Trade: Standards

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for his great experience in this area. I commend, too, the noble Baroness for securing this debate on trade and standards—significantly, the first full debate in this House since Brexit.

In January, at the African investment summit, the Prime Minister said—no doubt to bemused African leaders—that Uganda’s beef cattle,

“will have an honoured place on the tables of post-Brexit Britain … families across Angola will shortly be tucking into delicious wholesome chicken from Northern Ireland”.

It should be noted that Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Spain and France are already more successful meat exporters to Angola than Britain, and that, despite a beef ban because of its inability to control foot and mouth, Uganda’s exports to the UK are worth just $10 million, compared to $132 million to Italy, $115 million to the Netherlands and $95 million to Germany. Brexit has not, as the Prime Minister suggests, been the barrier. Whether the UK is exporting to Angola, Uganda or any other country, standards, we are told, will be a critical component, and our interaction with European standards—Europe being a much bigger market for them—when an African country is exporting to Europe and to us, will be significant.

Can the Minister, therefore, in responding to this debate, also clarify the status of the trade Bill: what will or will not be in it; whether it is still the Government’s intention, as it was previously, that the mechanisms through which trade agreements will be negotiated will be under the procedures of the previous Trade Bill; and the status of the parliamentary lock that the Government earlier indicated that they were committed to? Clearly, they believed that standards were sufficiently important to require a parliamentary lock. If that is no longer the case, why? What will now be the interaction in the trade Bill with Northern Ireland—not just for Northern Ireland chicken but for those trading between Britain and Northern Ireland, and then between Northern Ireland and the European market?

Poultry is a good example of that, and I am glad that the noble Viscount raised it. As we have heard, Michael Gove, when he was Secretary of State, gave a rather glib comparison on TV when he conflated the process of surface-washing salads with chlorine used to mask poor hygiene practices. The EU, with full UK support, has made it clear that good hygiene practice is a prerequisite for the application of hazard-based controls and that they are an essential element of any discussion on market access.

If we are now setting that aside, our discussion on market access has a whole different meaning, and the Americans know it. With the Secretary of State’s equivocation on TV repeated by his successor, it is concerning. These statements should not be made in TV studios. If there is a parliamentary lock that means anything under legislation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, they should be said in Parliament and we should be given those commitments.

That is important because the US has established a negotiating mandate for both the United Kingdom post Brexit and the European Union for trade agreements. The text is identical for both. Therefore, when the UK says, as David Frost, the Prime Minister’s chief negotiator, said with great confidence in his recent speech, that the whole purpose of the project of Brexit is our ability to move away from the EU rules, how will that interact with the markets that we seek to export to and import from when they have to choose between the European set of standards and the UK’s—or will we ask them to triangulate, because that will be an invidious position for all our industry?

David Frost also said:

“One obvious example I think is the ability to support our own agriculture to promote environmental goods relevant to our own countryside, and to produce crops that reflect our own climate”—


because clearly we have a climate unique in western Europe—

“rather than being forced to work with rules designed for growing conditions in central France”.

This got me scratching my head. Can the Minister outline those rules?

Finally, David Frost also said:

“There are other broader advantages to running your own affairs. One obvious one is that it is much easier to get people involved in taking decisions”.


But we have no mandate set by Parliament, no standards commission, no updated parliamentary approach, no ability to scrutinise when the ink is signed on agreements and no ability to ratify. How exactly will people, and primarily Parliament, be involved?