Lord Benyon: The number of live animals exported from Great Britain since Brexit has been zero—none: not one. There is one vessel, the “Joline”, which operates out of Folkestone and has the capacity to take live exports from Great Britain to Europe, and there is none going on that vessel at the moment. We still want to bring in this legislation, because there may be future demand, the infrastructure...
Lord Benyon: ...means of selling plants and we are working with relevant organisations to raise awareness with sellers and customers of the legal requirements and the need for increased biosecurity. Since Brexit we have identified consignments arriving from the EU that don’t comply with our biosecurity requirements – the number of interceptions is steadily rising – ballpark figures are around the...
Lord Benyon: ..., Lady Parminter, and other noble Lords asked about the justification for Clause 15(5). The UK’s high standards were never dependent on our membership of the EU. We can deliver on the promise of Brexit without abandoning our high standards. The powers to revoke or replace will provide the Government with the opportunity to amend retained EU law and will limit those reforms that do not...
Lord Benyon: ...the temporary arrangements that have been put in place. This is a long-standing commitment to protect against disease, given that the island of Ireland is a single epidemiological unit, pre-dating Brexit. They ensure that Irish trucks are not using Northern Ireland ports as a backdoor into the EU without red-lane checks. So, as we said in the Bill and have always maintained, we will need...
Lord Benyon: ..., we will continue to deliver the goal of enhanced biosecurity. We will implement the five-year action plan of the 2023 Plant Biosecurity Strategy for Great Britain and seize the opportunity of Brexit to tailor our border import controls with a new risk-based target operating model. Our final goal, woven through all the others, is to enhance the beauty and heritage of, and engagement with,...
Lord Benyon: ...on upland farms, I am delighted to say that, within the EIP, we have announced an extension of the farming in protected landscapes grant—the first bespoke grant scheme we have introduced since Brexit and, by all measure, the most popular; the money has gone out of the door very quickly. Some 74% of national parks are in upland areas, and farmers in those areas have been able to access...
Lord Benyon: ...about weakening the water framework target. I hope that I have covered that. It is categorically untrue that the Government have reduced in any way the water framework directive regulations since Brexit. All EU nations have exempted some water bodies from the target where it is neither practically nor technically feasible to meet it, and I have covered that. The 75% target was set before...
Lord Benyon: ...a year, enabling our wines to be sold throughout the UK and in at least 30 markets globally. Working with the reforms that allowed us to remove VI-1 certificates, Officials from the Cabinet Office Brexit Opportunities Unit and Defra are in the process of engaging with stakeholders as part of a deep dive review of the remaining wine sector rules we inherited from the EU. Areas under active...
Lord Benyon: I am full of admiration for how the noble Lord manages to find a Brexit angle on even quite a domestic matter. There is currently no disruption to the supply of water, its treatment or the treatment of wastewater. There was a contingency measure put in place but it has not been required by any water company.
Lord Benyon: It is actually longer than that. I hate to disagree with the noble Lord, who knows so much about these matters, but I can remember a dispute in the Baie de Seine long before Brexit, so this has been a disputed area of fisheries. However, I can tell him that we are in the business not of escalating this dispute but of resolving it for the benefit of the fishing industry and the sustainable...
Lord Benyon: ..., using a holistic, government-wide approach to transforming the food system. It is urgent and we are managing to do this at a time when we are introducing new farming systems, and dealing with Brexit, trade issues and the pandemic. But this issue is a priority for this Government and for my department. I eagerly anticipate the recommendations that will be set out in Henry Dimbleby’s...
Richard Benyon: ...recently, not least on indicative votes. I agree with him, and with many Members on both sides of the House, about the utter horror that could be delivered on our constituents by a no-deal Brexit. I agree with my right hon. Friend that of the 17.4 million people who voted undeniably to leave the European Union, not all of them were voting to leave with no deal—they certainly were...
Richard Benyon: ...Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate. It is a great pleasure to be able to debate an issue that is one of many that are more important than Brexit, although some of my constituents disagree. What we are discussing is an existential issue; in year or two, if I am optimistic, or more, if I am pessimistic, we will have moved on from...
Richard Benyon: ...continue to hear in this debate, reasons why people feel they cannot support the Government’s deal. We will hear hon. Member after hon. Member describe in gruesome detail what precise strand of Brexit or non-Brexit they will support. That will be all very fascinating for their local paper or grist to the mill for their next blog, but in the context of what Parliament is doing in this...
Richard Benyon: ...done our job. We as politicians and Members of Parliament have held the Government to account and scrutinised the Bill. This is not some fifth-column activity, as one peer said, or a betrayal of Brexit. This is improving the Bill. The crucial environmental principles will be in the Bill thanks to the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin),...
Richard Benyon: ...I am very grateful to the Minister for being here. I hope that he will be able to address some of the points that I and others raise. We exist at a time of the greatest turbulence and change. With Brexit, we have the resulting need to engage as never before with countries around the world. We see, never more than this week, challenges to the rules-based order. We see the rise of new...
Richard Benyon: ...the Executive to account to ensure that we have enough of them and that we have them in the right places. I argue that there should be a new strategy, even if we were not leaving the EU. However, Brexit brings a new urgency to our deliberations. It is not too late to see a paradigm shift in our strategy, but influence is hard won and easily lost. We need to understand that with influence...
Richard Benyon: ...conservation. More than that, as with President Obama, what we do can be more than an act of environmental responsibility; it can be an act of global leadership. We can start to re-engage, post-Brexit, in organisations such as regional fisheries management organisations, from which Britain has had to withdraw, because the EU—rather badly—takes part in them. I have the scars on my back...
Richard Benyon: ....” That is great, but it means more research and I do not think we need more research. I do not think we need to demand more money, as some are. It seems that some want more money from a post-Brexit agricultural support mechanism that is targeted towards species such as the curlew. That is fine, but I suspect some sort of agri-environmental plan that a curlew project could slot into is...
Richard Benyon: .... As we tackle the big challenge of this Parliament, let us remember what really matters to our constituents. Too often, this place, and those who report on it, are obsessed with the politics of Brexit; our constituents are concerned with the realities of Brexit. That means the reality for the companies in West Berkshire, and in all our constituencies, that are part of a new generation of...