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Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Amendment) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

My Lords, I hope it will be helpful to your Lordships if I speak to both instruments, given that both deliver legislation addressing requirements for the movements of UK sanitary and phytosanitary goods.

The first instrument completes the suite of EU exit amendments set out in the Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were debated on 2 December and came into force on 31 December. As with the earlier official controls instrument, this further instrument amends EU retained regulations governing official controls on imports to Great Britain of animals, animal products, plants and plant products, including food and other imports relevant to the agri-food chain.

The EU regulatory structure being retained and made operable by these amendments is complex and extensive. Due to the intricacy of the amendments required and a requirement set by the European Commission—that we should make and publish the first official controls instrument before mid-December, as a condition of it considering listing the United Kingdom as a third country for export to the EU—we took the decision to divide the necessary legislation into two instruments.

The earlier official controls instrument focused on operability amendments to the main body of EU official controls regulations. The instrument before your Lordships today makes similar operability amendments to more than 30 separate tertiary regulations, covering procedural aspects of the official controls regime. For example, Part 3 of the instrument amends the EU tertiary regulation governing the information management system for official controls, known as IMSOC. This amendment removes references to complying with EU-wide standards, which are mandated to enable member states to integrate their IT systems across the EU as a whole. The amendments do not change the

policy requirement for the UK to maintain computerised information management systems to the standard necessary to deliver official controls information and processes.

This legislation ensures that we can continue to deliver robust, effective controls and checks on all food, animal and plant imports. As previously announced, we have now started to phase in border controls on imports from the European Economic Area. Our purpose is to ensure that, without compromising our biosecurity, we maintain the flow of import activity at the border and give business and industry longer to prepare for the full controls regime. Phasing is a temporary, pragmatic step to support international trade and mitigate border disruption, made necessary by the unprecedented impact of Covid-19.

From April, pre-notification and health documentation will be introduced for imports of EU products of animal origin and for all regulated plants and plant products. From July 2021, we will have controls in place for all imports of European Union SPS goods.

I turn to the second instrument, the Plant Health (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020. Delivering unfettered market access for Northern Irish businesses moving goods into Great Britain is one of the key commitments in the Northern Ireland protocol and the United Kingdom Internal Market Act. The measures in this instrument reflect those commitments. They specify the mechanism to allow regulated plants and plant materials to move from Northern Ireland into Great Britain. This instrument does not introduce any policy changes.

The purpose of this instrument is to protect biosecurity and to support trade by ensuring that effective phytosanitary controls continue to operate between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and within Great Britain, in relation to Northern Ireland qualifying goods. The instrument makes amendments to retained EU law to allow movements of qualifying goods into Great Britain under an EU plant passport. This means that for Northern Irish businesses trading with Great Britain nothing will change compared with the situation before 1 January.

Once in Great Britain, an EU plant passport can continue to accompany the qualifying goods, but an authorised operator will also have the option, as for other regulated plants being moved in Great Britain, to replace the plant passport with a UK plant passport where appropriate. An EU plant passport on qualifying goods may be replaced by an authorised operator if they choose to replace the plant passport for business reasons—for example, to include their own business details—or split a consignment where each trade unit, be it a pot, box, trolley or similar, is not already covered by an individual plant passport. In these circumstances, the provisions allow GB operators to replace the original EU plant passport with a UK plant passport if the characteristics of the qualifying goods have not changed, but they also ensure that the traceability requirements in relation to the goods are maintained. Provision is also made for the goods to be assessed against GB plant health standards where these are different from those of the EU, and for the authorised operator to

have the option to issue a UK plant passport where the goods are assessed as meeting GB plant health requirements.

Under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol, Northern Ireland will maintain alignment with the EU plant health regime rather than that of Great Britain. This instrument makes amendments to allow identification of qualifying goods on the GB market to ensure traceability in the event of any biosecurity issues arising which need to be addressed.

The format of UK plant passports is amended to include a country code of GB(NI) for all qualifying goods where replacement UK plant passports are issued once within GB. This will allow the goods concerned to continue to be identified as qualifying goods and will facilitate effective enforcement.

Devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have formally consented to both instruments and the Northern Ireland devolved Administration have also consented to the plant health instrument.

The basis of these instruments—and my concern—is to protect biosecurity, which is of supreme importance to the Government and to all, as well as to deliver on our commitment to provide unfettered market access for Northern Ireland. I beg to move.

3.55 pm