It is a great honour to speak in this debate, having spoken briefly on Second Reading and sat on the Bill Committee and being a member of the International Trade Committee. We had a wide-ranging, well-informed and constructive debate in Committee, and it is good to see so many of its members speaking in the debate.
I would like to address a number of points, including the clauses relating to the NHS and to scrutiny, but because of the time limit, I will confine myself to just one, which is standards, and in particular new clause 11. Simply put, new clause 11 would allow the import of agricultural goods into the UK
“only if the standards to which those goods were produced were as high as”
the standards that apply under UK law. On the face of it, that sounds reasonable because it just seeks to ensure what we already have. Nobody has any difficulty with that—everybody here wants to maintain the high production standards, animal welfare standards and environmental standards that we have. That is why the Government have been absolutely clear that they will do precisely that. That is why the Minister stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that. That is why I stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that, as did all my hon. Friends.
There are a number of misunderstandings, which I will briefly address. We have already heard a number of times from Opposition Members about chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef, and I am sure we will hear about it again before the end of the debate. Those are already illegal in UK law. They are illegal because they are in European Union law, and European Union law is put into UK law by the terms of the withdrawal agreement. When Opposition Members plaintively say, “Why won’t the Government just put this in primary legislation?” the answer is because it is already there. If it were to be removed, the Government would have to bring something to the House and get us to vote on it—they would have to change the law, and we have all expressed our view about that. That prohibition is already there, so new clause 11 is simply unnecessary.
New clause 11 seeks to go further than maintaining our high import standards. It is crucial that we distinguish between import standards, which is the safety of food brought into this country, and safety standards, which is the way that they are produced domestically. The new clause seeks to have us say to all our trade partners, “We want to go further than ensuring that we import safe food. We want to reach into your domestic legislation and tell you exactly how you produce that food.” No self-respecting independent country will want to do that.