Nuclear Test Veterans

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

In the circumstances, I forgive my noble friend for the breadth of her question, and certainly join her in welcoming this event today. It is very important for the future of this country. Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are very important to our stability, resilience and safety.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, to return to the issue of nuclear tests, I am sure that the Minister is aware of the Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia, which are at the centre of a 60,000-hectare marine park. Three tests were conducted there, and there is increasing research and concern about residual radioactivity. There are areas where tourists are told not to stay for more than one hour. While the Government rightly focus on the circumstances of British nuclear veterans, are they also keeping a close watching brief on those sites and on the fallout—literally—that continues from those tests and will they make sure that they take any remedial action or provide any remedial support or information that they can to help other countries deal with the leftover situation?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I look forward to discussing the point that the noble Baroness raised in more detail. That is another question of breadth. Clearly, the nuclear test medal was designed specifically to recognise the unique contribution of the personnel who served in the locations, such as Australia, which she mentioned, and who served with UK forces as part of the testing of the vital deterrent.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 41A in this group. We discussed this issue in Committee. I said, “If the Government want to go down the route of keeping in Clause 16(5), why don’t they promise the same about the environment?” After all, the Government made the same set of promises regarding environmental legislation—that they would not do anything to damage the protection that the current regulations offered—while here in Clause 16(5) they are saying they will not do anything to increase the regulatory burden.

The Government wisely said they did not want to put in the Bill the promise that they would not damage environmental regulation. I had rather hoped that meant they would take out Clause 16(5), because to my mind that subsection offers nothing but uncertainty. How is it to be interpreted by the courts if the Government propose to use the clause and someone challenges its use in the courts, saying, “This subsection says ‘in relation to a particular subject area’. Has that been reasonably chosen and correctly defined? What is the overall effect of the changes?”? They will have to look at every piece of legislation that has passed in relation to that particular subject area. How are they to be weighed up? There is no mechanism here providing for them to be weighed.

The courts are going to be asked how one bit of legislation should be weighed against another with regard to the changes that it makes and the regulatory burden. How do you weigh one bit of regulatory burden against another if one bit of regulation imposes something on one group and the next regulation imposes something on another? How do you weigh those two things together? It seems to be asking the absolute impossible. It means that any bit of legislation passed under Clause 16 will be open to all sorts of challenges in the courts, and there will be no way of knowing what the outcome will be, because nothing in this subsection, or elsewhere in the clause, tells you how to parse it. So I hope the Government will see the good sense they had when they chose not to adopt my suggestion of doing this for environmental legislation and take Clause 16(5) and (6) out of the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I agree with the entirety of Amendment 41A from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, while agreeing with only half his reasoning. I entirely agree that, as we discussed at length in Committee, this is essentially impossible to calculate and creates a great deal of legal uncertainty. Where I disagree with him is that I would very much like to have seen non-regression clauses for the environment, public health, workers’ rights and a whole range of other things in the Bill.

Practically, what we are doing with the clause at the moment, if it is implemented, is creating a guaranteed regression of workers’ rights, food standards and environmental standards. If we do not have regulation of business, we will certainly see at least some cowboy businesses taking advantage of a reduction in regulation. That of course will not be in the interests of businesses that want to do the right thing on the environment, public health or workers’ rights.

I spent a great deal of time during the passage of the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act arguing for non-regression clauses. What the Government are currently giving us is a guaranteed regression clause, and that really should not be acceptable.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, as the proposer of Amendment 45, which is also in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I feel a terrible weight resting on my shoulders as a result of the preface from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, because this is the amendment that seeks to remove Clause 16 and I fear that I am not going to reach the billing that he gave us.

Over the course of this session, we have heard numerous arguments about the way in which the Bill more and more removes Parliament from the process of revocation and reform. I am not going to rehearse all those arguments again, because your Lordships have heard them both on Report and in Committee. Clause 16 is one of the key parts of the machinery in the Bill to govern how retained EU law can be reformed. There is an argument for removing the clause altogether, but I have bowed to the spirit of scrutiny rather than total oblivion and, as such, I do not intend to move the amendment.

As we have already heard in advance from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the provision that causes most concern is Clause 16(5), which mandates the nature of any reform of REUL to be deregulation—and deregulation only. The point the noble Lord made is about how we measure the sum of regulation. There was all sorts of debate in Committee. Is it the total of the changes across a group of amendments or a section of amendments? Is it each amendment by itself? These questions were never satisfactorily answered in Committee, so perhaps during Report the Minister can tell us how the amount of regulation will be measured. In other words, can one increase in regulation be balanced by two decreases in regulation through adjacent provisions, for example? We have not had answers to that.

Essentially, the spirit of the Bill is that there can be no increase in the “burden”—according to the Bill—caused by this reformed retained EU law. Clause 16(10) defines burden, with its paragraph (b) including “administrative inconvenience”, but one person’s administrative inconvenience is another’s life-saving safety measure. It depends on which direction you look at it. Clause 16(10)(d) includes

“an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”

as a burden. Again, what may seem an obstacle to one group may be existentially important to another.

As I said, I am not aiming to push this amendment to a vote. We are seeing amendments that are putting some safeguards in place. The noble Lord mentioned Amendment 76, which we anticipate. I am anticipating Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, where we will talk about non-regression, and Amendment 50, which will come up shortly. These are other important pieces to put in place to try to draw the majority of the sting from Clause 16.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank (Con)]

My Lords, I realise that the hour is late and I do not intend to detain your Lordships long. I speak to Amendment 48. It is a cross-party amendment and this morning, when I began to consider this, I typed up some notes, which I have—but I do not have my glasses and I typed in a font far too small. I feel I am now a speaking metaphor for what the amendment represents. We have to be careful that we are looking not just at the fuzziness of the whole issue but at the detail. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, ably set out why it is important.

This is a non-regression amendment. We are where we are right now, and we are content with that—if anything, we should be going further, but let there be no step backwards. The important statements in this amendment are very clear: let us accept what we are able to achieve, look at the international standards by which we must be judged and consider how to do that correctly.

I am pleased to see the Minister before us. It is not my intention or desire to vote against the Government, but these things occasionally happen. I think he can give us some words of comfort this evening about how we might help us to be able to understand the non-regression element of each of the matters we have touched on so far.

I will speak no further, other than simply to say that the amendment establishes and stabilises what we are about. We are a nation with clear ambition in this area, and we have done good work. Let us not let that be lost; let us not regress.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having attached my name to Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, I shall make just a couple of points on that. I stress Amendment 48, to which the Green group would have attached our names had there been space, and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that this is writing into the Bill what the Government tell us again and again, as they have for years, they want to achieve. It is simply delivering the Government’s expressed desire.

I want to make just three points on Amendment 47. There is some important terminology, with which I suspect the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, may have had something to do. That refers to the methodological quality of the evidence. There is increasing awareness in the scientific community of the need to look at the problem of publication bias: the probability that a scientific study is published is not independent of its results. That is just one way in which we have real problems with the methodology of what has been published and the Government have considered in the past, to which the amendment is to some degree addressed.

Proposed new subsection (5) mentions

“a sufficiently wide view of the ecological impacts”.

I will take a case study of this. Scientists are increasingly concerned about the combined cocktail impact of pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals together in the environment. I point the Minister to a European report by the CHEM Trust, Chemical Cocktails: The Neglected Threat of Toxic Mixtures and How to Fix It and, independently occurring, a launch this month in the UK of a report from the Wildlife and Countryside Link with the Rivers Trust and UK Youth for Nature, Chemical Cocktails: How Can We Reduce the Toxic Burden on Our Rivers? The scientific view taking that overall wide ecological view is increasingly being recognised as crucial, and massively understudied.

The final point I want to make is that Amendment 47 is reflective of something that I am increasingly finding: groups of scientists—including established scientists whom you might expect that have a very good route into the Government—are coming to me and saying, “Please advise us on how we can get through to the Government to make sure that our scientific advice and discoveries are acted on”. There is real feeling in the scientific community that there has been a breakdown in communication and consideration from the Government in terms of the current science. This amendment seeks to address those issues.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I just want to give particular support to Amendment 48, to which I have added my name. We cannot allow the Bill to weaken environmental and food safety standards. We know that Defra has by far the largest share of affected regulations of any department, so the Bill really will have significant implications for environment and food safety law-making unless it is done well.

I will not repeat the reasons why we need these amendments, but what has come across very clearly is the fact that there is widespread and strong support for the environmental non-regression principle.

Importantly, Amendment 48 would give transparency but also legal substance to the warm words of the Minister, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned. On day 2 of Committee, the Minister said that the Government are committed to maintaining high environmental standards and that he wanted

“to see … standards improve in future”.—[Official Report, 28/2/23; col. 208.]

I absolutely believe that is the case but, as a matter of law, the Bill provides no assurances or protections and cannot bind the hands of future Ministers. It is absolutely critical that these assurances and protections are in place in the Bill because, without a non-regression principle in law, they simply are not there.

On that basis, if the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, wishes to test the opinion of the House, he will have our support.

Cross-government Cost-cutting

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for securing this crucial debate on the Government’s plans to cut even further our clearly already hopelessly overstrained and underresourced machinery of government. Yesterday in the Finance Bill debate, I focused on the social costs of the kind that the noble Lord so powerfully introduced this debate with. These are the result of the past decade of austerity 1.0, a policy that only the Green Parties across these islands have been consistent in opposing, and the threat of austerity 2.0, a cascade into a hell of poverty and inequality, which the Government have just embarked on.

Today I am going to focus on the impact on the natural world, the very foundation of life on these islands and of the economy, which the Government like to talk about as their top priority. To start topically, COP 15, the biodiversity COP, has just finished, with a better outcome than many had hoped for: a globally agreed promise, to which the UK has signed up, to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. Yet currently only 3% of England’s land and 8% of English waters are being effectively protected and managed for nature, as identified in the 2022 Progress Report on 30x30 in England by leading NGOs. As my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb so regularly sets out in this House, our streams, rivers and seas are in a parlous state and our air is causing great damage to human health—and no doubt also to the natural world. That is in large part due to failures of enforcement as well as failures of regulation.

These are matters largely for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—Defra. We all know, and the political journalists here in the lobby tell us, that Defra is regarded as a department pretty far down the Whitehall pecking order—far below the lofty towers of the Treasury, with its tight stranglehold over the purse strings and narrow focus on the economy. To meet our COP 15 commitments, and for these islands to make the transition to looking after the natural world in a few short years, is a huge job, yet Defra is in no way keeping up with even the commitments that have been made by Ministers here in your Lordships’ House. The ENDS report recently came up with a list of 16 areas in which the Government had failed to meet their own commitments under the Defra umbrella. One of the largest of those was, of course, the legally binding commitment to set targets for air and water by October 2022. If anyone missed them, they were rushed out late last Friday afternoon—in December.

In your Lordships’ House, on 15 September 2021, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, promised that an independent environmental assessment of nappy use would be published by the “end of the year”. That was in the middle of 2021, and it has not been published. Also in your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, promised us a soil health action plan for England on Report on the Environment Bill, on 8 September 2021. It was offered as a trade-off for the other place dropping the soil targets that so many noble Lords from all sides of your Lordships’ House helped me insert into the Bill here. There is no soil health action plan as we enter 2023.

I am going to carefully anonymise my concluding remarks here, as I do not want to get anyone to get into trouble. I was speaking recently to a member of Defra staff who I know to be extremely dedicated and knowledgeable—indeed, a world-leading expert in their field. They have to be, since the problems that they are tackling in England are worse than pretty well anywhere else in the global North. This staff member’s head dropped in despair as they told me that staff had been told to prepare for a 20% to 40% headcount cut. This would be a gutting of a department already hamstrung by understaffing, poleaxed by cuts, and facing the huge burden of trying to manage post-Brexit deregulation. Can the Minister reassure me that that cut to the Defra headcount is not going to happen? Can she offer a Christmas present for nature, on these islands, where nature does worse than in almost any other part of this poisoned, plastic-choked, trashed planet?

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 30th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I can be brief. I thoroughly support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said to us in moving his amendment. I do not need to repeat arguments that I placed before your Lordships earlier this week on Monday, in December last year, and then again in January and March this year, and even in the Question that we had just before our proceedings on PPE, which continues to be stored in the People’s Republic of China at a cost to us of some £770,000 every day.

I am extremely grateful that the Minister responded so quickly after our debate on Monday with a letter that I received this morning. For the purposes of the record, I will read out one paragraph. She wrote:

“You made a number of points about PPE contracts which have been found to have underperformed. I also understand you have asked written questions … on these matters. I appreciate your desire for more information on this and I will be writing to the Secretary of State highlighting both your views and those expressed by others in the House.”


That is a very welcome response and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for going to that trouble.

I have sent a copy of our Hansard from Monday to my noble and learned friend Lady Hallett, who is chairing the public inquiry to which the Minister referred during our debate on Monday. The Minister said that lessons would be learned, and that the Covid inquiry would

“cover procurement and the distribution of key equipment and supplies, including PPE”.—[Official Report, 28/11/22; col. 1593.]

I am grateful to her for that.

I have only one other point. On Monday, I raised the issue of repayments. That is not something that can wait for the several years it might take the public inquiry to make its recommendations. I refer the Minister to my two questions about defaulting PPE suppliers and the actions that will be taken through the faulty contract PPE recovery unit. I also asked about individual settlements, which, as she said, are protected by commercial secrecy. I asked

“how will Parliament and the public be notified about money returned to public funds by defaulting PPE suppliers through the actions of the faulty contract PPE recovery unit?”—[Official Report, 28/11/22; col. 1581.]

How will that work? Can the Minister illuminate us a little further? If she cannot, would she be prepared to put pen to paper in a follow-up letter to me as a result of today’s debate? I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for giving us the opportunity to explore this issue further.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and indeed the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, who raised such important points about payment terms for small and medium-sized enterprises. That is a long- term issue that has not been addressed. There is a real opportunity here, as the noble Lord outlined.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 72, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, who so comprehensively introduced it, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I confess that I attached my name to it at the absolute last minute because I expected a rush of Members from around your Lordships’ House doing so. I thought it was important to demonstrate that there was a breadth of support.

I should perhaps warn the Minister that that support appeared to come from the Government Front Bench earlier, when the noble Lord, Lord Markham, responding to the PPE Urgent Question repeat from the other place, said that the earlier procurement

“should not have been on the basis of referrals”.

It would appear that this amendment delivers exactly what the noble Lord said should happen in future. That is a very interesting reflection of what is happening in your Lordships’ House.

Briefly, we know that the Government would like to treat all this as ancient history, but I and, I am sure, other Members of your Lordships’ House have seen that for members of the public this is still a source of very deep anger and concern. This morning I was on Radio 5 Live’s politicians’ panel and a caller raised this issue, albeit in the context of Matt Hancock’s appearance on “I’m a Celebrity”.

There were a couple of powerful letters in the Guardian this week. I do not know either of the correspondents. Dr Tristram Wyatt noted that in 1919, after the First World War, the President of the Board of Trade introduced a profiteering Bill to ensure that profiteering by suppliers would never happen again. In the same paper Dr Jeremy Oliver questioned why all these PPE contracts were not let on a full cost plus margin basis. This is of great concern to the public. I am hearing from all quarters again and again that people are simply saying, “Never again.” What happened in the Covid-19 pandemic with the VIP channel must not be allowed to happen again. This clear, simple amendment delivers just that.

I will also briefly express concern about government Amendment 116. We had an extensive discussion about this in Committee, which I will not revisit, but this appears to be a significant weakening of the protection of public concern about potential conflicts of interest. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of that.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to strongly support Amendment 72. There is absolutely no need for a VIP channel or similar. Surely, it just encouraged opportunistic entrepreneurs—to be charitable —rather than genuine experienced manufacturers. Will the Government publish a list of all MPs and Peers who used the VIP channel and on whose behalf they were lobbied?

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I have no amendment in this group, but I want to refer to government Amendment 34. I entirely agree with the proposition that the Bill enables public procurement to be put on a better path than it has been in the past. Many of those working in procurement across the public services have welcomed the Bill. As it happens, they also welcome the scrutiny we are giving it, because it is leading to improvements to the Bill. I did not attempt to count the number of government amendments we dealt with in Committee, but they were in the hundreds. In addition to those, I calculate that we have 153 government amendments on Report, so if it takes us a while, it is not our fault. None the less, it is a good job and it is right that we should do it. That is why I raise the following question on government Amendment 34.

My noble friend will recall that these amendments were not moved in Committee because there was some difficulty about what “covered procurement” was relative to “procurement”. At the time, I supported the Government’s amendments, because it seemed right to ensure that the broader scope of the Bill and the regulatory requirements encompassed within it should be applied to larger procurements and not smaller ones. I now support the insertion of “covered” before “procurement” in all the government amendments—except Amendment 34. Why do I single it out? Including “covered” means that procurements which are above the threshold and not exempt are subject to the Bill and the full range of its requirements—see Schedule 1 for the thresholds and Schedule 2 for the exemptions. Clause 2 makes it clear that public contracts are those that are above the threshold and not exempt. Okay, fine: “covered procurement” makes a distinction between those that are exempt and of lesser value and those that are of a higher value and included.

Clause 11 relates to procurement objectives. Procurement objectives are statements, not least by Parliament as well as by the Government, about what those who are engaged in procurement should regard as their responsibility. The essence of Clause 11 is that:

“In carrying out a procurement, a contracting authority must have regard to … delivering value for money … maximising public benefit … sharing information”—


so that people can understand the authority’s procurement policies and decisions—and

“acting, and being seen to act, with integrity.”

In my submission, these are not regulatory requirements; they are the basis on which contracting authorities should be behaving. We will come on to debate Clause 11 and will deal with its proposals then. But it seems to me that, however we end up stating in Clause 11 that these are procurement objectives for contracting authorities, they should apply to all contracting authorities and to all their procurements.

Interestingly, the Government resist this on grounds of flexibility. I am not sure in this context what that means: flexibility not to have value for money; flexibility not to act with integrity? But the Government have not disapplied the operation of Clause 12 and the national procurement policy statement. The Government want to have the power to apply the statement to all procurements, so we do not get “covered” in front of procurement in Clause 12(1) but we do get “covered” in relation to procurement in Clause 11. This must be wrong. It must clearly be right that not only the procurement statement but the objectives on which it must be based must apply to all procurements.

So I put it to my noble friend that this is not a technical amendment. There may be many that are technical amendments, but this is a substantive amendment that has an unhappy consequence that it would disapply the procurement objectives to a significant number of the lower-value procurement activities in the public sector. So when we reach government Amendment 34, I invite my noble friend not to move it. I hope that she will at the very least do that on the grounds that this should be revisited before Third Reading.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly having attached my name to Amendment 173 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I attempted to attach my name to Amendment 3, but somehow that transferred to government Amendment 2, which I am guessing everyone has already worked out was a mistake—part of the general confusion we have with this Bill. Perhaps it is just, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, outlined, that the flood of government amendments has overwhelmed the administration of Report.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have already set out the issues very clearly. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave us a masterclass, having made himself an absolute expert on the issues of procurement, particularly around Covid. I want to add one extra balancing thought to that. The issues of privatisation and contracts do not apply only to the procurement of materials; they apply to the procurement of services, including the clinical services to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred. It is important that this does not get lost.

I will refer to a study published in the Lancet public health journal by academics from the University of Oxford in June. It showed that outsourcing since 2012 had been associated with a drop in care quality and higher rates of treatable mortality. This is peer-reviewed research published in a very respected journal that shows that privatisation has had and is having a disastrous effect. To quote the authors of that study:

“Our findings suggest that further privatisation of the NHS might lead to worse population health outcomes.”


I think it would be unrealistic to expect the public to engage with the details of the kind of debate we are having this afternoon, but it is important, and I have no doubt at all that the public is gravely concerned to see that we have maximum transparency. Indeed, I think there is strong public support for reversing the privatisation of the NHS—but, wherever we are letting contracts for the NHS, we must have maximum transparency and clarity about the manner in which that is done.

Nuclear Test Veterans: Medals

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with great pleasure, as I always do in your Lordships’ House, to use the hashtag Campaigning Works, and I join the Front Bench spokespeople in commending the nuclear test veterans and their families who have campaigned so hard, and for so long, and can now finally celebrate the results. I do hope that the Government can ensure that these medals reach the veterans and their families.

My question follows on from that of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and from what the Minister was just saying about the traditional owners of these lands. I note that in this rather long Statement there is one sentence that refers to

“an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the lands that were used for nuclear testing”.


I wonder whether the Minister might be able to amplify a little what the word “acknowledgement” actually means? I particularly note in that context Maralinga, the most infamous site in Australia with the worst contamination, and the worst damage done to indigenous communities. Just last year a Monash University study revealed some new scientific understanding that in the desert environment, even small particles can break down in that environment to release plutonium—something that is happening right now at this moment and will happen for many decades, and perhaps centuries. So, would “acknowledgement” include more support, perhaps for more research and more action to deal with the continuing damage?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important to publicly acknowledge the use of lands belonging to traditional landowners for nuclear testing, both in Australia and the Pacific; I was going to volunteer that point which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made. We are acknowledging it publicly in Parliament, and we have to continue to do that; I am not aware of any particular research in the area that the noble Baroness mentioned, but I will certainly ask that question and come back to her if I can give her any more information. I suspect that she may know a great deal more about Australia and what is going on there.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Developed Countries

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not like the direction of that question. However, we have encouraged discussion on loss and damage. Obviously, the Labour Party has come out with a big initiative on reparations—which is not funded—and it is very important that we join in the discussion of loss and damage to try to find a joined-up way forward, with support from around the world. The whole problem about climate change, as I have said in the House so often, is that it is an international challenge as well as a domestic challenge.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, following on from the question on loss and damage, the Minister said that it was really important that there is discussion. Have we not utterly arrived at the time when we need action, given that loss and damage was kicked into the long grass, taken out of the Glasgow climate pact and put into the Glasgow dialogue instead? Denmark has promised loss and damage money; Scotland has promised loss and damage money; and the Belgian region of Wallonia has promised loss and damage money. If the Government want to be world-leading, when are we going from discussion to actual action and a promise of money? It is not the same thing as adaptation finance.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

In my experience, you can only get action, especially in an international context, if you have constructive discussion. In terms of our contribution, the UK spent £2.4 billion on our international climate finance between 2016 and 2020 on adaptation and investment in areas that needed to address loss and damage. The Scottish Government fund is £2 million.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 415 and 419 in this group. In addition, I will speak to Amendment 417, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan but originated as an amendment tabled by my noble friend the Minister.

Amendments 415 and 419 are somewhat narrower than the other amendments in the group, which the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has spoken to. They simply probe how the Bill has been drafted in relation to the term “conflict of interest”. Under Clause 75 contracting authorities have a duty to mitigate conflicts of interest, and under Clause 76 they are required to carry out conflict assessments. In each case, the clauses define the term “conflict of interest” by reference to Clause 74. Under Clause 74(2), a conflict of interest exists if someone has a conflict of interest—hence the Bill basically says that the definition of a conflict of interest is that it is a conflict of interest, which is not entirely helpful.

While “interest” is defined in Clause 74, “conflict” is not. Clause 74 says who might have a conflict but not what a conflict actually is. Is it an objective test or can conflicts include subjective perception? Does it have to be an actual conflict or just a possible one? Clause 74 is no help whatever. Clauses 75 and 76 have tried to define “conflict of interest” by reference to Clause 74, but in doing so they have merely highlighted that there is no definition in that clause. I have not attempted to define the term myself as my amendments today are obviously probing ones, but some attention needs to be paid to the drafting.

Amendment 417 would delete Clause 76(4), which deals with conflict of interest assessments. Subsection (4) takes the contracting authorities into the realms of fantasy. They have to think about what they know that might cause “a reasonable person” wrongly to think that there are actual or potential conflicts of interest. It is often hard enough to identify the range of potential conflicts of interest; getting into the territory of trying to work out what a so-called “reasonable person” might wrongly think is a potential conflict of interest is mind-blowing.

Having worked out what this reasonable person wrongly thinks, the contracting authority must take steps to demonstrate that the imagined wrong thought by the imagined reasonable person does not in fact exist. This is beyond parody. For good measure, there is no definition of “reasonable person”. We do not know whether this reasonable person is assumed to have any knowledge of public procurement or the workings of contracting authorities. Those of us who live in the world of politics know that otherwise reasonable people often believe extraordinary things and their capacity for thinking extraordinary things wrongly is infinite.

I very much look forward to hearing how my noble friend the Minister will defend subsection (4).

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and congratulate her on the first half of her contribution, which clearly identified a crucial problem that has undoubtedly been missed by numerous other eyes.

However, I entirely disagree with the second part of her contribution, which referred to Clause 76(4). I do not often find myself in the position of defending what is potentially the Government’s position—perhaps I am about to pre-empt entirely what the Minister is about to say—but subsection (4) says:

“If a contracting authority is aware of circumstances”.


It does not say, “We expect the contracting authority to be clairvoyant and know of every single circumstance where a reasonable person might”. We all know this. Think about local councils. Having been a local journalist on another continent, I think of a case where a large city authority kept commissioning a certain architect to do a whole series of projects. That ended up raising considerable public concern. If that is happening, noble Lords can see why it would make sense to pre-empt the explanation of why there is no conflict of interest and therefore no problem here. It is also worth pointing out that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said that this was a subjective judgment that would affect the letting of the contract. In fact, it would not; it just says that there must be details of the steps included. So I would defend Clause 76(4), if the Government feel that it needs to be defended.

Before I get to what I chiefly want to say, I want to apologise briefly. I attached my name to a number of amendments in the previous group; I meant to be here to speak to them but events unfortunately intervened and I could not be. I still stand behind them.

Coming to this group, I have attached my name to a number of amendments in various combinations of the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, clearly outlined—I will not go over the same ground—the Boardman review reported in May 2021, which has allowed plenty of time for this issue to be included in this Bill, despite all the hurry and rush that we know there has been around it. I would also point out something that the noble Lord did not say: when the Boardman report came out, the Government said, “We accept all of these recommendations”. If the Government have accepted them, they should surely be incorporated in this Bill.

I want to pick up on one amendment that I did not sign, although I would have had I noticed it: Amendment 413 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that

“a donation or loan of more than £7,500 to any political party in a calendar year”

should be declared. We are talking about transparency and trust. This is obviously a practical, simple step that would not be very hard to implement and would be well worth while.

Amendments 421 to 423 are about preventing undue influence. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I shall concentrate on Amendment 423. There is huge public concern about the revolving door, and I note that my honourable friend in the other place, Caroline Lucas, has done a huge amount of work, dating back in Hansard to at least 2013, on the revolving door in the defence and energy sectors.

That concern is not restricted to the Green Party. I was just looking through some of the reports. In 2011, Transparency International UK issued a press release headed

“Revolving door between Government and business is ‘spinning out of control’”.

If it was spinning out of control in 2011, we are at jet engine speeds by this stage. In 2016, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, in a report entitled Redefining Corruption, said that the public want a ban on the revolving door. This amendment provides much less than a ban; it is a modest six months, and I am not altogether sure that it should not be longer, but there is certainly great public concern about this. In 2017, the Committee on Standards in Public Life expressed concern about the revolving door.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, set out one disturbing case. Here is another. In 2020, We Own It highlighted the interaction between Serco and NHS Test and Trace, and the degree to which there has been a revolving door between Serco and the senior Civil Service, to the point where a former head of public affairs of Serco became a Health Minister—I am not sure how many Health Ministers back, but at some point, anyway.

Finally, we should not forget the Greensill scandal. Just look at the mess that arose in part because of a revolving door—indeed, in some cases people were stuck in the same door at the same time, apparently representing both private interests and public, government interests. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments noted that there were thousands of potential cases, but initially looked at only 108. There is lots of discussion about limits to that committee’s power; it cannot possibly cover this issue. We must start from the other side of the contracts.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be relatively brief, because I sense that some of the drive and energy has gone out of the Committee.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I will not continue with the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, as it sounds as though the Committee is familiar with that. Having experienced it, I would say that it is quite effective.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

To take us back 30 seconds, to Amendment 413, about political donations over £7,500, I take the Minister’s point that yes, that register exists, but this amendment requires the supplier to take reasonable steps to make the declaration. If the supplier is not required to do that in their bid application, does that mean that every commissioning authority must add to their list of things to do, “Go and check the donations register every quarter to see what is happening”? Would not structuring it in this way make it much easier for the commissioning body?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I will start by trying to answer the point that the Civil Service has rules and this Bill is far wider in its application, which we accept. If we are too prescriptive in listing every relevant person in legislation, we may miss persons who should be considered. We think guidance provides a comprehensive list; Peers should see the guidance for commercial professionals in PPN 04/21, for example. As we have discussed in relation to other parts of the Bill, we have to have a combination of the Bill and guidance.

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to make such regulations ensures compliance with the provisions of the Scotland Act. I hope that my noble friend will be able to clarify the situation, if not this evening then in writing.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, being aware of the hour, I will be extremely brief, but I just want to express support particularly for Amendment 441, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. I think we have to look at this in the context of, as the Committee may be aware, the current movement in relation to the Energy Charter Treaty and the way in which increasing numbers of states—most recently France but also the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Italy—have found that this treaty that they entered into years ago has really restricted their ability to act on the kind of environmental, social and labour matters identified here. It is really important that we do not bring in new laws that create further restrictions.

On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, there has been lots of criticism of the CRaG process and that it was essentially designed for long ago when trade treaties were something very different from what they are today. Just to illustrate that point, this morning I was with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for a visit of Canadian lawmakers. We learnt then, very interestingly, that Canada had wanted to include the issue of frozen pensions—the fact that the UK does not uprate its pensions for people in Canada while it does so for people in the United States. That is the kind of way in which trade deals can become far more complicated today. Unfortunately, on the account we heard this morning, the UK Government refused to countenance this being included in the trade deal, but it is really important that we see how broad trade deals can be today and that they have the maximum democratic scrutiny. That is what I think this amendment seeks to achieve.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 436, from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and to my noble friend’s Amendment 441. It is a pleasure to follow both of them.

I want to talk a bit about some of the problems that we face inside our own government structures and Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and I spent quite a bit of time earlier this year on the Health and Care Act. Indeed, there was a section in there about healthcare arrangements with other countries. But that was the end of a story, and at each stage from 2014 onwards we kept finding people trying to relax the EU directive on procurement rules, which we had to abide by then, in order to enlarge the gift that we could give under a treaty. For health, this is an extremely important matter.

The EU procurement directive, which governs all public sector procurement in member states, defines fair process and standards to ensure that all businesses, including the NHS, have fair competition for contracts. It also, incidentally, prevents conflicts of interest through robust exclusion rounds and protects against creeping privatisation. It is that latter point that is really important in particular for the NHS, but there are other sectors of the public realm where that matters too.

On 18 November 2014, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Livingston of Parkhead, whether the EU procurement directive protected the NHS. He replied:

“Commissioner de Gucht has been very clear:

‘Public services are always exempted ... The argument is abused in your country for political reasons.’”

The noble Lord, Lord Livingston, went on to say:

“That is pretty clear. The US has also made it entirely clear. Its chief negotiator—

this was in relation to TTIP—

said that it was not seeking for public services to be incorporated. No one on either side is seeking to have the NHS treated in a different way … trade agreements to date have always protected public services.”—[Official Report, 18/11/14; col. 374.]

Again in 2018, I raised these points with the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, in a debate and he said:

“I can tell them that we have implemented our obligations under the EU directive. The Government are absolutely committed that the NHS is, and always will be, a public service, free at the point of need”—


and the current Government repeat that point.

“It is not for sale to the private sector, whether overseas or here. That will be in our gift and we will not put that on the table for trade partners, whatever they say they want.”—[Official Report, 29/3/18; col. 947.]

That was very helpful because it came in advance of President Trump’s attempt to broaden what could be in a possible trade agreement, which would definitely have included health. Those of us who are concerned about these matters therefore relaxed a bit, until the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill came before your Lordships’ House, which was intended to replicate the reciprocal healthcare arrangements that we used to have under EHIC. The problem was that it had a clause that also gave rights under international trade agreements for health services to be part of those trade agreements, with no reference back to Parliament. It was an expedited process but, during the passage of that Bill, we managed to revert to it being just about reciprocal healthcare arrangements in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

However, this year, we went through exactly the same process again when the Health and Care Bill was introduced, as it contained a much looser series of clauses that would have allowed health to become part of trade agreements. During the Bill’s passage, a cross-party group of Peers fought very hard and were really grateful that the Government recognised the risk that they were putting the NHS under and conceded. Now, the provisions under the Health and Care Act are the equivalent of EHIC but for other countries.

I wanted to raise these points because it seems to me that we must have Parliament’s involvement before things are signed and sealed. We also need to let those people who are negotiating our trade agreements understand where some of the clear red lines remain across Parliament—and certainly across this nation—for certain public services, including the NHS.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe to her new position. As she knows, she and I share many views on the Bill; indeed, we supported each other’s amendments. I fully endorse the quotation read out earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Fox; I hope that my noble friend will stick to it.

Amendment 534 is in my name; my noble friend had added her name to it, and it was debated during an earlier sitting of the Committee. It asked for a report on procurement rules, specifically around simplification and SMEs. My noble friend will be aware that, obviously, it has not yet been moved because it is low down on the list. While she has now removed her name, about which I am distraught, I hope that, when we get to that part of the Marshalled List, we might have a more favourable response from the Government Benches.

I have three amendments in this group: Amendments 323, 326 and 327. They are probing amendments relating to some of the discretionary grounds for exclusion in Schedule 7. The mandatory exclusion grounds in Schedule 6 are all based on objective facts—mainly whether various offences have been committed. The discretionary grounds in Schedule 7 are a mix of subjective and objective tests. My amendments are designed to probe this. I could have tabled more amendments to the schedule, because other paragraphs in it also use subjective tests, but I chose paragraphs 8, 9 and 11 as examples of the issue that I wished to debate.

In each of these paragraphs, the test is whether a decision-maker considers that a supplier has done something. To take the example of paragraph 8, the ground is that the decision-maker considers that the supplier or a connected person has infringed a bit of UK competition law, or an overseas equivalent. I do not understand why all these matters covered by the paragraphs cannot be dealt with by objective tests, as are used in Schedule 6. Surely an infringement of competition law can be objectively determined and ought not to be left to the opinion of a procurement official. Can the Minister explain why the Bill uses subjective tests rather than objective ones for these paragraphs?

My amendments are rather more modest than replacing these provisions with objective tests but they seek to strengthen the nature of the subjective test from “considers” to “is confident”. I chose that wording to align with what is in the Explanatory Notes, which explain the paragraphs in Schedule 7. I suggest that, if a subjective test is to be used in Schedule 7, the hurdle should be set at a fairly high level. My amendment might not be the right one but it is there to probe the language of the Bill. I am aware that Clause 55 gives some opportunity for suppliers to push back on decisions by contracting authorities but, at the end of the day, judicial review is the only real remedy available to a supplier who feels that they have been badly treated by the terms of this Bill. As we know, judicial review is a very unwieldy remedy and, frankly, is not available at all for SMEs in practical terms.

I also note that, in paragraph 15, which deals with national security, the decision-maker has to determine whether there is a threat to national security. When my noble friend winds up, would she please explain the difference between “determines”, which is used in paragraph 15, and “considers”, which is used throughout the rest of the schedule?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with great pleasure, following the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to agree with everything that all of them said. I am going to be quite brief but I have three points to make. I will speak chiefly to Amendment 177, to which I have attached my name—as have the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Hendy—but I also want to comment on a couple of other amendments in this group.

I join others in welcoming the Minister to her new post. Is it not good to have some certainty in politics? At least we have the certainty that the Procurement Bill will come round again, whatever else we might be doing or facing in other parts of the Westminster system.

There is a phrase about the certainty of death and taxes, except of course we know that taxes are not a certainty for many of the companies now operating in the UK or collecting many government contracts. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, referred to one of those companies in particular—a company that I describe as the great parasite. It does not pay its workers very well, which relates to another amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—we will get to that later—and it pays little or no tax in the UK.

There is a specific point to be made here. I am sure the Government would say that they want to see government and official money being spent well. However, the Tax Justice Network has noted, in looking at definitions of tax havens, that another term for them is secrecy jurisdictions. When companies operate out of tax havens, it is extremely difficult to see what is happening with their money and how they are operating; of course, they are not paying for the facilities and services they need to run their business and make their profits. In thinking about the great parasite, the example I often give when talking to schools, colleges and community groups is this: “Imagine the road outside. Think of all the lorries that have been carrying Amazon parcels up and down it today. Who is paying for that road? All of us in this room are, but Amazon is not”. If the Government are concerned about value for money and transparency in government procurement, Amendment 177 and the associated Amendment 180 are absolutely essential additions to this Bill.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 236 in this group. It probes the relationship between direct contract awards and framework contracts.

Direct awards are allowed under Clause 40 if they satisfy one of the justifications in Schedule 5, paragraph 8 of which allows them if they are similar to existing contracts for goods and services that have been entered into in the previous five years and in which the initial tender set out the intention to use the direct award justification. My amendment would change those five years to four years, specifically to probe the differences between a repeat direct award under Clause 40 and an award under a framework contract, as covered in Chapter 4 of Part 3.

Clause 45 says that a framework contract has a maximum duration of four years other than for defence and utilities contracts. Doubtless this is my ignorance speaking but I hope that my noble friend the Minister can explain to me the rationale for allowing five years for direct awards under Chapter 3 as opposed to four years for framework contracts under Chapter 4. My question is pretty simple: is there a substantive distinction between direct awards and awards under framework contracts, where the justification for the direct award is in paragraph 8 of Schedule 5?

It seems to me that this is another example of how the designers of this new procurement system have lost sight of simplicity and underlying principles in designing the system. However, there may be a good reason for that, of course; I look forward to my noble friend the Minister explaining it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly on Amendment 240 in particular, to which I would have attached my name had I noticed it in time. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. What he set out in terms of the problems of framework agreements are the kind of things we often encounter in the pages of Private Eye; it really is time that we saw some action on this issue.

Amendment 240

“is intended to prevent the future use of ‘VIP lanes’ for public contracts.”

I rather suspect that the nation out there, which is exhausted by politics, is probably not glued to your Lordships’ Grand Committee on the Procurement Bill this evening. I looked up the schedule: people are probably watching either “The Simpsons” or “Britain’s Parking Hell”. However, I know from what I get in my mailbag and what I see on social media that what happened during Covid with VIP lanes is a huge, continuing concern among large numbers of the British public. It was only last month that the Government were forced to admit that 50 firms had been put into the priority lane for test and trace contracts, worth billions. They included Immensa, a firm that was subsequently at the heart of more than 43,000 false negative results and had been incorporated only in May 2020. This came after the Good Law Project successfully challenged the Government’s VIP lane for personal protective equipment contracts.

So we have a situation where people are now looking at politics and saying, “We want to see things done differently”. This small, modest amendment would set a marker for achieving that; I feel that it deserves more attention both in this Room and outside it.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a few amendments in this group. The first is Amendment 235A, which was brought forward as a probing amendment so that we could consider the direct award of contracts in special circumstances. It is important that the Government both put on the record why there is a need for direct awards and explain properly the limited circumstances in which they can be used, so that things are completely clear. I also point out that, in certain scenarios, a contracting authority might be able to make a modification to an existing contract without following a competitive tendering procedure; in reality, that would have the effect of making a direct award. We need a bit of clarification around some of these issues.

The Bill introduces some changes that we would support in this area, including, for example, that the contracting authority would be obliged to publish a transparency notice in advance of making a direct award. We would very much support that. It is also interesting that Ministers will be empowered to designate specific contracts or categories of contracts that can be awarded directly in certain identified areas, such as in protecting life and for public security. It is good that we have a bit more meat on the bone in this area and on the issue around transparency.

Negotiating Objectives for a Free Trade Agreement with India

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, for securing this debate and the International Agreements Committee for all its work on this report. I strongly agree with some of its conclusions and strongly disagree with others.

In talking about a UK-India free trade deal, we have to start with history. For the majority of the past two millennia, the Indian subcontinent had the largest and one of the richest economies in the world, representing around 30% of global GDP. Then came the East India Company and the Raj. By 1970, India’s GDP was about 2% of the global total. It has now recovered to some 10%. Over those recent centuries, India was not an underdeveloped country but one that had been underdeveloped, as a process, by the yoke of British dictatorship. Here I disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich; this is not ancient history. If you talk to Indian officials and people, this is very much part of the reality of how they see their relationship with the UK today.

Even in recent years, our relationship with India—its Government and people—has not always been smooth. I have appeared on Indian national television only once, in a debate show that I was told had many tens of millions of people watching it in primetime. This was back in 2013 when, under the coalition Government, the UK planned a disgraceful £2,000 visa bond policy that was levied in an utterly discriminatory way on visitors from India, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Rather oddly, I was the closest thing to a representative of the UK Government on the show. I had rather a torrid time, with Indians—including businesspeople with very large investments in the UK—understandably expressing their anger at this policy, which was an early attempt at the culture war hostile environment that we have seen so much more of in years since. That I was saying the Green Party opposed the policy really did not help much, because I am afraid there was not much sign elsewhere in British politics of opposition to the visa bond.

I reflect on that now because reading the Government’s documents and seeing their approach I do not see much sign of a sense of humility, of historical understanding or of the kind of respect that we need to see to establish a future equal, mutually beneficial relationship. As a number of noble Lords have said, it is impossible just to pull money out of the equation and say, “This is only economics and money”. We have to look at the whole geopolitical framework, and that involves history, the present and the future. The poverty, the human rights abuses and the destruction of Indian industries and communities that are the legacy of the Raj still have huge impacts today, and for all the lip service paid in the strategic approach to human rights, gender and workers’ rights, there is very little sign, as other noble Lords have said, of the practical delivery of such returns from our current trading approaches or plans.

We live in a world of globalised, frenzied trade which has delivered huge profits for a few while the rest of us have paid with poverty, exploitation and huge externalised costs to the climate and the environment. That is the story of trade for the UK. It is the story of trade for India, and the story of trade for the world. We need a different approach, and this is where I agree with the International Agreements Committee about the need for democracy. What we need from the Government is a trade policy covering our approach to all countries that receives proper, full democratic scrutiny. As the very useful WWF briefing for this debate highlights, the lack of scrutiny of free trade agreements and our overall policy may put the Government at risk of breaking their commitments under the Aarhus convention, which means that legislation with environmental impacts should receive meaningful public consultation before it is implemented.

My concerns lie particularly, as noble Lords might expect, with climate, environment and social justice, as well as with the crucial issue of tackling corruption. With the City of London being the global centre of corruption, freeing up trade in services risks exporting our problems to India, enhancing the issues that that nation already has.

Turning to environmental issues, it is interesting to take a case study. The Government’s documents and the committee’s report clearly foresee real advantages and potential for growth for the Indian garment industry in exporting to the UK. That has to be an area of great environmental and social justice concern. If we look at the environmental issues, the UK today by volume sells twice the amount of clothes that were sold in the UK 10 years ago. Do we really need more clothes, more waste and more plastic pollution? Do we really need this kind of industry that is so often built on, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, made out so clearly, extreme labour exploitation of women, particularly young women?

In the interests of being positive, I am going to highlight one aspect of the Government’s approach that I am pleased to see, which is that there is at least a mention of antimicrobial resistance. I should perhaps warn the Committee that I intend to make this a focus of my work in the next year, so noble Lords will hear a great deal more on this issue from me. I would like a much stronger focus on a one-health approach which ties together the human, veterinary and environmental aspects of health. Both our nations face significant challenges in these areas. This helps to highlight why this narrow approach on trade and economics is a problem. We need to take a systems-thinking, holistic approach to how we can co-operate and work together to tackle our joint problems.

I come back to the points on which I certainly disagree with the committee, and probably with the Government, on the investor-state dispute settlement procedures. Here I also disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as I have before and will probably often do so again. In this context, I note that, disgracefully, a British company recently won $190 million in compensation from the Italian Government, who had taken environmental measures to protect both their own population and the global climate. The Italian Government blocked oil drilling from 12 miles off their shores. Under the energy charter treaty—a subject of growing controversy—using an ISDS procedure and no-win no-fee lawyers, the British developer Rockhopper won $190 million. That was eight times the amount it had invested.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently warned that ISDS risks a “regulatory chill”, which will stop Governments taking the essential steps they need to on environmental issues. One study in the journal Science found that Governments could be liable for up to $340 billion of payouts through ISDSs for taking the environmental measures we all need. This is clearly extremely dangerous and deeply undemocratic.

I will also comment briefly on the considerable discussion there has been on the barriers to trade within Indian states and the difficulties in dealing with them. This is democratic decision-making. They are democratic governments—they are perhaps not always perfectly democratic, but then ours is not either—making decisions for their people. What right do we have to drive a cart and horses through those democratic decisions?

I will finish by reflecting on the alternatives on this. How might we focus on co-operation and working together, rather than looking at the narrow financial advantage, to tackle the issues we need to? I go back to history. Through the 20th century, particularly in the work of the Institute of Plant Industry in Indore, there was a great deal of understanding of the importance of soil health and the use of green and animal manures. Research was carried out there that was transported to the Soil Association in the UK, which now increasingly informs thoughts and scientific research in the UK about the future of protecting our soil, which the NFU and many others will acknowledge. This two-way exchange of knowledge, ideas and research is the kind of exchange on which we need to focus.

In thinking about that and putting it in this model, I drew the attention of the previous Government to how we might look at trade differently, as fair trade and co-operation rather than free trade that benefits the few. In 2019, Costa Rica, Fiji, Iceland, New Zealand and Norway announced the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability, which aimed to slash the barriers on trade in environmental goods and services, to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and to encourage voluntary eco-labelling programmes and mechanisms that could go across international arenas. It is based on a commitment to achieving environmental outcomes, not just to increasing export volumes.

The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, brought up Scotland. As we speak, Scotland is announcing what looks like an impressive programme for government. I am proud of the contributions that Green Ministers have made to that programme. I would welcome the chance to discuss more ways in which we might green Britain’s trade policy. The models are out there; we just need to adopt them.