My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who is a leading light on the advisory panel of the Dimbleby report, which I will refer to shortly. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for moving the lead amendment in this group. I do not intend to repeat many of the comments that have been made; he has very eloquently addressed the issues of the amendments in the names of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and others, which purport to fall foul of the World Trade Organization.
I shall speak initially to Amendment 90, and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who have been on this journey with a similar amendment in the original rollover trade Bill, on which we made a lot of progress. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, rather annoyingly, got in before me by tabling the amendment that was carried. We will discuss that further in the context of the trade Bill.
As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said when moving Amendment 89ZA, this is an issue that consumers and farmers care passionately about. It was front and centre of the Conservative manifesto—not that I saw that—which we want to build on with this amendment, to then adopt what was originally government policy in the rollover trade Bill. I will not refer to it, but it complements Amendment 97 which follows later.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others, referred to part 1 of the interim report by Henry Dimbleby—I almost called him a noble Lord—in the National Food Strategy . On page 7 he refers to
“grasping the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to decide what kind of trading nation we want to be. The essence of sovereignty is freedom—including the freedom to uphold our own values and principles within the global marketplace. In negotiating our new trade deals, the Government must protect the high environmental and animal welfare standards of which our country is justly proud. It should also have the confidence to subject any prospective deals to independent scrutiny: a standard process in mature trading nations such as the United States, Australia and Canada. If we put the right mechanisms in place, we can ensure high food standards, protect the environment and be a champion of free trade.”
There we have it. We are taking back control. I applaud that in this sea change, for the first time in nigh-on 50 years, we will decide how we trade.
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I am proud of the high standards that this Government and successive Governments have imposed on production, which our British farmers are only too proud to meet. Consumers set great store by them, as evidenced by the
1 million signatures on the petition to maintain those high standards. We need fair competition and a level playing field. Yes, I applaud the Government saying that we will keep our high standards, but as Henry Dimbleby pointed out, we need to have the other side of the coin. We need to ensure and have it on the face of this Bill, in this place, that we will not import agricultural foods especially, and other goods, that are produced to lower standards. Those are two sides of the same coin. The Government are half way there, and in Amendment 90 I hope to nudge them a little further, building on the conclusions of their own adviser, Henry Dimbleby. Obviously, I prefer Amendment 90 to Amendments 89ZA and 93, but that is something on which the House will decide.
I am reluctant even to consider Amendments 94 and 95, because the terminology is very confusing, and in any event, I worry about us leaving the EU with no deal because the dispute resolution mechanism of the World Trade Organization is in great jeopardy, given the position of the United States. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in that we need to differentiate the terminology that we use quite loosely regarding the difference between food standards and food safety. I have the highest respect for the work that is done in England especially, by our own Food Standards Agency, with which I am more familiar.
We must be clear that if anybody in this country were to eat chlorinated chicken, they would not get food poisoning or anything else that was unsafe in that regard. As I understand it, chicken is rinsed in chlorine because of the intensive levels of production. This is also why beef is injected with hormones: they are not reared outside, so farmers must compensate.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Empey, on his amendment, and refer to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, because the argument has moved on. Even if we carry the amendments here today, I am extremely worried that they would not find favour in the House of Commons. It appears that the Government are seriously considering allowing in these substandard products, as I would call them, but placing tariffs on them and labelling them. That is completely unacceptable, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has encapsulated that possibility in Amendment 103. It sets out amending or revising UK global tariff rates, and specifically relates to having regard for the well-being of the UK agricultural sector and the importance of maintaining standards of imported goods which are equivalent to, or which exceed, the relevant domestic standards.
We could end up in a situation that the Minister, in summing up this debate, will remember only too well: the unilateral ban in this country on sow stalls and tethers. Yes, we had the red tractor system, to which the noble Lord referred, and all those accreditations which I entirely endorse and support, but the consumers went out and voted with their feet. They read the label, but they looked at the price and bought the cheaper imports. I do not want to place our consumers in that difficult position, and I do not want to see family farms where I grew up, and which I represented for 18 years, go to the wall because the Government will not sign on the dotted line the Bill with this group of amendments. I shall weigh up the level of debate when deciding on my own amendment.