Richard Foord
Main Page: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Honiton and Sidmouth)Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Mr Carmichael
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. She was on the Committee when we heard from the Swiss representatives in Brussels, and they were successful over a rather longer negotiation period. I give credit to the Prime Minister for having created a political environment in which a negotiated agreement this year is not just possible but expected. I understand all the reasons why the Prime Minister would want to see the earliest possible implementation—there are imperatives coming from the political electoral cycle, shall we say—but at the end of the day it is more important that our farmers get what is necessary to allow them to take advantage of the agreement. If they cannot sell the products into market, we have missed the whole point of having an SPS agreement; it would be an agreement simply for the sake of it. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that, in this agreement, as in any other trade deal we have, leaving ourselves open to the import of food produced to lower standards than we expect of our farmers would be absolute madness.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
I am grateful to the Chair of the EFRA Committee for laying out the top lines from this excellent report, and I also commend the Committee for its work on the inquiry into animal and plant health. My right hon. Friend spoke about the Cabinet Office Minister not appearing before his Committee, but the Minister did appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee in September, as part of our inquiry into the UK-EU reset, although that is of course not the place for detail on SPS arrangements. Any alignment with the EU on SPS policy needs to be phased in. Could my right hon. Friend expand on why the shift needs to be a transition, rather than an immediate removal of friction, given that the National Farmers Union has said it is critical that we avoid a cliff edge?
Mr Carmichael
On any objective analysis, it is very important that we get this right, and we can get it right by doing it slowly and carefully. The hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst)—the lobster capital of Europe—referenced the report from CropLife UK. The report seeks to quantify the financial cost of a cliff-edge implementation, and puts it as high as £810 million. CropLife UK is obviously not saying, “Don’t do this,” but simply, “If you do this with no proper implementation period, there will be financial cost attached to it.” At a time when the Government’s central mission is economic growth, and when that growth must be available to every community in the country —rural as well as urban—taking that sort of risk for the political imperative of timing seems an unacceptable way of managing such an important agreement.