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

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

The CPTPP poses a serious public health risk, makes us complicit in untold environmental harm and is

“another nail in the coffin”

for UK farmers, as one constituent put it to me last week. I am deeply concerned about the livelihoods of farmers, who will be exposed to increased competition from lower standard farm inputs, meaning that many domestic farmers may struggle to compete.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Further to the point I made earlier, does the hon. Lady not recognise that the report on the CPTPP by the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which was set up all those years ago because people were worried about what was going to be in the Australia agreement—it is set up on a constitutional or statutory footing, is there to review all our trade agreements, and includes people such as Nick von Westenholz from the NFU and a number of other members from the agriculture community—did not find that it was damaging to farmers across this country? If that report is to be believed, would she not have done well to tell her constituent that this is not the case, rather than allowing that fear to run wild?

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank the hon. Member for those interesting points.

I am concerned about the negative impact that this Bill has on modern innovative and sustainable agribusiness. I am concerned about the worsening of the UK’s environmental impact, and the fading net zero commitments that this Government are shying away from. I am concerned about the human rights implications that my constituents, as consumers, may be made to stomach. I have many constituents working in the agrifood industry who feel they have been misled by this Tory Administration. One farmer told me last week that

“this Government says one thing with its many mouths and then does something completely different”.

We ask our farmers to maintain high welfare and environmental standards—and rightly so—but some signatories, such as Mexico, have almost none. Food security expert Professor Chris Elliott told me:

“It’s absolutely not a level playing field in any stretch of the imagination”.

We Liberal Democrats agree with the NFU and the World Wildlife Fund in demanding core production standards for agrifood imports, which would uphold the ban on hormone treatment for cattle and prevent the import of food containing any of the 119 pesticides banned in the UK—to give just two examples. Which? surveys show that 84% of the country agrees with us, and I urge the Government to adopt this measure.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I am sorry, but I just feel that this matter should be hammered home. The opening summary of the Trade and Agriculture Commission report on the CPTPP states:

“Question 1: Does CPTPP require the UK to change its levels of statutory protection in relation to (a) animal or plant life or health, (b) animal welfare, and (c) environmental protection?”

The answer from the Trade and Agriculture Commission is:

“No. CPTPP does not require the UK to change its levels of statutory protection in relation to (a) animal or plant life or health, (b) animal welfare, or (c) environmental protection.”

This is not going to damage them, so the hon. Member must go back to her constituents and reassure them, rather than allow this mistruth to run wild across the countryside.

[Sarah Dyke]

The hon. Member makes an interesting point, but my view is about what the future will bring.

I have spoken in this place about the concerns I have regarding the mental health of farmers and farm workers, and the situation that farmers face is stark. In 2021, over a third of farmers surveyed by the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution were “probably or possibly depressed”. Trade deals implemented since the Tory Brexit arrangement are causing significant financial stress and uncertainty to many agrifood businesses. Dairy, beef and poultry producers have approached me for help, fearing that they may not be in business by the summer. One farmer in Castle Cary told me last week that

“we farmers are the ones who stump up the cost”.

I am proud to have some of the country’s oldest cheddar producers in my constituency, such as Wyke Farms near Bruton, and many new artisan cheese producers, like Feltham’s Farm in Horsington, but even award-winning cheeseries are not safe from the toxic tendrils of this deal. The effects will be felt by businesses in the supply chain as well, such as Sycamore Process Engineering, a growing local business based in Sparkford, where 67 local people work; and if those businesses’ customers go bust, so will they. Losing agrifood businesses would irrecoverably alter our rural way of life.

The farmer in Castle Cary also spoke of the

“hidden cost of cheap food”,

and one of those costs is welfare, both human and animal. I echo the words of my noble Friend Baroness Bakewell about the threats to indigenous peoples in palm oil producing forests, which the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has mentioned. International Labour Organisation standards are not incumbent on signatories to this deal. We should have grave concerns about suspiciously under-priced food landing in our market, when the average Vietnamese harvest worker gets £5.50 per hour, according to the Economic Research Institute.

How can we know whether the people producing this food have been paid at all? The egg producers in Mexico, who will undercut my constituents by about a third, are subjecting their chickens to horrendous living conditions, and are themselves at the mercy of powerful cartels. They live in “slavery-like conditions”, according to El País this month, where cartels have

“taken over all links of the supply chain”,

and

“violence and extortion add to the ravages of climate change”.

Is this the sort of modern trade we want to support?

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Dyke]

I will not.

I want to end with a stark and urgent warning. Last month, the Food Standards Agency had to issue a health warning after a rise in salmonella cases from Polish eggs and poultry meat, with 200 cases reported in 2023. That risk only grows when we open the floodgates to eggs and poultry produced to lower standards. Professor Elliott warned me about antibiotics deployed en masse without veterinary approval, Government control, or knowledge of the antibiotics’ provenance. Such use and abuse of antibiotics is part of a frightening health picture. Professor Elliott cautioned that

“most countries do not have the infrastructure, regulations or oversight of drugs or pathogens—we could be opening up Pandora’s box.”

Batch-testing imports just will not work. Antibiotic resistance will spread from plate to platelet, and we would have a hard time swallowing that unpalatable morsel.

My constituents have record low trust in the Government. Removing water from the egg of an imprisoned chicken, drugged up on antibiotics that it did not need, and shipping that egg 5,000 miles to put into pancake mix and insipid sandwiches, is what my constituents have come to expect from this Tory Administration. Many of my constituents will not stomach toxic Tory trade deals, and we must urgently renegotiate them and have more mandatory parliamentary powers for future deals. We cannot afford the health cost to our population, the carbon cost to the planet, and the financial cost to our farmers. We have the chance to be world leaders in modern, world-beating, innovative, sustainable agriculture, and to proudly keep our high standards and improve our food security. Let us not lose that opportunity.