Brexit: Food, Environment, Energy and Health (European Union Committee Report)

Duke of Montrose Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Grand Committee

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who has covered so many of the issues, and most of the ones that I would like to touch on. I feel that the title of the debate this afternoon goes well beyond Brexit. Like many others, I offer the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, congratulations on securing a debate on this report, which was our committee’s swansong back in March this year. It encapsulated a great series of reports into every possible aspect of Brexit that our remit contained, beginning with Brexit and fisheries in December 2016, almost five years ago.

I declare my family’s interest in the rural and agricultural sector.

Throughout the process of producing these reports, the staff did wonders in summoning witnesses involved in every conceivable aspect, unravelling the many technical aspects and then hammering the findings into a series of succinct reports. The Government’s response is full of the idealism that characterised much of our approach to the whole Brexit deal. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, emphasised, there are many promises on which we are still waiting to see whether Europe can be brought to agree with our wishes—not just on Northern Ireland. Our concerns were largely due to the reliance of various sectors on trade with Europe and the perishable commodities involved.

As we negotiated, we waited anxiously until, at the last minute, Europe agreed to grant us third-country status. Then we welcomed the Government’s achievement in gaining a tariff and quota-free deal but, as our report pointed out, they got nowhere near a sensible approach to the sanitary and phytosanitary measures.

I must thank the NFU and the National Sheep Association for giving me an up-to-date position in their sectors. Another sector greatly affected has been fishing. Since January, UK agri-food exporters to the EU reckon to have lost more than £1.8 billion in income, while we have given extended grace periods to our EU competitors to sell in our market. In particular, 30% less lamb has been sold into Europe in this period. When it comes to exporting live animals for breeding, there has been a barrier due to the complete lack of border control posts with live animal facilities, to the extent that there are now sheep breeders with orders from EU farmers valued at £40,000 each who have no hope of getting a deal.

The Government laid great emphasis in their plans on a trade specialised committee on sanitary and phytosanitary matters. Has this ever been established? What sign is there of it facilitating trade between the parties?

Like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I ask how much of the funding provided this year for setting up a single trade window based on electronic documents has been spent, and with what outcomes. At present, our processes are faced with between £1,600 and £4,000 of additional costs per lorry going over to Europe. The fact that we have delayed setting any further controls for goods coming in from the EU may go some way to keeping supermarket shelves stocked as we go towards Christmas, but the food production issues that we currently face are due largely to workforce availability. As a consequence, I understand that the food industry has asked for a 12-month Covid recovery visa to expand the seasonal workers scheme. Has this been fully implemented?

A couple of sections of our report were on energy and the environment, topics that occupied many hours of discussion at the recent COP 26 gathering in Glasgow. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, our committee was considerably concerned about the remit given to any Office for Environmental Protection. Given that this has now been brought into existence, it was interesting to hear the noble Lord remark that the office is fully functional. I would like confirmation on that.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the session which my noble friend the Minister chaired at COP 26, on nature and the environment. Forestry and farming were much in focus as areas where carbon sequestration measures are practical possibilities. For the last couple of years, the NFU of England and Wales has been aiming for net-zero production by 2040, and in Scotland the aim is 2045. The mechanisms and results are fairly new science, and it is not clear whether the current calculations are based on the complete, whole-farm carbon cycle. This may become even more important as we negotiate the present trade agreement with Australia. I believe that it is as yet unwilling to sign up to any climate agreements and yet it seems to think that, by its calculation, its meat and dairy production will be net zero before the dates that we are considering.

From my day in Glasgow it was obvious that, as well as the environment, agriculture and food play out on a global stage, so much emphasis was placed on the need to establish norms which will allow us to compare and learn from what is happening in Australia, New Zealand and even the United States. I was particularly interested to hear the approach of the US Secretary for Agriculture, whose stated policy at the conference was to achieve more effective use of fertilisers and a reduction in methane emissions and to look after his 200,000 farmers. At that rate, we can expect a lot more competition from that quarter. Can my noble friend the Minister give the Committee any indication of the Government’s view of how this will affect our farm production in the UK?