The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs ()
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Eggs (England)
Regulations 2021.
The draft regulations were laid—that is the end of my
jokes—before this House on 19 October.
This draft statutory instrument has been laid to allow marketing
standards checks on class A eggs imported from third countries to
continue to be conducted at the locations where they already take
place. That is in accordance with current practice and, indeed,
practice over the past 30 years or so. The instrument is needed
because, without amendment, the retained regulation on egg
marketing standards will require those checks to be relocated,
causing disruption to the inspection process and requiring
considerable additional resources, with no material benefit to
anyone, frankly. The instrument will have effect only in England.
Both the Scottish and Welsh Governments will make the same
amendment to their own domestic legislation.
Marketing standards are intended to ensure that the market is
supplied with products of satisfactory quality to meet consumer
expectations. They are in addition to, and completely separate
from, safety—or sanitary—standards. Sanitary standards will
continue to be checked at the border, as they are at the moment.
The amendment to be made by this draft instrument is not a change
of policy and simply continues the existing arrangements for the
marketing standards checks.
Through the functioning of the Northern Ireland protocol,
regulation 589/2008 on egg marketing standards —which Great
Britain has retained—will continue to apply to Northern Ireland,
as it has effect in the EU. Therefore, the current checking
arrangements for the movement of third-country class A eggs into
Northern Ireland will not change.
For class A eggs to be imported into GB from a third country, the
Secretary of State must determine whether the third country has
equivalent egg marketing standards. Only European Union member
states are currently recognised as producing eggs to that
equivalent standard. I should add that we do not export or import
a vast number of eggs—that accounts for about 10% of the egg
market in England.
In the future, however, should things change and should we wish
to import eggs from any third countries other than those in the
EU, the Secretary of State must first make a similar
determination of equivalence. Until then, class A eggs may not be
imported into GB from non-EU countries. I reassure the Committee
that that is really not an issue at the moment, because we do not
import eggs from non-EU countries. We will continue to uphold the
high standards expected by UK consumers.
The change contained in this draft SI been discussed with British
egg industry stakeholders, and we held a joint consultation with
the Scottish and Welsh Governments. I ask the Committee to
approve the regulations.
16:34:00
(Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Murray. I
thank the Minister for her full and clear introduction, as
ever.
As we belatedly start to introduce checks on goods coming from
the EU, the issue of where and when checks will be made will, I
imagine, be an issue that will crop up for many goods. Today,
however, we are talking about eggs. We are advised that class A
eggs are not currently imported from outside the European Union,
so in practice this applies only to eggs from the EU. However, as
the Minister said, the provision could potentially be extended in
future. There is, of course, the ongoing issue of Northern
Ireland to consider.
I was struck by the questions raised by the Secondary Legislation
Scrutiny Committee’s report, following which there are a number
of issues that I hope the Minister can clear up. Returning to the
well-worn subject of arrangements on the Northern Ireland border,
the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said
in response to a question from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny
Committee that eggs from Northern Ireland will continue to have
unfettered access to Great Britain, which is as one would expect.
It is not clear to me entirely how many eggs are going backwards
and forward anyway. I am told by experts that most countries like
to produce their own eggs. I therefore imagine that most in the
island of Ireland are produced and consumed there.
I commend the quarterly egg statistics—which make for fascinating
reading—maintained and published by DEFRA. Looking at those, it
seems as if the numbers in Northern Ireland egg packing
stations—about one sixth of the UK total—tell a slightly
different story. Will the Minister tell us how many eggs that are
produced in Great Britain are shipped to NI and could she confirm
that they will be checked at the border, as stated in DEFRA’s
response to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee? How
much time is needed for those checks, and what is the estimated
cost?
I would also be grateful if the Minister could provide some
insight into how the current negotiations on the NI protocol
between and the EU might impact on the
future importation of eggs from Great Britain into Northern
Ireland. I suspect she may not wish to comment on that.
Appendix 4 of the SLSC’s report shows that the Committee raised
with DEFRA its concerns that the majority of respondents to
DEFRA’s initial consultation were actually against the proposals
in this instrument. Indeed, paragraphs 10.4 and 10.5 of the
explanatory memorandum helpfully explain that over 80% of those
consulted opposed the proposal and that the answer to this clear
expression of interest was that
“a round table will be scheduled”.
Presumably a roundtable was scheduled to explain to them why they
were wrong.
Looking at the response to the SLSC report, the roundtable seems
to have been held on 24 September, where it was argued that this
instrument will allow the Animal and Plant Health Agency to carry
on randomly checking for both domestic and imported eggs at
warehouses, distribution centres and packing centres and that if
egg inspections were conducted at the border, inspectors would be
unable to maintain their normal rate of inspection. That sounds
basically like a cost argument to me. DEFRA helpfully says:
“It is likely that inspectors would be unable to maintain their
normal rate of inspections on… imported eggs.”
In other words: “We won’t check at the border, because that
requires extra resource.” However, checking at the border may
help to stop potential future fraud, and that would be worth
doing.
It seems to me that when the Government promise no imports of
goods imported at lower standards, that is a promise based on
trust, not checking. Somehow we will trust that others would not
be so unsporting as to send us lower-standard goods, because we
trust them not to. That sounds pretty weak, which may be why some
in the industry are not entirely convinced.
The Opposition will not oppose today’s regulations, but it seems
that we are opening ourselves up to a situation where other
countries check our goods going into their country, but we just
wave stuff through. It is an open invitation to fraud, and it is
very tough on our producers, who face much tougher checks than
their competitors.
Finally, we have had correspondence with a representative from
the egg industry, who raised the issue of costs. Will the
Minister please confirm that the costs associated with checking
eggs at packing centres will not be borne by the egg
industry?
Today’s debate should guarantee our high animal welfare, food
safety and marketing standards, and I share the concerns of
industry stakeholders that DEFRA has failed to provide sufficient
reassurance that these proposals will uphold those standards.
16:39:00
I am very happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s points.
However, I do not currently know the exact number of eggs that
are shipped to Northern Ireland, so I am happy to write to him on
that specific point. The key issue, for the purposes of the
draft SI, is that the current checking arrangements for
Northern Ireland will continue to apply; there will be no change,
at all, to the way that that works.
As I said earlier, compared with the entire industry, the number
of eggs we import is relatively small, at about 10%; we also
export a certain number. The numbers fluctuate a bit but, as the
hon. Gentleman said, British consumers prefer to eat locally
produced eggs—I suspect that consumers across the rest of the
world do, too.
In the consultation, the reason why the stakeholders initially
objected to the change was that, of course, the British egg
industry is very ambitious and wants to produce more eggs, so
that we do not import any at all. That was very much the tenor of
the conversation that the Department had with industry. I am glad
to say that the roundtable, which was held to talk through
concerns raised, went very well, and my officials were able to
allay industry’s concerns. In summary, the read-out from the
roundtable was that, while domestic producers felt that eggs
should be checked at the border, egg marketing inspectors from
APHA were able to explain that additional resources would be
needed to do this, which might necessarily divert resources from
other functions.
I hear what the Minister says and I am reassured. However, from
conversations with people in the egg industry my sense is that
they are deeply concerned about the threat of lower-cost
producers being able to undercut them. I am told that there is
something like a 16% cost advantage from other egg producers in
Europe. Should we not be concerned about that?
No, we certainly should not. If we pass this SI, APHA will
continue to undertake risk assessment checks, both on domestic
and imported goods. Other checks happen already, such as the
sanitary checks—the safety checks—that happen at the border, as I
mentioned earlier. The Food Standards Agency is also able to make
checks on safety at the retail or processing end—that is normally
where those checks take place. British consumers, and the British
egg industry, should be under no illusion at all that imported
and domestic eggs will not continue to be properly checked to
ensure that they come up to our rightly high standards.
During the course of the roundtable, we also explained that
imported eggs will be subject to exactly the same checks as
domestic eggs, and that we will not import eggs from third
countries until a full assessment has been made. Truthfully, we
do not feel that is likely to be necessary or, indeed, to
happen.
I hope that hon. Members fully understand the need for this
statutory instrument, which ensures that marketing standard
checks on class A eggs continue to happen in the locations where
they take place today. This SI should avoid any disruption to the
level of checks that currently take place and will allow egg
marketing inspectors to continue to uphold our high standards. I
therefore commend these regulations to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
