Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Lord Trees Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, to the Chamber. We shall have to get used to using territorial designations, because these Benches have had a noble Lord, Lord Cameron, here for a number of years.

I also welcome the chance to debate this trade Bill but, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, alluded to earlier, we are considering the cart before the horse. The Trade and Agriculture Commission report is “due to be completed” by 30 November, so we have no sight of that yet. The Section 42 report required under the Agriculture Act 2020 will be available after that, and formal parliamentary scrutiny under CRaG will follow. So we are being asked to comment on the Bill without the benefit of those important reports and that of the International Agreements Committee.

I am left considering the benefits and costs of this agreement. I acknowledge, as has been ably and eloquently detailed by previous speakers, the benefits of agreements of this type over and above the financial. But the financial benefits are extremely modest: I find the Government’s estimate of £2 billion additional GDP by 2040 rather underwhelming.

So I am left considering the downsides or costs and concerns. Noble Lords are aware of my interest as a veterinary surgeon, and my concerns concentrate on our animal health and welfare, public health, the health of our farming industry, and animal health and welfare in the countries that will be supplying us with animal products more freely under this agreement.

We and His Majesty’s Government are rightly proud of our high animal welfare standards. Ministers regularly assure us that we will not lower our standards in negotiating free trade agreements. With respect, that is the right answer to the wrong question. We should ask whether countries exporting to the UK will raise their standards to our level. The answer in this case is that they have no obligations so to do.

The organisation World Animal Protection, formerly the World Society for the Protection of Animals, a global charity for animal welfare based in London, produced a ranking of 50 countries based on its consideration of 10 indicators covering the most important aspects of animal protection. In its latest, 2020 ranking, all the countries within the CPTPP agreement are lower than the UK. Only New Zealand, arguably, comes close to our overall standards.

In our quest for free trade agreements we have yet to set minimum standards for food imports, with the exception of hormone-treated beef, chlorine-washed chicken and ractopamine in pigs. Ongoing tariff negotiations with Canada and Mexico raise concerns about the potential vulnerability of UK farmers, particularly with regard to eggs, pigs, pigmeat and beef meat products produced at standards that are illegal in the UK. Several CPTPP countries still allow practices such as conventional battery cages—banned in the UK since 2012. Similar concerns arise with pigmeat imports from CPTPP members that employ sow stalls—banned in the UK since 1999.

Of particular concern, nationally and globally, for both animal and public health, is the excessive use of antibiotics in several CPTPP countries, with the attendant risks of importing and spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animal products. I know this will be a matter of concern to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who, to his great credit, raised the whole issue of antimicrobial resistance to the top of the political agenda and commissioned the O’Neill commission to report its important findings in 2016 on reducing our use of antimicrobials to prevent the severe downsides of antimicrobial resistance.

At a time when food security is rightly a concern, we should be extremally careful not to handicap, undercut or potentially destroy our own food production capability by importing products produced to lower welfare standards. At a time when climate change is such a dominant political issue, we should guard against exporting greenhouse gas emissions by importing products produced less efficiently than we do. A relevant example concerns beef, a kilogram of which we can produce in the UK with less than half the global average of associated greenhouse gas emissions. We should aim to not import beef from any country unless its carbon footprint is lower than ours.

In joining the CPTPP, we note that the Government’s own environmental impact assessment suggests that an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions will occur, but that it will be slight and negligible. But this does not take into account emissions due to transport, nor the potentially high starting point of the carbon footprint in the countries of origin.

In conclusion, we need to safeguard the UK’s indigenous, high-quality, high-welfare and sustainable food production capabilities. That does not mean that we require self-sufficiency—not at all—but we should ensure that we safeguard the core of essential food production capability.

So, finally, I ask the Minister: when will Parliament see the TAC report? Secondly, in his letter of 8 November to noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Lainston, stated that

“the Government has ensured that joining will not compromise our high animal and plant health, food safety, or animal welfare standards”.

In view of the fact that we cannot influence current standards in member countries of CPTPP, how will this be achieved?