Member

Of course, we should not, by and large, need SPS controls with our neighbours in Europe because, as I said at the beginning, for the large part we have very similar measures, we both take these issues seriously and there are relatively few diseases. We should have controls only where diseases exist. We had almost no SPS controls for the first three or four years after Brexit. We introduced them only because of two animal diseases on the continent. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe will be able to remind us which they were, because I think she had the difficult task of introducing them, which I suspect she did not particularly want to do because she does not like interfering with trade, but they were, and they may have been necessary for that purpose.