My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as chair of Peers for the Planet and director of the associated company. I will speak very briefly, broadly on the environmental issues that have been raised in this debate and particularly to give my support to the general principle of impact assessments. The case has been made very clearly that we need in particular to understand issues such as farming and the environment, which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, will speak to later. This is a complex area and unintended consequences are possible.
I want in particular to support Amendment 15 and the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown. Amendment 15 relates to the very important commitments the Government made on preventing the use of forest risk commodities. We really do need clarity on this, and particularly when the Schedule 17 regulations will be laid. I hope the Minister can confirm that the regulations will be in force before we accede to the CPTPP. Although the agreement does not impact the UK’s ability to put these regulations in place, given that we do not otherwise have environmental requirements for what is imported, we should not enter into trade agreements that increase the likelihood of forest risk commodities being imported into the UK without those standards being in place.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, also brought out very clearly the risk that the expectation is that our own regulations are unlikely to cover instances where domestic regimes of CPTPP parties legally allow deforestation which still impacts critical habitats and the human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. I note that the EU regulation, in contrast, covers illegal and “legal” deforestation. I hope that the Minister can comment on how we will interact on these issues with CPTPP member countries.
Amendment 16 was very ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. However, while the theory is there and we are assured that there will be no lessening of our standards on pesticides and the monitoring of pesticide residue, the explanation from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, certainly made me very concerned that our UK border testing regimes may be unable to cope with the additional impact of growing agricultural imports. If that is true, we can on paper have the highest standards in the world, but it will not make any difference, so the implementation is extremely important.
The monitoring and enforcement actions that have been discussed in considering Amendments 15 and 16 are of course related to issues that the Committee will debate later in considering Amendments 26 and 33, on the effect of investor state dispute settlement provisions. I hope that I am not, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about to go too much off piste. However, I want to apologise to the Committee for not being able to be here for that debate, and to say that it is important that we explore the potentially damaging effect on environmental policy-making of those provisions and understand whether the Government could be doing more to pursue side letters with CPTPP parties such as Canada, in order to obviate the risks that come with being bound by ISDS provisions. While I cannot be here to listen to what the Minister has to say on those issues, and apologise again for that, I will certainly read what he has to say with great interest.