Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP) [V]]

It is right that we in the UK seek to bolster our trade relationships across the world to boost our economy, create jobs, promote growth and benefit from exit from the European Union and the freedom that offers. That said, we should ensure the standards that we enjoy and value are not lessened because of such arrangements. In my constituency, I have many small family farms that spend each and every day working hard but are weighed down financially and by the time commitment needed to produce food to the highest standards.

Our farmers can truly boast of the safest food, with world-leading environmental standards, animal welfare standards and traceability from farm to fork. It would be wrong if trade deals and accession to the trans-Pacific partnership brought with them a lowering of those standards through the opening of our markets to cheaper products produced to lesser standards and with a negative impact on our environment. There is much focus now in the UK on the carbon footprint of farming. It would be terrible to impose targets on our farmers while we ship lesser product from the other side of the world.

These arguments are well rehearsed, and my colleagues and I have made them before in this House as we debated the Agriculture Bill and the Trade Bill. We need the Government to live up to their commitments that our farmers would not be sacrificed in the quest for free trade deals and that the standards we enjoy in the UK at considerable cost to our agriculture industry will not be diluted by new trade agreements. I recognise the opportunities—opportunities that a range of industries, including agriculture, wish to seize upon—but the Government must honour the commitment to farming families across the United Kingdom.