My Lords, I, too, am happy to support this SI, and I thank the noble Baroness. My points are more or less the same as those that have
already been raised, but I would like a little more clarification on the devolution relationship. As I understand it, this SI became subject to the affirmative resolution because of objections by some of the devolved Administrations—I am not sure which ones—but does that reflect a difference of approach in the various control regimes in the DAs? If so, what the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has just referred to could well occur. We would have differential targets and therefore differential methodologies, which would seem to be going backwards. Nevertheless, this instrument or related ones transfer the responsibility to the devolved Administrations, and the veterinary profession in particular will need to know how that is to be pulled together and properly co-ordinated. It will need to know that there will be UK-wide machinery for ensuring that that happens, particularly in the event of a serious outbreak.
I have only two or three other questions. The title of the SI relates to zoonotic disease eradication in general but in practice it refers only to poultry and, specifically, to salmonella. There are other zoonotic diseases and other poultry diseases. There is bird flu and there are other, non-poultry diseases, and I am not clear why they are not covered in the same regulations. Presumably the Government will wish to make the same system apply to all potential animal-to-human transmitted diseases, and the issues of devolution and having a national standard control and eradication programme would be the same for other such diseases. As we know from the experience of other parts of the world, these have sometimes become quite serious challenges.
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I think that the Minister answered my other query. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, referred to imports from outside the EU and I was a bit alarmed to hear that, in a no-deal situation, there would immediately be free access for hatching eggs from the EU. I thought that was a reference to tariffs, because they would be zero-tariffed in the temporary tariff proposition. However, if you offer zero tariffs to the EU, under WTO rules you have to offer them to everybody else. Therefore, you might be faced with a higher level of importation challenging domestic egg production and the hatching process. The eggs may well come from countries with much lower health standards. I think the Minister said that while the tariff would be the same for EU and non-EU countries, the regulations would be different. I am not sure at what point that gets tested under the WTO rules, but hopefully that will be well down the line and we will have a more rational regime by then.
My only other question is on the digression issue. If we are to maintain high standards, keeping them at least as high as the EU, are the Government geared up to ensure that we will avoid reaching trade agreements with countries whose standards are somewhat lower and which present a higher risk of zoonotic diseases, or any animal diseases—quite apart from the specific issue of eggs which I referred to? In particular, this affects the domestic testing regime, as well as that for potential imports. We know there has been a bit of a rundown in the laboratory capability of the agriculture and food sector more generally, so are we confident that we have enough laboratory capacity here to ensure
that we can check that new diseases are not developing, or appearing for the first time, in the UK? Clearly, some of that information has hitherto been provided by laboratories in the rest of the European Union.
Apart from that, and sorting out the devolution arrangements, which may turn out to be the most difficult part of this, I welcome this SI.