I thank the noble Lord for introducing this statutory instrument. I will not go into the details of what it is about; he explained it very well, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, but I have a few points and questions.
As we have heard, the SI is largely to give effect to the relevant part of the CPTPP because Canada is the major producer of ice wine. I have been to a number of vineyards in Canada that produce ice wine. In fact, I did splash out, buy some and bring it back. If you have not tried ice wine, it comes in lovely slim bottles and is very nice indeed. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, my recollection—I could be wrong—from the tours of the vineyards is that it has to be harvested when it is frozen; you cannot defrost the grapes, then pick them. It is important that we are protecting what is a very distinctive product, so we clearly support this SI.
While we are on the issue of the CPTPP, are there going to be any other SIs coming through Defra regarding trade and the CPTPP? I do not know if the Minister knows the answer but it would be quite interesting to have a heads-up on that. We have had, as the noble Baroness said, other SIs on wine. There may not be any other way around this, and it is no criticism, but Defra seems to come up with a lot of small SIs. Does it have to be like that? Could we do them en bloc to be a bit more efficient?
I was interested that in the Minister’s introduction he talked about the fact that this product is only imported; we clearly do not make ice wine in this country. It would be interesting to know the impact of this SI. How much ice wine is imported into this country? I had never seen it until I went to Canada. What percentage would no longer be able to be marketed and what is the actual impact of this statutory instrument? It would be interesting to know if it has been a problem for the wine trade.
The Minister also mentioned the Welsh and Scottish instruments that are likely to come forward through their legislation. Other noble Lords also mentioned this and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about the timescales. I note that Defra’s response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s concerns, in its report, explained that there are already rules in place which mean that this should not be a problem. Even so, we need to get all our legislative ducks in a row, so it would be interesting to know the likely timescales.
Finally, I support what the noble Baroness said about the Wine and Spirit Trade Association’s concerns regarding tax and excise duty. It has raised a really important point and I support her request to the Minister that this is discussed with the Treasury and that the department looks at this seriously.