Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-21
Topic: Agriculture
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, who spoke with such authority. I wish to speak to my Amendments 164, 167 and 170, to Amendment 160 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and to Amendment 166 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others. They seek to ensure that food security is properly recognised in the Bill, in a way that takes full and explicit account of the legitimate interests of all the devolved Administrations. I am grateful for the support of colleagues who have put their names to my amendments The tragedy of the Covid pandemic has demonstrated the links between access to nutritious food and public health. Conditions such as obesity and diabetes, which are linked to poor nutritional standards, have been associated with a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalisation and death from Covid-19 The panic buying we saw in anticipation of lockdown reminded many of us of the importance of the sustainability, resilience and security of our food supply. However, for many people panic buying is not an option, as poverty means that a secure and nutritious food supply is an everyday challenge. A decade of austerity has widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our society, and the recent loss of earnings due to Covid-19 has added massively to the numbers struggling with food insecurity The pressures on food banks have increased, and it is estimated by the Food Foundation that over 8 million people, including 2 million children, in the UK have faced food insecurity of some kind during the pandemic. Recently, it took the intervention of Premier League footballer Marcus Rashford to elicit a response from this Government on the need to continue free school meal vouchers over the school holidays. However, as the Children’s Society pointed out, the Government should make the extension of free school meal vouchers over the holiday permanent, whether or not there is a pandemic. The Government need to take much more responsibility for ensuring that all UK citizens have access to adequate supplies of nutritious food In a nation where 50% of food is currently imported—30% from the European Union—the importance of protecting high standards of nutritional value, and of the security and quality of both our domestic production and the high-quality fresh produce we import from the EU, cannot be overestimated. The subsector is very dependent on imports, as only 16% of the fruit and 53% of the vegetables we consume are grown in the UK. In this situation, retailers will face potential shortages of supplies if trade barriers are introduced because of a hard Brexit Our reliance on fruit and vegetable trucks coming across from Europe reminds us of the importance of securing an extension to the Brexit transition period to allow time to recover from the impacts of the pandemic and for the negotiators to strike the right Brexit deal. However, on the contrary, the Government appear to be prioritising trade deals with countries far beyond Europe, such as the United States, with its inferior food production and unsafe animal welfare standards. If such trade deals are allowed, with no requirement to preserve the high standards that Britain and the European Union have maintained, they will undercut our farmers with poorer-quality cheap food For agriculture and the food industry, and for both imports and exports, the continuation of European Union trade, where we have a level playing field, is vital. We need to ensure that Brexit does not mean that supply lines of fresh food from the EU are interrupted because of tariff barriers, or that our farmers lose their important export markets in the EU. In the post-Covid world, to meet nutritional and environmental goals, we need to trade more, not less, with our nearest neighbours A legal guarantee of future food, animal welfare and environmental standards would safeguard all UK consumers from unhealthy and unsafe food, while also protecting British farmers at risk of being undercut by poor-quality imports. However, so far, the Government have failed to support calls for such amendments to the Bill. The Bill is an opportunity to protect all British consumers and farmers from food imports of dubious quality, and to maintain current nutritional, environmental and animal welfare standards for vital imports of fresh food.