07:14

Environment secretary Michael Gove has come under fire after he said there was no “scope” for guarantees in his new agriculture bill over chlorinated chicken imported after Brexit.

Tory MP Neil Parish, chair of the environment select committee told Gove that such a guarantee would merely be putting his previous declarations about food safety into law. At a committee hearing this morning he asked:

What harm would it do to put [guarantees]in the bill? I don’t see why you are so adamant it can’t go there when your whole raison d’etre of British agriculture in the future is to have higher welfare standards.

Concerns about the bill, which represents the biggest reform to agriculture since the 1940s, have already been raised by the National Farmers Union for its lack of emphasis on food post Brexit.

Gove, who was giving evidence before the committee on Tuesday, said he shared the “sentiments” of Parish, but that the place for guarantees was the trade bill, not the agriculture bill. Guarantees were “outside the scope” of this bill, Gove told him.

Parish said this was to duck the issue as there would no time to debate agriculture standards in the trade debate. He went on:

I see no protection, because we couldn’t get it in the trade bill, and now you say we can’t get it in the agriculture bill.

Parish said there was no suggestion that American chicken was unsafe to eat, but that their animal welfare approach was completely different with higher antibiotics in poultry, for example. He explained: