Mr Alistair Carmichael
MP for Orkney and Shetland · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I do not know whether this is something I still need to declare, Mr Speaker, but I visited the Falkland Islands in 2003 as a guest of the Falkland Islands Government. They have never invited me back.”
“I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and also that my wife is a practising veterinary surgeon. What is happening was predictable because it was predicted. The Government were warned by the National Audit Office in June last year that they were unprepared for outbreaks of this sort.”
“The Minister is surely aware that there is no route to net zero that does not go through oil and gas hydrocarbons, and that not exploiting resources on the UK continental shelf leaves us reliant on imports, which also has carbon consequences that must be taken into account.”
“The transition to clean energy could be an opportunity to build a different model that would, to use the First Secretary of State’s own words, end “overly centralised decision making and over-privatisation”.”
“I welcome what the Prime Minister just said about strengthening farming. If he is serious about this, one of the first things he can do is ensure that our farmers do not have to compete with imported food that is produced to lower standards than we expect.”
“Q4. Like others, I have always respected the Prime Minister as somebody who was in politics because he wanted to give service to his country, and he has earned our gratitude for that. In my constituency, those who volunteer as coastguard rescue officers also do so from a wish to give service to their community.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,707 lines we hold for Mr Alistair Carmichael, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 95.
“DEFRA must immediately deliver a plan to start to fine and prosecute repeat offenders and those who are attempting to smuggle significant amounts of animal products. Successive Governments have been aware of the scale and risks of illegal meat imports and have failed to deliver a response proportionate to the challenge. We have identified the risks and some of the solutions. It is essential that DEFRA takes those risks seriously and acts to mitigate them with urgency. The stakes are too high for further inaction.”
“We have called on DEFRA to establish a taskforce to bridge the divides. It should lead on the design and delivery of a strategy for tackling meat smuggling. We also found that Border Force is not adequately fulfilling its responsibility to enforce rules at the border. It has too many competing priorities, and officers lack understanding of the risks and rules associated with products of animal origin. Port health authorities are willing to step up and support Border Force, but are needlessly inhibited by a lack of powers and funding. Such authorities should be given stop, search and seize powers in relation to animal products, and funding for enforcement presence at the border. There is currently no deterrent to meat smuggling, so smugglers are operating with impunity.”
“Other meat and dairy products are illegally brought into Great Britain for personal consumption because individuals are unaware of the prohibitions or because they are willing to take the risk. DEFRA banned imports of most animal products from the EU in April this year, but many travellers do not know what the rules are or why they are in place. We think travel operators should be legally compelled to inform travellers of food prohibition rules for EU countries, as they are for other countries. There is currently no ownership in Government of the issue of illegal imports of animal products. Responsibility is so fragmented across agencies that outdated, inefficient ways of working have been allowed to persist, and the scale of the crisis has escalated to an intolerable tolerable degree.”
“It carries increased risks of viruses, bacteria and parasites that can make people sick, and falls far below the strict standards that we require of British producers and legitimate importers, and that consumers expect. Illegally imported meat and dairy products are being sold online and via door-to-door sales to households and businesses. Illicit products can be found in markets, shops, takeaways and hospitality venues, where consumers trust that the food they are buying is safe and meets high welfare standards. In some cases, meat is misrepresented as being of British origin. We heard that the cost of living crisis is fuelling the market for cheap, illegally imported meat, as is demand for culturally preferred products, like pork from eastern Europe.”
“The reality is a limited and incomplete intelligence network, strained enforcement capability, and port facilities unsuitable for seizing significant volumes of potentially contaminated meat. At the very least, farmers and the public deserve greater transparency about the risks we face. We have called on the Government to start publishing quarterly data relating to seizures of illegally imported animal products. We have also asked the Government to model the amount of animal products entering Britain, and the risks this poses to our livestock. Meat smuggling was described to our Committee as “the biggest threat to food security we have had for a long time”. We do not know how these animals were reared and slaughtered, or how the meat has been handled or stored.”
“The Minister responsible for biosecurity committed to visiting the Port of Dover to see the situation for herself. At the time of our report’s publication, she still had not done so. I find that regrettable and very much hope it will be attended to in early course. The relationship between DEFRA and the Dover Port Health Authority is poor. That serves no one’s interest and requires immediate ministerial attention. We know that when commercial imports from certain countries have been banned, criminals have found a new way to make money and are bringing in products undeclared, under the guise of personal imports. DEFRA has reassured us that Border Force is delivering “intelligence-led checks”; we are concerned that this language hides the reality on the ground.”
“In her evidence to the Committee, the chief vet described port health authorities as our eyes and ears at the border. In that, she is quite correct, but still, Dover is the only port health authority in Britain being funded to support the work of Border Force in seizing illegal meat and dairy products. Even Dover’s funding has been under threat. This year’s funding was secured at the last minute and only after the intervention of stakeholders, including our Committee. We visited Dover and saw the entirely unsuitable facilities in which port health workers are being required to work. We saw vans stuffed with room temperature meat products packaged in plastic bags, newspaper and cardboard boxes. This meat had travelled across Europe, unrefrigerated, from countries where African swine fever is widespread.”
“We have no idea how much unchecked produce was able to enter through personal imports. We do know that, although border officials are now making far fewer seizures of animal products than in the years following the 2001 outbreak, they are seizing unprecedentedly high volumes. Last year, 235 tonnes of illegal animal products were seized at the UK border. Given the low levels of checks taking place, that must be just the tip of the iceberg. Port health workers tell us that they have seen a huge deterioration in the hygiene presentation of illegal meat, and say that shipments are increasing in size. That meat is heading to our high streets, our farms and our kitchen tables. Frontline workers are anxious that a disease outbreak is imminent, and we should share their anxiety.”
“The cost of the outbreak to our economy would be £13.8 billion in today’s prices. Experts at the time concluded that the infected meat that precipitated the outbreak had been imported illegally. In January this year, foot and mouth disease was again reported, this time in Germany. Experts there told the Committee that it was likely caused by illegally imported food. That single outbreak of foot and mouth disease cost the German economy €1 billion, and it required the culling of 336 animals and the testing of thousands more. In response, the UK Government announced import restrictions, but still, at-risk commercial consignments bypassed border control posts for six days, despite the ban on affected products. We will address that matter in our next report.”
“I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for me to make the statement, which marks the publication of the third report by our Committee in this Parliament. Our report is titled “Biosecurity at the Border: Britain’s Illegal Meat Crisis”, and it really is a crisis. It is a crisis that has been brewing for years, if not decades. It is also a crisis that matters not just on the national level but on the individual and personal level. We should never underestimate the impact that animal disease outbreaks have on the mental health of farmers, veterinary professionals and others in our rural communities when biosecurity breaks down. In 2001, over 6 million animals were slaughtered across the United Kingdom following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Rural communities were devastated.”
“Even as things currently stand, we have a mental health crisis in the farming industry. We know from our own personal community experience from 2001 that that was a moment of genuinely acute mental health crisis from which many people have not yet recovered. The truth of the matter is that one of the biggest challenges facing the livestock sector is maintaining a critical mass of livestock numbers. If we were to go through the same sort of cull that we went through in 2001, starting from where we are today, I think we would risk losing that critical mass, and that could have a catastrophic impact on farmers right across the country.”
“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.”
“The conditions in which the Port Health Authority workers operate were disgraceful: working in big sheds that we probably would not keep cattle in, with holes in the roof and pigeons flying around. Meanwhile, just a few miles up the road, there are purpose-built facilities where workers would at least be able to change into their personal protective equipment and have proper showers at the end of the day. I place on the record the Committee’s gratitude to, and my personal admiration of, Lucy Manzano and her team at the Dover Port Health Authority, who have done a remarkable job and a significant public service in bringing this to the attention of the wider population.”
“First, I thank the hon. Lady and all other members of the Committee for their engagement in this report and for the way in which they approach the work of the Committee as a whole. I may be slightly biased, but I really think they are quite excellent in the way they go about their business—I could not ask for a better membership. What we saw at Dover was truly shocking. We are still close enough to lunch that I am not going to give too many details, but the photographs that were provided to the Committee were truly horrendous. The hon. Lady suggests that the control points at Sevington and Bastion Point could be repurposed, which is an obvious solution.”
“The other thing that we were told was that the possibility of an outbreak of African swine fever could be the death knell for the British pork industry as a whole. To my mind, that really illustrates just how high the scale of risk is here.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to the Committee’s work, which is—I hope the Whips are here to hear this—a textbook example of how a Government Back Bencher should go about his business in Committee. He is absolutely right that seeing scales was worrying. It is obvious that that product is then going straight to the market and goodness knows where after that. Our real concern is that we are bringing in pork products from eastern Europe and places where African swine fever is already present. A lot of that meat is, we suspect, destined for eastern European workers in our pig industry. One does not have to be Einstein to work out the scale and nature of the risk there. We heard two things. One of the witnesses said that we were one carelessly discarded ham sandwich away from disaster—that is absolutely right.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We risk ending up playing a whole game of whack- a-mole, tightening the controls at Dover and seeing the effort displaced to other communities and ports. Notwithstanding that, the priority is still the short straits, as the significant volume of imports come through them. That all underlines the view of the Committee that what is needed is for somebody in Government to take control of this issue, with a strategy for dealing with it, because there is no point in having the best national security at one port if all we do is displace the effort to others.”
“That is an important point, which is related to one made earlier by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), and it is about the stability that people have in their life if they know that they have indefinite leave to remain. The industry that I have the most to do with is the fishing industry, and we have seen an increasing presence of transient workers in recent years, outwith immigration rules a lot of the time. In a handful of cases—I stress that it is just a handful—there has been egregious abuse, and that can happen because these people are forced to live in the shadows. Giving them stability allows them to have the same rights and security that we all take for granted.”
“In June, the Scottish Government made a very welcome commitment not to pursue a deliberate policy of reducing livestock numbers. Despite that, livestock numbers in Scotland continue to fall and have fallen by 15% over 10 years, so that across the United Kingdom we now risk losing the critical mass we need to maintain the network of abattoirs, hauliers, vets and merchants. If food security genuinely is national security, is now the moment to consider including within the remit of the Climate Change Committee the maintenance of food security?”
“I think the Minister may need to add a few more island venues to his travel itinerary in the future. May I take him back to the question of tax? He is right to say that if we will a reduction in tax, we should look for a reduction in expenditure, but it does not always work like that. When we cut the rate of duty on spirits, we did it with the expectation of a loss of £600 million, but it actually brought an increase of £800 million. That can sometimes happen. For years, the UK hospitality sector has been asking for a reduced rate of VAT on its services, and that would be sector specific. It has given evidence, backed by some of the biggest consultancies in the area, that that would in fact bring an increased tax take. Will the Minister make that point to the Treasury?”
“Friend the Defence Secretary should not be awarding contracts to a company like that?”
“Is the Foreign Secretary aware of the concerns expressed by his noble Friend Lord Hain about the possibility of contracts under the Army Collective Trading Service being awarded to Elbit Systems UK, whose parent company Elbit Systems Ltd markets its weapons as being “battle tested” in Gaza and on the west bank? Lord Hain wrote to the Defence Secretary to say: “Awarding this contract worth an estimated £1.9 billion to £2.5 billion would entrench Elbit Systems at the core of the UK’s defence infrastructure for a full 15-year period” and that to proceed with the contract would “erode confidence in the integrity of our procurement system”. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that Lord Hain’s comments should be given the fullest possible consideration and that, if they are shown to be of substance, his right hon.”
“If we can achieve something along those lines in Geneva, we will have some cause for optimism.”
“They state that we should be looking for: “A global target to reduce production of primary plastic polymers and related elements such as reporting and national measures.” Reducing production is critical; I will return to that in a minute or two. They also call for a “Clear and legally binding obligation to phase out the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastics…A binding obligation to improve the design of plastic products and ensure they cause minimum environmental impact and safeguard human health, including supporting reuse…Provision of ambitious finance (‘effective means of implementation’) in particular for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States”. Finally, they call for: “Using regular UN procedures for decision-making if all efforts at consensus have been exhausted”.”
“That created sufficient public pressure, so that in 2022, there was a decision by 175 countries to develop an internationally legally binding instrument to address the problem of plastic pollution. That matters on so many levels, and it is why the word “global” is central to the treaty. Plastics as an industry emits more carbon than the entire global aviation and shipping industries. The question we should ask ourselves is: what exactly does “good” look like at the conclusion of the talks in Geneva? I cannot improve on the fine summary in the briefing from the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace ahead of today’s debate.”
“Even when we go out on a beach that looks pretty clear and pristine, if we start picking up the small pieces of plastic, 10 or 15 minutes later, we have a carrier bag full of them. In Orkney and Shetland, we have a great range of community initiatives to tackle this issue. In Orkney, we have the “bag the bruck” campaign every year. In Shetland, we have Da Voar Redd Up. Despite the community effort and people taking responsibility for stretches of coastline and picking up the rubbish, weeks later, it is as if almost nobody had ever been there. The tipping point for public consciousness on this issue was the “Blue Planet” series by Sir David Attenborough a few years ago.”
“For those of us who, like me, come from island and coastal communities, the growth of plastic pollution has been obvious for years. Ahead of this debate, I got an email just a couple of days ago from a constituent of mine, Jim Chalmers, who said: “I can remember as a child beachcombing around the south end of Stronsay, and coming across the occasional unfamiliar plastic bottle and being intrigued by its novelty. It might have been an empty washing-up liquid bottle of a kind unknown in our household or even had words in a foreign language.” Fast-forward to 2025, and the position is very different on the beaches of the Orkney and Shetland coastline, and right around the coastline of all European countries.”
“At this turn of the wheel, I particularly thank Greenpeace UK for the assistance of its campaigner Rudy Schulkind, but in the past, I had a private Member’s Bill on the subject, and that was supported by a whole range of organisations, from the women’s institute through to Friends of the Earth. We have to call that a broad-based consensus. This debate is timely. The next round of talks on the UN global plastics treaty will be held in Geneva between 5 and 14 August. The Government, I am happy to acknowledge, have a good story to tell, and in fairness, they inherited the record of the previous Government, who also accorded some political importance to this issue. The message I want the Chamber to send today is that the Government have to do all that they can—not just in presenting the UK case, but in supporting others.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Global Plastics Treaty. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time available for this debate, and for allocating the debate to the main Chamber. That is an important signal that the House is in political consensus on the issue, and we attach a great deal of importance to that. I thank those Members who supported the application for the debate to the Backbench Business Committee, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage). She has a long and distinguished record of campaigning on this issue, but is unfortunately unable to be here. I also express my appreciation for the support of the various campaigners—organisations and individuals—who have kept this issue in the public consciousness for so long, not always in the easiest of circumstances.”
“However, I know fine I’m urinating into the wind” —he did not actually say “urinating”— “as I have no control whatsoever over the source of the stuff and the forces that encourage and permit its growing release. I appreciate that the 17th of this month is not a good time for you to be away from Orkney” —there is never a good time to be away from Orkney— “but if you can somehow bring any influence to bear, I would feel my efforts aren’t totally in vain.” It is for people like my constituent Mr Chalmers and his likes right across this country that we are here today. We pin our hopes and their hopes on the efforts of the Government and like-minded countries to get the treaty that we know we need and that our planet deserves.”
“If we are to get this treaty across the line, UK needs to be robust not just in presenting our own case, but in supporting and protecting those who are less fortunate than we are: the small island nations, the campaigners and the scientists who are there on their own finance. My final ask is that there should be a ministerial presence at the negotiations in Geneva, which would be a really important signal that the Government could send about the seriousness of their intent. Madam Deputy Speaker, you said I would speak for 15 minutes and I think I have had 14, so I will return to the email that I got from Jim Chalmers. He went on to say: “I’m sure I have a reputation as that weird guy that carries a bag with him when he’s out with the dog, picking up litter (I call it recyclates).”
“DEFRA is very well blessed in that it can afford to send a big delegation of highly trained scientists, which is fantastic, but they stand alongside small island developing nations, which perhaps only have one individual there. The need for a science mechanism is actually mandated in UNEA 5/14, and we need it really urgently to address this issue.” It was one of those moments when I had to stop and say, “Just a second, did you say what I thought you said there?” Even after we had explained to him his position as an eminent scientist giving evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons, with all the protection of privilege, he was not comfortable calling out in detail what is happening. The fact of the matter is that we know that it is happening.”
“We have to see that it gives us an opportunity to help and support others. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which I chair, took evidence on the global plastics treaty just last week, on 8 July, and some of what I heard was genuinely shocking. Professor Richard Thompson OBE, who is a fellow of the Royal Society and a professor of marine biology at the University of Plymouth, said: “Moreover, scientists I work with have been threatened on UN premises as part of these negotiations. Almost what I would consider a fundamental right to science and to access science is being denied. It particularly falls on some of the smaller nations.”
“We also understand that one of the biggest barriers in Geneva is going to be the role of the plastics industry itself. It is exceptionally well resourced, and it is rooted downstream of the oil and gas industry. Personally, I am pragmatic about the use of oil and gas. Until we have other technologies that can take its place, it is foolish to push our oil and gas industry off the shelf, but I am afraid I see little to commend in its behaviour. Had the industry’s representatives all come as one delegation to the last round of talks in Korea, it would have been the largest delegation at the talks. I am pleased to say that the UK delegation is the gold standard in this space. It is well resourced, and is well informed by scientific advisers, but that is not a cause for complacency or smugness.”
“Given the vast number of different plastics that are available and the different polymer combinations, they know just how difficult it is to actually recycle plastic. This country has a good record on collecting plastic for recycling, but the truth of the matter is that we recycle very little of it. We export a horrible amount of it—I think we exported 598 million kilograms for recycling in 2024. Of course, once it is exported, we do not know if it gets recycled or not, and we completely lose control of it. Then we have the growth of incineration. The number of incinerators has grown from 38 to 52 in the last five years alone, driven by the growth in plastics. I am afraid the idea that recycling alone is going to be the silver bullet will not lead to the meaningful reductions that we know we need, so we need a cap on production.”
“We can make not just an environmental and social case for that, but a business case. Ensuring that the treaty has the strongest possible reduction targets will be absolutely critical. That is where the contention has arisen in previous rounds of talks, and we can anticipate that the same arguments will be rehearsed. The most important point to address, however, is the idea that somehow the whole thing will be fixed by recycling and that we can just keep producing virgin plastics at an exponential rate. We reckon that the current exceptionally high levels will treble by 2060 if we do not do anything to arrest the increase. We cannot manage to fix it all by recycling, and the people who advance that idea—particularly those who work for the big plastic companies and the petrochemical companies—are downright disingenuous.”
“Yes, if it is a properly constructed, nationwide deposit return scheme. The experience in Scotland was, shall we say, not everything that it might have been. A properly constructed scheme will be critical. I see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), on the Front Bench, and I know she has a tremendous personal commitment to this issue. This is about creating a circular economy. I know there is a genuine commitment to that in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and a deposit return scheme would very much sit within that. We talk about such measures being somehow in conflict with business. Importantly, the fundamental truth is that the best opportunity for business comes from having a circular economy.”
“If they again stand in the way of making progress on something that matters to this House and to the people who send us here, we will see them, and there will be a commercial price for them to pay for standing in the way of progress. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Global Plastics Treaty.”
“The evidence session that our Select Committee held last week was not an easy one to pull together, especially when it came to bringing in corporate interests. Coca-Cola turned up and, to its credit, had a decent story to tell. INEOS turned up, and might or might not have had a good story to tell—it could not quite remember. The people who we really wanted to get were from Unilever, but apparently everybody in Unilever had gone to India for the day, so they could not appear before the Committee. We will return to this; they can run, but they cannot hide. In the past, we have seen not just the national, but the corporate influences that have stood in the way of progress. If those corporate interests are watching our proceedings today, they should hear a very loud and clear message that we are watching them.”
“I thank everybody who has taken part in this debate—it has been quite a remarkable exercise and an enormously valuable one. Every contribution has been truly excellent. We have heard from Members representing constituencies in Scotland, Wales and England; we have not had anybody from Northern Ireland, but I should place on the record that I have seen on the Annunciator that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has been in Westminster Hall this afternoon. It has also been noteworthy for the fact that, at a time of year when we all get a bit tired and scratchy, we have had remarkable consensus and a good-natured debate. In closing, I want to address myself to not just the people in the Chamber, but those who might be watching from outside.”
“If the last nine years have taught us nothing else, they have surely taught us that it is much easier to agree about the need for an agreement than it is to reach an agreement. The SPS agreement will be critical for food and drink exports. We are only going to get one chance on this, so to get it right we need maximum engagement with the companies and businesses doing the exporting. What is the Minister doing to ensure that their voices are heard in these negotiations and that the agreement suits them?”
“May we have a debate or a statement on the accountability and accessibility of arm’s length bodies? For months, I have been working with a company to try to get answers for it out of UK Research and Innovation. Emails go unanswered for weeks and months at a time. There is no publicly available contact information for the chief executive. I got an email this morning because my office called the press office at UKRI to say that I was going to raise the matter here; that is the only point at which we have had anything out of it. Bodies such as UKRI deliver a lot of Government policy. Surely, they should be accessible and accountable to Members of Parliament in exactly the same way that the right hon. Lady’s ministerial colleagues are required to be.”
“I welcome the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s commitment that resilience must be for all, not just for some. The people of Shetland will hold him to those words. A few years ago, we suffered a catastrophic power outage for about seven days in winter storms, leaving many of my constituents relying on copper wire phone lines for their connection to the outside world. If that copper wire is withdrawn without sufficient resilience being built into its replacement, the consequences for my constituents could be catastrophic. Will he, through his office, engage with private sector organisations when they are making these strategic decisions for us all?”
“In the last Parliament, a number of us raised concerns about the administration of defined-benefit schemes by, among others, BP, Shell and Hewlett-Packard. It was obvious at that stage—I think this view was held by his right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability, who was then the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee—that one of the root causes of the problem was insufficient independence and oversight by defined-benefit pension trustees. What is there in this Bill that will protect the position of pensioners in their retirement under those schemes?”
“The Minister has spoken about some of the history of this, but there is more recent history. The last Government introduced the Public Order Act 2023 to deal with Extinction Rebellion. The Home Secretary, who was then on the Opposition Front Bench, listed all the various crimes that could be dealt with. She said then: “the Government are extending powers that we would normally make available just for serious violence and terrorism to peaceful protest. Police officers themselves have said that this is, ‘a severe restriction on a person’s rights to protest and in reality, is unworkable’.” —[ Official Report , 23 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 63.] She was right then, and is wrong today, is she not?”
“I too remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In Orkney and Shetland, the food and drink sector is an integral part of our local visitor economy, as is the hospitality sector, but neither is part of the Government’s industrial strategy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if we were to bring food and drink and hospitality into the industrial strategy, we would not suffer the salami slicing of over-regulation that we are seeing, especially in Scotland, where the self-catering industry is now being hit with another round of regulatory burdens?”
“The right hon. Gentleman flatters to deceive, I fear. He is right about the way grocery supermarkets go about their business, but much of the problem is the way they choose to go about it. I recently heard from a livestock farmer who bought in potatoes to feed stock. He expected to find them green, bruised or damaged, but when they arrived they were perfect; they just were not conformed to the particular specification that the supermarket demanded. That demand does not come from consumers, but directly from supermarkets. If he looks around Europe and elsewhere, the right hon. Gentleman will find that supermarkets there behave very differently.”
“Even if we park for a moment the concern about animal welfare standards, the carbon consequences of shipping beef around the world in this way are utter madness, even though ironically it would help us to meet the targets set for us by the Climate Change Committee. That example illustrates that amid growing competition among supermarkets on price, if we continue to reduce our levels of livestock in this country the resulting gap will be filled by cheaper imports. That surely renders any definition of food security utterly meaningless. Once we lose our own producers, we will not get them back.”
“The supermarkets are entering into a price war as they try to push down food price inflation. As a primary food producer myself, I declare a registered interest. There are wider issues around the behaviour of supermarkets. There has been widespread and justifiable outrage in the past few days about Asda selling Uruguayan beef. The way it is often done is instructive. The labelling on the top looks lovely. It says that the beef is 30-day matured rib-eye steak of “heritage breed origin”, whatever that means. A shopper has to turn it over and see the small print on the back or underside of the tray to find out that it is beef produced in Uruguay from cattle slaughtered in Uruguay.”
“But if it has a story to tell, it needs to come out and tell it. Otherwise, we will be entitled to assume that there is not much that it can say. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings spoke about the need for reform and the way in which that reform might take shape. I disagree with very little of what he said. What we need, as the hon. Member for Salford says, is a single regulator from the farm gate to the supermarket shelves. At the moment, too many unfairnesses are hardwired into the system, there are too many players in the market and it is just too easy for outcomes to fall between the gaps. Those who suffer are always the consumers, who are left with higher food prices, or the primary producers. At the moment, it is principally the primary producers who are losing out.”