Agriculture Bill

Lord Duncan of Springbank Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I know that the Minister will be relieved that I am in the last chunk of speakers on this group. The degree of consensus across the Chamber in support of Amendments 270 and 271, in particular, has been quite remarkable, and those are the amendments that I wish to address.

With regard to Amendment 270, much of what I was going to say has been said, so, perhaps untraditionally in the House of Lords, I will not say it. However, I have two questions which I do not think have been raised. First, when I helped to scrutinise the Trade Bill, with great fanfare the Government announced the UK strategic trade advisory group. It was designed to be permanent, have regular meetings and support the consideration of standards. I would be interested to know how that will interact with the Trade and Agriculture Commission. There is a standing group. Is the expectation that the commission will be absorbed into that group?

Secondly, we have a network—again, launched with great fanfare—of international trade commissioners around the world, but I am still unsure what their role will be when other trade commissioners are appointed by the Secretary of State. Will they have any interaction with this issue? I suspect not, but if that can be clarified, I will be grateful.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and others have mentioned, these issues were raised in our debates on the Trade Bill. However, when they were, the Minister said that that Bill was not the appropriate place for them. As we have heard, when they have been raised in debates on the Agriculture Bill, it has been said that this Bill is not the appropriate place for them either. At some stage, we will have to find an appropriate place for these issues, as has been made clear in the Committee. I suspect that this Bill is that place.

This House expressed its opinion and passed an amendment on standards during discussions on the Trade Bill. I wrote to the Trade Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, when he was appointed, asking why the Government had reintroduced the Trade Bill stripping out the amendments that the Lords had made to it. He said in his reply to me that the amendments that the Lords had passed were “otiose”. After looking up that word—I confess to the Committee—I was disappointed to hear what the Minister had said, but this is now the time and place, and I do not think that this issue is otiose.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, who is not in his place, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who is, for their contributions. I suspect they are more in tune with the feelings of Conservative Back-Benchers in the other place than here. It is worth listening to what they say because I suspect that they speak for the authentic view of the Conservative Party this year in many respects when it comes to trade. I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering; I wish that hers was the authentic voice but, because we cannot guarantee that, we must have some protections in place in this legislation.

What struck me was that both the noble Viscount and the noble Lord tried to say, in the false narrative that they perpetuate, that there are now clear distinctions and indeed contradictions between producer interest, consumer interest, environmental interest and animal welfare interest. They are all now combined and cannot be easily separated, as in the past. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, reminded us of the establishment of the WTO in 1990. He did not mention another piece of pioneering development in 1990, when he was Trade and Industry Secretary: the Food Safety Act. He felt no contradiction at the time between putting enhanced standards for food safety for our consumers on the statute book and being the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Perhaps he has forgotten about that—but he is not here to intervene, even if that was allowed under the rules. We now need a system where we have strict enforcement of high standards for our market, we stop illegal activity and avoid those illegitimate goods coming in and we do not diminish and devalue market access, which is a cherished commercial benefit for our country.

There is still the narrative of differential—you can buy premium products for food if you pay extra because they have that extra bit of safety added to them—but we should have got rid of that concept a long time ago. If you go to Tesco and buy any good egg there—and surely they should all be good—the chances are that it was laid in my former constituency in the Scottish Borders just outside Peebles. If you visit the website of the farm company that produces most of Tesco’s eggs across the whole of the United Kingdom, the very first thing that comes up on the home page is that it adheres to the British Lion quality standard, the award assured by the British Retail Consortium and the RSPCA. They are not necessarily statutory but they are industry standards that add reassurance for the consumer.

There has been a lot of reference to the United States and I want to say a couple of things about the relationship with the United States. In the US, as we have seen, many states have lower labour rights, and therefore cheaper labour costs, than we have. That may be regretted by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and others, but it is the case. Feed is cheaper, they can reuse their litter and they use massively cross-subsidised soy and grain production for feed, so they have cheaper inputs and they would already be uncompetitive for us for those reasons. However, the US, in its negotiating mandate with its UK, seeks

“comprehensive market access for U.S. agricultural goods in the UK”,

including by eliminating

“Non-tariff barriers that discriminate against U.S. agricultural goods”.


What are these areas? Not all of them are statutory. Yes, we have inherited elements from the EU, such as the EU broiler welfare directive on stock density, and we monitor welfare and environmental outcomes such as CO₂ levels. There is no equivalent of those in any part of the United States. We have non-legislative standards that have no US equivalent, which they see as barriers but we see as something to be protected—and, I say to the noble Earl, Lord Devon, promoted—such as on the welfare of farmed animals and on the condition of animals. We have salmonella control for food safety; we have antibiotic stewardship, where we collect data for good practice not required by law; and we have a farm assurance scheme that 90% of our chickens, turkeys and ducks are reared to.

Finally, I will turn to an element that still puzzles me greatly about negotiations with the EU. This is where I think we get to the nub of some of the concerns. The US is asking of us what it is asking of the EU, which effectively is to remove some of these barriers, which are protections for standards, thus enabling American producers to be more competitive with us—in effect, making their products cheaper. However, in our negotiations with the EU, the draft text that the Government published states that they are not seeking mutual recognition for testing and certification for foodstuffs. In practice, that means a great burden for our food exporters, who will have to provide prior approval with the supplier along with compliant testing certificates, which are linked to the comments of my noble friend Lord Bruce. We do not seek mutual recognition of this testing and compliance regime. Could it possibly be that Dominic Cummings thinks that if we did do this, it would reduce our scope to agree a trade deal with China or with America, where our standards framework, our testing and our certification are seen as less of a barrier? I hope the Minister will state that that is not the case.

Simply repeating that we would not see legislative reductions is not sufficient. We have to have the protections that the amendments would put in the Bill. This is not an otiose issue. The time is now and the time is right under this Bill to amend it.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committee (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The House will be pleased to know that we are returning to the noble Lord, Lord Flight.

[Lord Flight [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for my computer not working properly.

It will be a tragedy if British agriculture suffers rather than benefits from Brexit. It appears that aspects of the Bill are not helpful to British agriculture, although it gives us the ability to restructure in our best interests. I was concerned to see Country Life, of all magazines, with headlines like

“British farming sold down the river”


and comments such as

“What a way to repay our farmers, by importing lower-standard products that steal their market”.


Is the Bill, with its many amendments, good or bad for our farmers? That seems to be the fundamental question. Defra Secretary George Eustice has insisted on upholding high welfare and safety standards and insists on the same welfare and food safety rules for imports as there are for our own farmers’ products. We need to put into law what Michael Gove promised when he was at Defra: namely, that Britain would lead the world in animal welfare and food safety.

But it now appears that we are going into trade negotiations having told other countries that we will not insist on either proper agricultural standards or environmental rules, so British farmers will be required to meet higher standards than pertain in other countries and will compete with food and goods exported by those who carry none of the same costs. Liz Truss is rightly pushing for free trade deals with the US and Brazil, knowing that the easiest way to achieve them is to signal her surrender on food exports. If that occurs, though, what a way to repay our farmers if we are importing goods or foods that steal our markets through lower standards and subsidies.

But are we misunderstanding the Bill? Is it not a trade Bill but rather a domestic Bill? It establishes a legalistic framework by which we can create a new system for supporting our farming industry post Brexit. The Bill also sets out a list of activities that could be supported by the Secretary of State. There are prescriptions for reforming our agricultural markets in line with farmers’ objectives. The key issue is to ensure that cheap goods and food imported to the UK do not undercut UK food production costs and standards. Arguably there should be a ban on food imports that do not meet UK standards. What is needed is for the Government to set out how and where this legislation is a friend to our farmers and how we can prevent unfair competition.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 299. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make this clear in the debate.

Clause 53: Commencement

Amendment 299

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for speaking on this, the last of the group of amendments, which is an important group because it will enable the Government to provide the opportunity that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox of Newport, hit on. We are absolutely doing this to ensure that there is proper scrutiny and so that we can bring forward those regulations, which will be via the affirmative route, so that noble Lords—I am looking particularly at the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—will be meeting again in the latter part of this year. My intelligence on these matters is that we there will be two before December 2020 that we will need to attend to in particular, but I put on the record that the whole purpose of doing this and of my amendments is to ensure that the regulations have the proper scrutiny they deserve and so that we can ensure that the farmers who are at the root of the Bill have certainty about what we intend for 2021. We will deal with that before the end of the year so that we can begin these schemes and the payment will come forward in 2021. I wish everyone a most enjoyable August.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The Minister and all noble Lords will be pleased to know that no one has expressed a wish to speak after the Minister.

Amendment 299 agreed.