Exiting the European Union (Plant Health)

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Plant Health (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 10 November, be approved.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With this we will take the following motion:

That the draft Plant Health (Phytosanitary Conditions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 10 November, be approved.

[Victoria Prentis]

These statutory instruments will establish the future plant health regime for Great Britain by ensuring that EU legislation relating to phytosanitary controls, which is retained under the EU withdrawal Act, is operable after the end of the transition period. Devolved Administrations have given their consent to these SIs.

It is our responsibility to protect biosecurity across plant and animal health and the wider ecosystem. It is important that our biosecurity protections are aligned to address the specific and often unique risks that relate to Great Britain. These regulations are specifically about protecting plant biosecurity.

On the plant health SI, this makes operability amendments to the retained EU plant health regulation to reflect the risks to Great Britain, rather than the risks to the wider EU, and to reflect the EU’s status as a third country after the end of the transition period. There are amendments to implement a new UK plant passport in place of the current EU one, with the format of the new document set out within the SI.

From the end of the transition period, Great Britain will also no longer use the EU protected zone arrangements and will instead move to using pest-free areas, an internationally recognised classification that allows countries to take additional protective measures against incursions from pests which are established elsewhere.

The SI also makes transitional provisions to allow the continued flow of trade and to reflect the phased import requirements detailed in the published border operating model. Phytosanitary certificates will be required for those plants and plant products from the EU that pose the highest biosecurity risk to Great Britain from 1 January, where import controls for lower-risk plant material will be phased in gradually from April.

This SI makes operability amendments to the Official Controls (Plant Health and Genetically Modified Organisms) (England) Regulations 2019 to correct references to EU legislation. It also makes consequential amendments to fees legislation, including amendments to allow charging for services relating to exports to the EU.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

It is very important that we have very high standards and I am glad that we are doing that, but will my hon. Friend also ensure that they are high standards that help domestic growers, because we need to have more home-grown food on British plates and more jobs in agriculture in Britain?

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[Victoria Prentis]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. This is a matter that he and I have discussed before and I know that he is every bit as ambitious for the future of British horticulture as I am. I really do think that there is more that we could be growing here and I very much hope that, in the next few years, that comes to pass.

This SI also contains amendments to primary legislation to remove references to EU obligations. These changes have no operational impact, but simply remove redundant and inoperable references to EU obligations.

I turn to the phytosanitary conditions SI. This sets out the lists for Great Britain of quarantine pests, provisional quarantine pests, pest-free area quarantine pests and regulated non-quarantine pests. It also sets out measures in relation to the introduction of plants, plant products and other relevant objects into Great Britain and the movement of these within Great Britain.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and for outlining the regulations. In relation to Northern Ireland, which has built a fantastic reputation on a top-quality product, and most of the agri-food sector we have export, what discussions has she had with the Minister in Northern Ireland and would those discussions ensure that our high-quality standards would be maintained as well, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Victoria Prentis]

The hon. Gentleman is a great champion for his farmers. This SI is related to GB only, but I assure him that I speak very frequently to the Minister in Northern Ireland. I have not done so this week, but I do generally often and I probably will in the course of the next few days. I know that he and I are both committed to very high standards in British agriculture.

In making these operability changes, we are focused on ensuring that the phytosanitary controls reflect actual risks to Great Britain. The risk assessment process follows the UK’s well established risk management methodology using our UK plant health risk register as our principal screening tool. Applying this evidence-based process to determine our lists of regulated plants, products and pests for the future has resulted in increased focus on the threats about which we really need to be concerned. For example, some pests that pose a risk only to citrus, rice and other tropical crops, which we do not grow, have been deregulated. This has positive impacts, as it allows our inspectors to focus their efforts on the higher-risk commodities about which we are concerned, such as Xylella hosts, and tree species such as plane, which we are really worried about. This approach means that items that have previously been subject to restrictions or prohibitions even though the risk is in fact negligible, such as mangos, curry leaves and so on, are now able to be imported into Great Britain free of restriction.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

It will not have escaped the Minister’s notice that we are actually in a pandemic, and protection and prevention for our environment before getting to that stage are really important. How robust does she believe the implementation of this legislation will be in ensuring that we are indeed as protected as we can be?

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[Victoria Prentis]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. These statutory instruments are broadly transferring rules into GB law, but we are able to use this moment in our history to ensure that they are better suited to us and the biosecurity risks that concern us. As he says, in the midst of a pandemic that takes on a special and added significance.

Protecting biosecurity is of enormous importance for any Government. It is important that we facilitate the import and movement of plant material, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said earlier, but this must be done in a biosecure manner. That is why these operability amendments, with their focus on risks to GB, are so important. They establish our future plant health regime and ensure that the current phytosanitary protections, which are vital to protect our biosecurity, are maintained at the end of the transition period. I commend the draft regulations to the House.

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[Victoria Prentis]

I find that I am being asked by one hon. Gentleman to display my legal and obsessive statutory instrument skills and by another to assure him that I am not out of touch with farmers and will be going home to look after the sheep tonight. I can assure them that both those skillsets are very useful in a modern farming Minister.

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) made slightly rude comments about the length of my statutory instruments. I am afraid that these transitional SIs are necessarily long because we are simply amending the retained EU legislation. We are doing it in a way that genuinely makes it current, to reflect the risks to GB. The extensive instruments have been through the normal checking procedures, including several pairs of eyes’ checks by DEFRA and other Government lawyers—as the hon. Gentleman knows, I was one for 17 years—so I am fairly confident that they are good enough. They have been well scrutinised by the JCSI, on which I sat for a number of years, and the devolved Administrations, and the versions we are debating today include helpful amendments that were made by all those people, so I am fairly confident that the instruments are up to scratch. I am as confident as I think we can be. I accept, however, that they are long.

The hon. Gentleman asked some specific questions about replacing the oversight of the Commission. EU functions have already been incorporated into the UK-wide plant health risk group arrangements. Those functions include the auditing system of SANTE F and decision-making structures such as the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed technical committee. A sub-group of the plant health risk group will be responsible for all technical aspects of these audits. In addition, there is a national IT system, which is operational now, that replaces the EU notification and rapid alert system. The UK system has been backfilled with publicly available data from EU systems, so I am confident that the UK will be able to continue to benefit from that at the end of this year.

As I said earlier, from 1 January, GB is introducing a phased import regime for EU goods to maintain biosecurity and to keep trade as frictionless as possible. The phased EU import regime will allow time for trade to adapt to the new import requirements for EU goods. GB plant health authorities are undertaking significant recruitment to increase the number of plant health inspectors. The numbers have gone from about 200 inspectors employed by the Animal and Plant Health Agency to more than double that, and I believe the ambition is for 250 extra to be in place early next year. We have sufficient resources to meet demand from the turn of the year and to ensure minimal disruption to trade.

GB plant health services are currently reviewing their operating hours to ensure that biosecurity standards will continue to be met and strengthened in ways that support trade and smooth the flow of goods while minimising the burden on businesses. There has been enormous engagement with the horticultural industry on the planning for this, with individual operators and key stakeholder groups. Most recently, we have undertaken a series of feasibility sessions, with more than 300 participants on the Zoom, and equivalent export sessions. Alongside that, we are hosting a series of webinars—there was one earlier this week, I think—on the new plant health requirements for imports, exports and internal movement.

For goods imported from the EU, which the hon. Member for Angus raised, GB will be carrying out a phased implementation of import checks, which will be aligned to the risks posed by different regulated commodities. Lower-risk goods will receive a lower frequency of checks.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate. In order to prepare for the end of this year, it is essential that we have the right legislation in place to continue to protect plant biosecurity while facilitating trade and movement of plants and plant material. I hope that hon. Members fully understand the need for these regulations, which ensure that existing regimes for safeguarding Britain’s biosecurity will continue to operate effectively at the end of this year by addressing plant health risks faced by GB rather than the EU. I commend them to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Exiting the European Union (Plant Health)

Resolved,

That the draft Plant Health (Phytosanitary Conditions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 10 November, be approved.—(Victoria Prentis.)