Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Main Page: Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Labour - Life peer)Australia Free Trade Agreement
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
That this House takes note of the Free Trade Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Australia, laid before the House on 15 June.
Relevant document: 4th Report from the International Agreements Committee (special attention drawn to the agreement)
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank and pay tribute to the very recent Trade Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who worked very closely and openly with the committee, not just to facilitate our access to documents and briefings and to answer our many questions, but to negotiate within Whitehall that very welcome exchange of letters on how future trade deals will be handled. Of course, his resignation, rather different from the other 60, except for that of the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, took place on Friday, and was not to get rid of Prime Minister Johnson but was a result of Mr Johnson’s leaving. In the Lords, we always do something a little different.
Having gone through four Ministers when I was dealing with Brexit on the Front Bench, and having now lost a Trade Minister in my new role, I am beginning to take this slightly personally. However, I welcome the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, to the wicket. I hope that he found time during the Wimbledon finals—sorry, Australia—to peruse the 2,000-page document on the Australia deal, and that “team Grimstone” will be there to help him answer our many questions.
This debate is important for three reasons. First, and most obviously, it is the first time that this House has debated a new, post-Brexit trade deal which is not just a rollover from our EU days but is a from-scratch, non-European trade agreement. Secondly, it gives the House a chance to consider the deal within the Government’s wider diplomatic, defence, foreign affairs, environmental and domestic objectives—at least, it would be good to debate it within that context if only the Government had set out a trade policy which went wider and beyond the nebulous “global Britain”, which is simply about more trade. Thirdly, again from it being a novel agreement, and the first since 1973 for which our Government have had responsibility and come to our committee, it gives the House the opportunity to consider whether our ability and our powers to scrutinise negotiating objectives and the resultant deal are sufficient for the task given to us.
Beginning with the first of those points, the actual deal: how do we assess it? The International Agreements Committee welcomes the agreement, especially the provisions facilitating trade in services, including financial and legal services; mobility; digital; consumer protection; and its support for SMEs. In particular, improved mobility for UK professionals seeking to work in Australia, a new framework on mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and the ban on data localisation, are all likely to be beneficial. We note, as the Government acknowledge, that the expectations of increased trade are not enormous—0.08% of GDP by 2035—and only very slight in goods, given that existing Australian tariffs are already very low.
However, the deal has other advantages, not least in helping pave the way for the UK’s potential entrance into the CPTPP. It was right for the Government to prioritise Australia as a segue into that. However, we queried whether the desire for speed reduced the chance of obtaining more from the negotiations, and we highlighted the fears of many in our farming communities, particularly in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, that they may have been sold short, with safeguards for their produce insufficient for the new competition they could face, particularly given the differences in Australian farming practices.
It is true that Australia’s focus on Asia might mean that our farmers will be insulated from competition from this deal, but there is a fear that the unconditional approach to removing agricultural tariffs could set a precedent. If a similar approach with the US, Brazil or Argentina had a cumulative effect, it could be damaging to our farmers and our wider agri-food sector. Although the TAC and the FSA/FSS—food standards and all of that—did not raise any significant worries about food standards and safety, the impact of increased competition on vulnerable farming communities remains of concern.
More time in negotiating might also have enabled our negotiators to obtain more on climate than is in the deal with what is now, of course, the former Australian Government. Given that the new premier and his Government are far more sympathetic to tackling climate change, we have urged Ministers to seek more ambitious moves in this direction through the joint committee set up under the deal. More generally, the desire for a quick result, and with a trusted ally, might have led to Australia’s very clear trade objectives and focus giving them a better deal than perhaps we could have obtained.
I turn to my second point. Given that this is the first deal negotiated from scratch, it provides an insight into the Government’s vision for post-Brexit trade. However, the committee finds it regrettable that the agreement cannot be placed in the context of a published trade policy and thus be understood in relation to other policy priorities, such as on climate, or in line with our diplomatic or defence alignments, or indeed with the Government’s own desire to safeguard their right to regulate for public policy reasons, including the promotion of public health and morals.
Since all trade deals involve trade-offs and compromises, Parliament needs to be able to judge the outcome of any FTA against the Government’s overall objectives, but these need to be set out in an agreed policy with Parliament and made publicly available. We asked Ministers a year ago to set out their ambitions for trade in this new era. Without such a framework, Parliament cannot judge the success or otherwise of a trade agreement. The Government demurred, leaving us scratching our heads as to the extent to which any outcome meets the Government’s wider objectives for their trading partnerships.
This may not matter so much with Australia—it is a friendly nation and a close ally, with which we already have extensive and pretty much free trade—but not all future deals will look like this. Following the invasion of Ukraine, with its impact on global security, food security, supply chains and vulnerabilities, just-in-time processes, our environmental commitments, and the need for strong, resilient relations with friendly states, such an overarching framework is even more urgent. Furthermore, as Russia, perhaps alongside China, has devalued any commitment to a rules-based global order, on trade or anything else, the UK needs to ground its trading and international relations firmly in a trusted, ordered and rules-based environment. That is what we need the Government to spell out.
Our committee is not alone in seeking a proper trade framework. The International Chamber of Commerce says that the UK has an opportunity to design a trade policy that creates an economy that is prosperous, fair and green. It should not be difficult for Ministers to lay out their trade ambitions, acknowledging their wider global objectives. Much is scattered around among various official documents listing the Government’s commitment to universal human rights, the rule of law, fairness and equality as guiding
“all aspects of our international policy, including our approach to trade”
—so they say it sometimes, but not in that framework. Indeed, the DIT’s strategic approach for a deal with Mexico highlights its commitment
“to uphold … high environmental, labour, public health, food safety and animal welfare standards”
and the interests of “consumers, producers, and businesses”.
Given the annunciations emanating from Anne-Marie Trevelyan, why the resistance to publishing the objectives and red lines as a trade policy? Such a benchmark would help us understand how the emerging agreements with individual American states, such as the one with Indiana, and those with India and the Gulf fit into the picture and embed respect for human rights and the environment within them. Without a trade policy against which we can rank any deal, what exactly are we are meant to conclude?
Thirdly and lastly, in this new trading environment is our committee, on behalf of the House, able to scrutinise trade deals effectively? The answer is yes and no. In the case of Australia, the Government gave us three months with those 2,000-odd pages—delivered to me on Boxing Day—to study, take evidence and report, but the Act requires only 21 sitting days. That is impossible for any trade deal. We would like the Minister to give us an assurance that months, rather than days, will be available to us to do the job we have been given.
In addition, we are uncomfortable as to whether the devolved Governments have sufficient input into trade agreements that impinge on their competences. We also lack environmental impact assessments. Indeed, we do not have sufficiently granular impact assessments even to judge the Government’s projected outcomes, let alone to test these against other data or to hear from independent analysts of the likely impacts.
Above all, of course, the Lords can only opine on a deal. Even the Commons can only delay ratification. This is far less traction than the European Parliament, the US Congress or other legislatures have. Yet if parliamentarians are excluded from greater oversight of agreements with major impact on people’s lives, we risk worsening public concerns about trade impacting negatively on some sections of society. If we believe in free and increased trade, as we do, any lack of trust in it cannot be a good thing.
While we welcome the Grimstone rules and the Grimstone commitment to a debate on negotiating objectives, which we saw in action on CPTPP and expect to have with our report on India, that offer came too late for this set of negotiations. We hope to have greater input in future. We are delighted that this first opportunity to report to the House is on a deal with a friendly, reliable ally and that the agreement, with some hiccups, is one we can endorse. I thank our committee and secretariat for the amazing work they have done on this, and the witnesses for their input and insight. I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for batting at such late notice, and I thank all speakers—especially the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, and the noble Lords, Lord Oates, Lord Kerr, Lord Morris and Lord Udny-Lister, who serve on the committee, and indeed the former member, the noble Lord, Lord Robathan. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and I are in competition for how many ministerial scalps we have taken but he has not had a member of the committee resigning before the chair took her place for the first time. The noble Lord’s place was, of course, taken by the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, but very sadly he is going to be leaving this House. I take this opportunity to thank both noble Lords for the time they spent on the committee.
I will not try to cover the whole debate; the Minister has tried his best. I think it is true to say that there was broad support for this deal, although the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, it is “no big deal”. “It could have been so much better”, said my noble friend Lady Liddell and “cautious” said the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, of her approach. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was perhaps less kind as he said it is “not that huge” and it gave away a lot for services, I think he said, with not a lot in return. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said he supported it but was not blind to its inadequacies, and that sums up what our committee was saying: there are some inadequacies. My noble friend Lord McNicol said the fear was that the price of speed meant that it was at the cost of quality—they may not have been quite his words, but I think that was the spirit of it.
Clearly, agriculture is the big divide. The consumers, as some have said, will benefit—I thought the Minister was scraping the barrel to talk about biscuits as the great “up” that was going to come. But there are undoubtedly worries on the agriculture side about standards and about the impact, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, on our communities. Agriculture is not just like any other good; it is about communities, it is about support for a way of life, and it seems to me, and maybe the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said this, that had the DAs been involved all the way through, greater sensitivity to that might have achieved something that would have led to fewer worries. I think the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, basically was asking a very broad question about whether the remit of the TAC was too narrow, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked whether earlier scrutiny would have helped.
The environment was mentioned by a number of speakers: the noble Lords, Lord Oates, Lord Liddle and Lord McNicol, and the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, along with a number of others, on a range of issues on which more should have been got. My noble friend Lord Morris says that he hopes the new Government will use the context of the joint committee to move further on some of those shortfalls on the environment. As the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, reminded us, there is not just a new Government over there but we are about to have one over here—let us hope that the combination of those two move forward.
Finally, on the broader issue of scrutiny—to which we are going to have to return as a House, I think—the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said that we can debate only when we can do nothing about it, and the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, asked whether even the way we are doing it is sufficient. I think there is something really important about this; it is how trade fits into our security, our defence, our foreign affairs and our development, as well as our domestic agenda. But just looking at trade itself, what is it that this Government want? We just saw a wonderful example of it. We were asked about standards by my noble friend Lord McNicol, and others, but I thought one of the most interesting exchanges was between my noble friend Lord Liddle and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, about CPTTP. If this is the push for this particular agreement. and we hear there may be real questions about that Pacific tilt—some very supportive and some asking whether we have really thought about this—surely that is a debate that should take place in this Chamber, but it is also a debate that should take place and be on the record from the point of view of government. It is so important, not just how for trade fits into other things but on whether we have the right focus for trade.
Therefore, although this debate was about the particular deal with Australia and, as I said at the beginning, perhaps it is good that it was with a friendly ally with whom we do much work already, it has raised some very broad issues, both for the Government and for this House. For the moment, I thank everyone who has contributed, and I beg to move.