Agriculture Bill

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

I congratulate the Government on tabling Amendments 18C and 18D in response to the earlier Lords amendment from my noble friend Lord Curry. It is very welcome that the Government have listened to the arguments in your Lordships’ House about trade and standards of food and have accepted the principles debated here. However, I also recognise the importance of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I very much hope that the Minister will respond to those points; they are important and I support them.

It may seem churlish to keep banging on about food standards after the Government have made such a major concession. The transparency that will be introduced by requiring the Secretary of State to explain whether and to what extent new trade agreements ensure that we do not import food produced to lower safety, welfare and environment standards is very welcome. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, said, it does not guarantee that lower-standard food will not be imported; it simply guarantees that there will be a report.

I do not want to go on at length because we have discussed these things so many times, but I want to reiterate one point that I made earlier in the debates on this matter. It concerns the practicalities. Let us assume that we are committed to not importing food of a lower standard with regard to the environment, welfare and food safety. Who is going to ensure that? The Minister has repeatedly said that we have advice from the Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. That is fine but there will also be a role for local authorities which, through their environmental health officers and trading standards officers, will be checking the food in restaurants and shops. My concern is that we may have high hopes of ensuring that these standards are maintained but then not have the resources, either in the national bodies, such as the Food Standards Agency, or the local bodies, to ensure that these promises are delivered on the ground.

This question of resources has been highlighted already—without the additional responsibilities of new trade deals—by the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, Emily Miles. On 22 October, she told the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health:

“I want to be clear to the relevant parts of government that there simply isn’t enough funding available for local authorities to carry out their duties on food safety”.


The question of practicality is still unresolved. I very much hope that the Minister will comment on this and reassure the House in his summing up.

My close colleague, the late Lord May of Oxford, used to quote to me the refrain from an Australian country and western song: only the hard yards get you home. We are now on the way home and these last few hard yards are ones that we have debated. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response in finally bringing this home.