UK-Canada Trade Deal: Suspension of Negotiations Debate
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere
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UK-Canada Trade Deal: Suspension of Negotiations
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that question. We fundamentally agree with that. We have been talking with the cheese manufacturers all the way through this. We send £200 million-worth of food to Canada and it sends us the thick end of £600 million back, mostly wheat, maize and lobster. However, we do not want to take the hormone beef. That is where the beef is. The issue, therefore, is that we have £18 million of trade that we need to try to support, and we will do our best to support those impeccable farmers, especially in the West Country and in Wales.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, Canada is notorious for gearing its trade policy around its dairy sector, which is particularly strong in Quebec. However, is not the wider issue here whether Britain will always follow EU rules on sanitary and phytosanitary standards? According to the WTO, SPS measures must never be economic and can be justified only by science. The EU’s ban on these various kinds of beef has been condemned by its own scientific advisory agency and by the WTO. Is it the view of my noble friend the Minister that our SPS regime, as long as it is tied to the Brussels one, it is compatible with WTO regulations?
Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)
This is the issue. Canada has been in a recent—2016—deal with the EU and understood the SPS rules of the EU. It understands fundamentally that we are not reducing our rules on SPS, but it has seen an opportunity, and you go for the gap when you see the opportunity, do you not? If you are a trade negotiator, you think to yourself, “Where can I get my point of advantage?” On our two outstanding issues, the cheese and the rules of origin—where, again, we are pretty much sorted with a rollover from the EU—Canada has seen an opportunity to cross that line. It is a pause in negotiations and we will get back round the table as soon as it comes back over the red line.