Central America: Trade and Investment

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on securing this debate. It is a welcome and rare opportunity to debate a region of the world that is so often overlooked when it comes to foreign policy, trade, investment and security.

I recently returned from an IPU delegation to Mexico so I will focus my contribution on that country. Of course, I am aware that Mexico defines itself just as much as north as central America, although the term “Mesoamerica” encompasses Mexico as well as the central American countries. In addition, drug cartel activity and people trafficking from central America through Mexico en route to the US have implications for legitimate trade and investment. As His Majesty’s Government are currently engaged in negotiations on a free trade agreement with Mexico, a topic also covered in the helpful Library briefing for today’s debate, I hope noble Lords will agree that Mexico is relevant to this short debate. I have a number of questions for the Minister but, if he was not expecting to answer questions on Mexico today, I would be grateful if he might write to me in due course and place a copy in the Library.

First, I know that the second round of the UK-Mexico trade talks have been held but do the Government still expect them to be concluded by mid-2024, as originally announced? I ask this because I am aware that the Mexican ministry of economy has recently fired all its senior officials involved in the negotiations. Does that mean starting over again? What, if anything, does the Minister expect to be different with a completely new set of negotiators?

Secondly, and for me this is by far the most important point, I want to ask about the relationship between trade and investment and human rights. I ask the Minister to set out clearly the Government’s rationale for removing all consideration of a human rights clause from this free trade agreement, and indeed all such new agreements? The original FTA to which the UK was party as an EU member included a human rights clause, as did the continuity agreement. I for one was hoping that our bilateral agreement would go further and better than the merely declaratory clause that we had through the EU, and instead we would want to demonstrate our much-vaunted global leadership in this field and underpin the clause with a mechanism for monitoring and accountability. Sadly, on the contrary, it seems that no human rights clause will form part of the UK-Mexico FTA but that a separate, parallel human rights “dialogue” will take place. The trouble is that although we have already had two rounds of trade talks, the human rights dialogue has not even started and, as far as I know, no start date is in sight. Will the Minister please tell the House why not?

I am familiar with the standard line that establishing a free trade agreement then puts us in a better position to raise human rights concerns with new partners, but this seems a very weak chicken-and-egg sort of argument, and it clearly did not apply in any case when we were happy to include a human rights clause in our previous deals. A more robust and defensible stance would be that being up front on human rights would be a stronger incentive for trade and investment. At the very least, I would welcome a date for the start of a genuine human rights dialogue with Mexico, but I also hope that the Minister will agree to take this issue back and reconsider incorporating a human rights clause in the negotiations.

Should anyone be in any doubt, human rights in Mexico is a critical problem that needs an awful lot more than mere dialogue; it needs urgent action with strong international leverage behind it. Our embassy team in Mexico does sterling work, continuously raising human rights issues and individual cases and contributing to training and other technical assistance. Over 106,000 people are currently known to have disappeared in Mexico—“disappeared” is largely a euphemism for kidnapped and/or murdered. These are mainly journalists, human rights defenders and environmental and indigenous campaigners. Perpetrators enjoy almost complete impunity. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people, some of them having been forcibly removed by companies seeking access to natural resources.

This brings me to my next question: does the Minister have any information on whether any British companies are or have been involved in such displacement activity? What specific measures or programmes does the DIT have in place to ensure that UK companies doing, or hoping to do, business in Mexico comply with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, sometimes known as the Ruggie principles? On a related point, what happened to the Pacific Alliance, of which Mexico is a member and with which our Government have said in the past that they were committed to deepening our involvement? For example, do the UK Government still support what they used to call high value campaigns—HVCs—to support British companies in exporting and investing across the sectors where UK industry could add most value?

Finally, can the Minister update the House on what language and cultural support his department provides to UK companies looking to build export growth in central America and Mexico? How many DIT officials and negotiators are competent in Spanish, or are taking Spanish courses at the FCDO language centre?