My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing these amendments and for the focus on food and agriculture for the first time in our discussions. I understand the reasons behind the amendment, but there is a context here that has a particular sensitivity for the Government, which is that the obvious thing about the protocol is that, under the Good Friday, agreement we already have food safety and animal health bodies. Those institutions are not mentioned in this amendment, but when the Good Friday agreement was functioning it was agreed very early on that they were in play.
We have working arrangements to deal with major animal health problems and so on, and the protocol implies a totally different set of arrangements from those that any casual reader of the Good Friday agreement would say we have made no use of. We already had north/south bodies in place to handle difficulties of animal health, food safety and so on, which will now be reappearing in Brussels.
The difficulty for the Government is that they are well aware that they have to find some way to redress that, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has therefore raised a serious area of concern that requires widespread consultation. However, we will not get any real progress here without returning to the Good Friday agreement and without getting to the idea that Europe extracts powers to deal with veterinary health and food matters and lays down the law.
We already have in place north/south bodies where these things are dealt with extremely well—and have been for a long time. There is a reason why there is a problem here for the Government but, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is quite right to raise this general issue of consultation. It is very pertinent, and I am indebted to him that, for the first time in these many days of debate, we are talking about food safety, animal health and what needs to be done. If we act under the principles of the Good Friday agreement, something that is currently very controversial—such as the veterinary clauses of the protocol—could be put into a calmer place acceptable to both communities.
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