Business and Trade Committee
Oral evidence: Export led growth, HC 649
Tuesday 3 June 2025
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 June 2025.
Members present: Liam Byrne (Chair); Antonia Bance; John Cooper; Sarah Edwards; Alison Griffiths; Charlie Maynard; Gregor Poynton; Mr Joshua Reynolds; Matt Western.
Science, Innovation and Technology Committee member also present: Chi Onwurah.
Questions 258 - 299
Witnesses
II: Paul Kenward, Chief Executive Officer, ABF Sugar; David Exwood, Deputy President, National Farmers Union; and Steve Bates, Chief Executive Officer, BioIndustry Association.
On resuming—
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Paul Kenward, David Exwood and Steve Bates.
Q258 Chair: Welcome to this second panel in today’s hearings as we open our exploration of the US trade deal. Thank you very much indeed to our witnesses for bearing with us as we performed our democratic duties downstairs. Steve Bates, perhaps I could start with you. Could you just say a little bit about what you were hoping to get out of the UK-US trade deal for the life sciences sector and whether you think we got it?
Steve Bates: We were hoping to ensure that the most valuable export market for UK pharmaceuticals was protected, that we would be able to grow that market more quickly and that the US would continue to be a valuable partner in innovation and science. The challenge that we have at this stage is that it is very hard to know what the US policy in our sector is since they have not defined what they want to do yet. It is very difficult to buy a pig in a poke, but that is where we are.
Q259 Chair: Was there anything specific that you wanted to see or that you had asked the UK Government to try to land?
Steve Bates: The biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors have grown over the last 40 years when there have been no tariffs. Unlike your previous panel, we have not operated in a tariff environment. We have existed under WTO tariff-free conditions. This is a very big change for our sector, which has big implications for patients and costs. We were hoping for a continuation of that, but we understand the political reality of the new Administration’s posture.
Q260 Chair: What are the big negative impacts on the life sciences sector as a result of the US policy? What have we not managed to get rid of in the US deal?
Steve Bates: We do not know what we have not got rid of, because we do not yet know what the Americans want to do in this sector. It seems like they want to use a particular section 232 investigation to implement new tariff proposals and national security positions within the supply chain for pharmaceutical products and ingredients. That is not how our sector has operated in the past. There are specific rules that apply during pandemic periods. We saw those operate during the covid period.
From our perspective, we knew there would be a change. We are still not quite sure what change the Americans want to make. We can endeavour to guess at what that may be, but we need to see in black and white what they are planning to do, both for their own industry and for our industry in the UK. We have all grown as part of a global industry.
Q261 Chair: How is that affecting the business of UK firms today? Are they able just to carry on trading as before until something bad happens?
Steve Bates: In terms of marketed goods, yes.
Q262 Chair: The level of uncertainty sounds quite high. How are firms in the life sciences sector dealing with that uncertainty? How are they planning for risk?
Steve Bates: Uncertainty has gone up. Much of biotech is based around venture capital. Venture capital firms have pulled their horns in. The non‑tariff changes to US science have had an impact on confidence. The changes at the FDA and the changes to grant-giving bodies in the federal Administration to US science have sent a chilling effect across the sector.
Having said that, global pharmaceutical companies continue to ensure medicines are supplied and new products are developed on a global basis, but we are also seeing changes suggested around drug pricing in the United States. That is also having a chilling effect. In a sense, tariffs are one small part of a package of changes for us, rather than the main game.
Q263 Chair: Yes, understood. David Exwood, was this a good deal for UK farmers?
David Exwood: Agriculture is always a sensitive area, but it is really simple. We expect the UK Government to stand up for UK farmers and standards. Largely, they have done that. They stood up for our phytosanitary standards. No hormone-treated beef will be allowed into this country. The beef quota that has been conceded is a new quota, but it is only 13,000 tonnes. That is just over 1% of the UK market. We welcome that. The challenge is in how that quota will be applied. If that 13,000 tonnes all came into the UK as fillet and strip loin, that would be our entire market in premium cuts. That could really displace the market.
It is also about the cumulative effect of these trade deals. It is about how it will work in conjunction with perhaps the Australia-New Zealand deal as well.
Q264 Chair: I see. At this stage, there is no real clarity as to when you will know more?
David Exwood: No, we do not know when this quota will be applied and how it will work.
Q265 Chair: Do you have a best guess as to when farmers really need to know this by?
David Exwood: We expect it to be imminent, but clarity would be good.
Q266 Chair: Paul Kenward, from your sector’s point of view, was this a good deal for Britain?
Paul Kenward: We were shocked and really upset by the deal. We are one of the sectors that have been inadvertently put at major risk. Bioethanol is a strategic British industry. I represent Vivergo Fuels. There is another big plant in Teesside, Ensus. From what I read, a last-minute concession in the deal, which was taken without consultation with us and without an impact assessment, has triggered a full-blown crisis in our industry.
To put some context around that, the Government gave away a 1.4 billion litre tariff-free quota for bioethanol. The size of the UK market is 1.4 billion litres. It is the same number. Our entire industry depends on the tariff to adjust for the fact that US bioethanol is heavily subsidised. It comes from genetically modified corn and genetically modified yeast. Whereas David has his protections, we do not.
It is particularly upsetting because it is exactly the business that your Government—the Government, our Government—want to support. Bioethanol decarbonises road transport fuel. Our factory in Hull takes the equivalent of 250,000 cars off the road because we put green bioethanol into road petrol. That decarbonises the road fleet.
We are also the foundation for future investment. We have been talking to people about hydrogen, which is a key priority for the Government’s mission to decarbonise. We are talking about sustainable aviation fuel. When the Government sign off expansion deals at airports, you always talk about sustainable aviation fuel being the thing that unlocks that. You cannot get sustainable aviation fuel without British bioethanol. We can clean up marine fuel. We can decarbonise industrial. We have jobs for 200 skilled workers in Hull. We supply British wheat from 12,500 farmers, who are going to see their prices drop on up to 1 million tonnes of wheat. There are 4,000 further jobs in the supply chain.
We have green investment memoranda of understanding ready to go on sustainable aviation fuel and hydrogen. They are worth over £1 billion, and they will disappear.
Q267 Chair: We are going to get into this in a little more detail, but the top‑line answer is, “No, this is not a good deal.”
Paul Kenward: Yes, I could just have said, “No.”
Q268 John Cooper: I will come to you, David, first and foremost. The beef situation is complex. There is no doubt about that. My understanding is that the beef herd, both in Britain and the US, is at quite a low ebb, which has driven up prices. Prices at the moment are quite good. What is your evaluation of this beef deal? Does Britain have more to lose than we have to gain out of this?
David Exwood: We need to be clear. The US is always going to be an aggressive exporter of food and will look for opportunities in high-value markets such as the UK. We are pleased that the deal has a reciprocal nature, but, clearly, the UK market is one of the most prized in the world and people want access to it.
I am a beef producer. I am really proud of the standards on my farm. We expect the Government to stand up for the production standards and environmental standards in this country. This deal is a threat to that. It is a limited threat, but, yes, the Government need to continue to stand up for us. We need the UK beef market to continue to function. Confidence among farmers is at a low ebb. You will understand that. It is really important that we have the confidence to invest in the future. If we think our market is going to be constantly chipped away, UK farmers will not invest in sustainable beef production in the future. They will not look to expand our herd at a time of high prices and opportunity. They will turn away, and we will lose that opportunity.
It is vital that confidence is seen as part of what can be done through this deal. That also means confidence for UK consumers. They need to have confidence in the type of beef that they are eating. They need to be confident that hormone-treated beef is not on the UK market. We must not see an undermining of the market as a whole. We are seeing high demand. We want that to continue.
Q269 John Cooper: I have two points. The first is on hormone-treated beef. Are you confident that the UK Government can keep hormone-treated beef out? There are systems in place. Secondly, rather than worrying about cheap beef coming over here, you are concerned about the high‑end market, the so-called New York strip steak. Your concern is that it would be the high-end part of the market that would be particularly hard hit. Am I right in saying that?
David Exwood: Yes, that is absolutely right. On hormone-treated beef, yes, the checks are there. This is a reflection of the EU position as well. Supply chains know how to deal with hormone-treated beef. Those checks have to be robust. They have to mean something. There has to be confidence in the UK market that we can identify hormone-treated beef and that it will not be allowed on to the UK market. What was your second question?
John Cooper: That first question you have answered pretty fully. It is about the high-end part of the market.
David Exwood: Yes, absolutely. Because the UK is a high-value market, they will not be sending their lowest cuts. They are going to want to send their highest cuts. They could flood the UK high-value beef cuts market in one move with this quota of 13,000 tonnes.
What we do not have in these trade deals is anti-dumping measures. Is DEFRA following the trade flows of beef around the world? Are they watching to see how UK quotas are being used by different countries and the combination of those quotas? Although this is limited to just over 1%, it could have a much bigger impact, if it were used aggressively by the US.
Q270 John Cooper: It may not seem much at 1% of the total market, but that 1% could be that very high-end part of the market. It could be very damaging.
David Exwood: Yes, exactly. It is our total prime cut market.
Q271 Chair: You asked whether DEFRA is monitoring this. Is that a rhetorical question? Do you know the answer to that question?
David Exwood: We do not think they are.
Q272 Chair: You do not know?
David Exwood: I see no evidence that they are monitoring trade flows and where that is going, and that is then reflected in their approach to the trade deals.
Q273 Chair: Yes, that lack of clarity feels like a problem. If you were designing the quota so that it worked best for UK farmers, can you give us a sense of how you would design the quota?
David Exwood: Anti-dumping measures are so important. Again, the backdrop to this is the New Zealand and Australia deals. Ultimately, that is moving to no quotas and no tariffs over a period of a decade. Currently, Australian beef is all going into China. If there were a disruption in trade flow, which seems highly likely at the moment, and that beef suddenly could not go into the Chinese market, Australia would look to switch it into the other quotas that they have around the world. If that were switched into the UK market alongside the US quota, that combination could have a dramatic impact on our market. That is the bit that we want to see. We need to see all the trade deals that have been done in recent times in combination.
Q274 Chair: Is this another example of the Trade Remedies Authority just being asleep at the wheel?
David Exwood: It feels like they have taken a piecemeal approach to trade deals, not a collective approach. That is the challenge.
Q275 Charlie Maynard: Following on from the point about the import of hormone-treated beef, we have assurances from Trade Minister Douglas Alexander that it will remain illegal, but there seems to be no check at all on whether the beef coming into the UK on the back of this deal has been hormone-treated. Are there checks? If so, what are they?
David Exwood: There are checks. This is not a new situation. Checks on hormone-treated beef do exist. There are questions about whether those checks are robust enough over the whole life of the beef animal, but certainly in the supply chain there are checks in various ways through dedicated slaughterhouses, segregation of storage and analysis of the meat itself for traces of hormone treatment. Yes, those checks do exist. It is in parallel with the EU approach.
Q276 Charlie Maynard: Are those checks happening in the US?
David Exwood: Yes, they happen in the US.
Q277 Charlie Maynard: Therefore, we have reasonable confidence that, if US beef is hormone-treated, we will know it?
David Exwood: Yes.
Q278 John Cooper: You are clear that this deal took you by surprise. There seem to be some knock-on effects that perhaps have not been thought through. You touched on the price of wheat being affected. Much of your feedstock, effectively, is wheat, and you have deals right across the country, I assume, for that wheat, so that may be hit, you are suggesting. I think I am right in saying that a by-product of your bioethanol is cattle feed. Is that in the form of cattle cake or something similar?
Paul Kenward: Yes, it is.
John Cooper: That might also have a knock-on effect. Farmers face a double whammy. Arable farmers potentially face wheat prices dropping, and, for dairy and beef cattle farmers, a key food source might disappear.
Paul Kenward: Our industry takes significant quantities—in our case, 1 million tonnes—of UK feed wheat. That is low-protein wheat, which does not go into bread or into pasta, but would go into animal feed. We extract the protein and turn it into dry-digested distillers grains, which go into animal feed, as you say. That is important. If we were not there, the UK would have to import soybean hulls from Brazil. They will be on dirty great ships burning marine fuel.
The industry produces bioethanol, and I talked about that. That decarbonises UK road and is a key building block for future green industries, including sustainable aviation fuel. The industry also produces liquefied carbon dioxide, which goes into operating theatres in the NHS, into abattoirs, and into the food and drink industry. That is a critical industry, and many of you may remember the crisis that happened in 2021, when the supply chains that the first panel were talking about proved that they are not always resilient to stress. If we lost this sovereign capability, you could see further crises in those supply chains.
Q279 John Cooper: What can you do about this? Your product eventually goes into fuel, so is there an opportunity there, or do you fear that you are going to be undercut?
Paul Kenward: We are definitely undercut. At the moment, the Government have given all of the UK market to the US under that tariff scheme. We do not have a home. The Government can help, and that is why I am pleased to have the opportunity to be here today.
DBT is trying hard to work across Government to help us. Our asks are quite simple. We need confidence to continue. We need, ideally, for Jonathan Reynolds or somebody senior in Government to say that they agree with us that this is a strategic industry that is worth saving and should be profitable. All it needs is for the regulations that were set up under the Government that Mr Byrne was in to be enforced appropriately, so that this industry can survive.
We need to give our board and investors confidence. We need to give our employees confidence. We have already had people resign from our business because of the uncertainty that this deal has caused. Why would you work for a business that is under such a threat?
In terms of what we want Government to do, we have now virtually written a strategic business case that we would like to give to DBT, for DBT to represent within Government. We would like to make our case, and we would like to make it soon. We need that commitment from Government by mid-June. I know that sounds quick, but the deal was on 8 May, and we said then that we needed urgent action.
The Secretary of State said, in a meeting in this building, that he pushed his civil servants to work within days, not weeks. The days are rushing by. I am incurring heavy losses. The industry is incurring heavy losses every day. I cannot continue to incur heavy losses. On 15 June, I need to decide whether to start buying more wheat from David’s farmers to turn into all those products. Why would I do that, unless I have some confidence that the Government are going to step in?
Q280 John Cooper: To be clear, you are talking about a couple of weeks to save your industry.
Paul Kenward: Until 15 June, we have 12 days to save this industry. It is such an important industry. There are things that Government can do in terms of a level regulatory playing field with US ethanol. There is a consultation already out on something called ULDUR, or retentate. One of the key themes from the first panel that I can only echo is around whether Government could go at a little more pace in terms of coming back with that consultation answer, which would be tremendous and would give us a level playing field.
In terms of long-term demand growth, 10% of UK petrol is currently ethanol. If you increase that to 15%, that is half again of the demand in the UK. Suddenly, we have room to breathe. Suddenly, we survive. That is something that the DfT could do very quickly. It needs to explain how it is going to get to the sustainable aviation fuel mandates that it has set out. We believe everything that we have read. By 2030, alcohol-to-jet, which is taking our ethanol and turning it into jet fuel, is going to be the second cheapest way of doing that. There is no other path, so somebody needs to accept and understand that and help us to get there.
To get there, our shareholders cannot continue to bear the burden of these losses to get through to that long-term strategic gain for the industry. We believe in this green economy. We believe in the Government’s mission to decarbonise and be a clean, green energy superpower, but we cannot bear that burden alone. Something such as the coastal growth fund, which was announced when you announced the trade deal, could work very well as a transformation and growth fund for the UK bioethanol industry.
Q281 Gregor Poynton: Can I just take that on slightly further? The coastal growth fund was £360 million. What are you looking for in terms of financials?
Paul Kenward: The amount of time that it will take for us to be supported depends on Government. Our estimate for the industry is that it would cost up to £75 million a year for up to two years, if it took Government timescales, to get to those policy asks in the medium term and to get the demand up.
Q282 Gregor Poynton: So you think a total of £150 million over two years will save the industry.
Paul Kenward: It should be no more than that. I do not want to get rich on Government subsidy. I want an industry that works on regulatory flows. We just want to be at breakeven for those two years, or ideally less time, so that we are there as a national industry when we are needed.
Q283 Gregor Poynton: What happens without that?
Paul Kenward: Without that, we close.
Q284 Gregor Poynton: I am presuming it is similar for others.
Paul Kenward: I run Vivergo and a small bioethanol distillery at British Sugar. At Vivergo, we will have to start closure processes from 15 June unless we have some commitment from Government. I cannot speak for Ensus. It is owned by CropEnergies, which is owned by Südzucker, a big German company. It has publicly and very clearly said in its annual accounts that it will no longer support that business beyond February, which is its financial year, so that business will also close. This industry will be lost.
ABF alone has invested £700 million in that site. Once it goes, it goes. If you think about what that does to future investors in green industries, when they look at successive Governments that said, “This is a strategic industry. This is important. We will put regulation in place to back it. Your investment is safe”, we will be writing all of that off, it will be gone, and it will not be built again. That will have a devastating impact on investor confidence.
Q285 Chair: Just so we are really clear, the evidence that you are giving to the Committee today is that this deal is, basically, going to destroy the British ethanol industry, and the factories are going to start closing really quickly unless the Government put a rescue plan on the table.
Paul Kenward: Yes.
David Exwood: We want the Government to see the opportunity in the ethanol market. Why does Trump want this market? Because he wants options for US grain farmers and producers. It is the same for UK farmers. We need options in the marketplace. Every lost processing capacity and every mill gone is even less choice for UK grain farmers, so this would make a difference to us too. It is important. It is not something just to be traded away.
Q286 Chair: So you would say that UK farmers would support the case that Mr Kenward is making?
David Exwood: Yes, absolutely. We need options in the marketplace. For us, that means choices around where we sell our grain to. If we lose the option of selling to bioethanol plants, we have lost another market.
Q287 Charlie Maynard: We have just had a panel talking about iron and steel and saying how bad the tariffs are that the US has put on iron, aluminium and steel. Now we have a 19% tariff on the US coming in, and you are saying that is really good news and that we should keep that. I am trying to work out whether the UK is still a free-trading nation and believes that tariffs are a bad thing. ABF is one company, with a market cap of £15 billion. Why should we be protecting your company while UK customers are having to pay the costs of that 19% tariff?
It seems like we are talking out of two sides of our mouth, because, on one level, we are saying that we want to get rid of those US tariffs. From the other side of our mouth, we are saying that we are fine with our UK tariffs and with protecting one very large UK company. I understand and am very painfully aware that there are jobs on the line as well, but I do not follow the logic.
Paul Kenward: What I would say is that we are in favour of free but fair trade. When the Government decided to build a bioethanol industry in this country, they did it because they wanted to decarbonise road transport fuel. To do that, they used two simple policy instruments. They had the RTFO, which mandated that fuel blenders put 10% ethanol into fuel, and they put an £85-a-tonne tariff barrier around the UK, because, if they did not have that, nobody would build a factory and invest that money.
If you do not have protection against highly subsidised industries overseas, you do not develop domestic industries. That is why it is entirely consistent to say that we want free and fair trade. Most modern trade theory would say that tariff barriers that are there to protect against distortions and subsidies are reasonable and proportionate. I would expect that from the US if we were subsidising industries, and they should and do expect it from us to protect our industries against where there are subsidies.
Q288 Antonia Bance: Mr Kenward, how many jobs are at risk, and where are those jobs?
Paul Kenward: We have 200 highly skilled jobs in Hull, at our Saltend chemical plant. Ensus has about the same number in Teesside. Those are highly skilled, highly paid jobs. We do regular employee engagement surveys. People really love to work for us. It is an industry that has a purpose. People feel that they are doing something good, with a real purpose. They are well paid. Two of our main board directors at Vivergo Fuels started on the factory floor and have worked their way up. Their jobs are at risk. They are highly skilled people. I am sure they will find another job—and I hope they do—but one of them has a three-month-old girl. These are real people who are going to lose their jobs.
Q289 Antonia Bance: What is the growth potential for this industry, absent this shock?
Paul Kenward: These are the very green jobs that the Government are talking about, which is why it is so frustrating for me. Sustainable aviation fuel plants built at Saltend or in Teesside—and there are active plans under way to build both—depend on our plants. That is hundreds, if not thousands more highly skilled green jobs, which will be casualties of this deal.
Q290 Mr Reynolds: Mr Kenward, you said that you have 12 days to save the organisation. What communication have you had from DBT?
Paul Kenward: We met the Secretary of State. He instructed his civil servants to work with dispatch, in days, not weeks. Since then, there was quite a long delay before we heard anything. Then we heard back from a civil servant who wanted to understand where we were. We have not heard a lot from Government, and that is why I am frustrated. It would be so simple for Government to assure us that the industry is strategic, that it is important, and that DBT wants to back it, and then to allow us to send our strategic business case. We have written the thing. It should be easy to at least evaluate it and see whether the Government want to support us.
Q291 Mr Reynolds: Do you feel that the Government are doing everything that they can to support you?
Paul Kenward: I have not seen any evidence of that. If the Government were doing everything they could, they would make a public statement that they think our industry is strategic. They would talk about their response to those policy asks, where they would be talking about longer-term demand creation. They would be talking to me about a short-term fund to help an industry that is distressed solely because of Government action. None of that has happened yet.
Q292 Mr Reynolds: You are based in Hull, and you have a new combined authority mayor in Hull.
Paul Kenward: We do.
Mr Reynolds: Have you had any communication with him?
Paul Kenward: He has got in touch with us. He is concerned about the job losses and wants to hear more from us so that he is briefed, and I am sure he will be talking about that.
Q293 Sarah Edwards: David, the Committee was just admiring a diagram that the NFU produced on FTAs from agreement in principle to ratification, which is a very complicated process. As we are still going through that, what red lines should the UK Government have when continuing these negotiations with the US?
David Exwood: They should protect our standards, and specifically our SPS standards. Agriculture cannot be the sector that always gives. We have given in this case. We should not be giving in the future. That is a clear message to the Government.
Q294 Sarah Edwards: Thank you. Paul, did you have anything that you wanted to add on any red lines? We have explored some of that, but is there anything that you wanted to add on these ongoing negotiations?
Paul Kenward: I have to be realistic. We do not believe that the Government are going to derail the whole UK-US trade deal for the bioethanol industry, but they do not need to. All we want to do is get the Government to support us, create the demand, and then, in the time that it takes for that demand to materialise, support the industry.
In general, there are a number of industries that can be impacted very severely by changes to tariff codes. You heard that from the first panel, and you have heard it from us. If you make decisions at speed and at pace, in the dying stages of a negotiation that is closing, you can have real consequences. Ideally, you would understand that as clearly as you could ahead of making the decisions. If not—and that sometimes happens—you need to be set up to move very quickly to make recompense and to act. You have heard from a number of people this morning and today that the Government are not really set up to move quickly to do that at the moment.
Q295 Sarah Edwards: David, do you have any concerns at the moment about UK food and animal welfare standards and whether they could be impacted by this deal more widely?
David Exwood: They clearly could. We expect the US to come back asking for more. We expect the Government to continue to stand up for them. We are very proud of our production standards and our animal welfare in this country. We do not want to see that undermined in any way.
Q296 Sarah Edwards: If we look beyond beef and ethanol, are there any other agricultural sectors that raise any concerns with you in these continued negotiations?
David Exwood: Chlorine-washed chicken is something that has been discussed widely in this country, so chicken and pork are further sensitive areas where we do expect there to be interest.
Paul Kenward: Mr Maynard might be happy to hear that I would love to reduce tariff barriers against my sugar. We produce British sugar. It is high-quality. It is grown from beet across East Anglia and the north of England. There are very high tariffs in the US against that, not because our sugar is subsidised, which it is not. If we could get a tariff rate quota for sugar, that could be very valuable to our farmers and to another few thousand people with highly skilled jobs in the UK.
David Exwood: Another important principle that we want to see in any future negotiations is the reciprocal nature of this deal. It is a really important principle. If there is any access granted, it needs to be reciprocal.
Steve Bates: I would just encourage us to think about sectors that are perhaps less visible to the public. Scientific instruments are the fourth most valuable export from the UK to the US. The UK has world-leading companies such as Oxford Nanopore. We need a reduction in tariffs on scientific and medical products and components if we think about life sciences as a whole, not simply pharmaceutical products and ingredients.
Q297 Sarah Edwards: Do you have any red lines for your sector?
Steve Bates: We come from a zero-tariff environment. While we would like to maintain that under WTO rules, I am conscious of the political realities of that ask.
Q298 Gregor Poynton: The US deal says that preferential US tariffs for pharmaceuticals are partly dependent on national security and supply chain conditions. How content are you with those conditions?
Steve Bates: We do not know exactly what they are, so it is very hard to give you an answer to that question. I am sorry. If you look at the wording of annex 2, it refers to requirements that are based on a sector that is not our sector, but, along the lines of the previous panel, steel and aluminium.
It is quite hard for us to understand which of those conditions apply. We are going to need to come back to you once we are clearer as to what the US Department of Commerce wants to do in this space, and then what implications it has for us. We are used to operating under covid and pandemic rules, which are different. This is about supply chain. We have heard talk of the importance of not being dependent on China or India in the US discussion, but it is unclear exactly what they want to do, and we need to see those clearly.
Q299 Gregor Poynton: Do they know at the moment what they are looking for?
Steve Bates: There is a long discussion, as we have seen in the development of the BIOSECURE Act in the US Congress, about where they want to end up in this. That was a previous piece of legislation in the previous Congress, so I do not think there is clarity yet.
Chair: We understand that there may not be cross-sector conditionality, but that is definitely one of the questions that we want to explore with colleagues in Washington next week. This has been extremely useful. Thank you very much indeed for the candour and the clarity of your evidence.