Draft Animals (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Aquatic Animal Health and Plant Health (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

David Rutley Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (David Rutley)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Animals (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Aquatic Animal Health and Plant Health (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

[David Rutley]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. There are two sets of regulations for members of the Committee to consider. These statutory instruments are made under the enabling power in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to take powers currently held by the European Commission and transfer them to the appropriate Ministers in the UK.

I should first make it clear that neither instrument makes any change to policy. The instruments are technical and ensure a smooth transfer of powers from the EU to the UK. I should secondly make it clear that the instruments in no way diminish our controls in the important subject areas covered. There is no proposal to alter or reduce our biosecurity controls for animals or plants, our animal welfare standards or our capacity to protect public health.

Thirdly, Ministers will be able only to make negative resolution statutory instruments on specific procedural or technical matters—I stress that it will be technical matters—that are laid down in the various legislative functions currently exercisable by the Commission. The new enabling powers in these SIs will therefore be confined to only those matters that the EU Parliament and Council have delegated to the Commission to implement by way of tertiary legislation, with input from relevant experts.

Legislative functions are currently conferred on the Commission by EU legislation. They enable the Commission to set out the technical details of the regimes in what is known as tertiary legislation. These two instruments take the powers currently held by the Commission and transfer them to the appropriate UK Ministers. Therefore, the instruments are correcting measures enabled by the 2018 Act. The crucial point is that they do not introduce new policy. They preserve the current animal, fish and plant health regimes and simply ensure that we will continue to operate effectively when we leave the European Union.

The Animals (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019—the first instrument we are considering —cover animal health and welfare. They provide for legislative functions to be exercisable by UK authorities. The exercise of those functions will principally be by way of domestic secondary legislation by the appropriate authorities that is made under the negative resolution procedure because it will involve minor technical amendments to the EU retained law. This instrument transfers existing functions currently conferred on the Commission in the areas of animal transport, which is regulations 2 and 6; livestock identification, which is regulations 3 and 5; transmissible spongiform encephalopathies —TSEs—which is regulation 4; seal products, which is regulation 7; animal slaughter, which is regulation 9; animal by-products—ABPs—which is regulations 8 and 10; and zootechnical conditions, which is regulation 11. That allows us to react and develop the legislation in line with changes in technical requirements and in response to any relevant developments in the future.

The functions include such matters as amending implementation rules and procedures when amending detailed rules in respect of sampling and laboratory methods; approval of new scientific disease-related tests; revisions to disease monitoring and surveillance; setting down rules for breeding programmes to recognise disease resistance in livestock; determining feed safety practices; amendment of training and educational programmes; and the uniform application of disease contingency plans. The functions also include the powers to amend the welfare requirements for transporting live animals and to amend animal slaughter methods to take account of scientific and technical progress.

Regulation 12 is a cross-cutting regulation applying across this instrument generally. It contains transitional and saving provisions relating to standard form documents. For example, new forms will be introduced for the UK, but under these regulations it will be permissible to use the current EU forms after exit day for a period of time, so that the movement of products can continue unhindered in a pragmatic way while new forms are being considered and published.

Turning to the Aquatic Animal Health and Plant Health (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019—the second statutory instrument before us—I wish to draw to hon. Members’ attention to one matter relating to the explanatory memorandum, which has been amended. The amended version, which was published last week on 18 February, merely deletes incorrect references to powers not included in the SI, and therefore does not affect the content of the SI itself.

The first of these powers—to edit the criteria of listing diseases—was not included in the SI because the focus of the instrument is to ensure day one readiness. The power to amend the criteria, as listed in directive 2006/88, does not require being transferred at this stage, as the current criteria are well established and effective. The power to edit the criteria may be transferred to UK Ministers in future, but it is not required in the short term.

The second change involves the power to set out detailed rules for the introduction into the EU from third countries of aquaculture animals and related products. This was moved from this instrument and covered in the Import of and Trade in Animals and Animal Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, debated in the House on 19 February, which contains a number of similar amendments. I apologise to members of the Committee for the inconvenience that might have caused.

The second instrument ensures that a series of legislative functions currently conferred by EU legislation upon the European Commission will be exercisable instead by Governments in the United Kingdom. The difference is that this instrument relates to EU directives, while the previous instrument—the first one we discussed—covers EU regulation brought into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

Directives in this SI are transposed into domestic law by UK regulations and, in some cases, primary legislation when they come forward, so they are already on the UK statute book. However, the functions conferred on the Commission in those directives were not transposed, as it would not have been appropriate to do so, because they refer to EU institutions. They are now being brought in by these regulations to the appropriate Ministers in the UK.

I reiterate my earlier point that Ministers will only be able to make negative resolution statutory instruments on the various legislative functions currently exercisable by the European Commission in specific procedural or technical matters that are laid down. The new enabling powers will therefore be confined to only those matters that the European Parliament and Council have delegated to the European Commission to implement by way of tertiary legislation with input from relevant experts. As with the previous instrument, there is no change in policy.

Part 2 of the second instrument relates to aquatic animal health and part 3 relates to plant health. The regulations relating to plant health do not extend to Scotland—plant health is devolved and Scottish Ministers have chosen to bring forward their own legislation to deal with technical operability issues solely arising from EU exit from plant health legislation.

In part 2, which transfers functions relating to aquatic animal health, the instrument transfers existing European Commission legislation functions to appropriate UK Ministers. It will enable them to amend the list of diseases for disease control purposes, and draw up and, importantly, update this for third countries or parts of third countries, from which aquaculture animals and related products can be introduced into the UK post-exit.

In part 3, which deals with transferring functions in relation to plant health, this instrument transfers the legislative functions to appropriate Ministers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to make amendments, keeping pace with developments in scientific knowledge or changes in risks in plant health. The appropriate Ministers will also be able to specify import conditions that apply to plants and plant products originating in a third country. This is important in enabling international trade based on an assessment of the risk. It also enables appropriate Ministers to put in place temporary emergency measures for the purposes of preventing the introduction or spread of a plant pest. As I have said, there is no lessening of our prior security controls and these measures will enable us to respond to emerging threats.

These instruments will ensure that an operable legal framework is in place for exit day. They make no policy changes. For the reasons set out, I commend them to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his characteristically in-depth and thoughtful contributions and his extensive questions, which I will endeavour to address to his satisfaction. I also thank hon. Members for their presence on the Committee.

As we have discussed, the two instruments transfer specified functions to the UK Minister. Without establishing those powers in United Kingdom law, respective UK Ministers would be unable to bring forward measures for which the European Commission currently has authority on behalf of member states.

The hon. Gentleman kindly referred to the fact that DEFRA is under a lot of pressure with respect to SIs. Let us be absolutely clear: as part of leaving the EU, we are onshoring environmental, agricultural and fisheries policy in one go, so there will inevitably be a lot of SIs on the back of that. I am grateful to him and his team for bearing with us, which they have generally done in good spirit in the light of the amount of work going on, as has the ministerial team. I should more than anything pay tribute to officials at DEFRA for the huge amount of work that they do to make this possible.

We have laid out the SIs that are required for day-one exit. Final scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments determines what needs to happen, and the final few SIs are passing that hurdle as we speak. We are getting most of the SIs into the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments’ hopper, so we are well through the programme and making good progress. We sorted instruments that are legislative in nature into the affirmative procedure and decided that it was more efficient to pass others via the negative procedure, as hon. Members would expect. The drafts are considered in detail by the JCSI and are published several weeks before the parliamentary debate, so there is time to consider them, but I understand what the hon. Gentleman says.

A huge amount of work is going on, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to bear with us. I have not personally come across what he calls stakeholder fatigue, but I am conscious that there is a lot going on, and we are working very closely with stakeholders to try to provide the information that is required to help them.

It is important to recognise that, given the amount of work that is going on, we are trying to focus on the right piece of legislation at the right time. The policies within the SIs we have brought forward remain unchanged. The hon. Gentleman asked whether there was little or no significant change. I do not want to dance on the head of a pin, but I assure him that these are incredibly minor technical amendments. I know he has gone through them in great detail, and I am sure he can see that they are incredibly technical.

The hon. Gentleman requested further clarity on the appropriate authorities. They are the Secretary of State, the Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Ministers and the Northern Ireland Department. The definition of “other responsible authorities” depends partly on which part of the SIs we are talking about, but in the aquatic animal health and plant health SI they are simply other Ministers or the Northern Ireland Department.

As I said, these are minor technical amendments to retained EU legislation. The hon. Gentleman talked about sequencing. I think—I hope I have got this right—he is concerned about when the future negative SIs that are referred to in the two instruments would come into place. They would come forward when there was a need. We are transferring powers so that the Minister—the UK Minister or the Minister in a devolved Administration —can recognise that there has been a change in circumstances and update the technical requirements as a result. That is what we are talking about. We are not looking at a tsunami of future SIs all in one go. We are transferring powers to respond. At the moment we are in a very good place—we have good positions in place on plant and aquatic health and animal welfare—but we want to ensure that we have the power to make amendments in the future.

The hon. Gentleman asked about consultation and impact assessments. There was no consultation because there is no policy change. These changes are very technical and forward looking. For similar reasons, there was no impact assessment either.

The hon. Gentleman asked a number of very important questions about science. We have outstanding science, which is supported by the Government and the taxpayer, and we are considering how best to allocate resources. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is well aware of our demands, or suggestions, and no doubt of those of other stakeholders.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned our science agencies. We are very fortunate to have outstanding Government agencies and expert committees, which have genuinely worldwide recognition for undertaking risk assessments and advising the Government. They have been doing that work for many years, and we will be able to retain that expertise. We have the expertise of the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. We want to ensure that we retain that and, in time, build on it.

I think I have already answered the hon. Gentleman’s question about the various authorities that would be passed on to different Ministers, and about who those Ministers would be. I hope I did so to his satisfaction. He also talked about ensuring that we have the necessary resources in place. In debates on previous SIs, I have discussed with some of his counterparts what we are doing to support vets, for example. That includes ensuring that there is enough training to enable vets to step up and do what will be required on export health certificates, and we have also made strong representations to the Migration Advisory Committee about returning veterinary surgeons to the shortage occupation list, which I know the hon. Gentleman strongly supports.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned fish husbandry. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 made it an offence to cause animals, including fish, avoidable pain or suffering. There are mechanisms to ensure that welfare standards are in place. We have no current plans to extend animal welfare legislation to cover specific husbandry requirements for fish, but we do not rule out making such additions in the future.

The hon. Gentleman also made important points about TSEs. I can assure him and other members of the Committee that the TSE monitoring programme will not be watered down by the amendments and will continue unchanged after EU exit. The regulations exactly reflect the current EU programme, and the Government have no plans to revise our existing annual monitoring programme for TSEs, which will remain at pre-EU exit levels for the foreseeable future.

I hope that I have answered just about all the questions. Of course, the hon. Gentleman and I have a good relationship, and I can answer any other questions afterwards—or it can be done in writing. I hope that hon. Members are now more fully aware of why the regulations are needed. Overall, the regimes will continue to function similarly to how they did before. For the reasons that I have set out, I trust that members of the Committee will give the regulations their support.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Animals (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

Draft Aquatic Animal Health and Plant Health (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Aquatic Animal Health and Plant Health (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.—(David Rutley.)