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

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and his committee for their excellent report. As he rightly said, some of it is out of date, but the basic questions are very important and still relevant, despite the Government’s response. I am the odd one out this afternoon, as I am the only Back-Bencher here who did not serve on the committee. I shall ask my noble friend a host of questions. I know that he will not be able to reply to them all today, but I hope that he will give me detailed responses in due course.

I start with fishing. Just before the Trade and Cooperation Agreement was finalised, the Government told us all that there would be an incremental benefit to the fishing industry to the tune of about £148 million by 2026. Where are the figures to justify this? We do not have them yet and we do not have a balance sheet, and it is quite wrong that the Government have not produced them. The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations has produced its own report, which shows a totally different figure; it shows that the fishing industry is likely to lose £300 million by 2026 and that the UK fishing fleet has serious problems ahead of it. That report was prepared by a former Defra official, so I presume it to be well based and fairly accurate.

To continue on the theme of a full report from the Government, does my noble friend agree that no assessment of the TCA provisions is relevant for fishing without including the non-quota species? Fundamentally, does my noble friend agree that any deal that allows EU fleets to catch 42,000 tonnes of fish in our waters and for us to catch only 12,000 tonnes in EU waters is doomed to be a failure and a continuation of a rather disastrous 1983 agreement?

Inevitably, leaving Europe has led to more bureaucracy. Does my noble friend agree that the cost of extra bureaucracy and filling in forms for the non-tariff barriers, health certificates, catch certificates and border checks is going to cost the fishing industry a further £24 million?

I want a vibrant, economic fishing industry, but I also want one that is environmentally friendly. British trawlers catch fish by dragging nets along the seabed; they are not the only ones to do so. On average, bottom trawling fisheries release about 1 billion metric tonnes of CO₂ annually. Of that, Britain produces about 90 million metric tonnes of CO₂. Why were these figures not included in the COP discussions? We produce more CO₂ from the seabed than the aviation industry does—and the aviation industry is getting stick, but the fishing industry is not. Why does my noble friend not stop this abysmal habit? Only 1% of UK waters are fully protected, and 97% of our offshore MPAs are subjected to destructive practices of bottom trawling and dredging. What plans has my noble friend to change those figures?

Finally on fishing, does my noble friend agree that the economics of deep-sea trawling do not stand up, and that the UK’s marine heritage is being damaged to destruction by other nations’ fisheries in the vast majority of cases? I hope that he agrees with that; it was a statement made by his fellow Minister and our noble friend Lord Benyon when he was in another place.

Moving on to agriculture, we recently had the trade deals with New Zealand and Australia, which have put the fear of God into our farmers. There is no detail from our Government about how they are going to work with farmers to promote exports, to drive efficiency and to increase productivity in the same way that the Governments of Australia and New Zealand have been doing for many years. Let us not forget that the cost of producing lamb in New Zealand is 63% lower than in the UK, and milk is 25% lower in New Zealand.

In the foreword to the Government’s reply to the Trade and Agriculture Commission report, we find the words:

“Promoting the interests of our farmers … is a priority of our trade policy and our trade deals are delivering on this.”


How do the Australia and New Zealand trade deals tangibly benefit UK farmers? We have had no reply to that, and it is time we had one. Could my noble friend tell me how he expects the bilateral safeguard to work and for how long it will apply?

I return to the Trade and Agriculture Commission report and the Government’s response to it. Any government response that states that a report makes “innovative and far-reaching proposals” means that that report is condemned to the shelf that gathers the most dust. It is obviously too difficult for the Government to get their minds around it. What is happening to the new export council to open up these new market opportunities? Where are the details? Where is the budget? There was nothing in this year’s Budget on export promotion, so where is the money coming from for that?

As we look to the future, we must not achieve our climate change ambitions by exporting UK production of food. In the way that farmers are being treated at the moment, it is likely that we will increase the percentage of food that is brought in from abroad, rather than the home-use percentage. It must be galling for our farmers to produce high-quality food to the highest standards, only for most of it to be turned into processed food that is bad for our health. Why do we have the highest standards and the highest level of processed foods in western Europe? If that is not enough, farmers have to plough in and lose a vast amount of crops because of a lack of workforce. The crop wastage in 2021, so far, is estimated at £61 million and there is a labour shortage of 18.8%. Can my noble friend tell me what plans he has for that?

Finally and quickly on the environment, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, about Europe not coming up to the mark on COP 26. Will my noble friend confirm that he is looking at the question of land management, and biodiversity and nature management? We have just done the Environment Bill and have ELMS coming up, but nowhere in there have we looked at how management will happen. There has never been a time when more surveys have been carried out by the Government into nature and how we treat it, and never have they changed the goalposts so often. The farmers, who are under pressure anyway, are the custodians of our countryside. We need to help them in order to help nature and biodiversity.