Import of Animals and Animal Products and Approved Countries (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I apologise to my noble friend for speaking after her, but I used to chair—until it was abolished—the EU Environment Sub-Committee, of which the noble Lord, Lord Trees, was an excellent member. One of the things we were really concerned about was that, when we moved out of the EU, we no longer had access to TRACES, which, as the Minister will know, is the main system for controlling biological security in animal and food products. Exactly as the noble Lord pointed out, we have put off these import controls I think three times. Can the Minister clarify how we are substituting the information we had from TRACES and how that now works? Are the Government satisfied with it, and where will we go with it in future while we wait for those biosecurity controls to come in in respect of the EU?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and for the helpful briefing he organised beforehand. I begin by very much echoing the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, about the Government once again delaying checks on food imports from the EU, and the biosecurity and consumer protection implications of all that. I also very much welcome the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on TRACES; we have discussed the issue many times and were always assured that there would be alternatives for TRACES in place, so it would be useful to hear from the Minister whether that is now the case or not.

I thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for drawing these proposals to the attention of the Committee and their implications for the loss of parliamentary oversight. The Explanatory Memorandum has set out the changes made by previous EU exit SIs and provides an explanation as to why these provisions are not considered sufficient to deal with urgent cases. We are acutely aware of the ongoing and changing threats to our animal and plant biosecurity, as well as to human health, and the need to have robust measures in place to act swiftly when new threats arise, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said. As such, we are sympathetic to the case being made and do not intend to vote against these regulations.

However, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has quite rightly pointed out that, once again, we face the loss of parliamentary oversight on the imposition of these urgent measures. It specifically proposes that the Minister be asked to give an assurance that the regulations will be used only on the rarest of occasions, so I ask on its behalf: can the Minister give an assurance that the powers will be used only on the rarest of occasions?

Following on from this, I have some detailed points which I would like the Minister to answer. First, if our response times because of parliamentary delays have led us to be vulnerable to biosecurity and food safety risks, why has it taken Defra until May 2022 to address this concern? What has been happening in the meantime? Have we left traders and consumers exposed to extra risk because of our inaction? I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why nothing has been done before now.

Secondly, in correspondence with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about the capacity of the animal disease policy group, Defra responded:

“The expertise, capacity and processes required to exercise the powers in this instrument appropriately are well established within government, and have already been used to effectively control a range of SPS … risks since January 2021.”


If we already have the means to control these risks effectively, does that not rather undermine the need to give the Executive these extra powers? Could the Minister give some examples of the effectiveness of the current control regime to provide some context to this debate? What are the effective control measures? Where were they lacking? Why do we need to give Ministers extra powers? Friends of the Earth has also written in, asking about the independence of the bodies making these decisions. It would be helpful if the Minister could shed some further light on the independence of the bodies carrying out these risk assessments and making recommendations to Ministers.

Thirdly, the correspondence from Defra makes it clear that the new powers will be used to impose import restrictions not just where there was a new biosecurity risk but also to lift existing import restrictions if, for example, a country had successfully controlled an animal disease outbreak. This point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. Can the Minister explain why existing parliamentary oversight cannot be maintained for the lifting of import restrictions? This does not seem to be as urgent as when a new biosecurity threat emerges—where action may be needed in days or, at most, weeks. There would very much seem a role for Parliament in overseeing the lifting of import restrictions and in making sure that the country of import had taken all the necessary action.

Finally, paragraph 7.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum outlines some of the risks of delayed action. It talks about the threat of retaliatory action against exports from Great Britain. It also mentions the threat of intervention by the WTO. The Minister referred to this in his introduction. Can he expand on this concern? I am struggling to understand what these threats are. Can he give a scenario as to how serious this risk of WTO intervention is? From what he said about retaliatory action, are we developing a reputation for responding slowly to biosecurity risks? Is this a real concern about which we should be aware? I am just trying to understand what our competitor or trading nations feel our biosecurity level is and what the threat of retaliatory action is. It would be helpful if the Minister could shed some light on this. I look forward to his response.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their interest in this issue and for their contributions. I will open by reiterating that the amendments in this instrument do not constitute a change in policy. The instrument seeks to establish a process through which we are able rapidly to implement country-specific import controls where significant risks to animal and public health have been identified from non-EU trading partners which are approved to import live animals and animal products into Great Britain, ensuring a consistency of approach across EU, EFTA and non-EU trading partners. The instrument cannot be used to approve or delist countries and commodities, nor to lower import standards in any way.

Furthermore, while I appreciate that the shift to an administrative procedure raises sensitive issues about parliamentary oversight, I have outlined why I believe that it succeeds in striking a balance between the requirement for appropriate scrutiny and the need for effective biosecurity and safety controls. It is also worth noting that noble Lords and Members of Parliament in the other place will, of course, continue to be able to hold me, other Defra Ministers and the department to account, through all the usual means, for the ways in which the powers in this instrument have been exercised.

Let me just for a second address some of the points on an apparent loss of parliamentary scrutiny. Of course, when we were in the EU, these matters were decided by tertiary legislation, so they were effectively agreed with people such as national Governments’ Chief Veterinary Officers and other officials, then at an official level within the Commission it was decided, and none of us within the two Houses would really have much say after that, unless something went badly wrong. What has happened since is that it has become a secondary legislation matter.

Noble Lords are right to ask why, and why now. I can give a scenario, which was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. When we wanted to relist Ukraine last year, when an avian influenza outbreak had diminished, it took two months to get it through the necessary processes here. That is an impairment to free trade—and that addresses some of the points of concern to international organisations. It is right to say that what we are seeking here is more ability for executive action. There are still a lot of ways, within and without the statutory instrument, to hold Ministers to account for the decisions that the department takes. But we are a long way more responsive to noble Lords than we were able to be in the European Parliament.

Let me just address people’s concerns about border controls. This instrument cannot be used to remove border controls for any country, either in the EU or outside it. So it is really important that we are confident that we have the capacity and capability to undertake assurance functions previously carried out at EU level. The department has put the resources in place and drawn on additional expertise in its agencies and across government, in particular the Food Standards Agency.

I shall endeavour to answer other points that have been raised. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, wanted clear assurances that, if the Secretary of State is given the power to lift import restrictions via an administrative procedure, it will be done in a way that does not endanger biosecurity and food safety. That is an entirely valid point to make. Defra will not lift restrictions on imports of animals and animal products unless it is confident that it is safe to do so. We are committed not only to maintaining our high import standards but to continually improve on the processes in place to protect UK biosecurity and food safety. The UK Chief Veterinary Officer leads this work, following the repatriation of functions from the EU agency, DG SANTE F, in January 2021. To deliver this, Defra’s team of veterinary and technical experts oversee a detailed assessment and audit programme to ensure that any decision to change UK import authorisations are risk and science based. This includes: surveillance of emerging overseas disease and food safety risk; ongoing monitoring of trading partners’ regulatory regimes; and assessing non- compliance at GB border control posts. Where concerns are identified, we are able to undertake an emergency in-country inspection to verify that those imports are safe.

The noble Lord was entirely right to raise the impending risk of African swine fever. I chair a monthly biosecurity meeting, and I am brought up to date on a more regular basis on the progress across Europe of diseases like that, which are alarming. The noble Lord is right to say that it is running rife in some countries in their wild boar populations, and we are very careful about that. We recently exercised how we would cope with an outbreak of African swine fever. The whole purpose of what we do is, first, to prevent the disease coming here but, secondly, to be able to deal with it, contain it and ensure that it does not go through our domestic farm pig industry, which would be a very serious situation.

I hope I have also answered the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, made about, if you like, a fraudulent regime that might seek to suppress information. Of course, that happened, or could have happened, under the regime which we are asking the House to approve we move away from. It happened when we were in the EU and it can be prevented only by good intelligence and good security, by working with our posts abroad and by continuing to work with our EU neighbours, making sure that the professional contacts at Chief Veterinary Officer level and other biosecurity official levels are maintained.

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The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked how we access information in the light of our loss of access to TRACES and whether the Government are satisfied with the current system. Defra and its agencies, along with the FSA, have been developing their SPS surveillance capabilities over the past few years to ensure that UK public and animal health continue to be protected. We are committed to continually building on these, looking not only to strengthen resources but to incorporate new technologies and approaches to properly manage these risks. It is vital that we maintain our good working relationship with other countries to achieve the kind of security that he rightly raised.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am not sure if the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, wants to intervene, but I would like a bit more clarification. Is the alternative to TRACES up and running or not? The Minister talks about it still being developed—is it there? Is it functioning?

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness for intervening. It sounded rather like work in progress to the extreme; I thought we would be rather further ahead than that.