Drew Hendry – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

The speech made by Drew Hendry, the SNP spokesperson at Westminster on International Trade, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

May I extend my birthday wishes to the Minister, too? I will not ask him how many candles are on his cake, but I am afraid that I cannot hold a candle for the defence he gave for these deals. It seems that I am not alone. In addition to the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), there seem to be many more Tory critics; I will refer to a few of them in my remarks.

First, a general debate is no replacement for genuine parliamentary scrutiny. The Government have failed to provide that, even though it was promised. The deals, lumped together in the debate, are one-sided and a betrayal of farmers. They threaten food security and animal welfare, reduce consumer confidence, find climate change expendable and do nothing to mitigate the enormous losses of Brexit. Quite possibly, they are also breaking international law. Yet again, no reason is provided to support this further exercise in UK self-harm. They simply double underscore the increasing risks of the UK and the need for Scotland to become a normal, independent country and to rejoin the world’s most successful trading bloc, the EU.

Let me cover those points in order and in more detail. When I say that they are one-sided deals, I am, as we have heard, quoting the current Prime Minister. He was right. Of course, given that his party is in power, he was also being generous. These are awful deals. They are unmitigated disasters. That is why the Government are refusing to allow Parliament to vote on them. These deals are the legacy of the previous Prime Minister and make as much sense as the infamous mini-Budget.

Anthony Mangnall

The hon. Member is making a point about whether we can vote on the deals. The reality is that having a vote on them would not change anything, as he full well knows. We are leading people down a path without clarifying how, under the CRaG mechanism, the votes would make no changes to the trade deals that we are debating.

Drew Hendry

I admire the hon. Member’s dexterity. Having been in the House when he has quite rightly criticised the lack of scrutiny offered by the Government, I understand that he is now in the employ of the Government and must sing a different tune. The fact of the matter is that this is not good enough.

Anthony Mangnall

Will the hon. Member give way?

Drew Hendry

No, I am going to make some progress.

Given that his party was in power, the Prime Minister was, as I have said, being generous. These are awful deals. They are unmitigated disasters and that is why Parliament is not getting the chance to scrutinise them properly. They will do similar harm as the mini-Budget to the sectors concerned. The current Prime Minister also said that they

“shouldn’t be rushing to sign trade deals as quickly as possible”.

We agree, but wait a minute: he is the Prime Minister! Why, then, is he allowing this to proceed? If he does not agree with it, is not letting it go through just another part of a grubby deal for power? It makes no sense otherwise.

The Government are keen enough to tear up deals such as the Northern Ireland protocol, yet they will not get around the negotiating table on these deals, even though they can do so. These deals are bad, very bad, for our farmers and food producers. The National Farmers Union president, Minette Batters, says of the Australia deal that

“this is a one-sided deal. When it comes to agriculture, the Australians have achieved all they asked for and British farmers are left wondering what has been secured for them.”

And well might they wonder.

She went on to say of the New Zealand deal:

“The government is now asking British farmers to go toe-to-toe with some of the most export orientated farmers in the world, without the serious, long-term and properly funded investment in UK agriculture that can enable us to do so. This is the sort of strategic investment in farming and exports that Australian and New Zealand governments have made in recent decades.”

This has a knock-on effect on our food security. These deals are bad policy at the worst possible time. The laissez-faire, couldn’t care, get it over the line Brexiteer ideology has de-prioritised domestic food production in support of importing cheaper—for now—lower standard food. That is dangerous and should be put on hold immediately. It sets a thumpingly bad precedent. The rest of the world is watching and wants the same one-sided access that has been squandered here.

Anthony Mangnall

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Drew Hendry

If the hon. Gentleman wants to pick up on that point, I will give way.

Anthony Mangnall

I will, on food security. That is exactly why the Government passed, in the Agriculture Act 2020, the need to report back on food security—so that we could review the situation and ensure that this country has a full and complete level of food security. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, actually, that shows that we are taking it seriously, rather than ignoring it?

Drew Hendry

It will come as no surprise that I do not agree with the Government Member. These are damaging deals. They are one-sided and other people will want access.

Talks are ongoing with India, Brazil, Mexico, the Gulf states, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership countries and Canada. Will they now accept less than has been offered here? This might just be the damaging start of the process. No wonder the National Audit Office report says that the UK Department for International Trade is “taking risks” in its haste to sign new deals.

This is bad for consumers. Research by Which? found that 72% of people across the nations of the UK do not want food that does not meet current standards coming in through trade deals. And boy, do standards differ! In Australia, animal welfare standards are well below what is expected of our producers, particularly on pigs, eggs, sheep and beef, with cramped sow stalls, battery cages, the painful mulesing of sheep, huge herds of cattle in zero-grazing feedlots, and permissible live animal transport times that are twice the length of ours. Australian poultry farmers use 16 times—I repeat, 16 times—more antibiotics per animal than our farmers. The UK Government’s own advisers have voiced concern about the impact on UK farmers of the overuse of pesticides in Australia, including 144 highly hazardous pesticides.

John Spellar

But do we not also import chicken from countries with very questionable standards, such as Brazil, from which we also import beef, and Thailand? Are there not, even within the EU framework, considerable variations in animal welfare standards?

Drew Hendry

If there are variations in standards, they are certainly nothing like this. The line that the right hon. Gentleman intervened on was 144 highly hazardous pesticides.

Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise, given that the former Prime Minister who brokered the deal employed the former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, as a trade adviser. Incidentally, I do not think that the Australians will return the favour. Abbott is a notorious climate sceptic. That is why the deal gets worse and worse, leaving aside all the obvious food miles involved in all the imports. He is on record as saying, when he was Australian Prime Minister, that his main role in trade talks was to ensure that his negotiators

“weren’t sidetracked by peripheral issues such as…environmental standards”.

It looks like he succeeded on both sides of the world—that is little surprise with this fracking Government, whose Prime Minister had to be shamed into attending COP27. Australian oil and gas production is set to increase substantially until at least 2030, with dozens of new coalmines, yet there is nothing on that on the UK Government’s agenda. It is no wonder that even Tory Lord Deben, the chair of the Climate Change Committee, condemned the Australia deal as “totally offensive”.

The Scottish Government called on the UK Government to prioritise the Paris agreement commitments, but the UK Government signed this deal with nowt. Indeed, we know that they actively scrubbed all the concerns in haste to get the deal signed, as departmental emails prove. There are no legally binding, enforceable climate change conditions in either deal. As I said, it is no wonder that they do not want the deals to be scrutinised. They may, however, have broken international law through the lack of scrutiny. They will probably just shrug their shoulders, of course, like their Prime Minister and former Prime Minister, because they are getting pretty good at lawbreaking on that side of the House. A formal complaint will, however, be heard by the Aarhus convention compliance committee.

These tragicomic deals are put into even sharper focus for this Brexit and bust Britain by the deal that the EU has just signed with New Zealand. Yes, you guessed it, Madam Deputy Speaker—it is on better terms than the UK deal, with actual farming safeguards. In the first year of the agreements, the UK will allow 12,000 tonnes of New Zealand beef into the UK, whereas the 27 EU countries will allow only 3,333 tonnes between all of them. By year 15, the UK will allow a whopping 60,000 tonnes, while the EU will have capped imports at 10,000 tonnes and will still apply a 7.5% tariff. The EU has secured a better deal on beef, sheep, cheese, butter and more.

Let us look at what we have lost through Brexit. In the EU, about half of our trade used to be paperwork-free, but 100% of trade is now bundled up in red tape. For every £490 of damage from the loss of EU trade, the deals combined will realise £3 at best. Scotland’s food industries are being painfully punished for something that Scotland voted against. Fruit and vegetable exports to the EU are down by more than half, and dairy and eggs are down by a quarter. Brexit is a disastrous economic hit that Scotland should not be forced to endure. As for the deals we are debating and those planned, we call on the Department for International Trade to publish an impact assessment of the free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, and the proposed free trade deals with the CPTPP, India and Canada, with a particular focus on food and farming, showing the anticipated effects in all four nations.

The UK Government must stop gambling with Scottish farming, food production, manufacturing and trade. They have failed to protect our brands. They have gambled with food standards, workers’ rights and protections. They are reckless over the environment and climate change, and, as has been so obvious, they have turbocharged inflation and threatened people’s wellbeing, as well as diminished their household budgets. And yet, they have the brass neck—the utter cheek—to say that we should have supported this place, so often in a race to the bottom, especially in this international lunacy and trading failure.

People in Scotland can see that the risk is not in being a normal, independent country, but in remaining shackled to Westminster. They see that these one-sided deals do nothing for our farmers, damage our food security, lower standards, fail on animal welfare and climate change, possibly break international law and do nothing to mitigate the eye-watering costs of Brexit. The deals cannot be supported and it is clearer than ever that Scotland must return to the EU as an equal and normal independent country to escape Westminster’s basket-case ideologies.