UK Shellfish Exports

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

The noble Baroness has hit on why we wish to have discussions with the Commission. It interprets the matter as being one of public health. The point is that all molluscs exported from class B waters have to be depurated. That is undertaken by businesses near to the market on the continent, and it is on that we are seeking redress. The Commission made it clear in September 2019—and I can put copies of the correspondence in the House Library along with the letter to the Commissioner—that molluscs exported for purification can be certified. We therefore think that there is an issue that we need to clarify.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, is not this and other measures taken recently by the EU to punish the UK for leaving its jurisdiction a flagrant abuse not only of the EU’s own laws but of several international laws such as the WTO SPS agreement, which states that WTO members

“shall accept the sanitary or phytosanitary measures of other Members as equivalent, even if these measures differ from their own”—

ours, of course, are identical—as well as the recent TCA, which states that each party shall ensure that SPS measures

“are not applied in a manner which would constitute arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination against … the other Party’s territory where identical or similar SPS conditions exist”,

which they do in this case? I hope that my noble friend will make this lawlessness apparent to this House, which always maintains the importance of upholding international law.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

Again, my noble friend is correct to raise this point. It is why the Secretary of State wrote to Commissioner Kyriakides yesterday. We wish to meet her and her officials, because we simply do not understand the legal interpretation of what has come out of the Commission very recently, which is entirely contrary to what we had been told previously.