UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I will ask the team to write to my hon. Friend about the technical detail, because I do not have those figures to hand. However, really importantly, beyond the question of the opportunities that under-35s on a three-year visa have, being free to choose what they want to do when they go and work in Australia, that shift from a two-year visa to a four-year visa for executives and managers who want to work in any number of sectors—and, indeed, for their families to be able to work in Australia as well—is a huge opportunity for our workforce to go and enjoy Australian opportunities, and also to bring UK expertise to our great friend and ally.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I wish you a happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. From the enthusiastic way in which the Secretary of State is selling this deal, she has clearly been drinking a lot of the Prime Minister’s Kool-Aid, but no matter how much positive spin she puts on it, it is a bad deal for County Durham beef and sheep farmers, including those in my constituency. Those people are already struggling because of the restrictions that have come about because of Brexit, so I ask her what discussions she has had with her counterparts in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about support for those farmers in years to come. In many cases, they are marginal anyway, and if they are opened up to worldwide competition from Australian lamb and beef, that will make their job 10 times harder.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I cannot speak for my colleagues in DEFRA, but I know that progress on the environmental land management schemes framework is developing at pace. That framework will be a really important tool to help our farmers make the right choices, not only about the food production that they choose to do, but about managing the environment that they are stewarding on our behalf as we move forward and—to the question of the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) earlier—make sure that we look after the biodiversity and the nature that surrounds us.

However, I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman that this deal is bad for his farmers, because there are great opportunities coming. As I mentioned earlier, the release of the lamb imports plan for the US is opening up a whole new series of markets, and as we continue to do more trade deals and with the opportunities in Asia-Pacific, our amazing farmers will have opportunities to move into new markets that they have not had before. However, as I will continue to say and as the right hon. Gentleman knows, there is nothing like eating local. Our farmers continue to advertise and very successfully sell their products to the British markets too, and I know that my colleagues in DEFRA work very closely with farming groups to help ensure that happens.