Brexit: Trade in Food

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Drew]

Again, I am not an expert on the farming industry per se, as the hon. Gentleman is, but having talked to those who know about it, I know that the lamb market—Welsh lamb, in particular—is very vulnerable. I made the point that New Zealand would no doubt be keen to expand its exports to this country, but I was proven wrong in the sense that New Zealand can already export 200,000 tonnes of lamb. The big threat is actually from Australia, which has a more limited quota arrangement and will no doubt wish to have a free trade agreement—any agreement—so that it can export more to us. Again, that is a question I ask. I genuinely do not know where outside the EU—where 60% of our food exports go to—we can form all these free trade agreements.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is not only where our exports will go or where our imports will come from, but that the laudable environmental and health and safety constraints that we place on agriculture in this country will not necessarily be replicated in countries in other parts of the world that may wish to export to us? We shall see a race to the bottom on environmental and health and safety concerns.

[Dr Drew]

That is, of course, a real threat. I refer to the Government’s response to the Committee’s report. At paragraph 6, on “Regulations and Standards”, the Government cited the Prime Minister in her Mansion House speech, saying that

“the UK will need to make a strong commitment that its regulatory standards will remain as high as the EU’s.”

I should damn well hope so—excuse the proverbial—because if we do not, we will not be able to export to the EU. It is important to maintain the existing standards, and we would want to drive them up—the Minister has said that—but that will be in some jeopardy if we form free trade agreements with countries with lower standards, because those would preclude the higher-standard export markets that we have now.

Looking ahead to the Select Committee’s “The future for food” report—to laud the Committee again—its value is that it has all the right headings. The keynote is uncertainty: we need to allay the element of doubt that is creeping into what is now a tight timescale. Looking at the report, the questions will obviously be about budget—I am pressing the Labour party to ensure sufficient funding. We have already guaranteed the same money until 2022, but to be honest with the Minister, we want to go further, because we do not think that the transitionary period is long enough. That has come through in both reports.

There is not enough money to make the transition work. Whatever form of payment system we come up with, it will be a pretty traumatic change. For some farmers, it will be the most traumatic change they have ever had in their lives. We would therefore like more money to be allocated and for things to be done properly. We are not against public using moneys for public goods, but we have to handle the situation with extreme sensitivity. Otherwise, we will lose a lot of good farmers who cannot make the transition easily.

To go back to today’s report, I have some questions arising from the Government response. How will they deal not only with tariffs, but with non-tariff issues? In my constituency, some of the manufacturing companies say that the problem is never with free trade, or setting up free trade agreements, because they are set up all the time. The problem is when other parts of the world take non-tariff action, which is a real danger in the food sector. It would be good to know how far the Government have got and in what ways they are at least investigating how to deal with the threat of non-tariff barriers.

On the potential for increased paperwork, the Government are setting great store by a new computer system—as did my Government, to our cost, when we introduced the Rural Payments Agency, and I dealt with Accenture at that time. We were told then how everything was going to be wonderful because the computer would do it all for us. It would be good to know how far we have got with the new computer system and what it will do—there is the idea of “e-certs”, but whatever name it has, it is just a computer system. If we do not have the right brief to start with, we will not get the right outcomes. Therefore, how far have the Government got towards introducing that computer system in such a way as to cope with all the different pressures, whether of trade or of the standards and so on?

There is also the human dimension. The spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins)—to whom I should have paid due regard earlier, but I do so now—spoke about the need for seasonal workers. Another element, which was picked up on by the Select Committee, is the additional need for veterinary support. At the very least, we do not have enough vets in this country to do the work that is needed, which is why we recruit foreign vets.

That work will only increase, despite restrictions on immigration and on what is called mutual recognition of professional qualifications—a very good thing that ensures we get in people with equivalent qualifications to ours. Dealing with that takes time. We will need additional vets in the short run to deal with some of the new processes. Again, will the Government give us an update on their important discussions with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the British Veterinary Association and so on?

That leads on to the issue of customs and how those arrangements are being looked at. I must say that some of the Government’s answers are fairly sketchy. The response is a fairly brief piece of work—I laud the Select Committee again because although its work was brief, it was precise, but the Government did not necessarily tell us everything. Perhaps the Minister will fill in some of the detail, such as how much store is set by the IT system, how he will deal with border inspection post capacity and what is happening with some of the trade agreements with non-EU countries. All that will require a very different approach. I hope that we will not have a hard Brexit, but even under a soft Brexit those will be very complicated issues that are difficult to work through in the short term.

Another issue is country-of-origin labelling, which Members across the House would all support. Customers need assurance to know where something has come from and whether it is of the standard that they expect. Again, the Government have made lots of commitments, but it would be good to know how they will deliver on those commitments—what they said in paragraph 13 of their response was very good in aspiration, but not detailed in how they would action it.

In conclusion, there are many points of detail. That matters, because we should be entering a period of discussion where agriculture, hopefully, will be in the footlights. That is rare, because normally agriculture is somewhat in the shadows, but it is crucial at this stage because of what happens to our food chain. We must make sure we get this right to support the industry and the people who work in it. That may not be easy in the short run, but we must be clear where the strategy is taking us.

If there is any regulatory divergence from the EU, those of us who fear that things could get worse in the short run need the Government to be clear on what they are trying to do. What mechanisms will they employ and who will employ them? The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has taken on a huge number of new people—perhaps it should not have got rid of as many as it did when it was not at the frontline of these changes. It would be good to know how those people could be as effective as they should be, in a short period. Their knowledge alongside the ministerial team will be crucial. I sympathise with Ministers; I know how much pressure they are under, because this issue puts the Opposition under a lot of pressure due to the number of ways in which we have to respond.

I hope the Government have got the message that they need to be very clear on how they are moving forward. Otherwise, we will be back here week after week with debates, trying to ascertain what the detailed considerations really mean and how we will take British agriculture and the British food chain forward into the next decade, whatever our status with the EU. More particularly, they must make sure that British food is of as good a standard as it can and should be, and that it can be traded successfully with the rest of the world.