Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Kieran Mullan

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Gareth Thomas]

Q My last question is this. The Government have sold the benefits of the two FTAs as partly being about the huge, new, billion pounds-worth of Government procurement options that will be available. Do you think that that is one of the reasons why farming has been thrown under the bus? Was it that the opportunities in other sectors, such as Government procurement, were so good that they could afford to give so much away to the Australians? Or were there other reasons—inexperience, worries about Brexit and so on—why farming came off so badly?

Nick von Westenholz: I would not want to give a long answer; we all have opinions on what happened with the negotiations. I would just say that if you are doing a trade deal with a country such as Australia or New Zealand—countries that are, particularly when it comes to goods, already almost totally liberalised, and are very big and effective agricultural exporters—agriculture in the UK will probably be the main sector to come under pressure as a result. If you wanted to do a deal, and particularly if you wanted to do it quickly, and wanted it to be liberalising, as was the Government’s intention, I am not sure that you could do it in any way that did not at least have the potential to have a negative impact on UK agriculture, though none of us knows exactly what the outcome of the deals will be in the next few years.

Jonnie Hall: If you look at modern trade deals—deals in the last 20-plus years—agriculture has often been the sacrificial lamb in those trade negotiations, no pun intended, so the expression, “being thrown under the bus”, resonates quite clearly with the agrifood sector. In modern-day economies, it is in digital, tech, manufacturing and finance that great gains are to be made. We are the primary producers of a primary product; when it comes to overall value, agriculture and food products will be relegated to the tail end of a trade agreement between modern economies. If you ask other sectors of the economy, they will probably think that the agreements that have been signed are very much in their interests and create opportunity. We tend to see them in another way.

Gareth Parry: I wanted to answer the question on the Trade and Agricultural Commission. Forgive me, but I am not 100% sure of the full list of TAC members; however, we have long had the policy that representation on the commission needs to reflect the potential impacts on the agriculture and food sectors across the UK. I emphasise the need for good representation of all nations. I fully agree with what Nick and Jonnie said about the effectiveness of the TAC. As was said, it is no secret that the agricultural sectors in both the countries that we are talking about are huge. There will always be winners and losers in these types of liberalised trade deals, and unfortunately, as we can see from the impact assessments, agriculture is predicted to be one of the sectors that is a significant loser from these deals.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Q To help me understand better how our arrangements compare to those of others, can you say how much scrutiny you feel MPs had of procurement arrangements when we were in the EU, as compared to now, under our independent approach?

Nick von Westenholz: When we were a member of the EU, all trade agreements by the EU were scrutinised directly by Committees of Parliament. There was, through that process, a good degree of parliamentary scrutiny. At that time, Parliament retained a theoretical ability to either accept or reject all regulations stemming from the EU. A lot of people might argue that the power was exercised rarely, if ever, and that played greatly into the debate on our membership of the EU, but certainly formerly Parliament had a greater ability to oppose trade deals.