Oral Answers to Questions

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

While the other place’s International Agreements Committee report broadly welcomed the Australia-UK trade deal for sectors such as financial services, it was concerned about the deal’s impact on UK agriculture, highlighting that it will allow the importation of beef from deforested land, crops grown with pesticides not permitted in the UK or the EU, and often no protection from copies for products such as Scottish whisky and Cornish pasties. The Committee fears that that will continue with other trade deals that the Government pursue and criticises their refusal to involve the devolved Governments. How can farms and our food and drink sector remain profitable in the face of such free trade agreements? Does the Secretary of State accept that his failure to achieve protections from untrammelled competition for farmers and food producers will ultimately have an impact on their businesses and livelihoods?

[George Eustice]

In the context of the free trade agreement with Australia, we secured staging protections for the sensitive sectors of beef and lamb for a decade, and then a very strong special agricultural safeguard thereafter, set against volumes. We judged that that would be sufficient to manage any risks to the market. It is important to recognise that Australia cannot compete with the UK on the vast majority of agricultural products, including dairy. In lamb, New Zealand cannot compete with the UK and does not use the quota it already has. Beef is an issue that we are watching, but we believe that we have the right protections in place.

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The hon. Member for City of Chester, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

2. What recent assessment the Committee has made of the potential effect of the (a) Elections Act 2022 and (b) provisions in the Online Safety Bill on the transparency of political campaigning communications.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester)]

The commission’s view is that the digital imprints requirement in the Elections Act will increase transparency by helping voters understand who is paying to target them online. It could provide further transparency if the requirement were extended to cover all digital material from unregistered campaigners, regardless of whether they paid to promote it. The commission has said that other changes in the Act relating to non-party campaigners will bring limited additional transparency, while increasing the complexity of the law.

The Online Safety Bill would include new freedom of speech protections for some campaigning content, but does not include any provisions that would directly affect the transparency of political campaign activities.

[Deidre Brock]

Recently, openDemocracy highlighted research that suggests it is difficult to establish exactly what more than £3.6 million was spent on by the Conservative party before the 2019 general election because of unclear or even unavailable invoices. Without that clarity, it is obviously difficult to establish exactly what political campaigning communications resulted from contracts that included £700,000 and £1.6 million to political consultancy firms, or even from the 200 out of 300 local Conservative branches that apparently submitted returns with no invoices. Yet the commission said it was “not proportionate” to take enforcement action. Under what circumstances would the commission be prepared to take action?

[Christian Matheson]

The commission reviewed the spending return delivered by the Conservative party following the 2019 parliamentary general election, and is aware that not all the required invoices were provided. Having reviewed the compliance of the return as a whole, it was decided that it was not proportionate to take enforcement action in relation to those missing invoices.

The hon. Member mentioned local associations, and local association campaign spending and accompanying invoices or receipts at a UK parliamentary general election are submitted as part of the spending return from their central party. The commission is required to publish the returns as soon as reasonably possible, whether or not they are complete. When a return is incomplete, the commission will consider what action to take in line with the principles of proportionality, as set out in its enforcement policy.