My Lords, I start with the report on instruments of interest by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Page 10 considers them in three paragraphs. I will home in on wines—I declare an interest: I have a small vineyard of my own of 100 vines—and spirits. On spirits, there are at the moment something over 100 different gins in the UK, and more are threatened. That is my first point. My second is that the English wine industry, viticulture, is growing very fast at the moment and there are new entrants all the time, which is very encouraging. Is the Minister confident that within the changes we are looking at today, new entrants can be fully briefed, will be welcome and will not be held up by the transitional changes to GI standards?
My second question concerns paragraph 34 of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s 33rd report. It says that this secondary legislation
“will enable the UK to meet its obligations under the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.”
However, as I understand it, Northern Ireland is using the protocol, so am I right in thinking that Northern Ireland is in the same boat, so to speak, as it is part of the UK but is somehow or other still stuck in the protocol? I am not entirely clear on how that works.
Thirdly, paragraph 35 of the same report says that, when the committee met, Defra confirmed—indeed, was confident—that total reciprocation
“was ‘the expectation and will be the default position’ at the end of the TP”.
Is that the situation at the moment?
Turning to the explanatory side of the Food and Feed Hygiene and Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations, am I right in thinking that if there is no deal—this is in paragraph 2.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum—we will, in a sense, have to have another lot of SIs? That seems an important question to me.
Paragraph 2.5 of the same Explanatory Memorandum, headed “What will it do now?”, says:
“A number of individual changes are made to retained EU law … The changes are detailed at paragraph 7 and will enable retained EU law to be operable after EU Exit and provide a smooth transition for affected businesses. The changes introduced do not affect the essence of the legislation but ensure that it remains operable after exit.”
Is that mirrored in the Northern Ireland protocol?
Moving on, my noble friend asked about the 21-month period. My reading of paragraph 7.13 is that it starts on 1 January 2021. I, too, would like confirmation of that.
Paragraph 7.16 talks about the Crown dependencies. What is the situation with the overseas territories? The two often go in parallel. I declare an interest in that a member of my family works in one of the overseas territories, although he is not in food or anything like that. As the two often go in tandem, I wonder what the position is now that we have highlighted the Crown dependencies.
In paragraph 7.17, reference is made to Japan. We recently signed a new trade agreement with Japan, so am I to understand that the points made in paragraph 7.17 were covered in the trade agreement, or did not need to be; or are we not too sure whether they are in the trade agreement or not? That seems of some importance.
When we came to the consultation under point 10, there clearly were a number of issues raised, it says, although the number of respondents was not too great. I imagine that the trade associations were all consulted. Again, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that the new trade body for English wine producers was consulted? If not, can we please make sure that it is in future?
It is not clear from paragraph 10.2 of the food and feed hygiene and safety Explanatory Memorandum what the issues were over which there was difficulty. There clearly must have been some because it says that there were “mixed comments”; that suggests that there were obviously some problems somewhere. It would be nice to know what they were.
Paragraph 12.2 talks about staffing. It says:
“It is estimated that one officer in each of these authorities … will need to undertake this task.”
It seems to me that the first things we should learn in life, as I am sure we do, is that people get ill—especially when we are in the middle of a pandemic—and have vacations. Presumably the one-person equivalent needs to be available in each local authority, which, in effect,
means that there has to be two. That covers the Trading Standards officers, presumably. Here it also mentions the “Port Health Officer”.
Lastly, paragraph 13.2 is very important because, in the current market—I used to be involved in the food industry—there are a host of small, new microbusinesses being set up. The creativity of the British nation in lockdown has mainly been in the area of food and developing new food products in particular. I just hope that, when there is this
“high ratio of small and micro food businesses in the UK”,
somehow or other, Defra takes a particularly focused look at how it can make sure that these businesses are fully briefed on the changes that are coming.
4.06 pm