Agriculture Bill

Dave Doogan Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I seek to underline the importance of the Bill, and the way that we transact and scrutinise it, and the provisions contained therein. My ambition is for a very different Scotland—a Scotland that speaks to the world on her own terms. We are not there yet, however, so it is important to my constituents, and those elsewhere across Scotland who are involved with the farming sector and food production, that the Bill is carefully scrutinised and amended where necessary. We must ensure that the priorities of the Scottish agricultural sector, and those of other devolved Administrations, are not swept aside in the interests of what is thought to be optimal for England, should any divergences exist in priorities or ambitions.

I raise that point because in my short time in this place I have witnessed Ministers offloading certain issues as simply “devolved” and therefore not requiring a response. Something can be a devolved responsibility when that suits the Government’s agenda, but they are much less enthusiastic to consult those devolved Administrations about meaningful ways to inform policy, with the principles of subsidiarity very much to the fore. A Union of equals? It does not feel like it if we consider the ways that powers are repatriated in post-Brexit Britain.

A key example of that is the total indifference of Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and their colleagues in the Home Office, when listening to calls from the agriculture sector—farmers, suppliers, processors, and others—who say that 10,000 seasonal agricultural workers are patently insufficient for the industry’s operational requirements. All we get from the Government is a deaf ear. That is simply not good enough, and it threatens the sector severely and imminently. I urge the Government to take urgent steps to address that matter soon.

The National Farmers Union of Scotland supports the application of Scottish Government policy and Scottish Parliament scrutiny of agriculture policy to the greatest extent. That must be unconditional in its application, not just when it suits UK Ministers—it should be a co-operative endeavour.

Confidence in UK Ministers is also an issue. We are reassured by the Prime Minister that

“There’s no question of there being checks on goods going NI/GB and GB/NI…we’re part of the same customs territory”.

Yet today, Stena Line, a key ferry operator in the Irish sea, confirmed its position that there will be checks and inspections on goods transiting between the two islands. The degree of inconsistency the industry is exposed to by the Government is simply not acceptable. It adds another layer of uncertainty for agricultural producers, processors and especially hauliers in Britain and Ireland.

We have, appropriately, talked at length about the need for producers and consumers in the UK to be protected from cheaper imports of meat produced to lower standards of animal welfare and environmental protection, but the Government must go further. Many people are choosing to eat less meat, for a range of personal reasons, but whether they are concerned about health, animal welfare or the environmental issues, including food miles, the Government can wring their hands or get on the front foot and try to ensure that when consumers are deciding what meat to buy in this country, they will choose the best prospect, which is meat produced in Scotland, Wales, England or Ireland. I see nothing in the Bill that will prioritise that.

Notwithstanding the minimal provisions of the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020, forecasting for future operational planning and the purchase of capital equipment remains far too uncertain for the sector. The Government must get their act together, and nothing in the Bill gives us any confidence that that will happen.

Agriculture Bill (Fourth sitting)

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Q On Tuesday, we had evidence from Jake Fiennes, the general manager for conservation for the Holkham Estate. In his view, the definition of livestock in clause 1 should not be extended to game—to grouse, pheasant or venison, such as the excellent produce produced in Scotland. Do you agree with that observation, or do you think that the management of game and financial help from the taxpayer for those sorts of landscapes would be beneficial to the future of agriculture in Scotland?

Jonnie Hall: First, I do not think the likes of game—pheasant, grouse and, indeed, wild deer, because we have farmed deer as well—should be governed as agricultural activity. The husbandry is not the same. They are wild animals. The habitat may be managed in their interests, but nevertheless they are not livestock that are bought, sold and managed in the same way as cattle, sheep, pigs and so on, so I do not see the benefit of that.

I do see, particularly in the Scottish context, the benefits of multiple land use in the same vicinity—the same land—such as having grouse moor management and managing wild deer populations in the interests of conservation, as much as in the interests of stalking and venison, alongside extensive grazing systems for the delivery of key habitats. That is one thing, but we will also be thinking increasingly about the preservation and restoration of our peatlands in the effort to tackle climate change. Grazing management will become a more fundamental issue—and extensive grazing management in Scotland—specifically for its public benefits and public good delivery, rather than just the production of an agricultural product.

That debate is an important one, but at this moment in time I do not view those things as agricultural activities. They can be supported through other means, because they are essentially environmental delivery mechanisms as well.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Q Given the broader ambitions of this Bill, and that which is going through the Scottish Parliament at the hands of the Scottish Government, how seriously do you view the potential for any checks on agricultural commerce between Scotland and Northern Ireland, in terms of how that affects crofters, farmers and processors?

Jonnie Hall: Again, at the risk of repeating myself, the preservation of the internal UK market is vital to the interests of Scottish agriculture. Alan Clarke mentioned some statistics about red meat. Our most important market is the rest of the UK, but we want to grow markets beyond that. I have often referred to the spending power within the M25, where we are sitting right now, as our bread and butter. That remains key, so we are very mindful of anything that rubs against the free flow of not just finished agricultural produce, but livestock. If I were a beef producer in the Scottish borders and wanted to buy a bull from Northumberland, I would not think it a smart move to operate different animal traceability systems and have all sorts of checks and balances at Berwick. In theory, that could be the outcome if we do not get these pieces of legislation to align.

[Dave Doogan]

Q What I was trying to get at was the particular role of trade between Scotland and NI, and the implications of any kind of impediment to that free movement. We are not going to have that between Scotland and England, or between Scotland and Wales, but we potentially will with NI. How big a deal is that for Scottish agriculture?

Jonnie Hall: I do not think it is a huge deal for produce leaving Scotland and going to Northern Ireland, but it is a very big issue for Northern Irish colleagues, who obviously want to access markets in GB—the rest of the UK. That is a real conundrum, in the sense that regulatory alignment with the EU will clearly be a vital issue on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. If that has implications for regulatory alignment with the rest of the UK and the EU, I can foresee lots of headaches and issues with that.

From what I see, we are moving more and more towards the potential of triangular trading agreements between ourselves, the EU and non-EU countries—for example, those in North America. There clearly has to be some sort of tension point at some level, because the UK Government have made it clear that there will not be regulatory alignment with the EU, although there will be equivalence—whatever that might mean—in order to secure deals with non-EU countries. That puts in doubt or jeopardy our potential to trade both with the EU and with other countries at the same time. That is a major concern for us.

[The Chair]

I call Danny Kruger, and this will have to be the last question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fay Jones]

Q My farmers would argue that food production and environmental delivery go hand in hand, and you cannot have one without the other. They would not be able to make any money if they did not have good soil, clean air and clean water, and they are responsible for maintaining that. If we did adopt your model of removing land from agricultural production, who would be responsible for ensuring those environmental benefits? Who would be safeguarding that?

George Monbiot: Yes, how did nature survive before humans came along? It is extraordinary, this idea of stewardship and dominion—this idea that humankind has to intervene to protect wildlife and ecosystems. We do not. We can do a lot to encourage the protection and to kick-start things, and we will always need a role as rangers to ensure that there are not too many conflicts between people and ecosystems. However, the idea that we are necessary to create healthy soils and healthy ecosystems—the best thing we can do in the great majority of cases is to remove extractive economies from the land and to let ecosystems recover. We need to bring back missing species, to take down fences, to kick-start woodland in places where there is not a seedbank left and stuff like that, but we need very little human intervention to get a healthy ecosystem going. While farmers are absolutely right to say that they need a healthy ecosystem to sustain their farming, we do not need farming to sustain a healthy ecosystem.

[Dave Doogan]

Q Mr Monbiot, there is a significant difference between your ambitions and the ambitions of the Bill and agriculture more generally. If you were to get free rein with one element of the Bill—some operational amendment that you could make to the Bill, rather than a theoretical one—what would it be, and how would you achieve it?

George Monbiot: I think it would be a clear distinction between the additionality that public payments for public goods could produce and the regulatory environment. I am not skilled in framing policy, but basically we need to lay down a distinction between, “Here is the list of things that you as a steward of the land are expected to do. That will be a matter of regulation with monitoring and enforcement. For most of those things, you will not get paid,” and, “Here are the additional things that are not being done anyway, for which you will be paid if you do them.” Quite how you draft it to deliver that, I am not sure. Is that a clear enough answer?

[Dave Doogan]

In terms of those things that you would have them do, are these elements of rewilding or some form of carbon—

George Monbiot: Rewilding, carbon storage, watershed restoration—there is a whole series of additional ecological interventions that you could consider that would clearly fit the notion of public goods, but I worry when I see things like, “Animal welfare will attract public payments.” Surely animal welfare should be something that we legislate for. Hopefully we legislate for ever higher animal welfare standards.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

Q I apologise, perhaps Mr Zeichner planned to ask this, as he is an east of England MP, but I found your description of the east of England as an arable desert slightly confusing, having grown up there. It is better known as Britain’s breadbasket, so I wonder how you came to that conclusion.

George Monbiot: It can be both. It can be highly productive in producing a handful of crop species and deserted in terms of wildlife. There are large areas of arable land, particularly in East Anglia, where there is little wildlife. We see a lot of nitrate pollution, soil erosion and water pollution. It is not in a good ecological state, even though, thanks to lashings of NPK and lots of pesticides, we are producing a lot of food there.

We must recognise that what is great on one metric is not so great on another. The attempt to pretend that they are one and the same—that agriculture is good for ecosystems and that the more we have, the better it will be for ecosystems—clouds this whole debate. There is an inherent conflict between an extractive economy, which simplifies ecosystems, and the complex, rich ecosystems, with food webs that are both wide and deep, which an ecologist like me wants to see.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger]

Q You mean they are particularly vulnerable?

Diana Holland: They are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Therefore, it continues to be recognised that they need to be identified within labour market protection. In Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, they have additional protections to those that apply in England. We think that needs to be put right.

While, of course, at the time, in 2010, a number of things identified as red tape, burdens and so on were got rid of, there was general shock throughout the sector—across the board—that it could have been done like that to the Agricultural Wages Board, with a two-week consultation period, given that it had existed all that time and had all that experience. It needs to be put right.

[Dave Doogan]

Q Diana, you talked very clearly about the effect of the removal of the Agricultural Wages Board and its replacement with the dysfunctional—in the context of agricultural workers—minimum wage. Are the three devolved Administrations broadly similar? Do you suggest that including in the Bill an instrument to replicate the provision of the Agricultural Wages Board would be relatively straightforward for Ministers to do?

Diana Holland: I would say so, yes. It has been done recently; obviously, the original legislation covered England and Wales, so extricating Wales and doing that separately has been done in recent times. My answer would be yes.

[Dave Doogan]

Q Jyoti, I was interested to note that you represent large horticultural producers as well. There is nothing in the Bill to give a positive voice to industry about the availability of seasonal labour from abroad. Do you see that as a challenge? Would you have that amended?

Jyoti Fernandes: In many ways, because our union works with workers across Europe, we think it is important that some workers can come over to other places, as long as they are respected and get decent wages and decent labour conditions, to work on larger agricultural units. By and large, we represent people who live in the UK who want to be able to produce and to farm and work on other landholdings as well. We do feel that more encouragement and support for the sector, so there did not need to be poor working conditions, there were decent wages, and fewer pesticides and fungicides were used, would encourage British workers to work on farms. We also feel that would encourage loads of independent smallholder market gardens, which can be quite intensive and could provide really good employment —and enjoyment in that employment. We would like to see a lot more encouragement for independent horticulture and British workers.

Agriculture Bill

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) [V]]

I am happy to be able to make my observations on the Bill, its process and the material considerations at stake. As an MP representing a Scottish seat, I will necessarily keep my references confined to the narrow, yet vital, provisions that affect constituents in Angus and more widely in Scotland.

The Bill and its passage through Parliament afford us another example of the straining construct that the UK Parliament increasingly reveals itself to be. This is principally a Bill to provide legislative guidance, a regulatory framework and sector-specific support for English agriculture, yet here we are—MPs from all four nations of the United Kingdom—invested in its passage through this place. A far better proposition in recognising and respecting the devolved nature of agriculture would have been for the Government to table an English agriculture Bill under the EVEL—English votes for English laws—procedures so valued by Government Members, and a further agricultural co-operation Bill, which could have been agreed by consent with the devolved Administrations, with competencies over budgets, food standards, the single market in the UK, animal welfare, environmental protections, and crucially of course, trade, but that ship has well and truly sailed.

That being the case, I must turn to the provisions of the Bill, or in fact, the absence of a key provision that most concerns stakeholders in the agricultural sector: the standard of imported agricultural produce to the UK. Representatives of farming, consumer, environmental and animal welfare organisations across the United Kingdom have been crystal clear on this point. Parliament must take this opportunity to ensure that the Bill introduces vital safeguards for the maintenance of high standards of production on food imports, founded in statute, mandated by law and applying no more than that which is applied to producers of food in the domestic market.

During this period of unprecedented turmoil in our history, farmers and food producers have ensured that the cycle of food production has continued no matter what. That is the calibre of this industry and the people who work within it. We owe it to them in this context, and referencing the generations of food production before it, to ensure that our farmers are not undercut by lower standards of imports that result from some future trade policy.

This import standards issue is a matter of unparalleled concern within the industry, and moreover, it enjoys political support from across all parties in this House—a rare thing indeed. It is not a new issue either and it has been prevalent throughout the course of the Bill. Ministers have been asked many times by Members to consider it. What is concerning is that when I and other right hon. and hon. Members ask this question about standards of imports, we receive the same response from the Secretary of State as we did from his predecessor in the role, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers): that the Government are committed to high standards of production within the UK. That is a hollow and unconvincing yet very telling response to a question that nobody is asking, and it speaks to tension between the Department for International Trade and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that Members must circumvent today.

An early casualty, if we fail to act, will be the outstanding egg producers of these islands. It is a success story within food production that an industry that receives no subsidies provides countless farms with their egg cheque every month—so vital to the cashflow of seasonal enterprises such as farming. Yet, if the Bill fails to uphold their high standards of production on imports, they will face unparalleled if not insurmountable challenges in competing with foreign imports of egg products, dried and liquid, that could be produced to horrifically low animal welfare standards before ending up in unwitting consumers’ food products here. Scottish and UK farmers and producers are not asking for any special deal or to be protected from cheaper products of the same or higher standards. The industry in Scotland and across these islands is well able to compete on the world stage. All they are asking for is that the competition is fair and on a level playing field. For this reason, I will be voting to introduce this most basic of provisions to the Bill in the interests of consumers, environmental protection and animal welfare.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con) [V]]

The Bill is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the future of agriculture in the United Kingdom, including how we farm, how we feed people and how we make farming sustainable for this generation and the next. It also comes at a time when we are fundamentally reassessing our trading relationships across the world, and at a moment of crisis when expansion of our international trade is essential to our recovery and future prosperity. The Bill, as it stands, opens the door for our farmers to the opportunities for growth that international trade brings, and with that it goes some way to addressing the regional imbalance of opportunity and wealth that this Government and I want to focus on.

Farmers in my constituency and across the country already sell exports to Europe worth about £24 billion, and the Bill sets a template for expansion into other regions, which will mean that members of our farming community will be able to compete abroad as never before. They will sell more of what they already sell, and enter new markets so that they can sell more of the same products and new products too. To bring the narrative back to how extending British farming into global markets will directly boost growth, it is just simple maths that growth leads to more jobs, and with that, better jobs. Growth in trade will create new opportunities in places that may have been left behind. It will help to keep local talent at home and attract new talent from afar, and the levelling up of society in every region of Britain will take one more step forward.

I support the aspirations of farmers in Hertford and Stortford who want to sell into foreign markets, and I want farmers and consumers to be clear that I support their desire for the highest food and animal welfare standards, as do the Government. We are leaving the European Union and the CAP, and we must be able to negotiate and sign meaningful trade agreements. We must resist calls for the protectionism that will squander opportunity, and not try to force dynamic alignment from others with us in the UK. Apart from anything else, it was those rigid rules that played a large part in our vote—my vote—to leave the EU, so what message would we be sending if we tried to enforce them ourselves now?

Concerns around the safety and standards of food in the UK have been addressed in the Bill. The same stringent standards that we are all used to and wish to see upheld will still apply to meat sold here, including those that exclude chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef. I want to reassure farmers and consumers in Hertford and Stortford that I will always support the highest environmental standards and celebrate the fact that farmers are the custodians of our wonderful countryside. I support the highest standards of food production and animal welfare here and around the world. I also support a principle of clarity in food labelling, to enable consumers to make informed choices about what products they buy.

I will always champion our wonderful UK farmers, producers and products. I will support the Bill, as I am satisfied that our food standards and safety are protected, and I want to see farmers in my constituency benefit from different markets, more product opportunities and a greater distribution of wealth and opportunity across the country. This is an opportunity to renew British farming and add vigour to our global aspirations. It is an opportunity to secure more resilient food supply chains and set global standards for sustainability through international co-operation and leadership.

Agriculture Bill

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

In following the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I will try not to resort to impolite comments such as that which he directed at the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). He could not see the embarrassment on his colleagues’ faces when he made that comment.

I rise to speak in favour of amendment 16. The clarion voice of the people is at issue here and it is our responsibility as MPs to convey the horror with which our constituents view the Bill and its in-built opposition to their ambitions for food safety that respects the environment and safeguards the welfare of our animals.

The people of Scotland have spoken clearly in rejecting the Bill and its aims, and Ministers would do well to listen. If the Minister is listening for the voice of Scotland, I can assure her that she will find it over here on the SNP Benches, not over there on the Tory Benches. Scottish Tory MPs do not even speak for Scottish Tory voters, 95% of whom backed calls for food standards to be maintained, according to Which? People are asking why the Tory Government and the majority of their Back Benchers do not listen to the people—[Interruption.] That includes those who are chuntering from a sedentary position right now. Perhaps if the risk was of chlorine-washed chanterelle mushrooms or hormone-injected foie gras, Tory Ministers would have less of a deaf ear than the one they have turned to those of us who are happier dining on chicken fried rice and mince and tatties.

So much for taking back control, the newly independent, yet strangely impotent UK cannot specify the standard of food we will import going forward: John Bull under the heel of Uncle Sam right enough. That pitiful transatlantic asymmetry rings truer now than at any stage in Anglo-US history. The Tory Government have demonstrated in the most humiliating and unedifying way possible that nothing will get in the way of a US trade deal—in and of itself a highly questionable negotiating position.

The Government have betrayed civil society across these islands and ignored valid evidence and well-documented concerns about the Bill and its shoddy back door, leading to a food standards horror show. The will of the people of these islands is ignored by a Government who have purposely allowed the DIT tail to wag the DEFRA dog on food standards.

That highlights a betrayal that will take some beating—all in the name of breathing life into the Brexit myth of no global trade without Brexit. Meanwhile, Mercedes, Zara, Airbus, Heineken, Volvo and L’Oréal all sell big from within the EU to the US without the need for European Governments to betray their populations and farmers through the food that they produce and feed to their children.

The Government are capable of listening to industry as we saw during covid, when they listened intently to the supermarkets about food supply and to the private supply chains about food distribution. So why will they not listen to farmers on this issue? Farmers have been very clear on matters of provenance, the risk to their business of an any-price trade deal, and the supply of seasonal labour.

Why do the Tory Government seem to hold our farmers in such contempt? The question is rhetorical. We all know that it is because of the twin Tory totems of Brexit and immigration, which, for the hard of thinking, are one and the same thing. On a post-Brexit trade deal, the DIT speaks for Government. The Home Office speaks for Government on immigration, specifically their disastrous approach thus far to access to seasonal labour from abroad. No wonder many are beginning to ask what exactly DEFRA speaks for.

If the Government persist in proscribing the most basic protections for our food supply from the Bill, no amount of watery, weasel words will hide the simple fact that a Government that cannot act as guarantor for the food we eat cannot act as guarantor for anything. Scotland is taking a different route.

[Bill Wiggin]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), just as I did after his maiden speech. May I say that he needs to allow a little more of his Scottish charm to seep into his speeches? I need to declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, particularly as a breeder of Hereford cattle. Some 88% of Herefordshire is farmland, and 10,200 people work on our 2,812 farms.

On amendments 12 and 16, let me say that farming is not a religion; it is a business. We need to increase farm incomes, cut NHS expenditure on obesity, lose the need for food banks, and ensure that we behave towards our livestock in the way that we behave towards one another: with respect, kindness and, most of all, understanding of the huge challenge all this presents. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Green party, Extinction Rebellion and many others have their own agendas on how to run the landscape, so their contribution is not surprising, but the NFU’s is surprising, because it has gone far too far in trying to wrongly frighten people. We must remember that the Agriculture Bill is primarily a continuation Bill. The amendments would put strict conditions in place when the EU negotiates a free trade deal, whereas when we, as part of the EU, negotiated free trade deals with other countries, none of those restrictions were in place. If we impose strict food requirements, America will challenge and win at the WTO. Opposition Members may rejoice at that, but the EU will not be able to accept those terms either.

Agriculture Bill

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

As a relatively new MP, I have been astonished by the commitment of this Government, the ministerial team and the Parliamentary Private Secretary to put the rights of farmers and this great nation at the front of this outstanding Bill.

On my election, I became forged to representing the interests of farmers and the farming industry in my constituency. Farming comes up on a daily basis, and I would like to speak personally about that, rather than about the international scene. The farmers of Derbyshire Dales are of hardy stock. They are wedded to the rugged land and the livestock they raise. They are farmers such as Simon Frost, who picks me up in his Land Rover and takes me around the land that his family has farmed for centuries, and his wife, Suzanne, who has spent her working life in science and animal welfare. They are custodians of land, such as Sir Richard FitzHerbert at Tissington, who showed me around the dales that he and others love so much.

I am also grateful to the agricultural team at Bakewell, and to Alastair Sneddon, auctioneer, who goes out of his way patiently to brief me on the ins and outs of what is happening. Because of those constituents I stand here today to support this outstanding Bill. My constituents have also been well served by the National Farmers’ Union, represented by Andrew Critchlow in Matlock, by Jane Bassett from Hartington, and by Andrew Broadley from Derbyshire Dales.

Derbyshire farmers were understandably wary of newcomers, and I was one of them. Although I had small landowners and tenant farmers in my family, it took them a while to accept me, and to understand that I had their interests at heart. Once elected, I made it my mission to badger the poor ministerial team—they know what I mean—and I sat on the Bill Committee, and worked jolly hard for my constituents whenever I could. I know and am confident that this Government have the interests of farmers and the rest of the population at their heart, and that includes local issues in constituencies such as mine. I think about Hartington Stilton, Dovedale blue cheese, Peakland White, and Peakland Blue, and I know that Ministers have the backs of my constituents who work in those small businesses, and who possibly wish to go global.

We were elected on a manifesto of commitment and of not compromising our standards, and we will not do so—the passage of the Bill has proved that. We have maintained existing protections in law through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and the Bill contains many safety and reviewing features. I am so proud of what we have achieved. This is a listening Government. The jewel in the crown has to be the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and I am delighted by the expertise of those who contribute to that. I therefore support the Bill.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I shall keep my remarks brief, out of courtesy for those further down the call list, but also because there is little left to say about the Bill and the Government’s ambitions therein. I support amendment 16B and its provisions on equivalence for agrifood standards in relation to future trade. The amendment places a benign requirement on the Government to have, as a negotiating objective in trade deal negotiations, the ambition of achieving equivalence of standards. While noting that, I would point out the Secretary of State’s insistence that proponents of protecting food standards, environmental protections and animal welfare standards are seeking to mandate precisely the same standards as we produce here in the UK. That is a tendentious misrepresentation of the pursuit of equivalence, encompassing as it does the same or higher standards.

Amendment 16B does not tie the Government’s hands when negotiating or bind them to any requirements and outcomes, meaning that the Government would still be free to prioritise other negotiating objectives above the duty to seek appropriate equivalence thereby representing the wateriest of all provisions, which if the Government oppose it—as they will—should leave us all very concerned.

I have to say that the Minister has been very generous with her time in discussing these matters with me and listening to my deeply held concerns about the Bill. She debates in such a conciliatory and kind way that I come away believing that she has agreed with me when in fact she has done no such thing in any given instance. [Laughter.]

If this is the last thing I say on this subject, I will observe that I believe the Government have wilfully lost sight of the fundamental importance of the material we are legislating for. We are transacting frameworks for the import of production domestically, not of timber or textiles or televisions, but of the foods that we will eat, and that is what is at risk when the Bill passes unamended, as it inevitably will. The food we prepare and feed to our children has not received the protection it deserves, and nor has its intrinsic worth been recognised—a theme which is manifest in the Agriculture Bill, but also in the Government’s Trade Bill and, of course, the detestable smash-and-grab United Kingdom Internal Market Bill. Everything I have done and said in the passage of this Bill has been in the interests of those working in farming and food production in Angus, in Scotland and across the whole of the UK. The people of these islands deserve better than this, whichever nation they call home. Scotland will have better than this, as the dawning of independence supports.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her incredible work on the Bill, and may I thank the Conservative party—every other Member has thanked their party—because we put this in our manifesto and we have delivered. We promised high standards on animal welfare, and we have kept that promise. We promised that our farmers would be protected, and we have done that. We have fulfilled and honoured what we said we would do. We have taken the EU commitments that we had, and we have brought them into statute.

I thank the Government for listening to farmers, and I am proud that our party is the voice for the British farmer. I welcome the new partnership with the Department for International Trade, but I hope that we will look not only at how we can protect ourselves, but at how we can promote the British farmer; how we can package ourselves; how we can put our delicious cheeses, apples and wines on the lips and in the stomachs of our North American colleagues so that they long for the delicious food quality standards that only we can provide.

Look at the success of Yorkshire Tea, which increased its consumer value in the US by 950% this year alone. That shows what can be done with a strategic plan to market our amazing agricultural products abroad. I welcome the Bill—