My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 14 and I join in
supporting Amendment 13 and much of the sentiment behind
Amendments 9, 25 and 26. I thank my noble friend the Minister
for the meeting I had with her. I entirely support the
comments of the noble Baroness, Lady , as to why it is important
to have these points in the Bill. If you look at the gross
value added of agriculture, it contributes over 10% to the
economy of the Yorkshire and Humber region alone. Exports of
food and drink from the UK are worth £16.4 billion per annum.
I would like to say a word about marketing. The noble
Baroness, Lady , raised a very important
point here, which I discussed in the private meeting I had
with the Minister. Our exports to China, for example,
have grown by over 60% because the agricultural attaché in
Beijing is paid 90% by the industry levy and 10% by the
Government. If we are doing so well there, surely we should
heed the requests from the NFU, farm organisations and the food and
drinks industry to have similar specialists in other key
markets. The sooner we do that, the better. I am half-Danish
and it is a source of some surprise to me that Denmark
exports a higher share of its food to countries such as China
than we do. It is a country of 6.5 million; we are a country
of 60 million. We have a lot of catching up to do, but we are
clearly on the right track with the agricultural attaché...
...When I look at the CLA briefing—I declare that I am
a member of the CLA and I was with the NFU earlier today—it says it
wants to see exports of UK food outside the EU grow, and we
would all support that. It thinks that free and fair trade
between the UK and other markets outside the EU is a positive
government ambition, and it supports any new free trade deals
which meet that ambition. However, in seeking these trade
deals it is imperative that equivalence of standards is
met—that is what this debate is about—in order to prevent the
undercutting of UK markets by the introduction of products
that meet lower environmental or animal welfare standards. It
believes that that would be very detrimental. Today I
met NFU colleagues from East Anglia
who were highlighting that...
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