Welfare of Laying Hens Directive
Debate between Jason McCartney and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Miss McIntosh
The Minister will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s comments, and I invite him to respond. It is perverse to introduce regulatory costs for manufacturers, retailers and processers at this time.
Miss McIntosh
I would like to make some progress.
I put it to the Minister that he has three options before 1 January. The first is to do nothing, as he set out in his recent written statement to the House, and to let the ban lapse before it even takes effect and to offload the costs of policing processed products—not shelled eggs, but eggs in powdered, liquid and other forms. That would be unacceptable.
The second option is to take unilateral action, and the Commission clearly states that the Minister would be entirely within his rights to do so. Indeed, he said in the Government’s response to the Committee’s ninth report on the welfare of laying hens directive:
“We will be pressing to ensure that the Commission initiate infraction proceedings against Member States whose caged egg producers are non-compliant”.
He went on to say that the Government would also consider taking unilateral action:
“The Government has thoroughly investigated the possibility of taking unilateral action and bringing in a UK ban on all imports of egg and egg products which have been produced in conventional cages in other Member States”.
What has changed the Minister’s mind between the quite recent date of publication—25 November—and today? The Minister should take unilateral action, rejecting shell eggs or egg products in powdered, liquid or any other form, based on the legal letter and the legal basis of the directive, backed up by the commissioner’s response to the Committee.
The third option that I invite the Minister to consider is to tour European capitals. It is not up to members of the Committee. We had a warm response from the incoming President, the Danish Agriculture Minister, when we made a visit two weeks ago. She asked the Committee which other capitals we had visited, and which other Ministers we had met. I regret to say that I had to respond that we are not allowed out very often, so it is not really the role of the Committee. It is the role of Ministers from the 14 compliant member states to tour member states to secure—if the Minister does not want to take unilateral action—a multilateral ban on their part. There are 14 or 16 other countries—we are not entirely sure how many—who will not comply.