Trade Bill

Giles Watling Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

I shall endeavour to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker—in fact, I have spent the past 10 minutes furiously editing my speech.

I welcome the Trade Bill. It is a breath of fresh air to be able to talk about the opportunities of global trade rather than just the process of Brexit. As the Secretary of State and many other Members have pointed out, the Bill does not cover new trade agreements, but rather aims to help with the process of transitioning the EU’s trade agreements to UK agreements. It is worth reflecting on some of the opportunities that will provide.

My constituents in Clacton voted strongly for Brexit. Of course, there was a range of issues behind that, including control over our laws, borders and money, as well as trade, but one key aspect of trade is ensuring that the deals we strike are consistent with British values, and specifically British values with regard to animal welfare. I fully recognise and support the reasons for transposing existing EU law into UK law: to provide business with certainty and consistency. To my mind, the Bill does just that; it provides a great deal of stability for business. However, in our recent debate on animal sentience, it was clear to me and to many others that existing British law is far more robust than EU law in this area. Therefore, as we go through the Brexit process and consider the trade implications, we need to look past EU law and maybe use these transposed regulations as a starting point to see how British trade policy and law could do more for animal welfare once we are outside the EU.

My message for Ministers is this: the Bill is a great step forward, but we must not simply fall back on adopting unreformed EU law where there is clearly a case to use EU regulations as a stepping stone to a better place. For example, an EU pet travel regulation introduced in 2014 brought further measures to strengthen enforcement, which was welcome. As the UK withdraws from the EU, there will be opportunities to re-evaluate the rules to ensure that they are fit for the modern world and to exercise our trade laws and regulations more efficiently than the EU could.

Animal welfare has always been dear to my heart—indeed, I fought against some outrageous puppy farming in Wales in the mid-1990s. Please do not assume that I am simply rubbishing the work that the UK and the EU have already done on animal welfare and trade. The EU regulation on the welfare of animals in transport, for example, has achieved dramatic improvements, but does it go far enough? Animals must be transported in a way that will not cause them injury or suffering. European law that governs the welfare of animals during transport applies to anyone who transports live vertebrate animals in connection with “economic activity”—a business or trade. That is something that I am sure we all support.

My point is that with a more dynamic trading relationship with the world outside the EU, we cannot simply use old EU regulation as default. Rather, we should put British values of animal welfare, and the need always to improve, update and refine these rules, at the heart of our trade initiatives and associated laws. Let this Bill lay the ground work for a future trading policy that makes us proud of how we discharge our duties towards animals within the trading system.

Finally, the Executive need the powers to negotiate with the strength of the knowledge that what they say goes. More importantly, those with whom they negotiate must know that our Executive have that power, because otherwise we are all weakened. That is why I support the Bill.