Exiting the European Union (Pesticides) — House of Commons, 2019-10-01
Topic: Agriculture
Charles George Eustice (Conservative, Centre-right): On the final point raised by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), I addressed the issue of errors previously. Bringing across these statutory instruments is a vast undertaking; it is inevitable that there will be a few errors, and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 made provision to deal with those even after exit. I explained very clearly that there was a simple oversight in the case of endocrine disruptors in that particular statutory instrument I want predominantly to address the issue of oversight, which was the principal concern raised by both the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), and the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). It is important to recognise that the UK has always been recognised as the leading country in the European Union for chemicals and pesticides expertise. The chemicals regulation division within HSE is the driving force behind most of the EU working groups that consider issues with pesticides. Through those working groups, we provide our technical expertise to the European Union; it benefits from our technical input. Yes, there is a role as well for the European Food Safety Authority and the European Chemicals Agency, but we should not underestimate the incredible technological and technical expertise we have in this field In addition to the CRD, which sits within the Health and Safety Executive, we benefit from advice from the expert committee on pesticides, which is a panel of leading academics with knowledge in this area. We also have an expert committee on pesticide residues, which assesses all the evidence on both imported and home-grown foods to look for trends in breaches of maximum residue limits. When we leave the European Union, all the existing methodologies for assessing pesticides at a European level will be brought across, including the so-called end points—that is, the thresholds that are applied—and the precautionary approach. Indeed, the key regulation, 1107/2009, was largely drafted by British officials based in the CRD. So we will be bringing all that across in the first instance The idea that there will no longer be technical or scientific assessments is a misunderstanding. I am told that, in the vast majority of cases, where "shall" is specified in the EU regulations in the context of requiring scientific input, it remains as "shall" in the UK ones. I think there are one or two minor areas that do not relate to the requirement for scientific input but relate more, as I understand it, to the methodology and the requirements on particular organisations or bodies. There, it is not appropriate to convert "shall" in the same way, as we do not have to have exactly the same institutions and organisational structure that the European Union has to carry out those effective scientific assessments. However, I reassure hon. Members that we will continue to have scientific assessments, that science will continue to lead all our decisions on pesticides in future and that we have some of the best technical expertise in this field. I hope that I have been able to provide reassurance on that point. Obviously, the main purpose of this particular statutory instrument is to change the dates for the transition Question put and agreed to.