Select committee: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Recommendation 12
First report - Australia FTA: Food and Agriculture
Published 17 Jun 2022
Paragraph 81
Addressed to Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Australia FTA: Food and Agriculture All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
While we believe the Government could have gone further in the UK-Australia FTA on standards, it has the opportunity, through the various forums created under the agreement, to continue to discuss environmental and animal welfare issues with Australia as part of its wider ambition of raising standards globally. The Government must produce a clear strategy for how it will use the forums created by the UK-Australia FTA to raise standards in the future. It should also set out how it will organise and resource the work of these committees to ensure they have sufficient senior buy-in on both sides to make further progress. Finally, it should set out what provision it will make for parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals of these committees.
From: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, First report - Australia FTA: Food and Agriculture (HC 23), paragraph 81, 17 June 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 12 October 2022 (deadline 17 August 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and responds to each recommendation, largely setting out existing measures in the UK-Australia FTA and committing to seek similar environmental provisions in future FTAs.
- On the bilateral safeguard, it says the technical processes are "currently under review by Government" and that it "will continue to keep Parliament updated on the outcome of the review".
- On future FTAs, it says it "will further seek similar commitments and provisions" on the environment, and will seek applicability across all levels of government.
- On impact assessments, it "accepts the recommendations" of the Trade Modelling Review Expert Panel and "intends to implement them fully", but expects changes to be "incremental".
- On import controls, it says the new Target Operating Model "will be published in the Autumn" and the new controls regime "will come into force at the end of 2023".