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Mr. Rifkind: I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman clearly has not read the Commission's paper, page 3 of which is about the procedure for lifting the ban. It says:
- "A working paper must be presented by the UK, elaborating the specific criteria and indicators as exemplified in the UK framework document",
- "The Standing Veterinary Committee has examined the UK framework document . . . giving many of the principles a favourable reaction",
Mr. Cook: I have read the document repeatedly. As the Foreign Secretary says, it states that the committee has given
- "many of the principles a favourable reaction"--
Mr. Rifkind: The right hon. Gentleman must read the document a fourth time if he has read it three times, because he has not understood it. It states clearly the procedure for lifting the ban and says explicitly what the first step is:
- "A working paper must be presented by the UK, elaborating the specific criteria and indicators exemplified in the UK framework document."
Mr. Cook: As the Foreign Secretary says, the document states:
- "as exemplified in the UK framework document."
As the Foreign Secretary has turned to the page on procedure, let us deal with his comments. He said that I was wrong in saying that this matter had to go before five committees. [Interruption.] I am sorry if I misunderstood him. Obviously I was right in saying that it had to go before five committees. Is that what he is saying?
Mr. Rifkind:
The right hon. Gentleman can check the record. I said explicitly that all these committees bar one
Mr. Cook:
The paper says that the UK working paper
"will be submitted"--
Mr. Rifkind:
For consultation.
Mr. Cook: Indeed. I intend to read it all, if the Foreign Secretary will relax and let me do so. The paper states:
- "This working paper will be submitted for consultation to the Scientific Veterinary Committee, the newly created Multi-disciplinary Scientific Committee and, where appropriate, to other relevant Scientific Committees. At the same time, it will be discussed by the Standing Veterinary Committee.
In the light of these discussions the Commission will take a decision".
Mr. Rifkind: The right hon. Gentleman must not get into a bogus lather about these matters. He knows that the Commissioners are not scientists. He would be the first to criticise Ministers or the Commission if they took scientific decisions without consulting scientific advisers. That is what they are required to do and that is what we insisted on, because if decisions are not based on scientific advice, the only alternative is to base them on political considerations, which is exactly what we are trying to get away from.
Mr. Cook: The Foreign Secretary's intervention was revealing. He said that the Commissioners are not scientists--which we accept entirely--that they will take advice from scientific committees, and that these are the scientific committees. Having listened to that, it is unlikely that the Commission will then say, if the scientific advice is negative, that it will go ahead with the decision.
The next stage is that the Commission will present its draft decision to the Standing Veterinary Committee. As the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle(Mr. Leigh) rightly reminded the Foreign Secretary, the Committee refused to lift the ban on derivatives--it divided on it. That is how we got into the dispute and into the non-co-operation policy in the first place.
It is not entirely honest of the Foreign Secretary to say to the House that this will be a matter simply for scientific and not political judgment. The next paragraph says:
There is another gulf that the Foreign Secretary cannot wriggle out of. In the document that he submitted last week, the Government made considerable play of the importance of exports to third countries. The Government
proposed that exports to third countries that were not authorised to re-export beef to the European Union should recommence immediately. The Government also proposed that exports to other third countries should recommence subject only to safeguards on re-exports to the European Union, not subject to anything that we were going to do to tackle BSE. The Foreign Secretary cannot deny that that is knocked firmly on the head by the Commission, which dismisses the proposal in one line. It says:
When he was asked yesterday when exports to third countries could recommence, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with the characteristic honesty that has undermined his interventions in this affair, said:
Mr. Rifkind:
On exports to third countries, the matter will no doubt be discussed this weekend in Florence. Yesterday, my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General put to the European Court of Justice the UK case--which was extremely well received--with regard to this part of the ban. We are likely to have a decision within the next week or 10 days on whether there should be an interim decision by the court which could lift that part of the ban immediately. Obviously, we cannot be certain until we hear that judgment, but the Attorney-General believes that he had a good hearing on the inequity of that aspect of the ban. We will wish to see the outcome of that hearing and take that into account.
Mr. Cook:
I commend the Foreign Secretary on his confidence in the European Court of Justice. I presume that he will now defend it against the criticism that it frequently receives from Conservative Back Benchers. In case hon. Members did not notice it, may I point out that they are being asked to accept the framework agreement without any commitment on exports to third countries, and on the assumption that the European Court will ride to the rescue, which many Conservative Members will find uncomfortable.
Apart from the gulf between the papers of last week and this week, the Foreign Secretary is unable to answer the question that I repeatedly asked him: when will the phased lifting of the beef ban be completed? He said that it was never his intention to have a timetable. On 27 May, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he was seeking an agreed strategy to provide for the lifting of the rest of the ban and that the question of a timetable would obviously be part of those discussions--so presumably he discussed a timetable with our partners in the European Union. What did they say?
Mr. Cook:
I will just finish with the Foreign Secretary.
What did our European partners say when the right hon. and learned Gentleman raised the timetable? Are we to infer from his inability to offer any timetable that he does not wish to share with us the answer that he received?
Farmers need to know when they can export beef again--will it be this year, next year or the year after? It must be dawning on Conservative Members, including the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle, that they will be fighting the next general election with most of the beef ban still in place.
Mr. Rifkind:
The right hon. Gentleman quoted from the British document that was put to the Commission, in which we made no suggestion of determining calendar dates now, as to when various parts of the ban should be lifted. Picking an arbitrary date of 31 July or 2 August would be nonsense. The Commission's document as well as our own reflects that the approach should be to agree the conditions that must be satisfied for the lifting of each phase of the ban, and for the UK to initiate that process when it can demonstrate that those conditions have been met. Then the ban will be lifted.
"Fortnightly reports by the UK . . . and monthly reports by the Commission to the Council and Parliament will continue as long as necessary and are an integral part of this procedure."
If we assume that the Council is going merely to note the reports with which it feels unhappiest, the Foreign Secretary is not being frank with the House about the nature of the discussions that he has had in the past month.
"Exports to third countries will be permitted in parallel to phased exports to other Member States".
In other words, until we fulfil all the steps set out by the Commission, and until all the committees give their scientific advice, there will be no exports to third countries.
"I am not trying to avoid it. I just don't know the answer".
Perhaps the Foreign Secretary will give us the answer.
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