Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Humphreys

Committee stage
Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading on this Bill. I am afraid that, like many others including my noble friend, I failed to dodge a couple of viruses and their aftermath recently.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on this group, and in particular to support Amendment 15 in the names of my noble friends Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. This amendment reflects the concerns of UK farmers and has a particular relevance to Welsh farmers. It seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State reports on the impact of the procurement chapters on different types of farmers and farms. Here, for the first time in my nine years in this House, I find myself slightly at odds with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr.

With the trade deal set to provide a mere 0.08% boost to the UK economy, it appears that both New Zealand and Australia, with economies many times smaller than ours, are set to benefit. New Zealand, for example, will have access to a UK market of some 67 million people if it chooses to, whereas our farmers will find New Zealand, with its market of some 5 million people, a much less attractive prospect. Both New Zealand and Australia will have almost unfettered access to UK markets. This places UK and Welsh farmers at significant risk, with apparently almost nothing gained in return.

For those of us who live in Wales, there is an additional impact that will not appear in the list contained in this amendment but is nevertheless important to us—the impact on the Welsh language. Some 42% of our farmers speak Welsh, as opposed to 19% of the general population. They are the guardians of our language, traditions and culture. Anything that impacts on the viability of our farming communities will eventually impact on our language.

Our farmers are concerned about their futures and, as a recent edition of Farmers Weekly reported, this concern has resulted in a large reduction in the level of support for the Conservatives among UK farmers. Where 72% of farmers in 2020 said that they would vote Tory, now only 42% would do so. One supposes this result reflects the reality of “getting Brexit done” on our farming communities and fears for the future of farming. However, this is an opinion poll; what we need is hard evidence.

The Minister can perhaps suppose that this trade deal will be a great success; I can suppose that it poses a significant threat to our farming communities. Only a comprehensive impact assessment, such as the one called for in Amendment 15, can provide us, as legislators, with the evidence we need to justify our positions and decisions. Like my noble friend, I hope the Minister will agree to this amendment.

While I have the Minister’s attention, could I ask him to further comment on his assertion that eating New Zealand lamb is better for the environment than eating lamb from around the UK? Imported lamb from New Zealand can be produced to lower standards than our own foods, using methods that are unacceptable here. This is why my preference has always been for the taste and quality of Welsh lamb over New Zealand lamb. I fail to see how importing lamb from half way around the world makes that lamb better for the environment than locally produced and sourced lamb. Welsh lamb is among the most sustainable in the world, produced using non-intensive farming methods and high standards of husbandry. When the Minister responds to this group, would he care to take the opportunity to offer Welsh and UK farmers a few words of support in recognition of the work they do to produce such high-quality produce?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend. I agree with 99% of what she said—the 1% is that lamb from the Scottish Borders could even just edge Welsh lamb. But I will allow the Minister a life-raft after what he said at Second Reading: he does not necessarily need to choose between Scottish and Welsh lamb, he just needs to say that he will back British producers over Australian and New Zealand producers. He is the British Trade Minister, so he needs to bang the drum for our sectors.

We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, on whether George Eustice’s comments were in breach of the compact made in accepting everything bad that is done by your Government once you leave office. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is scrupulous in doing that and protecting the previous record.

I turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on impact assessments. When it comes to the impact on some of our sectors, the Government themselves have touted the protective measures. They have indicated that this could go wrong and therefore that protective measures could be triggered. The NFU is quite clear that they are insufficient; nevertheless, Boris Johnson and others have said that there are protective measures and that we need not worry. So we need to know the baseline information about that—it needs to be transparent and open—otherwise we will not know whether we are getting close to understanding whether a triggering mechanism will be required or not.

As my noble friend Lady Bakewell indicated, we are starting from the basis that cattle and sheep production in the UK are having difficult times. I noticed, just this morning, from statistics on GOV.UK that this is the first time since 2012 that total UK meat production has

“decreased by 0.8% to 4.1 million tonnes.”

That is a reduction in cattle of 4.6% and in sheep of 9.5%. The sectors are having a difficult time, for a whole set of reasons that have been indicated, and therefore the last thing that they needed was an agreement that did not sufficiently offer a degree of protection that there would be like-for-like competition.

As we all know, this was an agreement of liberalisation, but it was a liberalisation from our end and not theirs, because they were already liberalised. So the only opportunities that could arise would be if Australia or New Zealand either seek or want to capitalise on that. The Minister made the point at Second Reading—he made it very clearly—that it was unlikely that they would want to take all the quotas and capacity they have now secured; he said that it would be unlikely that that would be the case. However, that does not recognise, as the NFU and others have said in very clear briefings, that it is not just the overall volume of imports; it is also what kind of cuts and meats they are and what kind of competition exists.

One thing that, I confess, I had not noticed—it was subsequently drawn to my attention—is that, unlike normal practice, this is an agreement on shipped product weight; it is not an agreement on carcass weight equivalent. That is absolutely desirable for the Australians and New Zealanders; they want to ensure that the good cuts for our markets will be shipped in a way that is super-efficient and is not an overall carcass-equivalent weight. That means that every percentage point that they increase on shipped product weight that comes directly to our markets will have a disproportionate impact on our own ability to compete with that, because our farmers are ordinarily trading on a carcass weight equivalent basis. Unless I am incorrect, I understand that we trade with the EU on carcass weight equivalent, but we are giving Australia and New Zealand the advantage of trading on shipped product weight. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether that is the case.

My second point is about the Government’s own estimates, which say that we are likely to see a 5% contraction in the sheep sector and a 3% contraction in the beef sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, indicated when putting that in GVA terms, the NFU has calculated that that would result in £464 million lost to GVA. That is not an insubstantial sum when it comes to a sector that operates in some of our most remote and rural areas and, as indicated before, in areas that have received considerable challenge over recent years.