European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Mark Garnier Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Thursday 9th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

The answer is clear. We now have a clear mandate to leave the European Union, and we can negotiate with the EU having the ability to walk away if we choose. That is precisely why we will get a trade deal with the EU. We have spent three years tying the hands of the Government’s negotiators and making sure that that deal does not happen. I am a farmer, as the House well knows. I know that either you decide to do a deal and shake on it, or you decide the price is too high and walk away. Parliament has spent all its time tying our hands. It is now time to get that deal. I have every confidence in the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to deliver that deal. Opposition Members have spent the last three years thwarting us, and the British people have finally worked it out.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has chaired the EFRA Committee. Can he confirm that in relation to sanitary and phytosanitary standards, each country that chooses to import grants a licence specific to the product, so whatever we choose to import, it is down to DEFRA to grant the licence and has nothing to do with WTO rules? It is to do with the individual country’s sanitary standards.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is right. With chicken, the issue is not the use of chlorine gas in the processing—in fact, only about 20% of American chicken is dealt with in that way. The point is the Americans rear broilers at probably three or four times the density that we do and they use far more antibiotics, and they use the chlorine process to enable them to bring their chicken to the market. All we have to do as we do a trade deal with the European Union is lay down the rules on the welfare of chickens. We are actually proposing higher welfare standards in the Agriculture Bill. That is how we deal with it. Chlorine is not necessarily the issue.