Trade in Animals and Animal Products (Legislative Functions) and Veterinary Surgeons (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-10-07
Topic: Agriculture
John Eric Gardiner (Conservative, Centre-right): No. I am going to make progress, if the noble Lord will forgive me. I have had a lot of interventions and I will address his point My noble friend Lady McIntosh also raised the issue of veterinary surgeons. We are offering free training for official vets to sign EHCs for food products. Some 736 have been registered with the APHA to assess free training, of which 564 enrolled on the course for this qualification; 152 have since qualified. The total number of official veterinarians who can sign EHCs for food products has increased by 200 to 835 since 8 February. We have also created a new certification support officer role to assist official vets and are offering free training. To date, 170 have registered and 47 have qualified. We have published a list of official veterinary services on GOV.UK to help businesses find official veterinarians. I am absolutely clear that vets are vital in this. That is why the statutory instrument tidies up the position in relation to veterinary surgeons, as I have said My noble friend Lady McIntosh asked about animal welfare and transport. There is considerable concern about the welfare of animals in transport and we will continue to recognise EU transport welfare authorisations for an interim period, to mitigate the risk of friction at the border from EU consignments arriving. This is an area where the Government will look in future to see how we can enhance animal welfare. We have been clear that we understand the issues about transport and the Scottish islands, but we think that there is considerable room for improvement, and this is a work in progress. I understand the point my noble friend makes about farming interests as well, but we need to be mindful, clearly, that our standards of animal welfare are clearly understood The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, spoke about the legislative relationship if there were different regulatory regimes in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The Prime Minister recently highlighted that there are ongoing negotiations, and it would not be appropriate to pre-empt those at this stage—I suspect that the noble Lord expected me to say that. The statutory instruments deal with third-country listing and, specifically, operability amendments To answer the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, we are absolutely clear on this and it is central to our border delivery group work. We absolutely understand it, which is why I mentioned animal welfare to my noble friend Lady McIntosh. We are very conscious of the importance of planning to ensure that we have the facilities in place and do not have animals held up. There must be alternative ways, including by using other ports, because we all understand that the straits between Calais and Dover, in particular, are going to be pressure points. It is important that we work to make sure we have capacity in place at other ports, including rerouting to EU ports and airports that have the appropriate border inspection facilities. We are very mindful of the importance of our animals coming from this country, where we want them to be well looked after, and moving to other parts of Europe. I know that there will be some details that I have not adequately addressed. Some are detailed and I want to make sure that I get the absolute chapter and verse, so that in no way have I verged into my own personal view, but instead given a distinct expression of view I understand everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, but I do not believe that, in bringing forward the statutory instruments, I have done anything other than the best I can to ensure, in whatever circumstances we are presented with, that we are in a position to say clearly to the Commission that we have done everything possible to secure its consent for a listing if there were a circumstance in which that was necessary. I entirely back up my noble friend the Duke of Montrose. I think I know farmers quite well, coming from that stock, and if we had not bothered to do this, with its nearly £5 billion consequence, and had not put this forward in the way we have, there would have been very considerable alarm and disquiet that we had not done everything possible, for any scenario. One thing about these times is that nothing is particularly certain, and therefore we have to cover all eventualities. So, I understand the noble Baroness’s amendment, but I hope she will feel able to withdraw it.