Food Safety Standards: Brexit

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, all the agencies, including the Food Standards Agency, play a hugely important role in terms of consumer confidence. It is important that we ensure that the resources are put in place—as we are doing in Defra, with additional resources to deal with many of these things—so that we can continue to have the confidence that we should have. I want to be clear again: we will not compromise on the standards that will be on the statute book. Those are the requirements that we will adhere to in any trade deals.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, if these standards had been established under existing EU trade arrangements, a mandate would have been sought and secured by the Commission from the Council and then published for the Parliament. The Government have not done that with this Parliament. A public scoping exercise would have been carried out and published, and this Parliament through our MPs would have been able to consider that, too. That also is not happening. Why are the Government proposing under this working group fewer opportunities for this Parliament to intervene and less transparency even at this stage of the discussions? In respect of the trade Bill, the mechanism that Parliament would have as a result of this exercise is an unamendable single statutory instrument. Why are the Government proposing less transparency and fewer opportunities for parliamentary accountability than we currently have by virtue of our membership of the European Union?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I shall take the opportunity to take that question away and look at it so that I give a proper and detailed reply, of which I shall put a copy in the Library, because it is important. This Government are absolutely clear that we want trade deals. They will be reputable for all sorts of reasons that I have outlined, and we certainly want transparency.