Asked by: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans the Government has to remove Total Allowable Catch limits from particular stocks.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
We have no plans to remove total allowable catch limits. Any decision to remove a stock from management by setting a total allowable catch would need to be guided by robust scientific evidence. Scientific advice for 2020 for most stocks in the North East Atlantic will be published by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea on 30 June.
Asked by: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of the proposed review of the EU hormone-free beef quota on the allocation of EU and UK tariff rate quotas.
Answered by George Eustice
The High Quality Beef quota (also known as the EU 481 grain fed quota) established under the Revised Memorandum of Understanding of 21 October 2013 is an autonomous tariff rate quota not bound in the EU’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) schedule. The review of this quota consequently has no bearing on the apportionment of the tariff rate quotas in the EU’s WTO schedule between the UK and the EU-27.
Asked by: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of the potential redistribution of the EU hormone-free beef quota on UK beef exports to the EU in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by George Eustice
The European Commission submitted a draft negotiating mandate to the Council for approval on 4 September. The draft negotiating directives specify that the Commission may offer the United States a country-specific allocation of a certain proportion of the annual tariff rate quota for High Quality Beef (also known as the EU 481 grain fed quota). They make clear, however, that negotiations should not increase the total volume of the quota or total market access into the European Union. As this nonetheless encompasses a range of potential outcomes, it will not be possible to make an assessment of the impact until the negotiations are concluded and the details of any allocation that may be agreed upon are known.
Asked by: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect on the UK beef sector of the European Commission’s proposal to allocate a larger share of its hormone-free beef quota to the US.
Answered by George Eustice
The European Commission submitted a draft negotiating mandate to the Council for approval on 4 September. The draft negotiating directives specify that the Commission may offer the United States a country-specific allocation of a certain proportion of the annual tariff rate quota for High Quality Beef (also known as the EU 481 grain fed quota). They make clear, however, that negotiations should not increase the total volume of the quota or total market access into the European Union. As this nonetheless encompasses a range of potential outcomes, it will not be possible to make an assessment of the impact until the negotiations are concluded and the details of any allocation that may be agreed upon are known.
Asked by: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of leaving the EU Customs Union on (a) the dairy sector and (b) UK-EU trade in dairy products.
Answered by George Eustice
As part of our preparations to leave the EU, we are in the process of carrying out a rigorous programme of analytical work that will contribute to our understanding of how leaving the EU will affect the UK’s dairy sector.
Part of that programme has included modelling work co-funded between the four UK agricultural departments. In August 2017 FAPRI-UK published this analysis in the report “Impacts of Alternative post-brexit trade agreements on UK agriculture: sector analyses using the FAPRI-UK model”. It considers the impact of different trading scenarios on many commodity sectors, including the UK milk and dairy sector. The full report is available on agri-food and biosciences institute website.