Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Iain Duncan Smith

Report stage
Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I enjoy the idea that my hon. Friend puts such trust in Government never to take other arrangements into consideration. We know how that works. It will be fine today with my right hon. Friend the Minister here, but there may be others in charge in future, and I am not sure I would always want to rest my defence in Ministers.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for this new clause. Was he as surprised as I was that when we asked the Secretary of State whether she would block China’s accession to CPTPP she was unable to give us an unequivocal answer?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I think the right hon. Gentleman makes my point. I sat in Government and all I can say to him is that one cannot always say that Ministers will necessarily do the right thing; rather, they will do the right thing by the Government, which is sometimes not the same. I do not mean to cast aspersions on my party’s Government by any means, but that has happened in the past. I simply want to make the point that China’s potential accession has huge implications for all sorts of things, including because of its immense economic and political influence in the region and the pressures on the UK if we were almost isolated in our observations.

China is not a likeminded party—there may be other countries that are rather similar. It openly seeks to revise the liberal, open and rules-based order and establish itself as a regional hegemon. If admitted, it would be the largest economy and dominant economic and trading partner in the CPTPP, with unrivalled political influence. It could block a future US entry. As we join it is important for us to make way for the US and bring it in, which will help in a whole range of areas. China’s accession would help to cement Beijing’s desired leadership in global trade. I will remind the House that China is next up for the CPTPP, so this is not something conjured up.

China’s entry also risks further increasing economic dependence on it, which is already too high, and building resilience into the Chinese economy to weather sanctioning should tensions over Taiwan escalate, which they almost certainly will. That would run counter to the UK’s strategic efforts to de-risk and maintain the status quo in the region. Serious human rights abuses are and continue to be embedded within Chinese supply chains. China is the most egregious offender in this regard, with its actions on religion in Xinjiang and in Tibet, where slave labour is also practised. Slave labour undercuts the World Trade Organisation and normal trade. Those are good commercial reasons why the membership of any country with the views China happens to have would have a real impact.

China’s accession is unlikely to drive economic reform in the country. There is no political ability to drive such reform under President Xi, who has moved China further away from the spirit of the CPTPP on labour rights protections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is, although I cannot follow my hon. Friend through Lithuania and the atolls of the far east, because I would be ruled out of order by the Chair. I hope he will forgive me, but he makes a strong point.

I say gently to the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), that it was a Labour Member, Lord Leong, who tabled the amendment in Committee in the Lords. Labour said that it would whip for the amendment if it were reworked to not mention China. Strangely, the new clause does not mention China, so I would have hoped that Labour would support it, but it does not. I understand that Labour has tabled its own new clause.

Parliament should be able to make its voice heard on a matter of such national significance. The new clause does not overturn constitutional conventions by a long way. Having a report, a debate and a non-binding vote would not determine Government policy, but it would determine the House’s view on the elements of this particular trade deal. I note that Opposition new clause 4 also seeks to look at this, but there are other issues that I will not bring up now.

There are elements in the Government who believe that debate is not a bad thing, because it allows them to make their case for why such a trade deal is important. I urge the Government to be positive about this, because being positive about debate in the House of Commons is a restatement of democracy. It allows people to decide whether they agree. More importantly, this is about accession. If those who follow us in seeking to join the treaty are defined as a threat, as they are in the review, that will at least inform the Government. It will also allow the House to pressure the Government over its real concern about what they might be doing. In future, a Government from either side of the House or of whatever form may choose, under pressure from China over economic issues, to let it accede to the treaty. Who knows? I do not say that that is the mood, but it is for Back Benchers to make their point about what the Government should do and for them to take note. In that regard, I commend my new clause to the House.

[Liam Byrne]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I will speak in support of new clause 1, which he tabled, as well as the new clauses tabled in the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

I welcome this debate and the new clauses and amendments that have been tabled, but I lament the fact that we have not been permitted a full debate on the treaty—something the right hon. Gentleman argued for very eloquently. We needed a debate today not merely on the three chapters of the CPTPP covered by the Bill, but on the full 30 chapters of the treaty, with all the associated annexes and bits of analysis and argument.

I do not want to detain the House for very long, because the Business and Trade Committee went to the length of writing and publishing a report earlier this year. However, I want to underline the point about the lack of scrutiny. Of course, it was the Government themselves, in the Grimstone rule, who said that no new free trade agreements would be ratified by His Majesty’s Government without a full debate on whether we should agree to them. When I asked the Secretary of State on 23 January whether she would agree to a debate under the terms of the CRaG process, she said she would be “happy to support” such a debate. Her officials then wrote to the Clerks on the Select Committee to say that such a debate had been requested, only to be told by the Leader of the House that no time was available. The Leader of the House confirmed that in writing to me last week in a letter in which she said:

“it has not been possible to find time for a debate in Government time.”

The House of Lords is having a debate on the treaty today on the recommendation of the International Agreements Committee, so why can’t we? Are we second-class representatives in this House? Are we unqualified to have a debate on all 30 chapters of the treaty? Are we not qualified to speak, on behalf of the people we came into public life to represent, about how the treaty will affect their future? I think we are. I think we should have a debate on the full treaty.

And I cannot believe that we are out of time. Members will have seen the report in the Financial Times last week, which said that the working day in this Chamber

“has been shorter on average this parliamentary session than in any other in the past quarter century”.

Are we seriously saying that we have not been able to find time for a debate, which it is the Government’s policy to support, on one of the only free trade agreements that His Majesty’s Government have been able to bring forward since we left the European Union?

On Twitter, the Minister—I am a keen follower of the Minister on Twitter, he will be pleased to hear—said last week that there have been four parliamentary debates on the treaty, but I wonder if he is sure about that. When I asked the Clerks on the Select Committee to check that, they were left scratching their heads a little bit. They could not find all four that the Minister referred to. We have to accept that there is no shortage of controversy in the Bill, not least because the Secretary of State herself resiled from the figures that describe the benefits of the treaty to the country.

Illicit Finance: War in Ukraine

Debate between Liam Byrne and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate and on having spoken so clearly and passionately.

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). As he knows, we have been following each other for some time over the past few years—actually I wish to rephrase that; this is not a stalking issue, but it could be seen to be something similar to that in a political context. It is good to follow him on this particular subject because he speaks a lot of common sense. I wish to go back to the last section of his remarks, which deal with seizure and the debate that is going on about that.

First, though, in response to the opening remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, it is hugely welcome that NATO membership has now expanded on the northern frontier. That is very important. It sends a strong message to Russia. Russian aggression has always been there below the surface. Sometimes it boiled over into remarks, but we always ignored it. The tendency of democracies and believers in freedom, freedom of speech and human rights is, sadly, too often to deal with countries on the basis of how they wish they were, rather than on the basis of what they are telling us what they are and what they will do. It happened in the 1930s. We ignored the nature of “Mein Kampf” and Hitler’s clear objectives, which he laid out endlessly. We kept saying that only one more step would satisfy that dictator and that he would be fine; it would not be a problem. But in fact, the more we gave him, the more he determined on and we ended up in a war. Appeasement did not work. It does not work here. And 60 million people died directly as a result of our failure to understand that, when dictators tell us what they are about to do, it is always good to recognise that they are actually sending us a signal, not wishing for something else.

That has happened here with Russia. Russia made it very clear what it was going to do, right the way from South Ossetia to the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. These were very clear first steps in telling us that Greater Russia was on the move and was an objective of Putin, not just an idea. On the Minsk agreements, I remember sitting in Cabinet on this. I am not saying I was ahead of anyone else, but I remember saying, “How many of us here are really worried about the fact that there is an agreement now granting the right for Russia to sit on territory that it has invaded and occupied?” Everybody shrugged slightly and said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about it.” That, of course, was the signal to Putin that we were not prepared to stand up. That first phase only established for him the entirety of his project and its feasibility, and then there was the constant supply of weapons and the terrible shooting down of the airliner. Those were all constant steps, telling us the direction and that he was testing us. Every time he tested us, he succeeded: we backed down and did nothing. The result has been this final full invasion—or attempted invasion—of Ukraine.

In that context, I am slightly sorry that NATO was not able to send Ukraine a stronger signal about its future with regards to NATO. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex in that I applaud much of what the NATO-Ukraine Council did and think it is an excellent start, but I think we could have been more positive. America and Germany particularly stood in the way of the general mood of the council to offer more to Ukraine. I know that we probably could not have brought Ukraine in immediately, but everyone harped on about article 5 being the problem because it committed people to go to war. It does no such thing, by the way; it is always worth reading these things before pronouncing on them. Article 5 does not commit the nations in NATO to go directly to war. It commits them to agree together to take action as they deem “necessary”. Simply put, it is quite important that it is not an absolute: the declaration of a war against one is a war against all is then followed by actions as deemed necessary in nations. That means that, by and large, we will probably come together and do that, but it does not mean that we would have to be at war in Ukraine. We could have offered that relationship, and reading the article tells me that that is the case.

I commend the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in all this, as I commend the UK’s leadership. The beauty is that the Government and Prime Ministers have led the way on the issue in so many ways, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned. The good news, of course, is that this House has not been divided on any of it. The House has sent a strong signal that Parliament stands by those in Ukraine and by the Government’s actions in trying to support them. That is very important because it is not always the case; in America, it is not necessarily the case at the moment. This Parliament has stood head and shoulders among most others, and it is because of that that we have been able to lead in terms of equipment, support, and recommendations with regards to NATO. The UK is influential in these matters and long may it remain so.

I return to the question raised by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill: how do we deal with Ukraine’s aftermath? Right now, there is a debate taking place about frozen assets. We have frozen the private assets of some oligarchs and we have frozen the Russian national Government’s assets here in the UK, in America, in Canada and in various other nations through their markets. It is quite an interesting debate, though. We can certainly seize private assets, although even that has been debated—but it is quite clear that under international law it is wholly feasible for us to do so—but the real debate begins when it comes to very extensive Russian national assets that are now just sitting there. How can we deal with those? It is not the case that doing this immediately opens the door to the Chinese and others to seize our assets should they wish to. There are a number of arguments, which I will quickly run through.

There are a number of routes around the problem of sovereign immunity in relation to claims against Russia for its conduct in the war and an attempt to obtain access to those assets. Customary international law permits the imposition of sanctions and restraint of assets in furtherance of international peace and security and legitimate foreign policy objectives. That means that, if asset-freezing measures are failing to achieve those aims, it would seem—this is important—very permissible in principle for measures of seizure to be adopted as a necessary and proportionate next step. They are not ruled out; they are by a natural extension. We must view international law as a movable process that is not set in stone. It has always been capable to shift international law by what nations agree. This is an important, feasible point. States are obliged under international law to take all necessary and proportionate steps to bring an end to a breach of peremptory norms of international law. That is important, because it sets the tone for why we may look at this carefully.

[Liam Byrne]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Is he as perplexed as I am about why NATO allies have not sought to bring forward, for example, a motion at the United Nations that could help to crystallise that change in norms? If we are to effect, for example, the interpretation of immunity laws, he is absolutely right that norms need to change. One way to do that is through a vote at the United Nations, which I would have thought we could win.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree; we are probably all going to agree. We have talked about the military alliance, but now we are in the realms of the economic alliance, because that is really where we win the peace. We may yet win the war, but that is no good if we leave behind a shell of a country that is incapable of operation, democracy or even economic wellbeing. Winning the peace is as vital, and we need to be planning for it now; they did that during the second world war. It is worth reminding ourselves that by the end of that war, they were very clear about what they were going to do.

Whether it is NATO, an alliance, the G7 or whoever, it is important that we form a bloc on these matters and agree, although I know there is a little resistance to that elsewhere. Furthermore, I believe that international law is not fixed, but is capable of development. Although the leadership of the UN Security Council is foreclosed because of Russia’s power of veto, there could be sufficient development to allow adjustment of the boundaries of state immunity in customary international law to allow enforcement of such international awards. For example, international law permits state assets to be frozen without any international court’s adjudication. We did not need permission for it; we did it. The reason it is done is because an action has taken place. International law could be developed to allow seizure pursuant to such adjudication.

The UN General Assembly has already adopted a resolution calling on Russia to pay reparations, and there is no reason why regional bodies such as the EU or the Council of Europe—not just NATO, but other bodies that could come together and do this—could not adopt specific resolutions providing a pathway to compensation and enforcement. That point was also made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill.

Frankly, there would appear to be no obstacle in international law to a state that imposes sanctions on Russian assets making it a condition for release of those sanctions that the Russian state honour any award made by the International Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights. This is another route that allows us to sanction Russia; if they fail to meet their requirements under the sanction, we simply seize their existing assets in balance with the sanctioning that was necessary. Overall, for those and many other reasons, the details of which I will not go through now, I think there is more scope for sanctioning.

It was Lord Bingham who said that the public policy consideration that had greatest claim on the loyalty of the law—this is really important—was that where there was a wrong, there should be a remedy. We must always be governed by that in law. That is why I believe it is wholly feasible for us now to start the process by which we may undertake the pathway to the potential seizure or subsequent seizure of Russian assets for reparations.

I will conclude by mentioning, as I did in a previous question to the Prime Minister, that I came back a few days ago from Ukraine. It was a privilege to be there, working with a remarkable charity that I have now supported twice in Ukraine, called Siobhan’s Trust, which—in a classically British kind of way—just set off when Russia invaded Ukraine and went towards the danger. The people from that charity have been feeding those dispossessed of their properties and fleeing the war. They moved into Ukraine and have now moved down near the frontline, and they feed people there from pizza trucks. They have made over 1 million pizzas for people in Ukraine, and they produce joy and hope in people’s hearts when they are there, as they wear what they call Ukrainian kilts and they put the boombox on. People’s faces really lift when they see this peculiarly quixotic British crowd—who seem impervious to the idea that they are within the range of shell shot—having fun; it lifts their spirits and brings them great hope.

The thing I discovered while I was out there, and the one thing I know from having served, is that war is terrible. War is horrendous. War hurts those who are not directly involved in it—more, perhaps, than those who are. It is a terrible, terrible affair, to be avoided at almost all costs, except when justice must prevail. However, talking to the military and to some of the guys I saw down there near the front about their problems and issues, I must say to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill that we still have so much more to do.

Ukraine is the frontline of NATO. There is no beating about the bush: if Ukraine fails on this, we all fail, and the repercussions, as the right hon. Gentleman said, will be terrible. Ukraine’s war is already our war, whether we give it membership of NATO or not. It is our war. We started that when, much to Putin’s shock, we stood by what we said we would do.

The war in Ukraine has exposed our own failure to understand what war fighting really means. The truth is that almost all of us in NATO have abandoned the idea of the sheer extent of a full-scale war. When I talked to the Ukrainian soldiers, the amount of ammunition they told me they use on a daily basis is astonishing. We have forgotten that, so we do not have stockpiles appropriate to fighting war, and we have to replenish those in double-quick time, because they need that ammunition. They are running short of artillery ammunition, not because we do not want to give it to them, but because so many of us do not have enough artillery ammunition to give them right now, having placed contracts only recently. America, by and large, has many more stockpiles than we do, but it is a fact of life that if we wish to avoid war, we must prepare for it, and we simply have not prepared for it over the years to the extent we needed to.

The Ukrainians need that support. They need training; many of their soldiers get two or three weeks’ training and then they are on the frontline. I swear to God, having been a soldier myself, that it takes a long time to understand proper fieldcraft, and the less someone knows, the more likely they are to be wounded or killed, because they will take the wrong decisions. I will not say exactly what is required, but I must talk to the Government about what they could do. Ukraine also faces conscription issues.

The reality is that Ukraine must win this war, but it needs us to be literally, as Roosevelt once said, the “arsenal of democracy”. It is for us who are not on the frontline to supply those who are, so that they may achieve their goal of victory. With victory comes the second phase of reparations and restoration. We must be in that right to the finish, for if Ukraine fails first in the war, or fails subsequently in the peace, we will carry the blame for it, and rightly so. We will never be forgiven. I simply say to my right hon. Friend at the Dispatch Box, “This is our war. We must win it with them, or else we will all lose.”

Russian Assets: Seizure

Debate between Liam Byrne and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Of course, I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. Interestingly, if we manage to criminalise the failure to disclose sanctioned assets, we are halfway there on his point, because they cannot then escape. If we prove that sanctions evasion is taking place, this can be the basis for asset recovery in due course; we would then have a reason why we should be doing this, not just because of the criminal purpose, but for the fact that we would actually be able to gain funds.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Is he as worried as I am about this new trick that the Treasury is performing called “general licences”? There are now whole categories of spending where the Treasury is basically issuing carte blanche to oligarchs to spend what they like and, worse, it is refusing to reveal that framework to us here in this House.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman; this is beginning to sound like one of those “golden visas”. It was golden in description, but dirty and leaden in reality, and I think this is where we are again. We are going to find us all in agreement—