Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

184B: After Clause 150, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of the impact of high temperatures on workplace health and safetyWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review of the impact of increasing temperatures on workplace health and safety.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure the Government is considering the impact of increasing temperatures due to climate change on the safety and health of workers.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, aware of the hour, I begin with a promise that I will not test the opinion of the House, although I am afraid that I cannot speak, of course, for the numbered amendments after this one.

Just to explain very briefly—it is fairly self-evident—my amendment calls for a new clause to review the impact of high temperatures on workplace health and safety. Of course, this is in consideration of the rising issue that this presents for the rights of workers in the climate emergency. I did not table a comparable amendment in Committee. I tried to table a broader amendment which was ruled out of scope and I never managed to get back to it, but I feel it is really important to bring this amendment here today, in light of events between Committee and Report.

Noble Lords may be aware of a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson called The Ministry for the Future, which features a mass mortality event as a result of extraordinary high temperatures and humidity. If we ever get to that stage in Britain, we will be beyond deep trouble. None the less, what we have just experienced at the end of June is what one expert described as a “quietly devastating” heatwave across Europe, which killed 2,300 people in 12 major cities and, it is estimated, will have caused several hundred deaths in London alone. The climate emergency means that, through that period, the temperatures were four degrees higher than they would have been otherwise, and one of the important things that has happened is that we have seen a large increase in so-called tropical nights, when the temperature does not drop below 20 degrees centigrade, people struggle to rest and that then has a cumulative effect on workers’ health.

We have not just seen the heatwave. We have also seen the TUC launch a large-scale, serious campaign to ask the Government to look at this and, in fact, to go further and set a maximum working temperature. It is worth stressing that, unlike other countries such as Spain—which might not surprise noble Lords—and Germany, we do not have a maximum working temperature. There is an obligation on employers to provide a safe workplace, but without that maximum temperature, and with circumstances arising that neither workers nor employers have encountered before, we really need to set some guard-rails for the safety of workers.

The TUC did a recent study on this and produced some horrifying examples, starting with what is happening in schoolrooms. It surveyed almost 6,000 teachers; some 94% reported they worked in excessively high temperatures during the summer, with 42% doing so regularly. A union rep reported on 27 telephone exchanges, in which the highest temperature was 36 degrees centigrade. A chicken factory reported high temperatures leading to incidents of tiredness and dizziness in a place where there was a lot of hard physical activity—that sounds like hell. In tissue culture and virology rooms, the temperature was 32 degrees and the room was full of ethanol fumes, which is another issue all to itself.

I am acutely aware of the hour, but I hope I will hear from the Minister that this is something that the Government will look at very seriously and consider the TUC’s call for a maximum temperature. That would obviously vary according to the circumstances. When we think about working outside, we have the issue of sun exposure, which also has longer-term risks for health and skin cancer, et cetera. I hope that I will hear something positive from the Minister and that the Government will take this seriously, listen to what the TUC is saying, acknowledge that the climate emergency is making this a fast-rising problem and take action. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. The problem is that words such as “reasonable” and “assessed risk” refer to what may happen in well-regulated, well-controlled workplaces; in contrast, it is the most vulnerable workers who are the most vulnerable to that not happening. However, many of the cases I cited were very mainstream workplaces, such as schools.

As promised, I will withdraw my amendment. Before doing so, I finish with an apology to the staff. We should give thanks to them for supporting us right through the Bill and throughout all the time it has taken. I also note that we should think about the impact of heat on their health and well-being in our workplace. We might want to think, as employers ourselves, about what reasonable adjustments we might need to make for them, as the temperatures in this workplace change. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 184B withdrawn.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to speak very briefly, because the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, has given such an effective speech, which outlines the issue, and the hour is late.

When she first came forward with the proposal for the Health and Safety Executive, I thought, “My goodness, here is a body that could effectively deal with harassment and violence in the workplace, because it knows how to respond very quickly to situations that put people into an unsafe set of circumstances”. I suspect that, when the HSE was first put in place, sexual harassment and violence were probably considered somewhat acceptable, or they were domestic or private. They were certainly not something that an employer or workplace should be concerned about. Well, times have changed and we no longer look at it that way.

It is therefore entirely appropriate to update the HSE’s role to take on these issues. It is very easy to see how effective that organisation could be in closing down both harassment and violence. It is a respected organisation; people in a workplace know that it will act and it will enforce. Those kinds of behaviours make a great difference to the whole culture within the workplace. So I thought that this was an ingenious approach, which I very much want to back, because we all want to stop violence and harassment and here is a mechanism that does that with very little change to the existing organisational structures, but by giving power and responsibility to an organisation that has the capacity to deal with the problems effectively.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who very powerfully made the case for Amendment 48. I am going to focus on Amendment 47. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, has already made the case for that very powerfully, but I will add one very recent set of statistics to it.

The noble Baroness mentioned unions and, just last week, Unite put out a study that polled women across the 19 sectors of work that it covers. It found—these figures are truly shocking—that a quarter of respondents said that they had been sexually assaulted at work, in a workplace-related environment or on the way to and from work. Some 8% said that they had been a victim of sexual coercion at work. This is the sort of situation that was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

People are in insecure employment and zero-hours contracts, which the Government are doing something about—perhaps not quite enough but something. If you are in a situation where you desperately need those hours and the supervisor decides where on the rota you are and how many hours you will get, that puts the supervisor in an incredible position of power, which can and clearly is being abused.

What is really telling is that 56% of respondents said they had heard a sexually offensive joke at work and 55% had experienced unwanted gestures or sexual remarks. I am sure the government response will be to tell us that they are taking measures to react, but, crucially, Amendment 47 sets out a responsibility to prevent it happening.

This really needs to be regarded as a public health measure. We hear often in your Lordships’ Chamber about the issues around mental health and well-being and the problems we have in our society. If you are forced to keep going into a workplace that is actively hostile to you, with gender harassment and abuse, then that will be very bad for you and for the company. As a society, we should not tolerate it.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, for introducing it. We must, of course, recognise that violence and harassment in the workplace are unacceptable in any form. It is also important to acknowledge that women, particularly in certain sectors, are often at greater risk and may face additional barriers to speaking out or seeking redress.

This amendment raises serious and pressing concerns about how we ensure that all workplaces are safe, inclusive and free from abuse. The call for more proactive duties on employers and greater involvement from the Health and Safety Executive is one approach to addressing these challenges. However, as with any proposed legislative change, it is right that we consider carefully the potential implications, including how such duties would be enforced, the capacity of the Health and Safety Executive, and how we balance existing legal protections with any new obligations we would place on employers. I am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say on this point, particularly with regard to how the Government see the role of regulation, guidance and support in preventing workplace violence and harassment.

In Amendment 47, my interest was piqued by subsection (3C) to be inserted by the proposed new clause, which refers to

“gender identities, including women and girls”.

That seems to me to stray dangerously on to Supreme Court territory, which, as I understand it, we have yet to hear the EHRC’s guidance on. It strikes me as a tad premature, but I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on it.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. In doing so, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register. It is a pleasure to follow him because this has always been his “WAIRIA” of expertise—bear with me. I will speak to my Amendments 289 to 298 and 314 to 316, but before doing so, I give full-throated support to everything the noble Lord said and his amendments. We are very much on the same page.

There is a strange situation with government at the moment when it comes to AI. That is not specific to employment rights but across the piece. We have been subject to it for the past year. We are told consistently that the Government will not be bringing forward cross-sector AI legislation. That position is to be defended if it is taken—the Government have decided on a domain-specific AI approach. But the difficulty with that is that whenever we have had domain-specific legislation coming through your Lordships’ House—be it product regulation, data or any of the Bills that I, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others, have worked on—we have been told that those are not the Bills where AI is to be considered. In only a slightly reductive way, we currently have a situation, to be clear, where the Government are saying they are not bringing forward cross-sector AI legislation and specific Bills are largely—not exclusively—not the place to incorporate AI issues.

The amendments that noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I set out in this group are key to one of the most important sectors—it is broader than a sector, and such an important aspect of our lives. It is how we are employed, what that employment looks and feels like, and how it is experienced by all of us. These amendments do not seek to address issues that will occur next year, next month or even tomorrow. AI is impacting workers right now, oftentimes without them even knowing that it is in the mix.

My first amendment seeks to suggest that the principles that have variously appeared in White Papers and other reports are put on a statutory basis in the Bill. We give ourselves the best opportunity to optimise with AI if we take a principles-based, outcomes-focused and input-understood approach. Similarly, I set out in Amendment 290 that all employers and organisations that develop, deploy or use AI should have an AI responsible officer. For this, do not think burdensome, bureaucratic or overcompliance. Because of the proportionality principle, it simply means that there is an obligation on those employers to report on their use of AI in the workplace. It can be well understood through reporting obligations such as those set out in the Companies Act, which employers will be very familiar with at this stage.

My amendments then move to questions of use. What happens where IP or copyrighted material is being used in the workplace? There needs to be labelling so that everybody is clear on, and there is transparency about, what is going on. What about the use of workers’ data? This is an incredibly rich resource that should not in any sense be served up or sold off to the highest bidder. The use of AI in the workplace should be clear and transparent, and workers should have an opt-in, not an opt-out, responsibility, as set out in the amendments.

Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has touched on, there is the question of automated decisions. It is clear that workers not only have to be aware that ADM is being used—and have the right to opt out—but also need the right to a human explanation of what is happening in those situations. If we are to optimise things with these technologies, concepts such as “human in the loop” and “human over the loop” must be understood. Safeguards need to be in place, not least where ADM is used, and this could form part of the data protection impact assessment that employers have to undertake.

Then there is the question of regulators. Employment and recruitment currently find themselves wide open to the use of AI. An individual may find themselves not getting shortlisted, not getting hired and not even knowing that the reasoning behind that was algorithmic processing rather than human judgment and human reasoning. It is critical to consider the right approach to fill that regulator gap. Would a specific employment and recruitment regulator do the job? My view—and I think there is evidence to support this—would again be that we could have a cross-sector AI authority. Again, do not think of a bureaucratic and burdensome AI regulator; instead, think of a nimble, agile, adaptive and, crucially, horizontally focused AI regulator, not only in the area of employment rights but across the whole of our economy and society. It would deliver that clarity, consistency and certainty that we all need wherever we come across AI in our working, professional and private lives.

It is so significant that, in Amendment 315, I believe there should be a commission on AI in the workplace. Mindful of comments from Monday, I am certainly no fan of setting up a commission to delay or kick issues into the long grass. But perhaps by using the technology to solve some of the issues that are created by the technology, we could have a reimagined approach to commissions and consultations.

Finally, I come to Amendment 316 and the algorithmic allocation of work. This is already happening, and it has already been in front of the courts. It is clearly an issue and one that needs to be fully understood. The Government need to state clearly their position on this most significant of matters. I look forward to other speakers and to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow two of the House’s acknowledged experts in this area of the impact of AI. I will speak to my own Amendment 323B and also note that I attach my name to Amendments 294 and 298 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes.

My Amendment 323B is quite a modest step. It calls for a review to be published within 12 months. In saying that, I thank the Ministers for having a meeting prior to the discussion of these amendments, which I very much appreciated. But I think the time for talk is over; the time for action is now. Twelve months is still too short, but it seemed the best timeframe I could reasonably give for this call for a review of the electronic monitoring of workers in the workplace. This picks up some points made by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. It also crucially points to the need to look around the world and see what else is happening and what we can learn from what has happened in other places. The companies selling these systems are global giant multinational companies. The companies deploying these systems are giant multinational companies in many cases. It is important that, rather than trying to pick this off ourselves, we look around the world and say that we want to be leaders in creating a different kind of model of how workers can be protected.

Online Harms: Young People

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point that we need to provide alternatives to online activities for young people. She is absolutely right about drama, and sport can also help with that. The Department for Education is conducting a curriculum review at the moment and one of its priorities is to make sure that children genuinely have a balanced, wholesome curriculum that deals with all those issues—one that is not just academic but deals with children’s development in the round, which is exactly what the noble Baroness is saying.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, Finland is known as a global leader in education and has schools that focus on critical thinking and the ability to absorb online information and regard it sceptically, when needed. Does the Minister agree that that is something we need to see much more of in British schools? We are presenting teachers with a real challenge, with so many subjects focused on teaching to the test and rote learning things to regurgitate. We have to think about the whole way in which our schooling operates, so it is focused on critical thinking.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point, and it goes back to the need for a balanced curriculum. In the past, our curriculum has become too focused on a very specific set of goals and not the broader issues. Having healthy relationships is part of teaching and learning at school; that is absolutely something that we need to do and we are strengthening the provisions for that within the curriculum. The Department for Education will provide guidance to help young people develop the skills that all young people need to be able to navigate this complex modern world.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this important Second Reading debate. It is great to see so many noble Lords taking part, and I particularly welcome and congratulate the maiden speakers. I hope they will work with all of us, particularly those on the Government Benches, to constructively improve the Bill.

This is a Bill that the Green Party welcomes, and my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will shortly provide a listing of the many points on which we agree. I am going to focus on the big-picture context in which this Bill comes before us. In doing so, I respectfully but strongly disagree with the pleasantly colourful opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. This Bill modestly—we Greens would still say inadequately—seeks to rebalance the power of workers and employers.

That relationship was thrown profoundly awry under Margaret Thatcher, particularly by strangling the ability of workers to get together in unions to support each other against the power of the bosses, particularly the bosses of large companies. The imbalance was then enhanced by allowing zero-hours contracts and other insecure forms of employment to explode, and for working hours to extend, across many sectors of our economy. That is something that was not permitted to happen in many of our European neighbours, which now benefit from healthier, happier workers, who have the capacity to contribute to their communities and societies generally, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, highlighted. We saw the wage share of workers collapse, a rise in inequality, and the inefficient and destructive financialisation of our economy, all of which can be at least in part attributed to failures to make work safe, fair and adequately remunerated.

There was a failure to recognise changing social structures, whereby the previously unpaid and unacknowledged labour of women has been brought into the paid workforce. That work has to fit around the continuing demands they still face. We are, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, both highlighted, people with responsibilities and needs outside work that our working structures do not adequately acknowledge. The economy is paying the price of this too, with skills, energy and talents excluded by inadequate labour protections.

The Blair and Brown Governments failed to redress the imbalance between workers and employers created under the Thatcher Government, and so we are where we are today. They too allowed the minimum wage to drift downward in real terms, subsidising the profits of giant multinational companies in particular, at a cost to us all. As the noble Lord, Lord Barber, said, we have seen a race to the bottom in employment, and that has to stop.

I often hear those on the Government Benches say that they want to get workers into good jobs. We in the Green Party take a different view: we want every job to be a good job, and those that are unavoidably difficult and unpleasant to have conditions that reflect the conditions of work. We clapped essential workers during the pandemic, but we did not lift their pay or the respect in which they are held. This Bill has the potential to do much more than it currently does. I invite noble Lords to consider the relative position of sewer cleaners and bankers, and what would happen if we did not have the former working for us all.

A fair society and a fair working environment are particularly important in what have often been described as the green areas of the economy. On Monday, the All-Party Group on Climate Change held an interesting meeting about the just transition, and that is something I want to look at in this Bill.

I am greatly concerned about the impacts of new technology on workers—for example, on the employees and agency staff at that great parasite, Amazon, who are forced, at a cost to their health, to act like robots, working themselves into the ground. That kind of surveillance is spreading to many other areas of work. Workers need the right to breathe at work. Hospitality workers need to be able to travel home safely at night, and work is being done on that through the Get ME Home Safely campaign. Generally, health and safety at work needs much more attention, and I want to see how we can build this more strongly into the Bill.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that proposal. Again, I hope that all these companies will contribute, or have contributed, to the consultation, because those are exactly the sorts of standards we want to achieve. We want to make sure that creators get the right awards; that is certainly our intention through this consultation. We need to find a way through this. We are working hard and we will not give up until we have found a way to resolve the issue.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, all pointed out the way in which big tech has already stolen large amounts of property. Had that property been cash or gold, we surely would be getting a different reaction from the Government—yet it is actually the same thing. I have a constructive suggestion to help the Minister. How about a universal basic income for the creative sector as compensation?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful suggestion. Hopefully, she has fed that into the consultation. I am sure it will be considered as one of the many proposals to resolve this issue.

Biocidal Products: Hand and Body Washes

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what restrictions they are considering placing on the use of biocidal products in over-the-counter hand and body washes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, biocides are a broad group of chemicals that include preservatives vital for ensuring the shelf life of cosmetic products. Preservatives proposed for use in cosmetics must be approved by the Secretary of State, following consideration by the independent scientific advisory group on chemical safety, before being added to the permitted list in the cosmetics regulation. Cosmetic products with a secondary biocidal function are permitted only if they are safe for human health.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Answer. She and other noble Lords will have received a briefing on this matter from Dr Paul-Enguerrand Fady at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. The Minister referred to preservatives, but many products are advertised as being biocidal. That briefing refers to a British Medical Journal article, which talks about biocide resistance as

“a new scourge of the infectious disease world”.

There is a lot of focus on antimicrobial and antifungal resistance, but does the Minister agree on the need to focus on biocide resistance as well? Will she direct the department to look at biocide resistance and see what can be done to tackle what that article describes as a “scourge”?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point about the impact on antimicrobial resistance that could result from these products. The Government are already focusing the second of our five-year national plans on this, and we support the 20-year vision established by the previous Government to ensure that antimicrobial resistance will be controlled and contained by 2040. This is an important issue that crosses over into human health in the wider sphere, so I thank the noble Baroness for raising it.

Paternity Leave (Bereavement) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, who so comprehensively and powerfully set out the need for the Bill. I also commend the honourable Chris Elmore, for taking it up and seeing it through the other place.

I am speaking to express Green Party support for the Bill and for fathers and partners who, in the most tragic of circumstances, find themselves a single parent as a result of the death of a partner or spouse. We all struggle to imagine how people survive such circumstances, but they have to. I must reference the amount of discussion that we have had this week about the evident need to improve maternity care dramatically. But, whatever we manage to achieve in that area, there will still be tragic occasions that we need this law to cover.

It is interesting to note that this is a real indication of how Parliament and the parliamentary process can and should work, but so rarely does. We are amending the Employment Rights Act 1996 and, in Committee in the other place, the original proposed Bill was amended to cover a broader range of circumstances, fully covering adoption and surrogacy and, as the noble Baroness said, the situation where a child dies. It was a copybook process, which we would like to see being done a lot more to produce good legislation and do things that needs to be done and that do not need to be regarded as political.

There was discussion in the other place about how this does not cover Northern Ireland. There was some suggestion that it might be extended, so can the Minister comment on whether that is technically possible, feasible or is being taken forward in any way? It was raised in the other place.

I follow the noble Baroness in acknowledging the work of Gingerbread, in making the case for this legislation and driving it through. It is a demonstration that campaigning works. Campaigning can be a long and thankless task, into which people have to put an enormous amount of effort, but it delivers. We need to acknowledge the importance of civil society voices being heard in both Chambers and being listened to and acted on.

Finally, I want to look at the broader context of the Bill. It restates an important principle that, when a child is born, they are not just an individual or a member of a family but a member of our society. They are definitely not the property of their parents. They are not the sole responsibility of their parent or parents, but the responsibility of all of us. Society has a responsibility to make sure that every child has a decent start in life. That is a moral position that, sadly, needs to be increasingly restated these days, but it is also a practical position: if we are going to have a functioning society that can tackle the many challenges and crises that we now face, we need to make sure that every human being in our society is able to develop to their full potential. We cannot afford to abandon any child, or any parent who is struggling to raise a child in impossible circumstances, without the resources to do the job.

This is a really excellent piece of work. I congratulate everyone involved and, like the noble Baroness, look forward to it being on the statute book with the regulations in place as soon as possible.

UK Trade Performance

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

When it comes to stock market listings and the operation of stock markets, that is, by definition, capitalism in the private sector, and the Government should not get involved in that particular exchange. However, the previous lord mayor led a very interesting initiative which identified that our pension funds are not investing enough in UK equities, so there is now an interesting scheme going on whereby we can see whether we can get 5% of UK pension funds invested in UK equities, which I think is a very worthwhile initiative.

When it comes to headquarters, et cetera, a number of studies have been put out recently by PwC, EY and Boston Consulting Group which have done surveys with CEOs who indicate that they still believe that the UK is one of the best places to locate their head office in Europe. Therefore, we do not see any diminution in that. Foreign direct investment into the UK now is greater than into France, Germany and Italy combined. The market, the money, talks. The money is coming in—my noble friend Lord Johnson is doing a sterling job on that. We have a strong, good economy. Foreign investment is coming in. There is dislocation of stock markets, but initiatives are being taken to alleviate that concern.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am glad that the Minister agrees with the Green Party about GDP growth being an extremely inaccurate measure of progress in a society. The question I want to ask is specifically about the situation of small and medium-sized enterprises exporting to the EU. Importers are having many difficulties. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, referred to florists, and horticulturists are reaching out to me regularly. On exporters, British Chambers of Commerce figures for the fourth quarter of 2023 show that 50% of SMEs have had no change in overseas sales while 24% have seen a decrease and that exports from SMEs to the EU are consistently underperforming domestic sales. The head of trade policy at the BCC has said

“firms continue to express huge frustration with the complexity and cost involved”,

referring to exporting to the EU. Are the Government going to do more to help in what is clearly a deeply damaging situation for SMEs?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I just wish the noble Baroness had been at breakfast this morning at No. 10 Downing Street, where my noble friend Lord Petitgas and I hosted 16 SMEs which are exporters to Europe and elsewhere. They reported on how their businesses are trading up and that they now have the opportunity to trade around the world beyond Europe. I have been through the numbers; they do not lie. The numbers say that in terms of our manufacturing there has been no difference between Europe and the rest of the world. There are of course individual circumstances and individual companies where there have been ups and downs. That is business, but, overall, we are very clear that our SMEs have a great appetite to export. We need to get more of them exporting—as I said, 300,000 out of 2.5 million VAT-registered companies do so; I personally feel that we should push that up to half a million. We can do that, especially with the new digital industries coming through. Certainly, I would be very happy to introduce the noble Baroness to a number of the export champions today. Some of them are actually bringing manufacturing back—onshoring manufacturing —to the UK following Brexit. That is a very pleasing development.

Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (IAC Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will return in some detail to food safety and food standards, referred to by noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, but I point out now that it is the standards of production that give rise to the need for the chlorine-washing of chicken. The dreadful US food safety standards, which are the main issue, are surely not something we want to import into the UK.

Like other noble Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for her clear introduction, and the committee for a comprehensive report. It expresses many of the concerns I have about the trans-Pacific partnership—I will use that phrase, rather than the acronym—although I would express them in much stronger terms than the committee has. However, we know that our committees operate on a consensus basis.

Much of what I might have said about it making much more sense to trade with our neighbours has been said already by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, so I will not repeat that. I will cite one economics textbook, which notes that the negative correlation between geographic distance and bilateral trade volumes is considered to be one of the most robust findings in economics. I do not often quote mainstream economics, but there is some obvious common sense there. I hope that the cat belonging to the neighbours of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, gets better soon. It is a very useful metaphor. I also agree with what the noble Lord said about a visit to Taiwan. That was a very useful comment.

With the trans-Pacific partnership, we are talking about decisions that have significant implications for climate action and inaction, environmental standards, human rights, labour rights, international development, food standards—as has already been referred to—animal welfare and public health. One of the areas that has rightly received the most attention has been the conclusion of the deal with Malaysia on palm oil. This is a major issue for environmental standards and indigenous rights in Malaysia, and—as your Lordships’ House knows, given that we are increasingly debating the issue of ultra-processed food—for public health in the UK. It could be very difficult for some of the rising, innovative UK producers of alternative oilseed crops to compete against palm oil produced from felled rain forests under very dubious labour conditions. The Minister may say, “Oh, but it is all going to be sustainable”, but I am afraid that the registration standards simply do not stack up for much of Malaysian palm oil.

I would also like to receive a direct response from the Minister, either now or in writing, about pesticides that are banned in the UK but are used across the trans-Pacific partnership. What are the Government doing to ensure that products that are treated with those pesticides are not brought into the UK? Disagreeing again with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on the precautionary principle, the EU is bringing in stronger and stronger rules because it did not apply the precautionary principle. More and more research is showing more and more dangers, particularly from pesticides and other chemicals in use. The EU is getting far ahead of us in terms of banning chemicals. We are trailing far behind. There is a real risk that we will become a dumping ground for products that cannot be sold in the EU under tightened regulations. What are the Government doing to ensure that that does not happen?

I very much agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, about the UK’s democratic deficit—the giant democratic deficit—with regard to trade deals, as the committee’s report also makes clear. All we have today is a take-note Motion: the definition of not doing anything, which is exactly what we are doing now. All we can do is express concerns, with no substantive impact.

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as I have many times before and probably will again, on the issue of ISDS. There is substantial evidence that, in some cases, it forces governments to reverse measures taken for the public good; it also has a chilling effect on democratic decision-making for the public good. According to the most recent figures I have from the UN Conference on Trade and Development, 175 cases have been brought on environmental issues under the ISDS procedure, half of which were under the energy charter treaty. I praise the Government for their direction of travel on that treaty. That is indeed progress, so I can say “Well done”—but that still leaves the other half of the cases. There is no doubt about the impact of reducing government action, but also the adverse effects on the UK’s agri-food sector, which I shall come to.

I turn to some specific recent issues that mostly relate to the Australian trade deal, but which tie in, of course, with the trans-Pacific partnership as well. The Government have promised that no hormone-treated Canadian beef will come in under this partnership. I would be interested to hear the latest on what the Government are doing on that.

It is interesting to look at some recent developments with Australian beef. Farmers Weekly recently reported the first attempt under the new deal to export British beef to Australia. It was stopped by Australian trade regulations. For the avoidance of doubt, as a Green, I am not at all in any favour of us producing beef here and shipping it to Australia, or Australia producing beef there and shipping it here. None the less, there is a profound inequality between Australian farmers and British farmers in the trade arena.

There is also, of course, a profound imbalance in production costs and systems between Australian beef and British beef. I do not know if the Minister is aware of this, but a recent article published in Animal Production Science, a CSIRO Publishing journal, looks at greenhouse gas emissions. It makes a well defended case, published in a peer-reviewed journal, that is quite astonishing when you think about it: there are 10 million more head of cattle in Australia than official counts provide for. Interestingly, the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that the official figures were never designed to measure the total cattle population, and that it is clear that that is a much lower estimate. That is worth noting. I have regularly tried to explain to your Lordships’ House how different Australian production standards are. Perhaps the following sentence, which is a direct quote from Rob Walter, ABS head of agricultural statistics, will help:

“Some of those properties in northern Australia are the size of small European countries. For them to know how many cattle they have … can be very difficult”.


I invite noble Lords to think about a local small farmer they know with a few head of cattle on 100 or 200 acres, to contrast those two production systems and imagine what it is like when they try to compete against each other.

I will wrap up by agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that it is probably too late for this Government to produce a trade policy. It would not be a very meaningful piece of paper to produce at this point. But this issue very much needs to be part of the debate in the run-up to our next general election. We need to think about what kind of trade we want—what volumes of trade will benefit our food security, our environmental security and all of our futures.

I was at the meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fairtrade this morning. This year is the 30th anniversary of the fair trade movement. It has made some limited progress, but we still have profound inequality in global trade. Global trade is still not providing us with food security in this age of shocks, and we need to think about the level of trade that is useful to us—trade that is for the public good, rather than a simple maximisation of private profit that comes with a cost to us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

They are hopefully crowded around their iPads; the noble Lord should know that we have updated from the old-fashioned wireless—which, of course, we have in my household.

I want to say thank you, genuinely, to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. I thank the International Agreements Committee for its report. I have a draft set of responses to the report, which will be formulated appropriately and given to the noble Lords as soon as possible. It really was excellent, and I think all the points that the Government have been challenged on are worthy of a response. I am extremely grateful for the mature approach the report took to the value of this trade deal and seeing the optimistic benefits of the CPTPP, within the reasonable framework that we will operate to.

It is possible that noble Lords may hear cheering if they listen carefully, because a few moments ago the Bill was passed in the House of Commons. I am sure we all feel the ripple—the Mexican wave, which is appropriate as it is a CPTPP member—coming down the Corridor to us. Before I go further and answer many noble Lords’ points, I refer Members to my register of interest. I do not believe there are specific conflicts, but I do have interests in CPTPP countries.

I have tried to group the comments made in this important debate and so, if I may, I will go through them. I will try to refer specifically to noble Lords themselves. I will highlight a few individuals, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. I congratulate her for giving a succinct and powerful description of the benefits of free trade, which often we forget. It is right that, in a scrutiny environment such as this House, we look at the problems, issues or challenges that might present themselves with a piece of legislation or a new treaty. To have the truly positive case for free trade made so clearly and powerfully is something that I welcome, and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that.

I am very grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, for his words. Again, he has been a passenger on the free trade express over the last year and a half since I have taken this position. I am extremely grateful for his advice and expert opinion on Japan, and the very positive case that Japan makes in terms of our trade relationship with the CPTPP and the associated benefits we have, both through having a trade agreement and an association with it through this process.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marland, for his very generous comments about our joint efforts to spread the benefits of UK trade around the world. If anyone has the most air miles on these red Benches, it must be a close competition between the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Marland. Both noble Lords are doing such important work, whether in spreading democracy and helping complex situations be resolved, or in pushing the Commonwealth. While this is not a debate about the Commonwealth, it is important to note how many countries that make up CPTPP are Commonwealth members. It is absolutely right that we should use this as further leverage to work with our Commonwealth peers. I will certainly take to my colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Marland.

I am always grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for his comments as to how we can better manage our trade process. If I may, I will just draw his attention, as someone so distinguished and who lauded the EU’s FTA negotiation process, to the fact that I do not think the EU has done a trade deal in my political lifetime. The most recent one was after a culmination of 17 years of negotiation, and the current ones are all live after many years. We have managed to close this deal in an extremely effective time period.

I turn to the process of CRaG which has been well raised by noble Lords. We made a clear commitment under the Grimstone convention that, if there was time, we would have a debate, and this is exactly what we are doing today. My colleagues and I have made ourselves totally and freely available to engage on every issue. Officials have been extremely open in responding to questions and challenges and I am glad to see some of them here today. I am particular aware of issues, such as SPS protection which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, or agriculture, raised by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, as well as points made by other speakers on the Front Bench from all parties. I think we have exceeded expectations in the work we have done in order to project that necessary element of debate.

I am not trying to avoid the point, but it is not for me to comment on the activities of the other place. I will leave that to them. It is right to be very comfortable in knowing that any new accession will be equally bound by the CRaG process. This is extremely important. It would be completely unreasonable if that were not the case. The Government have committed to that and I am very comfortable in making a further Front Bench commitment to it.

It is worth touching on some of the sub-issues that have come up in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, wisely raised SPS measures, and comments were made about ISDS. I believe we had a discussion earlier in this Chamber about the brevity of speeches and the importance of avoiding repetition, but I am going to have to repeat myself, if I may, and test the patience of noble Lords. There is no derogation. It says so in Hansard. It has been in Hansard before. There should be a collected, bound edition of my repeated statements in Hansard about free trade agreements that do not derogate from the security of our sanitary and phytosanitary provisions. It is very important to be comfortable about this. Hormone- injected beef, chlorinated chicken or dangerous pesticides which are banned here are not allowed into the UK on account of the FTA. This is a matter under our own control. It is important that consumers hear this.

When I talk to people about free trade deals, a lot of them worry that, somehow, this will result in a tidal wave of deadly products. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to the UK becoming a dumping ground for dangerous products. Any decision to allow so-called dangerous products into the UK is a matter for the UK Border Agency, the food safety authorities and the Government. If that is the case, it has nothing to do with this FTA, which is important in the sense that it changes our position on tariffs and how we trade with each of the different countries. I just want to reassure noble Lords and the public that nothing will change.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

To respond briefly to the Minister, of course, there is “allowing”, and there is also what checking is being done to make sure that it does not happen anyway. That is the kind of checking I was referring to.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. The checking is a matter for the Food Standards Agency. We have made a number of assertions. It believes that this FTA will not result in additional risk for it. I do not wish to be contentious. I always listen very closely to the noble Baroness’s comment about free trade. We do not share the same views on its benefits. I listened to her very carefully and I noticed that at no point did she mention the principle of the consumer. I am particularly focused on making sure that the consumer benefits from these free trade deals—that they see prices come down and the range of products broaden.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned the concept of proximity being at the core of trade. For many goods, it is right and in fact efficient to have a proximous concept of trade. I think of the idea of swapping beef herds, in terms of practicality—although I think we sell better beef than the Australians, and certainly more specialist types—so there is a market in that sense. However, if we look at investment, which is an important element of the CPTPP, our two biggest investment partners in terms of growth and current value are the United States and now India. They are clearly not the most proximous countries to the UK, so it is important to understand that, in modern trade, in services, the digital provision of services and financial investment, the world truly is our oyster.

Speaking of investment: the ISDS concern is raised continually. As Investment Minister, I believe that strong investment protections for investors into the UK are at the core of our offering. If, at any point, investors felt that their investment rights would be derogated, it would be much harder for all of us—and whoever stands in my place as Investment Minister—to get the vital money that we need for our infrastructure into this country. These ISDS provisions are enormously beneficial for us. I feel totally safe in offering them to other countries. I do not believe that there is any derogation of our ability to manage our economy, our ambitions for net zero, how we treat our workforce or any other measure. Investing in these CPTPP countries protects our businesses, particularly in countries such as Malaysia where we now have these protections.

That brings me briefly to the services point—