Exiting the European Union (Agriculture)

Debate between Rebecca Pow and George Eustice

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

No, I do not. Having worked in DEFRA for five and a half years, I have tremendous admiration and respect for all those people. Although they work very hard through the night, somebody will mark and check their work the next day. That is how our civil service works, and it has made a sterling effort to make sure we have all these regulations in order.

As a general rule, almost every regulation of these two statutory instruments substitutes “Secretary of State” for “European Commission”. These regulations are not complicated but rather straightforward. We often hear a lot about so-called Henry VIII powers in such debates, and there is a suspicion that, through the use of statutory instruments, we might be making changes to primary legislation that should not be made.

In truth, the most pernicious use of a Henry VIII power in modern times has been section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, which has run rampant through whole pieces of primary legislation, even important flagship Acts that predate our membership of the European Union. We are in a rather odd situation in debating on the Floor of the House whether it is okay to change “European Commission” to “Secretary of State”, as the original powers implied by these statutory instruments were imposed by the European Union without any debate in this House, typically through either an implementing Act or a delegated Act, and therefore with little or no scrutiny by the European Parliament and often with little or no scrutiny by the European Council. The role of this Parliament, if it was lucky, was to receive an explanatory memorandum but, by and large, only ever to receive letters to the European Scrutiny Committee advising on what the European Union had done to us.

Nevertheless, this is what taking back control means. It means that our Parliament, for once, is starting to take an interest in these matters, rather than leaving them to the European Union.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I pay enormous tribute to my hon. Friend. I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary when he was an Agriculture Minister, and I went through a great amount of this important work with him. On organic standards, is it not the case that we very much see ourselves as setting the bar not just nationally but across Europe and across the world, that we have influenced Europe on these standards and that we ought to keep these standards as high, if not higher, in leaving?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Of course, that is exactly what the regulations are about. We have had some influence on the organics regulations. Indeed, when I first became Agriculture Minister, something called the organics dossier was going through the European Parliament, and it concluded that journey only around six or nine months ago. Along with the smarter rules for safer food dossier, it became something of an internal joke about an interminable debate taking place in the European Union. In the end, we managed to get that agreement into something that was satisfactory to us, although it meant that not much had changed.

Finally, let me recognise something in the statutory instrument related to the control of imports. As the shadow Minister said, we are indeed ready to replace the EU trade control and expert system with a new UK system that has been in development in DEFRA for at least the past nine months. There has been a prototype version for several months and it will be ready to replace TRACES from the point at which we leave the European Union. I welcome the Minister’s point about the recognition of existing EU logos and standards for a 21-month period. Of course, we all hope that the European Union will do the honourable and sensible thing and reciprocate.