I am delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman ask Whitehall and Westminster to sing a better tune and work better together. Truly, he will be a parliamentarian here for many years to come.
I am doing my best to fill your shoes on the International Trade Committee, Mr Deputy Speaker, but when it comes to farming, we have been talking about the impact of imports into this country but not about consumer choices. My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) raised this point, and I pose this question to the House: what do hon. Members think the environmental, social and governance policies of any of the major supermarkets or purchasers of food abroad say about meat purchasing in the UK? Would Members think it acceptable if Tesco, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl or Waitrose started importing lower quality meat that does not fulfil their ESG standards? That consumer choice already exists; the opportunity for us as members of the EFRA Committee or the International Trade Committee, or as constituency MPs, is to make the case and ensure that meat that does not meet those standards is not purchased. That very effective tool has been overlooked.
I am not saying that everything in this agreement is right for farmers. There are serious concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) was right to raise the issue of small farms. DEFRA has taken some steps and pushed in the right direction to ensure that small farmers work together more effectively to use their purchasing power, so that they can rival some of the bigger farmers. We need to continue to have that conversation and ensure that we are providing reassurance.
That brings me on to scrutiny, about which I have been quite animated in the past. I must begin with an apology to my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), because when I was first elected to this place, in the early days of discussing free trade agreements, he stood up and vociferously made the case for why the CRaG process was not right. In my youthful enthusiasm, I stood up and said that he was wrong and that the Government’s system under CraG was absolutely perfect. Well, on the record, I say that I was absolutely wrong and he was absolutely right. I thank him for his time and expertise, and for talking to me about how we might be able to improve CRaG.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest said, members of the International Trade Committee of all political colours worked extraordinarily well to make sure that scrutiny was at the heart of what we were trying to do. The fact that we had to spend countless hours going through eight volumes and 2,000 pages of the Australia trade agreement to make sure that we could even try to produce a report on the UK’s first major trade deal was a tough challenge at best, but to not have access to Ministers at the beginning and as the process went on was not acceptable. I ask the Minister to make sure that the process is better in future, because that cannot be allowed to continue.
As was outlined under the Labour provisions for CRaG, and as has already been said, we asked for the House to essentially have 21 sitting days after CRaG was initiated to have a debate and a votable motion on whether to extend the CRaG process for a further 21 days. Members of this House would have had the power to continually do that if the questions were not being answered or if the Government decided not to table that free trade agreement.
On 19 July, I applied for a debate under Standing Order No. 24. Mr Speaker rebuffed me on that, but graciously granted me an urgent question to make the point about why we need to have a debate about free trade agreements. I hope that the Opposition will not take this the wrong way, but we on the Conservative Benches have far more rural constituencies. The Government should not be afraid of their own Back Benchers having a conversation about the merits or implications of free trade agreements, so that we can return to our constituencies, speak to the Country Land and Business Association and the NFU, and make sure that we are alerting them to the impacts and the positives or negatives, whatever they may be.
Unfortunately, the clock has run out. We cannot legislate for the Government to find time. As I have said to the Chief Whip and any Ministers who will listen, the Government need to consider adding a new clause to the Bill that would enshrine the scrutiny process, because if this Bill does not pass, we cannot actually ratify the Australia or New Zealand trade agreements. I hasten to add that we have not even produced a report yet on the New Zealand trade agreement, so the House has not had time to see the expertise of the International Trade Committee and its secretariat or the Chair’s views on it. We need to consider that.
If I can put it as bluntly as this, I would like to hear some assurances in the Minister’s closing statement about what we will do on the scrutiny process. We in this House deserve a say on the free trade agreements. I happen to be very optimistic—not naively optimistic—about the trade deals that we are signing, because there are real opportunities for the services and producers across the country that we should welcome. In fact, even in the course of the debate, there have been a number of things that I suddenly thought that we might be able to export to Australia, such as signed copies of the book of the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), and vintage cars—or at least one of them, the price of which is perhaps coming down. We have to take the opportunities to our advantage.
Perhaps one of the greatest moments on the International Trade Committee, which the Chair is far too humble to mention, was when the Australian Trade Minister was sitting there talking about what he was doing. The Chair decided to pop outside to do some lambing and came back in with a newborn lamb that he decided to christen Dan Tehan in honour of the Australia trade agreement.
There is a big opportunity for us to ensure that we get our scrutiny process right and to improve it in Committee and in this place. As the excellent NFU spokesman put forward yesterday, the point is that Members have that right and that opportunity. We have to balance imports versus export opportunities. We have to talk about consumer choice and the competition within the market. The Australia trade agreement will deliver far more than people expect, and when we couple it with the many other things that will be done with the GCC, India and Canada, we will see enormous benefits, as I have already said. I thank the Secretary of State for her opening remarks and look forward to the Minister’s response.
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