My Lords, I feel I should begin by declaring my fellowship, through the Industry and Parliament Trust, of the Horticultural Trades Association, which is the trade association for environmental horticulture. I am sure the Minister knows this but that is what used to be called ornamental horticulture. The Government have not always shown that they know what this refers to, so I make that clarification.
We are talking about a Brexit cost here. That is what is being inflicted. We have spent several years with people looking around and trying to find Brexit benefits but they have been extremely hard to find on the ground. This is a cost and is particularly likely to impact on small and medium-sized enterprises across Britain.
I would like to make a comment about the timing of this debate, on 18 April. These fees are coming in on 30 April and were announced two weeks ago. That is not a great deal of time for businesses to prepare for and understand what is happening, so I must express my concern.
This is even more crucial in the context of environmental horticulture. Now is the worst possible time for this massive change in the industry to happen. There are a few peak weeks for horticulture when people are planting their gardens in spring and looking forward to summer. This measure will hit the sector extremely hard at this moment. The seasonal peak may last for only a few weeks and this is happening in the middle of it. It would seem that it is too late to make any change to that but I hope the Government acknowledge—this is a question for the Minister—that the industry will be taking on a significant cost at this moment. They should be thinking about what kind of compensation and extra support it needs.
It greatly concerns garden centres, nurseries and other suppliers that there could be delays on 30 April and in the week or so afterwards. We have heard many reports of people importing woody plants, shrubs and perennials en masse beforehand. However, it is not possible to do that with bedding plants and many other smaller plants. What arrangements do the Government have in place to provide compensation should there be significant delays at border posts?
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I also have to ask the Minister about what is happening at these border posts. Will the staff be adequately equipped and trained to understand what are often complex loads of lots of different plants? I take as a case study for this Joseph Rochford Gardens in Hertfordshire. Some 15% of its imports come from Italy as loads of plants of many different species and sizes. It is a very skilled job to unpack and repack a load of those plants, making sure that they are not damaged. Will staff be adequately equipped? Are the staff on these inspection posts direct employees or contractors? If they are contractors, how are those contracts going to be overseen?
Another area is of great concern to people in thinking about what is on our supermarket shelves, given the many pressures on food security at the moment. Most soft fruit plants—strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes and fruit trees—are imported by UK growers to produce much of the food that we produce here. It is estimated that this change will add £200 million in costs to the fresh produce sector overall. To put this in concrete terms—this is really quite compelling—100 million EU strawberry plants are imported each year, primarily from Holland, Belgium and Poland. Each load of strawberry plants is worth up to £100,000. The plants are grown to order. One truck being delayed, with one
hold-up in the system, would not only mean a loss of £100,000-worth of plants; the grower would not be able to replace them. The grower could potentially end up with fields left vacant because there is no source for those plants.
I come back to the question of what compensation the Government are prepared to make if that situation should unfortunately arise. I stress that concerns about this have been expressed by British Apples and Pears, the British Tomato Growers’ Association and British Berry Growers. What consultation has the Minister had with those groups to make sure that they are at least as well informed as they can be? Will that be ongoing in the first days and weeks when this measure is implemented?
I conclude by acknowledging that there is huge concern about biosecurity. In the age of the climate emergency and globalisation, the risks of bacterial, fungal and vector-borne diseases are growing exponentially. This means that, ultimately, we have to think about reducing the flow and having many more nurseries. There is a huge commercial opportunity here to have this growing happening in the UK so that we do not have to move plants around. I hope that the Government are looking at that; anything the Minister can say on that will be helpful.
On the biosecurity point, I know that there is great concern. I have spoken to nursery owners. The British Tomato Growers’ Association said about the inspection points that we are introducing a significant point of infection. We have lorries being unloaded side by side. We hope that the plants are not being mixed but we all know that perfect things do not happen in warehouses—I worked in a warehouse many years ago—and there is a risk that the new inspection points could be a place where biosecurity is breached and diseases are spread. Again, there is a question around compensation.
Finally, my understanding—I stand to be corrected if I am wrong about this—is that the rates in the SIs we are debating now cover only the points of entry at Eurotunnel and the Port of Dover. Other commercial entry points—about 30 of them—are setting their own rates. Can the Minister tell me anything about what those rates will be? Are they paralleling these rates, in essence, or are they higher? Of course, it is very difficult for companies to move from one supply chain to another so what is the situation there, particularly for small and medium enterprises? I stress that supermarkets and big commercial companies will be able to pass on these costs but that is often not the case for small and medium-sized enterprises. This is of great concern to many sectors in that small and medium-sized business area.