexit, we are no closer to averting disaster than we were back then.

I was grateful for the meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, and their officials. Although it was an interesting meeting, they were unable to resolve my fundamental concern about the Bill. The Minister told me that amendments such as mine are not necessary because the Bill is only about rolling over existing trade deals and it is not the Government’s intention to renegotiate any of them, and we have heard that again today. The Government’s intention is all well and good, but good intentions are quickly broken down by the harsh realities of international negotiations. It seems obvious, as we have already heard, that other countries will take this opportunity to renegotiate terms that are more favourable to their interests, perhaps slipping things in that the EU would not allow but that the UK might be more inclined to accept, particularly if we were feeling desperate.

I ask the Minister again now: can she guarantee that none of these trade deals will be renegotiated? It is possible that things were unclear during our meeting but we must know now. We are only weeks away from the Government needing to sign on the dotted line, so this should now be a much simpler question to answer. If it is guaranteed that none of our existing trade deals is being renegotiated, and all of them are simply being rolled over with the exact same terms, then most of my amendments become obsolete. That would be a great situation, and I would be perfectly happy. However, without a clear and unequivocal statement to this Committee that there will be no renegotiation and no change in terms, we must make clear and unequivocal amendments to the Bill.

[Baroness Henig (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 13. The purpose of my amendment is extremely clear: to seek to maintain our present high standards of UK agricultural products. At the same time, however, I support other amendments in this group regarding animal health, hygiene and welfare standards and wider environmental concerns. I regard this issue as extremely important not just for the present round of trade treaty rollover negotiations, which of course it is, but as a signal for the future. I felt that the remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, were very pertinent to this point. I want to make it very clear to both present and future trade negotiating partners that we in the UK intend to maintain our present high standards in a number of areas such as agricultural products and food standards.

I too am grateful to the Minister for meeting me last week. She made it clear that her priority was to get these current trade deals finalised with as much speed as possible—yes, the word “continuity” was mentioned—and said there was a necessity for flexibility in the negotiations. I understand all that. The problem, as we have heard today, is that not all the parties to these negotiations may just agree to roll these deals over; they may want to look at some things again. I want to signal to the Government as strongly as possible how important we feel our present high standards to be.

Ministers apparently agree with me, because on a number of occasions they have been asked about our present high food standards and they all say that they have no intention of departing from them and intend to stick to them. If that is the case, then surely we have no problem in writing that in the Bill. What is the problem? If we all agree that these high standards are essential, then I do not understand why they cannot be in the Bill. I understand that my inadequate attempts to formulate the appropriate proposal may be the problem. I would then say to the Government, “Fine. You can see what I and other people are after. Take that sentiment away and put it in whatever form meets your requirements”. I cannot understand how they can just ignore this important issue. If Ministers share my views on high standards, there must be a way of encapsulating this in the Bill in some form. I am very flexible; I do not mind how it appears in the Bill, but I really feel that it should be there.

Food standards and the negotiations about them are going to be a major issue not just for these rollover trade deals but for the future. We keep hearing talk about the possibility of us joining the Pacific trade group. I think there was a meeting with people from New Zealand or Australia only today and we hear again about this possibility. But that would inevitably mean moving away from EU standards and our current high standards for food and agricultural products. Therefore, every time we hear these sorts of discussions about joining this group, we are alarmed; we want to know, if that is the case, will we then lower our standards? We cannot have it all ways. We also know how American agribusinesses are hungrily eyeing British markets. We know perfectly well that they want to flood our country with cheap chlorinated chickens and other food that does not meet our present high standards. Therefore, I believe we have to make it clear from the outset that we will not agree to this.

The Government should be left in no doubt whatever about the strength of feeling across the country on this issue. I ask them to make it clear in negotiations taking place now and in the future that food standards will not be lowered in any way. I strongly believe that everybody in this country will want this to be acknowledged. That is why I have tabled this amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 14 and I join in supporting Amendment 13 and much of the sentiment behind Amendments 9, 25 and 26. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the meeting I had with her. I entirely support the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, as to why it is important to have these points in the Bill. If you look at the gross value added of agriculture, it contributes over 10% to the economy of the Yorkshire and Humber region alone. Exports of food and drink from the UK are worth £16.4 billion per annum.

I would like to say a word about marketing. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, raised a very important point here, which I discussed in the private meeting I had with the Minister. Our exports to China, for example, have grown by over 60% because the agricultural attaché in Beijing is paid 90% by the industry levy and 10% by the Government. If we are doing so well there, surely we should heed the requests from the NFU, farm organisations and the food and drinks industry to have similar specialists in other key markets. The sooner we do that, the better. I am half-Danish and it is a source of some surprise to me that Denmark exports a higher share of its food to countries such as China than we do. It is a country of 6.5 million; we are a country of 60 million. We have a lot of catching up to do, but we are clearly on the right track with the agricultural attaché.

In supporting the theme of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I would like to put two questions to the Minister before we return to this on Report. First, if the Government are not prepared to put this in the Bill, what commitment can my noble friend the Minister give the Committee this evening that in any free trade agreement the Government conclude with overseas trading partners, all food imported to the UK will be produced to food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection standards which are at least the equivalent of those currently required by producers in the UK? Secondly, can my noble friend explain how the Government intend to set out, in clear and unambiguous terms, how they propose to ensure that food imports into the UK will adhere to our environmental and welfare standards, in the context of WTO obligations? I will not repeat the examples that have been given, but over 20 or 30 years and under different Governments—many noble Lords have served as Ministers for Agriculture—we have increased the cost of food produced in this country, at the consumer’s will, to have the highest environmental, welfare, food safety and hygiene standards. Those cannot now be swept aside in this bid to have cheap food. We have to pay the cost of producing that food.