Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Considered in Grand Committee

Moved by

That the Grand Committee do consider the Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations 2022.

My Lords, these regulations were laid in draft before this house on 20 October 2022. The time that we have does not permit me to cover in detail all the amendments that these instruments make, but I shall do my best to cover some of the most significant points.

The first instrument makes technical amendments to various pieces of retained EU law and domestic legislation to ensure that they operate effectively in the following four areas after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU:

“Official controls and requirements on imports into and movements within Great Britain of animals, animal products, plants and plant products; the rules on animal welfare during transport; the rules on the marketing of plants and planting material; and the rules on the prevention, control and eradication of certain transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, a group of fatal diseases which include mad cow disease.”

This instrument also addresses various other deficiencies in retained EU legislation and corrects errors in earlier instruments made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The changes are, for example, to

“clarify that the appropriate authority can create or amend rules on penalties for non-compliance with these regulations and relevant supporting legislation with regards to the Official Controls Regulation and Plant Health Regulation; streamline the process for designating an appropriate authority as a competent authority responsible for carrying out official controls; and replace the existing obligation for the appropriate authority to make secondary legislation to address biosecurity risks from imports of animals and animal products with a power to make secondary legislation, helping to protect biosecurity by giving Defra the flexibility to address biosecurity risks through means other than regulations.”

The Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964 is amended to enable Ministers to make regulations via the negative resolution procedure to ensure that domestic secondary legislation, which captures the marketing of fruit, vegetables, and ornamental plants for planting, can be updated as required. This change will ensure that we can keep pace with changing requirements in this space. Corrective amendments make it clear to transporters, organisers, and keepers of live animals, that they must comply with the journey log requirements on protecting animal welfare in transport.

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for presenting these two statutory instruments, which I support. I shall press him on a couple of issues.

Will both instruments definitely be retained and not excluded under the provisions of the EU retained law Bill currently in the House of Commons? Having done all this work, it would be a pity to waste it. In each case, will the Minister clarify which are the relevant public authorities?

On the trade in animals and related products regulations, as an MEP I spent many happy hours looking at the live trade in animals. As the MEP for Brightlingsea, I had the rather unfortunate experience of representing Brightlingsea when it closed down the live trade in Dover; there were demonstrations to prevent the live trade. My understanding is that it is still the case that one live animal is transported for every seven transported in carcass form, certainly from this country—now we are a third country, or third countries—to the EU. Are those figures correct, and are they still reflected in imports from the EU to this country?

Also, in the provisions of the regulations, is there a role for the Food Standards Agency in this regard? Whichever agency or authority it is, will it rely on notifications, or will it be able to do spot checks? It would be better for the Committee’s trust in the system—certainly my own trust—if it was able to do spot checks either on live animals or animal products, in frozen or fresh form. That would be very helpful to know.

I have two small further points to make that I am fortunate to have in my possession having attended the briefing from the Food Standards Agency on a completely different matter—its annual report for last year. Clearly, the regulations reflect the fact that, as a result of our departure from the EU, Ministers and food regulators are now directly responsible for food law for the first time in nearly 50 years. Therefore, the level of understanding, particularly at local authority level—not just when the products come into this country but when we are relying on local authorities to do inspections of food businesses at the level of outlets—is a matter of some concern.

This is potentially an extremely challenging area. It is just 10 years since we had the horsemeat scandal—or “horsegate”, as it became known. I accept that I could not tell the difference between a horse carcass and a cattle carcass, whether they had meat on them or not, but there should be someone out there looking at this and ensuring that horses imported into this country will not end up on our plate, passed off as beef. That case highlighted the importance of inspections, not just on an ad hoc basis but spot checks. It not only highlighted notifiable cases as they come into this country but, as the food penetrates through the food system, ensured that when we eat kebabs—I do not eat many of them—they are what they say on the product and not something else. With those remarks, I welcome these regulations.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introductory remarks to these two statutory instruments. I fear that I may fail his questions on the geographical applications of the SI. As with many statutory instruments that we have debated recently, the first—on animals, animal health, feed and food, plants and plant health—corrects errors in previous SIs.

The Explanatory Memorandum says in paragraph 7.2 that SI 2016/2031 will be reintroduced. Having been removed, it was considered redundant, but the removal appears to have left no mechanism available to enforce the regulation. The SI refers to three months’ imprisonment in all three devolved Administrations for non-compliance with the regulation. If there is no enforcement mechanism, can the Minister say how the prison sentences are to be applied and carried out? No doubt I have misunderstood this section of the SI.

Paragraph 7.4, as regards the OCR, refers to a designated competent authority but also states

“where no competent authority has been designated, the appropriate authority will be assumed to be the competent authority.”

Can the Minister say what qualification is needed to be classed as a competent authority, what is needed to be an appropriate authority, and who or what this is likely to be?

Paragraph 7.8 of the EM refers to Article 139, non-compliance and penalties for non-compliance, but states

“there are no powers to create any penalties to fulfil this requirement.”

In that case, is there any relevance to this SI?

Paragraph 7.13 refers to transporters, organisers and keepers of animals keeping a journey log, as set out in “Annex II”. I could not find any such annexe either in this SI or the Explanatory Memorandum. Can the Minister point me in the right direction for this?

My Lords, we also support these SIs but, like other noble Lords, I have a few questions and points to make about them.

I am concerned by the number of SIs where we have seen errors—and I have raised this on a number of occasions—when bringing former European legislation into UK law. We know that five particular SIs are referenced in paragraph 3.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum for the Animals and Animal Health, Feed and Food, Plants and Plant Health (Amendment) Regulations, all originating from 2019 or 2020. It is concerning that we are still seeing this number of corrections happening. I have asked the Minister before to reassure us that it is not going to keep happening but, unfortunately, it seems to keep reappearing. We ask again for reassurance that this is being sorted out and we are not going to keep having statutory instruments to correct previous instruments that we have already passed.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the issues with paragraph 7.2, outlining the penalty regime. As she pointed out, the penalty regime was considered redundant in 2020, which now means that there is no mechanism fully to enforce the plant health regulation as the existing penalty regime cannot be amended or added to. Can the Minister let us know what the practical impact of this has been, and what is the current situation going forward?

We also know that other areas have been corrected, including the accidental deletion of a requirement on the Secretary of State to charge fees in connection with certain functions carried out under the official controls regulation. It worries me how much the Government are trying to achieve in such a short space of time, and this is one of the reasons we are seeing so many errors. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister can confirm to the Committee that he is keeping a very close eye on the department in these areas, so we have as few errors as possible. We completely support the fact that we need to avail ourselves of opportunities to regulate ourselves differently, now that we are out of the EU, but we worry about the lack of legal clarity in the short to medium term while these errors keep taking place.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their interest in these instruments and their contributions. As ever, I will try to respond to all the points raised.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh raised some important points. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is part of the Government’s commitment to taking the necessary steps to put the UK statute book on a sustainable footing, following the exit from the EU. While the department assesses its retained EU law and plans for the REUL Bill accordingly, these statutory instruments ensure that the current legislation is operable. This is the last opportunity to make these technical fixes before the powers from the European Union (Withdrawal) Act to make these modifications expire at the end of this year.

My noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised important points about designated competent authorities. The official controls regulation provides that the competent authority will be the appropriate authority—the relevant Minister in Great Britain—or any other authority to which such functions are conferred. The designations of competent authorities are set out across various pieces of secondary legislation or dealt with administratively, and vary across the different areas within the official controls regime. Amendments to Articles 3 and 4 of the official controls regulation do not alter any existing designations, but make the process for designating a competent authority clearer and ensure that the appropriate Ministers do not need to designate themselves as competent authorities.

My noble friend raised some very important points about live trade, which I will come to. The Food Standards Agency is an increasingly important body since we left the EU. She is right that it is now directly responsible for food safety and for working with local authorities to make sure that they have the necessary skills, understand the changing legal environment and are able to carry out their functions effectively to keep us all safe.

My noble friend is also right to mention the horsemeat saga. I was in Defra at the time. Government, its agencies, retailers, business and a whole variety of other organisations learned a lot from that. Technology is our friend here. DNA sequencing has allowed us to detect when fraud is happening in our food system.

In response to the questions on the first instrument asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, robust enforcement mechanisms are in place to ensure that the plant health regulation is fully complied with. These consist of offences and criminal penalties as detailed in the Plant Health etc. (Fees) (England) Regulations 2018, and equivalents in the devolved Administrations. The amendments in this new instrument ensure that these existing offences can be amended and new offences created to ensure that enforcement options remain complete and up to date for the plant health regulation.

In reference to the noble Baroness’s question about “Annex II”, the reference in paragraph 7.13 of the Explanatory Memorandum is to Annex II to Regulation 1/2005, on the protection of animals during transport. Annex II sets out the requirements for journey logs needed to transport live animals.

On designated competent authorities, as I have explained, the official controls regulation provides that the competent authority will be the appropriate authority—in most cases the Minister in the relevant country. The designations of competent authorities are set out across various pieces of secondary legislation or dealt with administratively and vary across different areas within the official controls regime.

The amendments to Articles 3 and 4 of the official controls regulation do not alter any existing designations but—noble Lords will be glad to know—make the process for designating a competent authority clearer and ensure that the appropriate Ministers do not need to designate themselves.

A number of noble Lords raised penalties relating to non-compliance. Article 139 of the official controls regulation, as retained, places a duty on the appropriate authority to ensure that rules on penalties relating to infringements of the official controls are in place. However, no corresponding power was retained to create new penalties or amend existing penalties set out in existing legislation. Therefore, this amendment is necessary to ensure that we have sufficient penalties in place connected to the official controls regulation and delegated legislation. It is an important enforcement measure.

In answer to questions about the Welsh statutory instrument, my information is that, yes, it is compatible with ours. We are working closely with devolved Governments to make sure that there is a seamless regime across Great Britain. If there is any difference, we will certainly let noble Lords know, but my information is that it is entirely compliant.