Draft Import of Animals and Animal Products and Approved Countries (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Import of Animals and Animal Products and Approved Countries (Amendment) Regulations 2022.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue.

The purpose of the draft statutory instrument, which was laid before the House on 30 March, is to protect domestic food safety and biosecurity, and to support trade by bringing the process for amending country-specific import conditions for non-European Union trading partners in line with those already in place for the EU and the European Free Trade Association.

The draft instrument makes technical and operability amendments to several pieces of retained EU law relating to Great Britain food safety and biosecurity. It does not constitute a change in policy. The amendments will enable the Secretary of State, with the consent of the Scottish or Welsh Ministers, rapidly to change country-specific import conditions in response to risks among trading partners that have already been approved by this Parliament to export animals and animal products to Great Britain.

The amendments made by the draft instrument are necessary for two significant reasons. First, trading partners must comply with any specific import conditions that are found in retained EU law. Regular changes to such conditions are required to respond to changes in risk—of disease, for example. Amendments to retained EU law are made by SI. Even when a negative procedure is used and the 21-day rule is breached, therefore, there is a significant gap between the identification of risk and the legal implementation of import controls. Both trade bodies and trading partners have expressed concerns about the lack of responsiveness of the existing legislation.

Secondly, the draft instrument will ensure that the United Kingdom meets its international obligations and treats all trading partners equally. At the moment, country-specific import conditions for the EU and EFTA states can be managed administratively, but legislative amendments are required for the rest of the world. That discrepancy leaves us at risk of challenge at the World Trade Organisation and is simply not where we want to be. As timely amendments to country-specific import conditions are also necessary to meet trade agreement obligations, our current inability to make rapid changes for non-EU trading partners leaves us at risk of legal challenge and of retaliatory action. That is why the instrument is so necessary.

I will briefly address concerns expressed in the other place about parliamentary scrutiny. I appreciate and fully understand such concerns, but I wish to emphasise that this statutory instrument has been drafted in such a way as to ensure that as much parliamentary oversight as possible will be retained. Its amendments will remove a specific number of import conditions from legislation. Other important information, including that relating to country and commodity approvals, is unaffected by the draft SI. The approval or delisting of counties and commodities will therefore continue to require secondary legislation, and will therefore remain subject to parliamentary scrutiny. In other words, this instrument cannot be used to approve the import of, for example, chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef, nor to lower food safety or animal health import standards in any other way.

The powers delegated in this draft instrument will instead be used to apply, lift and change country-specific import conditions when risk in approved trading partners changes. The instrument stipulates that all such decisions must be informed by assessments of risk, taking into account specified animal and public health criteria—requirements that have been retained directly from EU law. Assessments will be carried out or co-ordinated by vets in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and will be subject to approval from the animal disease policy group, a senior Government body that brings together experts from across Government. The legal implementation of any changes by the Secretary of State will be, as they are now, subject to agreement by the Welsh and Scottish Governments.

The draft regulations cover England, Scotland and Wales, and the devolved Administrations have both consented to the instrument formally. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

As I said earlier, the amendments in the draft regulations do not constitute a change in policy, but simply seek to establish a process through which we are able rapidly to implement country-specific import controls where significant risks to animal and public health have been identified from non-EU trading partners. We are currently carrying out robust border checks on live animals and high-risk plants, and we continue to assess other risks all the time. My colleague Lord Benyon, who leads on the risk from disease in particular, has regular meetings, and the chief veterinary officer is in touch with all of us at DEFRA to ensure that we monitor and assess risks as they evolve.

This SI cannot be used to approve or delist countries and commodities, nor to lower import standards in any way. I appreciate that the shift to an administrative procedure raises sensitive questions relating to parliamentary oversight, but I have outlined how it succeeds in striking the balance between the requirement for scrutiny, and the need for effective biosecurity and food safety controls.

The hon. Member for Cambridge asked why it has taken so long to get to this point. We have been aware of the deficiencies in retained EU law that prevent us from amending country-specific import conditions sufficiently quickly. We have always recognised those deficiencies—I have recognised them in the past—but we took the view that correcting them was not essential on day one of EU exit, because we were prioritising so many other pieces of legislation, including that which enables import conditions for EU and EFTA states, which is, I think, the SI to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We have now reached this point in our extensive legislative programme.

The best way in which to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question is to give a specific example: of Ukraine, in fact, before the outbreak of war. The difficulty with the current powers led to a significant delay in lifting restrictions on Ukraine, following the successful control of an avian influenza outbreak there last year. It took two months, following a recommendation from the animal disease policy group, for us to be able to lift restrictions—which we wanted to do—because we were stuck with the existing process of lifting restrictions through an SI. Even that two-month period required a breach of the 21-day rule, and for the Scottish and Welsh Governments to forgo the consent processes normally required for SIs. Such delays have significant effects on GB importers. Were that to be reciprocated, such a delay would be devastating—for poultry exporters from GB, for example.

Parliamentarians in this House and the other place will, of course, continue to be able to hold me and other DEFRA Ministers to account through all the usual means for the way in which the powers in the instrument are exercised. All the changes introduced by the SI are technical operability amendments that are critical to ensuring that we can protect biosecurity and food safety by streamlining our processes of making changes to import conditions. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.