Baroness Suttie (LD)

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, for allowing us to have this short debate through his regret amendment. As I said in last week’s debate, the concerns about these regulations are much less about the substance of the regulations themselves and more about the democratic oversight, parliamentary scrutiny and very legitimate fears that Northern Ireland feels that it is being treated differently from the rest of the UK. On the regulations themselves, can the Minister say what the Government’s assessment is of the impact on the sector, if any, of the eight-year gap between the introduction of the EU regulations in 2018 and these enforcement regulations we are debating this evening? Will she also say a little more about how “businesses and stakeholders” were able to “feed into the development of the EU Regulations through various formal EU consultations”, as stated in the Explanatory Memorandum, and how the Government ensured that this happened in practice? In last week’s debate, as well as this evening, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, talked about the need to be pragmatic and practical. In general terms, I agree that the agricultural sector is looking for stability, biosecurity and mechanisms to protect our ecosystems from invasive pests and crop diseases. On these Benches, we recognise that aligning with the EU reduces barriers to trade. The reality of dynamic alignment, however, is that we are usually dealing with very small, technical changes which are probably truly understood only by a small group of experts—including the Minister, who follows these matters very closely. However, in the absence of formal representation in the European Union institutions, it is vital that this Parliament plays a full and proper scrutiny role, and I still firmly hope that the Government will set out a strategy in this regard. Finally, it is deeply to be regretted that the House of Commons no longer has a European Scrutiny Committee. It previously played a vital role in carrying out necessary scrutiny of these regulations. This function is increasingly being carried out only by the European Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House and through regret amendments such as today’s. The Government need to bring forward proposals to improve this.