Speeches by Zeichner.

“The assessment the Treasury did is detailed in a letter that the Chancellor published to the Treasure Select Committee. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that those figures have changed since then.”

“What is good is that this is an alternative income stream for farmers, which they can rely on into the future, but we have to demonstrate it is good value for money to maintain that support from the Treasury. I think Janet was going to add something.”

“That is a different question. The Treasury made its announcements at the Budget in the normal way, which is the way you would expect a Budget to be presented. There has been considerable interest in it since, but I do not anticipate any changes.”

“Of course, the Government is looking very closely at what is happening internationally, and DEFRA quite rightly offers its advice on any issues that might come up.”

“I have not had any communication so far.”

“Absolutely, and that is why we will use this period before opening up the new scheme to tackle this kind of issue. The question I find myself asking is how that scheme could have been introduced in that kind of way in the first place, but that is what we had. The choice we had at any point was, whenever we said it is n…”

“As I say, Chair, I believe we have robust supply chains, and I encourage people to have a reasoned dialogue, very much as we have had this morning, about the way forward for the future. The overwhelming message should be that this is a really important sector all the way through the food chain. It does a magnificent jo…”

“Thank you for inviting us this morning. I am Daniel Zeichner. I am the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs.”

“It does not tell the whole story, because we are working, as I say, within the legislative framework that was agreed by Parliament under the Fisheries Act. Our task is to make those judgments.”

“I think it is working effectively, yes.”

“To tax and subsidies?”

“It absolutely does, but it shows the complexity of the decisions that are being made. As a Minister, I can only follow the scientific advice we are being given.”

“May I look to you for that one, Mike?”

“Once we have had the spending review and we know the resources are available, we will know how much we have available to us. So we are talking about late summer—”

“I am not sure I quite follow the question, but basically it is obviously a market-driven system, so it depends essentially on the relationships within the sector. I am perfectly happy to pay tribute to the Chair and his predecessors for intervening in this a decade ago, introducing the Groceries Code Adjudicator and GS…”

“That is one of the legacy European Union schemes; we are currently looking at what we would do to replace that. We are in conversation with people on that, but it was a legacy scheme that came to an end.”

“We want to look closely to make sure it provides good value for money. Obviously, decisions that devolved Governments make are their decisions, we do not always take the same decisions.”

“I understand the point you are making. What I would just gently say is there is a fairly clear legal system around labelling, and labelling should not be inaccurate. Where it is inaccurate, there is a legal issue. But we are, as you rightly say, looking very closely at the whole issue of labelling and it should always …”

“As any responsible Government would do, we make preparations for all contingencies. But at the moment, there is no trade deal.”

“I am not directly involved in negotiations, I cannot tell you, but what I can tell you is that, exactly as you would expect, we provide advice. I can assure you that we are absolutely determined to make sure that our current position, which is that we will defend Britain’s farmers, remains absolute.”