Draft Plant Protection Products (Miscellaneous amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Pesticides (Maximum Residue Levels) (Amendment Etc.) Regulations 2019

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 21st February 2019 General Committees

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms McDonagh. I get up every day and wonder what I am going to do today, and then I remember that it is another SI. This is the third one I have been on this week. It was moving animals in the first one, and fertilisers yesterday on the Floor of the House. Today we have pesticides. This is probably the most complex and, potentially, the most controversial, because some believe that we should bear down on pesticides. I know the Minister has read every page and has notes. He will be pleased that I will not refer to the instruments page by page, but some important issues must be put on the record. Hopefully my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich will choose to question the Minister about some of them.

The Opposition’s biggest criticism is that the preamble in EU law is missing—we have not brought it across—which means that the interpretive effect and the broader legal framework is not there. I am sure the Minister will comment on that. It matters because it relates to where this fits with the withdrawal Act. We are trying to replicate in a very short time something that has been in place for 45 years. The preamble says, for example, that

“public health should be given priority over the interest of crop protection”.

What is the Government’s attitude to that? The minimum residue levels are set in consultation with the EFSA. Does our Food Standards Agency have the capability, let alone the capacity, to take on the role?

There are all sorts of issues in dealing with banned substances. There are rules for third countries, minimum data requirements and continuous monitoring. I have a huge list, which I am sure the Minister will at least know about. The reality is that he did not mention those points. Where are we in terms of the monitoring and evaluation of something as crucial to pesticides? We have not necessarily abrogated that to the EU because much of the work has been done in this country, but the process and protocol will be difficult to replicate, at least in the short run.

I am indebted to the Pesticide Action Network, which is a good organisation. I do not necessarily agree with it on every aspect, but it has done me proud, because I do not have time to go through every page of the statutory instruments. It has identified six areas, some of which were rehearsed when the Lords discussed the measures in November. It is interesting how long they have taken to get to this place—normally the scrutiny in the two Houses happens fairly rapidly.

PAN’s first critique is about the loss of oversight, checks and balances, and the significant consolidation of power, and not just in Westminster—much of it is devolved. What accountability is there for the oversight, checks and balances that come with the powers that we are granting to the Minister? That matters because, for all its faults, the EU has a process with EFSA that is subject to scrutiny in this country. As my noble friend Baroness Jones of Whitchurch said in the other place:

“At the moment, we have in the EU a thorough process of evaluation of products. The responsibilities for risk assessments are shared out across member states. There are clear decision-making roles for the European Food Safety Authority, the rapporteur member state, individual member states and the European Commission. All this is supported and backed up by access to the best scientific advice. While no process is perfect, there is considerable assurance that within the EU a detailed assessment of the risks has been carried out and cross-checked.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 February 2019; Vol. 795, c. 1831.]

Presumably, that will pass to HSE, which has faced dramatic cuts in the last decade and more. It will be interesting to see what additional staff it will get as the competent authority. We talk about 150 people, but how many of those will be in HSE?

The second argument is about the weakening of the requirement to obtain independent scientific advice. The Minister made the point that there will be independent evaluation, but my concern has always been—this is not recent; I had it in my previous incarnation—that much of the research money received by the academics who end up on the evaluation boards comes from the companies. That is what happens to ensure that we are at the front end of the science. The conflicts of interest are not easy to overcome. I am interested to know how independent is “independent”? How easy will it be to set something up in a short time that not only reflects that independence, but ensures that what we are doing is appropriate, not bureaucratic and safety conscious? Human health must be our primary consideration.

The third point is about the weakening of other standards, which is partly about deadlines. The Minister touched on the EU’s requirements to review minimum residue levels within 12 months of an active substance being authorised. The worry is that the Government, under the powers they are taking, seem to have a lot more discretion about what they do and when. PAN advances the criticism that it is less obvious how the Government will pursue emergency interventions and what the timescales will be. As my noble friend Baroness Jones said, the explanatory memorandum states that the renewal programme will

“need to be proportionate for one country alone to deliver”,

which the UK obviously is. How will the Government transpose that into British law to ensure that it is appropriate and carried out properly?

The fourth point is that the important parts of the regime are left unclear, or details will be filled in later. Again, the Minister was open about that. We will need to have other SIs because the situation will evolve. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, things are changing within the EU and we may not be able to keep up to date because of our short-term pressures. We therefore have to be very clear on our response and how we will be able to guarantee—we want to sell into the European market—that we are doing the right things in the right way.

Fifthly—colleagues will be pleased to hear that I will not be much longer—there is a lack of capacity and lack of investment in stand-alone regimes. We are currently part of a very sophisticated process. I have mentioned the HSE. There will be considerable interest in what mechanism the Government put in place at both an academic level and a scrutiny level to ensure that it is fit for purpose and that things are happening as they should.

The chemical division of the HSE has 150 people. I am not clear whether the Minister will get an additional 150 people or the same 150 people will be doing what they already do. Will they be doing what they are doing now and a lot more because they are a stand-alone organisation? They will not be part of a wider process even though they have been key to that wider process.

I will not go through them, but there are some mistakes in the drafting, which I will be happy to send notes on—no doubt PAN has sent them to the Government already. It would be interesting to know whether they have been picked up.

To conclude, pesticides are very important. Pesticides are crucial to farmers—there are farmers on the Government Benches who know how important they are. They are also very important to people’s health. If we get this wrong and let the wrong things go on the marketplace, we will pay the consequences.

More than anything, this is about trading arrangements. Again, we are now trying to put in place, in a great deal of hurry, a sophisticated system to replicate what is already there, and I wonder about the timescale. It will be difficult if we crash out—how capable are we of doing this from the start of April without question marks about safety and about the appropriateness of the scrutiny mechanism? More particularly, how will the consumer be absolutely guaranteed that what is happening is happening in the right way and not a hostage to fortune?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I want to draw on some of the points made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stroud. I will return to the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby at the end.

The first thing to note is that the current regulation that governs active substances is Regulation (EC) 1107/2009. Our own HSE was largely instrumental in the drafting of it. I have to point out to the hon. Member for Stroud that the then Labour Government voted against that infrastructure despite the fact that we had been involved in drafting it on the basis that they did not agree with the hazard-based principle. Nevertheless, we as a Government are bringing across the existing regime, with all its imperfections, including the hazard-based principle. We are bringing it over exactly as it is and placing it on the UK statute book.

To address the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby, who is obviously anxious to do things better, yes there are indeed opportunities to do things better and to refine the system, but that is a discussion for another day. We are absolutely crystal clear that the EU (Withdrawal) Act is about bringing across the existing regulatory structure. It seeks to make no policy changes whatever, and the regulations make no changes whatever.

To draw on the point about HSE resources, probably only the eight largest member states of the European Union have any meaningful capacity to do such work on pesticides. The UK is renowned in Europe for being the leader in terms of the scale and scope of our expertise. As the hon. Member for Stroud says, we have 150 experts on pesticides in the chemical regulations directorate. We have identified that there will be an additional workload. Scoping work has suggested that the directorate will probably need another 40 members of staff. The directorate has commenced that work, and we have identified that we will probably need to give it an additional £5 million a year to do it. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that the directorate already does the bulk of the work. It is simply fiction to think that the European Union does it. The European Union has an oversight role and owns the regulations, but the actual work—the technical evaluation—is already done by our own Health and Safety Executive.

[Dr Drew]

If we are not doing that work for the EU, the EU will have a huge hole. Obviously, we will have to check food that comes into this country because of the potential that the EU now might not be as effective. Is that not the reality?

[George Eustice]

It is very much the case that I would be open to saying that, as part of any future partnership, we should still have wider European technical working groups, so that the European Union can continue to benefit from British expertise but, at the moment, we are obviously not at the point of being able to advance discussions at that level of detail—as things stand, we are struggling to get a withdrawal agreement agreed by both sides at all.