Australia trade deal lawsuit blocked, claim campaigners

Campaigners have accused the government of trying to hinder a judicial process that would look into whether the UK-Australia trade deal signed in 2021 was lawful.

In February, environmental campaigners won the right to legally challenge the government over the impact of its Australia trade deal on British producers.

Campaign group Feedback was granted a hearing in the High Court, where it was due to argue the free trade agreement, which has been live since June last year, could lead to Australian meat and dairy producers “potentially undercutting” British farmers with goods produced to lower standards and with greater environmental impact.

But Feedback is now facing a government appeal about legal costs, which could see their legal challenge blocked by increasing finances.

The High Court previously confirmed campaigners’ legal case met the definition of an Aarhus Convention claim, which grants it certain special international law protections, such as limiting Feedback’s costs liability to £10,000 in the event the judicial review is unsuccessful.

This ensures litigation is not prohibitively expensive and that environmental campaigners with limited funds can still go ahead with their lawsuits.

But the government has now appealed against that ruling, arguing that the Aarhus Convention does not apply and that Feedback should not benefit from the cost cap.

The environmental campaign group warned it was “very unlikely to be able to proceed with the judicial review” if the government’s appeal was successful.

The hearing, which would otherwise be scheduled to take place as soon as practicable, is now held up pending the outcome of the appeal.

Read more: Environmental campaigners to take government to court over Australia trade deal

Leigh Day solicitor Rowan Smith, who is representing Feedback, urged the new government to “rethink its position on this appeal”.

“Our client cannot see how it is a good use of public money for government lawyers to go to the Court of Appeal to argue that important international environmental law protections should not apply, when this judicial review clearly meets the test for costs protection under the Aarhus Convention.

“All that is served by this appeal is that Feedback’s right to have access to environmental justice is being frustrated and delayed.”

Defra said it would not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

Feedback initially filed for a judicial review of the controversial UK-Australia trade deal in May 2023.

The agreement, initially landed during the Boris Johnson premiership by then foreign secretary Liz Truss, has been met with fierce backlash over the years.

Critics claim the deal gave Australian meat producers too much access to UK markets, with many British farmers fearing a wave of imports of cheaper Australian foods.

Meanwhile, Feedback lawyers intend to argue in the judicial review that the deal was based on a flawed environmental assessment, specifically a failure to use a widely recognised methodology to compare greenhouse gas emissions.

They also claim that, by importing meat produced to lower environmental standards, the UK failed its international climate obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Previous research by former Tory government advisor on food Henry Dimbleby – who is now rumoured to be joining the Labour government – suggested Australian beef had greater emissions intensity and a considerably larger deforestation footprint than beef produced in the UK.

The new Labour government has pledged to uphold environmental standards in trade deals, and alluded to revisiting the Australia and New Zealand agreements on that basis.

New Defra secretary Steve Reed told parliament on 19 July Labour would “stop farmers ever again being undercut by dodgy Tory trade deals that sell out Britain’s environmental and welfare standards, as they sell out Britain’s exporters and food producers”.

Instead, the new government was “spending resources on making it difficult for Feedback to access environmental justice, rather than taking this opportunity to revisit the implementing legislation to the trade agreement”, campaigners argued.

Feedback executive director Carina Millstone said: “Having been granted a judicial review of the environmentally disastrous UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement, we are dismayed the new government is now seeking to block it by appealing the cost cap granted to us by the High Court.

“This move from the new government is all the more perplexing as it had stated its intention to uphold environmental standards in trade deals.

“Rather than suppressing access to environmental justice, we urge the new government to drop its appeal, so that the environmental and climate grounds of this case can be heard- and to ensure this trade deal, and all future trade deals negotiated by the new government support, rather than scupper, the meeting of the UK’s environmental and climate obligations.”