Queen’s Speech

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the Queen’s Speech, which we are debating today, has been unprecedented in its vacuity. This gives us a licence to discuss what is not in the speech as much as the little that it does contain. I have ben pre-empted somewhat in what I intended to say by the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Broers. However, I am glad to be able to emphasise the message.

The Queen’s Speech has given scant recognition to the greatest issue of our times, which is the need to respond to climate change. It makes barely a mention of our strategy for power generation, which must respond to climate change while satisfying the domestic and industrial needs of the country. Without a vigorous programme for building nuclear power stations, there will be no possibility of meeting the net zero target for CO₂ emissions by 2050.

The real costs of nuclear power have been badly misrepresented. Invidious comparisons in terms of price per kilowatt hour have been made between the electricity from the new nuclear power stations and electricity from renewable sources, which is predominantly from wind power. When the intermittency of renewable power is taken into account, its real costs far exceed the quoted figures. If the proportion of electricity generated by renewable power exceeds a modest level, expensive back-up plant is called for, which ought to be included in the cost. The cost of building the Hinkley C nuclear power station embodies the cost of the first of a kind; it is estimated that the next example, which is to be built at Sizewell, will cost at least 20% less. First generation wind turbines were also burdened by similar start-up costs, and it is with them that a fair comparison should be made. However, a fundamental reason for the adverse costing of nuclear power originates in the economic nostrums of privatisation.

The proponents of privatisation have insisted that major infrastructure projects should be financed by private capital. The corollary of the high commercial rates of interest demanded by private capital is a severe discount rate that belittles the value of future benefits. The interest rate of 3.5% that is commonly used in government cost-benefit analysis implies that £100 received 20 years hence has a discounted present value of £50. However, if we apply a commercial rate of interest of 9%, that £100 has a present value of less than £18. In order to satisfy their short-term time preference and to indemnify themselves against risk, the private providers of capital demand an exorbitant rate of return. The risks are those of delays and cost overruns, and they include regulatory risks, which are a heterogeneous category of hazards arising from the tendency of Governments to change their minds.

When a commercial rate is applied to a programme to construct a large nuclear power station, its abundant future benefits are so heavily discounted relative to the costs entailed in its construction that its economic viability is called into question. We should not be adopting short-term commercial criteria when considering a nuclear project of which the benefits are expected to last for 50 years or more. The Government have failed to raise the necessary finance for building additional nuclear power stations from private sources. They judged that the terms available to them were too costly. Conversely, what they have offered to investors has seemed to them to be insufficient. The Government now propose to make their offers more attractive by reducing the risks that putative investors are liable to face. This is the purpose of the so-called regulated asset base methodology.

The intention is to indemnify lenders against the aforementioned risks. There are two effects. The first is that the capital funds are more likely to be forthcoming when the risks are alleviated. The second is that the rate of return demanded by lenders is liable to be lower when the risk premium has been factored out. Therefore, it will appear that the cost of a project under the regime of a regulated asset base is less than it would be under alternative arrangements, such as a contract for difference. This is an illusion. Any risks that materialise are liable to be borne by the Government or by the consumers of the electricity via higher prices. Moreover, the rate of return demanded by the lenders is still subject to their exorbitant short-term time preferences.

There is an obvious alternative recourse. It is to finance the project by direct government borrowing, which could be by the sale of designated infrastructure bonds. These bonds would bear a much lower rate of interest than commercial rates. The long construction periods that affect large nuclear reactors could be avoided by resorting to small modular reactors that can be constructed off site. These will require a period of development, but it is reasonable to propose that the Government should bear a large proportion of the associated costs. One might wonder why such a recourse has not been pursued.

One explanation lies in the fetish associated with the so-called net borrowing requirement of the Government, which successive Administrations have tried to hold in check. However, a distinction must be made between borrowing that is to service current expenditure and borrowing to finance investment in productive infrastructure. The latter should be no more subject to constraints than are the borrowings of manufacturing enterprises that are invested in plant and machinery.

We need urgently to invest in the nuclear power plants that will sustain our future prosperity as consumers and producers, and which will do so while allowing us to fulfil our commitment to staunch our emissions of carbon dioxide. Without plentiful electric power, we shall be unable to electrify our public, commercial and private transport; nor will we have the power to sustain the industrial recovery that must ensue if we are not to suffer severe impoverishment.

At present, the nation’s electricity generation is preponderantly in the hands of foreign owners. Moreover, unless we support our own nuclear industry, which is still capable of bringing a small modular rector into existence, our nuclear future will fall into the hands of the Chinese, who are currently participating largely in every viable British nuclear project.

Brexit: Food Prices and Availability (EUC Report)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the difficulty of discussing the effect of Brexit on food prices and availability is that we do not yet know what form Brexit will take, if indeed it materialises. Nevertheless, I shall talk about some of the worst things that could happen. At present, we do not even know whether there will be a transition period to allow some of the outstanding matters to be settled in advance of a definitive severance. Part of the reason for the lack of detailed planning has been the unwillingness of the European Union to negotiate trade policy and other matters in advance of a settled agreement.

Another part of the problem is the lack of detailed perspective that might have been available if the Government had embarked on meaningful exercises in forward planning. Our committee has been assured by the Minister that the problems that have concerned us will be largely overcome by rolling over existing arrangements. This presupposes a ready accommodation of post-Brexit Britain by the European Union.

However, leaving the EU without establishing a customs union would pose a severe impediment to the free movement of goods. Under the arrangements of the European Union, goods that have originated therein have had free passage to anywhere else in the Union without tariffs or other impediments. The European Union is surrounded by a tariff wall that protects its economic activities from competition that might undermine them. This allows member states to pursue their comparative advantages in industry, agriculture and services, while creating a benefit for all of them.

As we have been told, the UK produces 48% of the food that it consumes and the remainder is imported. The imports come preponderantly from the European Union, which provides 30% of what we consume. Another 11% comes from non-European Union countries under terms of trade negotiated by the European Union, which have guaranteed sanitary and phytosanitary standards and, where appropriate, standards of animal welfare. These guarantees have obviated the need for inspection at our borders.

The UK also exports a substantial proportion of its agricultural output and the products of its food and drink industry. The value of these exports is about half the value of the corresponding imports, and some 60% of the exports are sent to the European Union. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, or with the UK outside the EU customs union, all these exports will be subject to the tariffs that the EU must apply uniformly to countries that are not its members. Some of the tariffs would be so high as to threaten the survival of the relevant UK industries. The import tariffs that the European Union imposes on agricultural products are among the highest. For whole milk, there is a 70% ad valorem tariff; for beef, it is 56%; for lamb, it is 40%; and for poultry, it is 14%. These tariffs are testimony to an enduring purpose of the Union, which has been to protect its farmers. Their imposition on our farmers would devastate them.

If we were to be outside a European Union free trade area, we should inevitably be imposing tariffs on our import of foodstuffs. They would be needed to protect our agriculture against the competition from cheap imports. The World Trade Organization rules oblige the UK to treat imports from the European Union in the same way as it treats imports from any other country. To the extent that we are prepared to lower our tariff barriers to protect our consumers from price increases, we should be further imperilling the livelihoods of our farmers, who would already be suffering from the loss of their export markets.

It has been widely observed that rising food prices are bound to affect the poorest members of our society the most. If we were prepared to import cheap foodstuffs that do not fulfil the European standards of quality and, at the same time, to alleviate our own quality controls, our food exports would be disbarred from the EU market.

On 13 March, the Government issued a schedule of tariffs that would apply in the case of a no-deal Brexit. This gave industry and agriculture next to no time in which to absorb the details and formulate plans in response, if 29 March had indeed been the date of leaving the European Union. High tariffs were proposed for beef, sheepmeat, poultry, pigmeat, butter and some cheeses. These were aimed at protecting the producers whose exports will suffer from the aforementioned high European Union import tariffs. To the dismay of the National Farmers’ Union, protection was not extended to eggs, cereals, fruit or vegetables.

Given that there will be no tariff at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, one wonders how the regime could be maintained without creating severe distortions. Perhaps in replying, the Minister would care to deal with that point, as he has been asked to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

One Cabinet Minister proposed in a television interview that the UK could grow more food to keep prices down. He asserted that if supermarkets bought more at home, British farmers would produce more, and if they bought more from abroad, it would damage French and other continental producers. He seemed to be suggesting that the latter would be a desirable outcome. The derision he encountered was because he had no idea of the timescale that would be required for the necessary adaptations by our farmers. Increasing food production takes time, and it would not be possible to increase production in time to meet the demands of Brexit. Nor was he taking sufficient account of the fact that the variety of food that we presently enjoy in this country comes from our willingness to import what we cannot grow. The prospect of reverting to cabbages and potatoes in winter and lettuces and cucumbers in summer will fill many consumers with dismay. At present, we can eat whatever we wish at any time of year.

Nevertheless, it is appropriate to consider matters of self-sufficiency in food and the security of its supply in the wider perspective of global trends in agriculture. The present abundance of food is a temporary benefit. It is likely that there will be severe global shortages within two decades. The threat of global starvation envisaged at the end of the Second World War was averted by a combination of fortunate circumstances. These included the mechanisation of agriculture, an ample provision of fertilisers, the advent of hybrid varieties of cereal crops and the availability of abundant supplies of water from irrigation. The resulting period of relative abundance came to be known as the Green Revolution. It is now at an end, and many of its gains are being reversed.

The problems of soil salination, which arise from the ill-advised use of irrigation in warm climates, have severely diminished the agricultural output in many regions, including the Indian Punjab, which has been described as the Asian bread-basket. The global warming we are experiencing has made inroads into the agriculture of tropical regions that are becoming deserts. The rise in sea levels, which is the consequence of the thermal expansion of water, threatens to inundate low-lying river deltas, where much of the agricultural output originates in the developing world. A one metre rise in sea level will eliminate 30% of those low-lying croplands.

Evidence of the precariousness of our supplies of agricultural produce and their susceptibility to untoward global events has already been demonstrated by the experience of 2008, when there was a spike in food prices. To the extent that we cannot rely on global supplies, we must become more self-reliant. We can do so most effectively in the context of integrated European agriculture. A hard Brexit will make this difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in the short term, and it is uncertain how much time is available to us to secure our food supplies in future.

REACH etc. (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

I am most grateful.

In paragraph 17 of the 15th report the department is recorded as replying to one of the concerns thus:

“Should it become clear that we are in a ‘no deal’ scenario, staffing levels will be scaled up as required over a period of several years, allowing time for recruitment and training”.


The question has to be asked: as we are on the eve of a potential no deal, what is the position now and how far advanced are we with the scaling up? Are the officials coming from the industry and from other departments? What certainty can we have that the officials who are being asked to prepare for exit day under no deal are in place and have the knowledge in this regard?

My heart sank when my noble friend said that the dedicated IT system had been tried and tested and was ready to go. Successive Governments have found themselves in an embarrassing situation where we have a new, swanky IT system in place, it has been tried and tested and is ready to go, but it has proved to fail. I think the two examples I am going to choose actually reflect badly on my own Government. One relates to the Rural Payments Agency, where we not only introduced a new system of farm payments but, at exactly the same time, introduced a new IT system which had been tried and tested—and failed. The other IT system that caused great distress throughout the country was rolled out by the Child Support Agency. Again, we had a new IT system that had been tried and tested and proceeded to fail, with devastating consequences for families across the country. I hope that my noble friend will be proved right that this IT system is indeed ready to go.

At paragraph 27 of its 15th report, the committee raises concern about the possibility of failure and disruption:

“We remain concerned … that there may be disruption to the UK chemical industry, supply chains and wider economy as a result of new requirements to register chemicals from the EU after exit”.


That is certainly something noble Lords would wish to be satisfied on this afternoon.

My final point is that the House is incredibly grateful to Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Sub-Committee B for its work in preparing us for this debate on a very important SI.

I am rather concerned that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, might be at my dinner. We were at breakfast together this morning, as indeed was my noble friend Lady Byford and a number of others. We are now together—almost—post-lunch. I pray that we might be at dinner together this evening, but perhaps we might both have a reprieve. He mentioned the need for reassurance about ongoing consultation, and that all the groups are united. It is quite a challenge to unite such disparate groups as the Green Alliance and the broader environmental groups, the health companies, the animal rights charities and indeed the chemical industry. I conclude by asking my noble friend to give the House an assurance that the consultations are indeed ongoing and will continue throughout any transitional period.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, much of what I intended to say has already been said, and said very well. Nevertheless, I will add further testimony that reaffirms the comments of my committee colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson.

The experience of serving on the Energy and Environment Sub-Committee of the European Union Committee has highlighted a crisis in government that affects both politics and administration. Modern government is highly complex. Mundane matters of daily life and of trade are surrounded, as they must be, by regulations and legislation, and it can take a great intellectual effort to understand all the circumstances. Minor incremental changes to legislation can usually accommodated. If a small mistake is recognised, the matter can be amended. The changes proposed by the Brexit agenda are of a very different order. In this connection, Ministers and their civil servants have often had only a tenuous grasp of the matters at hand, and they have sometimes demonstrated before our committee an astonishing oversight.

The EU REACH regulations have proved to be a case in point. Here, we face some of the perplexities and absurdities of the Brexit agenda. It has been unclear whether under any circumstances the UK could continue after Brexit to remain a member of the REACH organisation, albeit that this has never been clear until recently.

The initial proposal put to our committee by the Minister in charge, who was flanked by a Civil Service adviser, was that the establishment of a UK REACH system—or a “BREACH” system, as we have heard it called—could be achieved easily by cutting and pasting the contents of the REACH database, which is owned by the European Chemicals Agency, into our own national database. It was pointed out to them that this was not generally possible. The information in the REACH database is also owned by commercial enterprises that have contributed to it. Some of it is subject to commercial secrecy. The data would have to be acquired via negotiations. Moreover, given that the data is often subject to joint ownership, such negotiations would be difficult and protracted.

In effect, the ambition of the Brexit agenda has been to acquire the fruits of a co-operative enterprise without having to co-operate with others. It has become clear that, in order to remain in business, UK companies will have to transfer their registrations to European Union-based companies, or parties, at least. They will have to bear the cost of registering with both the UK and the European Union. Moreover, unless they already have a presence in the European Union—other than in the UK—they will be depending for such registrations on the good will of rival enterprises. This is hardly a case of regaining national control.

The preponderance of the output of our chemical industry is exported. Some 61% of our chemical exports went to the European Union in 2017, and 73% of our chemical imports came from the European Union. If the Brexit agenda is fulfilled, we shall be looking at the likely demise of a significant British industry.

The chairman of our committee wrote to the Minister expressing our anxiety at the lack of preparation for these eventualities. In reply, the Minister told us that there has recently been a flurry of activity aimed at alerting industry to the need to prepare for Brexit. It is difficult to measure the extent of these activities, but it is clear that Defra has had other things on its mind.

This brings us back to a point that has already been made. The Conservative Party is in favour of small government and light-touch regulation, yet it has proposed changes far beyond the capacity of politicians and civil servants to accommodate. Its maladministration of the nation’s affairs amounts to an utter dereliction of duty.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and will address the issue of animal testing, which has already been referred to by several noble Lords.

The amendment calls on Her Majesty’s Government to seek continued participation in REACH as a priority in negotiations with the EU. This is particularly important with respect to the use of animals for the safety assessment of chemicals. As was referred to earlier, animal welfare is of great concern to the public, but I believe that the vast majority understand the need, under strict regulation, to use some animals to ensure human safety.

However, all interested parties—the public, the scientists involved and the welfare organisations—expect observance of what are called the three Rs in experimentation. That is, to refine, to replace and to reduce the number of animals used. That concept has been pioneered in the United Kingdom. The REACH guidelines explicitly require minimal use of animals, and permit it only after all other alternatives are exhausted. Most importantly, having a single registration and regulatory portal for the EU avoids any repetition of animal testing.

The instrument under debate today will require an independent UK chemical regulatory process centred on the HSE and the Environment Agency. Notwithstanding the terrific logistical challenges that that presents, which have been well articulated by the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Fox, this is essential in the event of no deal, and indeed in the event that the EU will not accept the UK’s continued participation in REACH. I should point out that, to date, no third-party membership has been admitted to the REACH system.

I have three questions for the Minister. First, will he reassure us that the UK systems replacing REACH will harmonise with it as much as possible and will take all measures to avoid the need to generate separate data for registration? The Minister has told us that current registrations will continue to be accepted, but that all UK registrants will have to resubmit their registration dossier to the UK competent authorities within two years. So will the current animal safety testing data be accepted at that time without the need for further testing? Conversely, for UK firms importing products from the EEA that are currently registered by an EU member state, will the existing data for animal testing suffice when they are required to register within two years of Brexit?

Bearing in mind the problems of intellectual property, what assessment has Defra made of the problem of intellectual property and the ownership of data in the context of its transferability? Finally on future registrations of new products, will Her Majesty’s Government negotiate with the EU the mutual recognition of animal testing data so as to avoid the need to duplicate animal testing, whether for EU registrants to export to the UK or for UK registrants to export to the EU?

Environment: 25-year Plan

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare that I am a member of the European Union Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. My reason for this declaration is that I wish to allude to some of the evidence that we have heard from witnesses and to some of the ministerial replies to our inquiries regarding their opinions on proposed legislation from the European Union.

The Green Paper on the 25-year plan for the environment, which we are discussing, is full of laudable ambitions and good intentions. I hesitate to be critical of it. However, we have been waiting a very long time to see this document. It is the product of an agenda that has suffered significant delays. It is appropriate to question the Government’s commitment to some of their declared aims. The issues on which I wish to concentrate are the disposal of our domestic and industrial waste and its recycling. This also entails the composition of the waste and the question of what can be done to make it more amenable to recycling and less harmful to the environment.

The European Union has proposed some stringent targets for recycling. These are expressed, somewhat crudely, as the percentage of the waste, by weight, that should be recycled. A target to recycle 65% of urban waste by 2035 was agreed by the European Council and the European Parliament in December. The proposal now awaits a vote of approval by the member states. The target has already been reduced from 70% by 2030, which was initially proposed by the European Parliament. However, the UK has asserted that it cannot support even the lesser target. The UK delegation has proposed a 55% minimum target, while declaring that it has been unable to identify a mix of policies that would be effective in reaching a higher target. Nevertheless, waste management is a devolved matter, and Scotland and Wales have both adopted a 70% target.

Our committee has been struck by the variability of the recycling rates across the country, even within limited geographic areas. Thus, whereas South Oxfordshire already achieves a 67% rate of recycling, Greater London has a far lesser rate of 32% and the rate for the London Borough of Newham is a mere 14%. The explanations for the derelictions of some local authorities that have been offered to our committee have sounded unconvincing. It has been asserted that it is far more challenging to achieve high rates of recycling in urban areas than in rural areas and that many local authorities are locked into waste management contracts.

The truth seems to be that rates of recycling are correlated with the incomes available to local authorities. The matter has surely been exacerbated by the cuts to local authority incomes and expenditures that the Government have imposed. In any case, the degree of variability in the rate of recycling is indicative of a lack of a co-ordinated national policy. It is clear that, if the Government were willing, we could do much better.

The pronouncements that have accompanied the publication of the Green Paper suggest that the Government are keen to confront a wide range of environmental issues. However, a cursory examination of some of the practical proposals belies this impression. For example, the proposals for dealing with the menace of single-use plastic items are wholly inadequate. The 5p charge on plastic bags, which had been imposed on larger retailers, has now been extended to smaller shops. It should have been applied universally in the first instance and, in any case, it has already been mandated in European Union legislation. The scourge of plastic packaging should have been addressed by imposing a cost upon manufacturers commensurate with the environmental damage that it inflicts. There should be mandatory design guidelines to eliminate polymer mixes in plastic packaging that make recycling close to impossible. Many single-use plastic products should be banned.

Much of our plastic waste has been exported to China, but from January China has banned imports of such waste. The consequence is that, until we establish adequate facilities for recycling it, this plastic waste will be consigned to landfill sites or exported to some of our European neighbours for incineration as refuse-derived fuel. The Government have been unwilling to adopt any of the obvious measures and it is difficult to understand why. Perhaps the answer lies in their adherence to a free-market ideology that discourages intervention of Governments in commerce and industry and exalts the sovereignty of consumers.

An odd accompaniment to the 25-year environment plan is a cost-benefit analysis that expounds the metaphysical concept of the capital value of the environment. This has been the work of the Natural Capital Committee, a group of self-styled neo-classical economists who have been appointed to the task by the Government. Cost-benefit analyses attempt to apply the precepts of commercial project appraisal to social investments and to other initiatives of public authorities that have an enduring effect. This has to be done in the absence of markets that could determine the monetary values of the outcomes. It is proposed that, in the absence of a market value, consumers should be asked to declare what they would be willing to pay to obtain the benefits of a project or to avoid its detriments. This is not an appropriate way to determine how we should confront the threats to our environment. Instead of seeking to uncover the self-interested opinions of individual consumers, we should seek to create a social consensus in favour of actions that might save us from the sort of thoughtless folly that is bound to result in a universal detriment. It is the duty of Governments to take a lead in forming such a consensus, and I do not believe that this Government are fulfilling their duty adequately.

Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I follow an excellent speech. The six sub-committees of the European Union Committee of the House of Lords have produced a collection of authoritative documents that have revealed in detail the nature of Britain’s relationship with the European Union. I have counted 17 such documents that are addressed specifically to the problems of Brexit, and there are more to come.

The reports demonstrate the complexities that an advanced industrial nation faces in the context of a global economy, where there are numerous interdependencies of trade and production; they have also served to highlight some startling deficiencies in the knowledge and intelligence of the incumbent British Government. However, to be fair, such shortfalls are inevitable in the complicated modern world. It seems that the sub-committees have processed and revealed far more information than the Ministers in charge of Brexit negotiations are capable of absorbing. Even the civil servants charged with advising the Ministers may be severely challenged. Therein lies one of the major hazards of Brexit.

The first matter on which to focus our attention is our trade in agricultural products with the EU and the rest of the world. The EU is our largest single trading partner in agricultural products. Of our agricultural exports, 80% go to the EU and 97% to countries in a wider free trade network, which includes the countries with which the EU has a free trade agreement. Likewise, 94% of our imports of foodstuffs and agricultural produce, which considerably exceeds the value of our exports, come from such countries.

The EU trading arrangements are based on a commonality of interest among the member nations, though their basic feature is unrestricted free trade among those nations. The EU has established numerous free trade agreements beyond Europe, while maintaining tariff barriers that have been designed to protect European agriculture and industry. The British Government are keen to maintain the benefits of our free trade with the EU while seeking to promote our trade with other nations through further reciprocal agreements. In the somewhat discredited phrase, the aim has been to have our cake and eat it. It is a fallacy to imagine that we could easily negotiate a more profitable trade in agricultural products with the rest of the world, as the Foreign Secretary has asserted. As examples of products that could be targeted for greater exports, he cited haggis, which the US has banned on health grounds since 1971, and Scotch whisky, on which India imposes a 150% duty. Those are hardly significant opportunities.

The process of negotiating trade deals is lengthy and difficult. At the heart of any such negotiations are the tariff rate quotas, which provide favourable reciprocal trading relationships at reduced tariff rates within limits governed by the values and volumes of the trades. Our Government have blithely assumed that they could acquire a proportion of the EU quotas determined by previous volumes of trade. As we have heard, that proposal has met with strong resistance from those with whom we would seek to increase our trade. The UK has been told that such an arrangement is unacceptable to the US and other WTO members, who wish to force the UK to open its market further to their farm products. Several witnesses who contributed evidence to our sub-committee warned that this would be the likely outcome. Many commentators regard it as unlikely that, after Brexit, the UK will be able to retain access to the free trade agreements of the EU with third countries. The nightmare is that we shall become subject to conditions of free trade in respect of imports, while being restricted in our exports.

The greater access to our markets of agricultural producers in the third world might result in lower prices for our consumers, but it could devastate our agricultural industry. In return for allowing our industrial imports into the US, we would have to allow the import of US agricultural goods that are produced to very different standards and by very different methods from our own. The EU imposes stringent standards on food safety, animal health, the use of pesticides and a wide range of agricultural practices. If Britain were constrained to pursue a trade policy outside the EU network, many of the standards that we impose on imports might have to be disregarded. To be competitive in overseas markets, we might have to lower our standards, which would severely prejudice our chances of maintaining our volume of trade with the EU. Merely to incorporate raw materials in our products from sources that are not regulated by EU standards would prohibit our trade with the EU.

Next, I turn to the restrictions on the freedom of movement of labour that are the objective of many Brexit advocates. British agriculture relies greatly on workers from the rest of the EU. There is considerable reliance on seasonal migratory labour for harvesting and fruit picking, but many permanently resident EU migrants are employed throughout the agricultural and food processing industries. Some of the facts and figures are surprising. We have been told that 40% of staff on egg farms are EU migrants, as are 50% of workers in egg-packing factories. In poultry meat factories, the figure is 60%. In recent years, nearly half of the veterinary surgeons registering in the UK have qualified from veterinary schools elsewhere in the EU. We have been told that 90% of the vets working in slaughterhouses are EU nationals from abroad. Vets can be described as skilled workers, in contrast to fruit pickers and abattoir workers. However, our witnesses have been unanimous in declaring that it is unhelpful to make such a distinction in agriculture. Fruit pickers may not have qualifications relating to their job but they are skilled nevertheless, and they cannot be replaced readily by casual untrained labourers. Our agriculture depends on them. Whereas some Ministers recognise the truth of that, the message coming from the Government is that the immigration policy after Brexit will be based on the skill levels of immigrants.

There is much more that can be said but I am conscious that our time is limited. I am happy to see that others have raised some of the many issues that I have neglected.