Trade and Agriculture Commission: Role in International Trade Deals

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab) [V]]

Very well said, Ms Bardell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on an excellent opening speech. I agree with very much of what he said, as will become clear.

Standards in food and animal welfare are an important part of a functioning modern society. Standards prevent abuse and dangerous practices by businesses and individuals, and they prevent animals from being kept in such conditions and treated in such ways that, if we saw them, would make us shudder. However, the Conservatives have a problem with standards. One need only look at the proposed Australia trade deal. If the deal goes through, it will undercut our farming industry and allow the dangers of food imports produced in ways that are not tolerated here, as the hon. Gentleman put it so well. That would mean lower-quality goods for British consumers and an even more difficult trading environment for farmers, whose margins are already incredibly slim.

The Government cannot say they were not warned. As the RSPCA pointed out last month, the Australia trade deal will

“set a dangerous precedent on animal welfare”

and encourage other countries with similarly poor welfare standards to demand the same favourable terms when they negotiate with us. Regardless of what Conservative Members say, that is the reality. This will be the benchmark for future deals and what others want to negotiate with us.

Despite what the Minister might claim shortly, the Australia deal involves the Government giving away quotas that allow 60 times the current level of zero-tariff beef imports straight away—not after 15 years, as Ministers like to claim. That all means that consumers could soon face supermarket shelves stocked with imported beef from cattle raised on enormous bare feedlots, or with pork from pigs that have been forced to breed in restrictive sow stalls. As the UK’s procurement standards allow low-welfare imports, those products could even find their way on to the menus of school children and hospital patients, who do not have a choice about their food.

All that means that our farmers face potential competition from high volumes of meat that has been produced more cheaply on the basis of poorer animal welfare standards. That is before a deal with Brazil—the same Brazil with which Ministers said they wanted a deal when they predicted an Amazonian Brexit boost—or with the United States. There are many areas where we would like a deal with the US, including a worker-led trade policy and putting carbon reduction at the heart of agreements, to name but two. On agriculture, however, we have serious and legitimate concerns. If the United Kingdom has a deal with Australia that allows imports of meat that has been produced to low welfare standards, the US will demand the same. As the Minister knows, the US agricultural sector has long wanted access to our market because its low-cost production would allow it to dominate at the expense of UK farmers.

The TAC was set up to head off a rebellion on the Conservative Benches over the Trade Bill and the Agriculture Bill because Conservative MPs knew—as we did, and as the terms of the deal with Australia show—that British farming was being sold down the river. In November, the Secretary of State said that the TAC would give advice to Parliament on trade and agriculture and that it so doing would allow MPs properly to scrutinise the deals the Government were negotiating. That changed significantly in June, when the Secretary of State said:

“The TAC’s role is specific and focused: it will look at the text of an FTA to see if the measures relating to trade in agricultural products have any implications for maintaining our domestic statutory protections—specifically those relating to animal and plant health, animal welfare and the environment”.

Ministers can say all they like about the TAC fulfilling the statutory remit it was given, but that is not what they said when they announced the same remit to head off a Back-Bench rebellion.

On 6 November, the Secretary of State told NFU Wales:

“We have no intention of ever striking a deal that doesn’t benefit farmers, but we have provided checks and balances in the form of the Trade and Agriculture Commission. That is an important reassurance as every deal is different.”

She did not mention assessing potential changes to statutory requirements, which she now says is the remit. The crucial check that we need on the deals proposed with Australia and New Zealand, which the Government are now pretending they never promised, is whether they would benefit British farmers.

The RSPCA, the NFU and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee all have the same concern that the TAC’s role has been watered down—a far cry from scrutiny during negotiations, or an ability to ensure that high farming standards are maintained by resisting clauses in trade agreements that undermine those standards. The TAC’s role will be limited to advising where domestic legislation has to change because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) correctly said, international agreements override domestic law.

The latest published remit is a clear attempt to scale back the previously briefed role of the TAC, and is a transparent attempt by the Secretary of State to avoid the embarrassment of the commission criticising what it called the “sell-out” deals that she is trying to get over the line with Australia and New Zealand, as happened last year. Why has the Secretary of State still failed to establish the TAC in permanent form? Why is she dragging her feet on appointing its chair and members? Why will she not say what support it will be provided with in undertaking its duties?

The failure to set up the TAC to do the proper job of scrutiny shows that the Government have no desire to support British farmers or farm workers, or to maintain high animal welfare standards in the UK. No wonder my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) voiced the suspicion of many that the TAC is being set up only to give the Government cover for lowering standards.

The Labour party would buy British, which means supporting British farmers and British fishers, and encouraging supermarkets to have more British produce on their shelves. Where Labour would make, buy and sell more in Britain to support our domestic industries, the Conservatives seem to want to buy more that is made—or, in this case, grown—abroad to sell in Britain, and outsourced to the highest bidder with the lowest standards. It is no good the Minister saying that because it is Australia, New Zealand or the United States, we should sign whatever we are offered. Good negotiation means trade deals that do not undercut our domestic industries, for goodness’ sake. Good negotiation means there should be give and take in trade deals, but the Conservatives have proven that they will give, give, give, with little expectation of anything in return, just for the PR of signing a flashy deal.

The story of the TAC so far is that, far from supporting our farmers, the Tories’ negotiating objective seems to be to give away the farm shop.