Mr Alistair Carmichael

Mr Alistair Carmichael

Liberal Democrat — Orkney and Shetland

Speaking in the House of Commons on 11 September 2025

Debate

Biosecurity at the Border: Britain’s Illegal Meat Crisis

Contribution

Obviously, the question of legal commercial imports is slightly different in its operation from what we are bringing to the House’s attention today, but I think we have to look at the whole thing in the round. There are opportunities if we are able to get that SPS deal, and the Committee will be looking at that in the near future. We will be visiting Brussels and speaking to Commission officials about where the deal has got to. We all know it is easy to agree that we need to agree, but actually reaching the agreement will always be the difficult part. Whatever we have by way of an SPS agreement, there will have to be rigorous checks at the border, but it may be that the SPS agreement would make some of that an awful lot easier than it is at the moment, and for everyone—importers, consumers and producers—that has to be good.

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