Trade in Animals and Animal Products (Legislative Functions) and Veterinary Surgeons (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

George Eustice Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the Trade in Animals and Animal Products (Legislative Functions) and Veterinary Surgeons (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019, No. 1225).

This statutory instrument serves three purposes. First, it makes a number of technical changes to existing statutory instruments, to ensure that retained EU law continues to operate effectively after the UK leaves the EU. Secondly, it ensures that our statute book is closely aligned with the EU initially, to support our application for third-country listing for live animals and products of animal origin. Thirdly, it makes a minor correction to an earlier EU exit SI.

The SI was made under the urgency procedure, as it will be required to support the UK’s application to the European Commission for third-country listed status for animal health purposes, which is currently being considered by the EU’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed—SCoPAFF. As the Government have made clear, we seek a negotiated withdrawal from the EU, but we are also taking all responsible steps to prepare for all scenarios, including a no-deal exit.

The European Commission considered the UK’s request for third-country listing at the SCoPAFF meeting on 9 April, and based on guarantees and the relevant animal health and hygiene legislation being in place on that date, it agreed to expedite that third-country listing so that it was available from day one. However, another vote is now required, on 11 October, and this SI must be ready and on the statute book to provide the EU with the necessary assurances to be able to expedite that third-country listing. We are making an offer to the European Union, which it has agreed to previously and, we hope, will again, to align certain sanitary and phytosanitary regulations for a period of nine months, in return for its expediting that third-country listing so that it will be available from day one.

This statutory instrument, as with all such instruments, has a rather long title. I will refer to it simply as the animal imports SI, which I think will be easier for everyone. The animal imports SI transfers legislative powers that give the Secretary of State, with the consent of Ministers from the devolved Administrations, the power to amend, vary or add to the list of third countries that can export animals and animal products into the United Kingdom—a function previously carried out by the European Commission.

The SI also gives the UK the power to align with the EU by being able to add new countries to the list for commodities permitted to be imported once the relevant veterinary and scientific risk assessments have been made. Previously, this power was not considered urgent, since we have many alternative powers in other legislation to prevent trade from countries where there is deemed to be either an animal health or a food safety risk. However, this additional power makes it easier to align directly with the EU during that nine-month transition period, in accordance with the undertaking that we have given in order to expedite that third-country listing.

The SI also amends previously made EU exit SIs regarding animal and animal product imports. This is linked to that first power and will simply allow the Secretary of State, again with the consent of the devolved Administrations where appropriate, to publish lists of animals and products that require or are exempted from border veterinary checks outside of the legislation. This will mean that we can vary both the countries on that register and the products that each of those countries are able to export to the UK.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Can the Minister explain why he is amending regulations that had already been made under the EU exit procedures in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 before we had even got to exiting? Was a mistake made the first time round or has there been a development? Why does he have to amend statutory instruments that were supposed to prepare us for a no-deal exit?

[George Eustice]

There are two reasons: first, as I said, the EU SCoPAFF’s April agreement has expired and it is considering the matter again on 11 October. Although the ability to amend and update the list in a quick and expeditious way was not considered essential the first time round, given more time we believed it would be helpful to put it in there to place beyond any doubt the fact that the EU would have all the assurances it needed to expedite third country status.

There was also an error, which I was coming on to. The statutory instrument amends the Veterinary Surgeons and Animal Welfare (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 by correcting a reference to the Recognition of Professional Qualifications (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to enable certain EU, EEA and Swiss veterinary surgeons to register with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. The error was simply that the previous SI referred to paragraph 43 of a regulation regarding professional qualifications that had been laid before the House by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The relevant paragraph in its final iteration became paragraph 44, so there was an error in cross-referencing to the wrong paragraph, and this SI simply corrects it.

Part 1 of this statutory instrument contains relevant definitions used in the instrument. The legislative powers to amend the list are transferred from the Commission in parts 2 and 3 of this instrument. In parts 4 and 5, amendments are made to a previously made EU exit statutory instrument, and to domestic regulations in England and Northern Ireland relating to the trade in animals and animal products. No policy changes were made by those amendments; they are simply technical.

The final purpose of this SI is to correct a genuine but minor error in referencing a paragraph that turned out to be wrong in the final iteration of the regulations that I have mentioned. The devolved Administrations were fully engaged in the development of this statutory instrument, and it applies to the whole of the UK. I therefore commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I shall try to deal with as many of the points that have been raised as possible. Starting in reverse order with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor, it is indeed the case that these powers, having been brought across, give the UK Government the power and the ability to change the list should, for instance, the European Union have a more lax state of affairs than us. Should it take unnecessary risks with food safety or public health, we would have the option to change the list to have a more stringent approach should it be necessary.

The purpose of amending the regulations now is, in the initial instance, to give the European Union the reassurance that we have all of the powers that we need dynamically to align our regulations on some of these SPS issues with the EU so that it can be reassured that we are not going to depart during that transitional period from the inspection regime that it currently has.

The hon. Member for Ipswich, the shadow Minister, raised the issue of goods from third countries. He is concerned that they may not be checked or inspected at all, but that is not the case. Currently, goods that come into the European Union will be checked in accordance with European standards. Goods that come into the UK on the day after we leave the European Union will also be checked, as they are now, on behalf of the European Union, in exactly the same way that they are now. Where we have transit goods—goods that are landed in another EU country but are destined for the UK market—they will be checked in exactly the same way as they are now when they come into the UK.

So it is already the case that goods in transit are inspected in the UK when they arrive, not at the port of entry. In so far as they are not coming through as goods in transit, but are simply landed in another EU port and then re-exported to the UK, they would undergo the same checks as they do today through the EU’s own system.

The other point I want to make is about rapid alert systems. The EU system is called RASFF: ports in member states can alert one another to problems that they have encountered at the border. The UK contributes the vast majority of the data to that, far more than any of the other countries. I think that for some items, as much as 75% of the intelligence on the system comes from the UK. We have to understand that the EU does not have its own inspection taskforce; it relies on member states. Currently, this task is performed at border inspection posts by the Animal and Plant Health Agency on our behalf, which does a very thorough job. That is where the expertise comes from; it does not come specifically from the European Union.

It may be the case that more goods have to go through the transit route to get to the UK. We anticipate an increase in the number of transit goods, which could mean up to around 8,000 extra checks at UK border inspection posts compared with now. However, we believe that we already have the resources to manage what is a small increase, based on the number of checks that we already do.

The hon. Member for Ipswich asked why we need to use the urgent procedure for this regulation. A European Union SCoPAFF meeting is taking place on 11 October, a few days away; that is not long. It has been a rather moving date: at one point it was going to be earlier in October, then at another point it was going to be 18 October, and it now seems to be moving again to 11 October. Given the importance of getting that third-country listing, we believed it was important to ensure we had done everything possible to provide the EU with the reassurance it wanted to be able to expedite that listing. That is why we made this regulation under the urgent procedure.

The hon. Gentleman ventured into a number of other areas, including the so-called Benn Act—the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. However, when challenged on some of those points, he also pointed out that they were outside the scope of what we are discussing today, so I will not be drawn into those issues save to say that this Government are working very hard and energetically to get an agreement, and have come forward with a sensible proposal to replace the so-called Irish backstop.

[Sandy Martin]

Why is it necessary to bring this SI forward now if there is no chance of our leaving without a deal on 31 October, and if there is a chance of our leaving without a deal on 31 October, how does that square with the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act? That was the point I was making about that Act.

[George Eustice]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act does not say there cannot be a no-deal Brexit. It requires the Prime Minister to send a certain letter on a certain date. We do not yet know whether the European Union would agree to extend; we do not know what terms it would demand or extract; and we do not know whether those terms, and any counter-offer it made, would be acceptable to the Government, Parliament or anybody else. There are still many uncertainties here, and we are clear that we will leave, with or without a deal, at the end of October. That remains the Government’s position, and it is therefore prudent to prepare for all eventualities, which is why this SI is necessary.

Finally, I will deal with a point made by the hon. Member for Falkirk about vets and veterinary capacity. This particular regulation is more about the inspections that APHA would conduct on behalf of the Government on imports from third countries, and less about the export health certificate. No veterinary capacity is really relevant to those inspections, other than the APHA port inspections that we already carry out. As I said, I believe we have sufficient capacity to manage that small increase in load.

However, the hon. Gentleman has raised a point about export health certificates, where goods going the other way would need some veterinary attestation to say that the goods are what they said they were. We have been offering free training for official vets to sign EHCs. Some 736 have registered with APHA, and 564 are already enrolled on that course. I am told that 152 have qualified, and the number of official veterinarians who can sign EHCs for food products has increased by 200 since 8 February, to 835. We are also looking at additional approaches, such as having certification support officers so that this work can be done by people other than fully qualified vets. We are conscious that there will be an increase in burden when it comes to export health certificates, and we have been working to build capacity in that area.

I hope that I have managed to address most of the issues that have been raised, and therefore commend the regulation to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.