Agriculture Bill — House of Commons, 2020-11-04
Topic: Foreign Trade
George William Freeman (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon. I thank Ministers—in particular the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—for the work that they have done and for listening to the concerns that we have all expressed. I also thank Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, for her tireless work with the EU this year, and Lord Curry, Lord Grantchester, Lord Gardiner and their other lordships for their work and for listening and putting the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory footing, as we have all been asking for This is a good moment, and not just because Government Members get to honour our manifesto commitments, which were sincerely made and taken by the public. It is also crucial for us to make Brexit a moment when we take back control of trade so that we can protect UK standards, ensure a level playing field for our farmers and go further by using our market leverage as one of the great markets of the world to promote UK leadership in modern farming: low carbon, low water, low plastic, low input, high productivity farming—the very farming that we need to be exporting around the world. To that end, we need to be looking in the Trade Bill at the use of variable tariffs to promote the export of British agricultural leadership around the world This battle now goes to the Trade Bill, where I will be pushing for three key things. First, I want a proper impact assessment for all trade deals, including the impact both for this country and for the third party. I congratulate the International Trade Secretary on renewing our trade arrangements with Kenya, which is an interesting and important market for us. I would like to think that we might be able to go further in due course and have a trade deal whereby we in this House could understand what it means for Kenyans as well as for agriculture in this country. After 15 years, we have lost the architecture for assessing the impact of trade deals, and we need to put that back in place so that this House can understand exactly what it is voting on Secondly, I want us to explore variable tariffs. What I mean by that is a world in which, yes, it is wrong that the EU imposes a 40% tariff on food from Africa—I am pleased that will be moving away from that—but also where we rightly do not accept food that is unsafe. I want us to imagine a world where we put a basic tariff on food that is safe but not produced to the standards that we would like to encourage, and zero tariffs on food produced in the way in which we need the world to produce it—with less carbon, less water and less plastic—and to use that to help drive our exports Thirdly, I would like us to put in place proper parliamentary scrutiny that is better than the CRaG process to ensure that we hold Ministers to account on the aims of trade deals and on the final terms, so that the House can show that we have used this moment genuinely to protect UK farmers, to make sure that they have a level playing field and to show our support for the best of British farming and all that it stands for.