Agriculture Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

I am in favour of free markets; I stand against protectionism in its many guises, including protectionism around farmers. I favour science and innovation; that is one reason why being outside the EU is so exciting. But if we start our life outside the EU rigidly applying the rules that we have inherited from the EU, we will be missing a trick. We must start to act globally—and the WTO is where we should start, rather than by putting a wall around our own farming practices.

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 103, which stands in my name; in so doing, I again draw attention to my registered interests. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, will hardly be surprised if I do not follow their line on this matter. I support the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, with which my amendment partly aligns itself.

It is not disputed that imported agricultural goods can have both negative and positive impacts for those in the UK agricultural sector. On the one hand, we may rely on certain imports to maintain and improve the viability of our farms, as well as to protect the health and welfare of our animals. On the other hand, goods which may very well meet the required WTO sanitary and phytosanitary standards can nevertheless represent a major threat to the viability of our food producers if they are able to undercut them by incurring lower costs in meeting regulatory standards. Such unfair competition can undermine our domestic food production. It can consequently threaten food security if our domestic capacity is indeed eroded. This is particularly relevant as a consideration at a time when the global pandemic has laid bare our susceptibility to the disruption which extreme events can cause to global food chains.

Just weeks before the coronavirus lockdown, it was revealed that the UK Treasury had been advised that farmers were not needed in the UK, and that we could follow the example of Singapore, which, the Treasury was told,

“is rich without having its own agricultural sector”.

Yet, by the beginning of April, Singapore had announced drastic new measures to accelerate local food production, including desperate plans to grow food on the rooftops of public housing estates, as disruption of global food supply chains started to hit home.

The sort of lower standards that could undermine domestic producers would be ones which allow more lax regulations relating to plant health, animal health and welfare, and environmental standards. Equally important in this regard are employment and human rights issues. We should not abandon our principles in relation to food production, environmental standards, and the welfare of animals or people around the world. This amendment proposes that we ensure that tariff levels and tariff rate quotas are maintained at levels which minimise the risk of there being a back door to our market for those without a trade deal with the UK.

Were a UK Government to lower the UK global tariff significantly, and thereby encourage lower-standard goods to enter our market, they would be threatening the well-being of both consumers and the UK agricultural sector, undermining our rural communities and jeopardising our food security. There is more than one way to tackle this threat; we shall come later to other possible avenues—I am thinking particularly of Amendment 97 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, which relates to trade deals. In the meantime, we should take the opportunity afforded by this bank of amendments to write into the Bill the safeguards which consumers need and which may be of existential importance to the future of agriculture in these islands.