Draft Plant Health (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Plant Health (Amendment) (England) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 General Committees

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. The two statutory instruments we are supposedly considering today are 210 and 58 pages long respectively. I say “supposedly” because I do not suppose for one moment that many people in this room have carefully read both documents and fully understand exactly what each one says. We had less than a week’s notice of them being tabled for today. Stakeholders whose pertinent contributions may have been able to influence amendments to the SIs have, for the most part, not responded at all because they are simply overwhelmed by the volume of SIs and are unable to engage.

The Government are proceeding with these SIs because they have to, but the process has become nothing more than a manic tick-box exercise. It did not have to be like this. We have had two and a half years to sort out a deal, and yet the threat of a no-deal Brexit remains very real, with just 10 days to go and a mountain of work still to be done if we do leave without a deal. If the Government intended to maintain the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, we should have started working our way through these SIs months ago, but we only got going on them this year. I confidently predict that there will be mistakes—perhaps not in these particular SIs, but in some of them—and that they will have serious consequences for our residents and businesses over and above the massive overarching mistake, which is the way in which this Government are failing to handle Brexit.

Yesterday the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) suggested in response to an intervention of mine that, because of their dedication and professionalism, officials who have worked very late into the night on the hundreds of SIs needed in a short amount of time cannot possibly have made any mistakes. Nobody has more boundless admiration than I for the people who have produced all this difficult and detailed secondary legislation, and I would like to put on the record Labour Members’ appreciation for their work. However, anyone put under that amount of pressure and who has to juggle a number of separate SIs simultaneously is susceptible to inadvertent error. It is of great importance that there is no mistake in these SIs.

Those of my age will remember the magnificent elm trees that used to grace our countryside. We now have ash dieback destroying our ash trees and blight sapping the strength of our horse chestnuts. It is a continuous battle to protect our crops and our wild flowers from exotic diseases and bacteria such as Xylella fastidiosa, and the presence of diseases and pests in imported plants is an ever-present danger to our native species. As pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) during a Westminster Hall debate in June 2018, Prospect recently submitted evidence to the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee inquiry into biosecurity, recommending better training for plant health officers. Does the Minister agree that we need to establish a viable training programme for new and established inspectors, as well as joint trading ventures with the Horticultural Trades Association and the Royal Horticultural Society?

Dealing with pests and pathogens once they are in the UK will be far more difficult and more expensive than it would be to prevent their introduction in the first place. Given the volume of UK-EU trade, which we all hope will not diminish too much as a result of Brexit, the current system for sharing biosecurity intelligence with EU countries must continue in some form. Any loss of that integrated approach would pose a risk to UK biodiversity. Will the Minister commit to retaining the precautionary principle in implementing biosecurity legislation? Have the Government put any thought into a plan to deliver future biosecurity collaboration with the EU post-Brexit?

The Plant Health (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 set up lists for England, Wales and Northern Ireland that replicate current EU lists. They ensure that protected zones can continue to be protected from pests and that emergency measures can continue to be applied where necessary. However, a large raft of EU legislation is being revoked because it is considered to be redundant. Has the Minister looked carefully at schedule 17? Has someone other than the authors of the SI, and with a vested interest in finding any mistakes, been through it with a fine-tooth comb? This is precisely the sort of area—the revocation of supposedly redundant regulations —where it might be easy to make a mistake.

The schedule revokes only 24 EU regulations and Commission decisions, but given that I have not had a few weeks to read through them I am afraid that I cannot say whether they are all redundant. The EU plant health directive requires checks on material imported from third countries at the first point of entry into the EU. However, once we have left the EU the intention is to allow plant material from third countries to pass straight through the EU without checking, to enter the EU without checking at the border, and to rely on checks at the destination premises of the importers. How do the Government intend to ensure that all the plant material brought into this country from third countries without checks is actually going to be checked? How will they ensure that no invasive species, pests or diseases escape into the environment between their entry into this country and being checked at the destination premises?

Does the Minister believe that it is more appropriate to offer a lighter-touch inspection regime to imports via ro-ro ferries than to other forms of transportation? Surely, the situation will give importers an added incentive to use ro-ro, which is a less environmentally friendly form of transport than other alternatives. Have the Government made any estimates of the amount of plant material that is imported from third countries via the EU every year? As it is not currently checked, I am not clear that we know how much there is or, therefore, what resources will be needed to check it. If those imports are not checked properly at the multiple inland destinations at which the checking will take place, does the Minister agree that there will be risks for biosecurity?

The explanatory memorandum details the additional costs that will be faced by businesses as a result of needing to use a UK plant passport and having to pre-notify for imports from the EU. I cannot find any acknowledgement of the additional regulatory costs that may be entailed by exporting plant material from this country to remaining EU countries. Can the Minister give us any information about the regime for exporting plant material from the UK to the remaining EU countries, or does she not expect that to happen in the future?

We cannot find anything in these SIs that we believe to be fundamentally wrong, but at the same time we fear that they may contain mistakes or inadequacies that could have serious consequences for plant health in the UK after Brexit. We have had neither the time nor the resources to satisfy ourselves that that is not a danger.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

I do not have a list of the premises to hand. I do not know whether my officials have one, but if they cannot provide me with that information before the Committee rises, I will write to the Committee with it.

[Sandy Martin]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dr Coffey]

No, because I am trying to finish my answer to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark. I am very conscious that different elements of checks will be required. I have been informed by officials that 227 extra officers have been recruited to facilitate the inspections that we believe may be necessary.

If the hon. Member for Ipswich would like to intervene now, he would be very welcome to do so.

[Sandy Martin]

I apologise if I have misunderstood the advice in the explanatory memorandum, but I was under the impression that importers would be able to register their premises. That was the basis on which I was talking about the destination of imports. Clearly, the Government do not control how many premises are registered—unless, of course, they decide not to register them, in which case they will have a problem, because people will no longer be able to import.

[Dr Coffey]

I have since been informed by my officials that the hon. Gentleman is correct in his assertion. The location of these centres around the country will vary, but the total of 227 APHA full-time equivalents is a significant increase. I think it is nearly double the current number. They will be able to undertake those additional controls. Forestry commissioners currently have about 10 FTEs, and they will be increasing that by a further five in order to be able to undertake the work for tree imports.

It is important to note that it is mainly plants and trees that will be planted, rather than fruits, vegetables and flowers, which will largely be able to continue to enter the UK freely from the EU. To give some assurance to the Committee, it is important to say that it is not the case that people will just be able to self-register premises. Recognising how important it is to protect the biosecurity of this nation, APHA inspectors will need to approve those premises in advance. I do not think that somebody’s back garden can suddenly become an import, unless it is so perfect that APHA agrees that it is necessary—well, it could be a very fancy back garden, I suppose.

The hon. Gentleman asked about training and a better training programme. I have already outlined that we will have additional plant health inspectors and additional Forestry Commission inspectors. We will be working with the industry, including the Horticultural Trades Association, to develop a plant health assurance scheme that will include training. I am confident that that programme will work well.

I have already answered the question about databases, and I have tried to answer the question about transit in the third country. We do not have data on the volume of EU transit trade, as regulated goods from third countries are currently checked at the first point of entry into the EU, after which they move under single market arrangements. However, APHA estimates that there are about 14,500 consignments from third countries that transit the EU for entry to the UK. That reflects the substantial increase in the number of plant health inspectors, who are already being recruited.

I have tried to answer all the questions, but I keep being sent more information so I will not have to write to the Committee. So far, about 25 businesses have been improved for the inland facilities check. APHA estimates that a maximum of about 100 will be considered eligible. It will be for businesses to decide whether they want inspections for the non-roll off. Felixstowe is one of the major areas and it already carries out such checks at the border. It will be for businesses to decide if they want to change the situation, but in my experience as the local MP for Felixstowe, one of the major ports, there is no reason why we would expect businesses to change that regime.

My noble Friend Lord Gardiner is responsible for biosecurity. I know of nobody who is more passionate about trying to ensure that we prevent all these different diseases from entering our country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wrote to the Commission about, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs worked with the Commission last year on, trying to get more checks on Xylella fastidiosa, because there is a genuine worry about that coming up, in particular from Italy. We are desperate to ensure that it does not cross into the United Kingdom. Our scientists believe it is only a matter of time with regard to how some of these things might get travelled, but we know that the number of species it affects keeps rising; at one point it was 50, but now it is considerably higher. I assure the Committee that we will continue to press the case on ensuring that we have biosecurity.