Trade Bill

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I will not be following the same line of argument as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I remind noble Lords that the majority of the amendments in this group apply only to regulations made under Clause 2, which applies to continuity agreements only. All noble Lords who have the bogeyman of a trade deal with the United States in their minds when they make their speeches are barking up the wrong tree. These amendments would have nothing whatever to do with any trade treaty outside the continuity agreements.

This feels like Groundhog Day. Having just come through the Agriculture Bill, I see the same people making the same arguments. I have this nightmare that in every Bill going forward, for ever, the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and a number of other noble Lords will be popping up with amendments in virtually the same form, whatever the basic content of the Bill, if they have half a chance of squeezing them into the long title.

These amendments go beyond food standards and all those things that so many impassioned words have been said about already into how food is produced. Noble Lords will be aware that, under WTO rules—they are our future in trading terms, if not our past—it is not allowed to mention food production methods without a scientific basis. That is one reason why the EU, and therefore the UK, has been in contravention of WTO rules. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are now living in the post-EU world where the WTO will be extremely important to us. I hope that my noble friend Lord Trenchard, who knows much more about the WTO than I do, will amplify that when he speaks later.

The noble Lords who have spoken know perfectly well what the UK Government’s stated policy is in relation to the standards that they are keen to see adopted in the way that the Government pursue business. UK law is aligned with EU law by virtue of retained law, so whatever trade agreements are entered into, it is not possible to import, for example, hormone-treated beef into the UK—even though there is actually no scientific basis for that, certainly on food safety grounds. Treaties do not and cannot change UK law. As I have said before, we do not customarily write every government policy into legislation. That would create a very cumbersome way of building up legislation.

Noble Lords have remarked in various ways how they think these policies need to be written into the Bill because they do not trust the Government or think that the Government are not sufficiently persuasive. They have often accompanied those remarks with a number of insults about either the Prime Minister or the Government in general. I have to say, it is not the approach of any Government involved in legislating to write into legislation things that appear to upset noble Lords on the Opposition Benches, or even on the Cross Benches. Noble Lords will be aware that, even if we wrote it into the Bill, it could easily be changed if the Government sought to change it in later legislation and Parliament agreed to that. As has already been mentioned, the straightforward electoral arithmetic now means that, with a majority of 80 in the other place, the Government’s policy can change. If we try to put anything into this Bill, it does not necessarily determine government policy for ever and a day, which is what noble Lords are trying to do.

The amendments in this group are not necessary and are, I believe, a waste of legislative time. I would fully expect the other place to reject them if they were pursued and passed on Report. I will speak in specific terms about one amendment only: Amendment 23. A number of noble Lords have referred to it as representing some kind of glorious compromise around the time of the previous Trade Bill. I will speak to it because my noble friend Lord Grimstone, the Minister, was not here at that time. He will have not been aware of the circumstances in which that amendment was put into the Bill.

We have to remember that, at that time, Parliament was barely functioning. It was more focused on resisting any form of Brexit in any way possible. Getting the Trade Bill through the House of Lords was an extremely difficult thing for my noble friend Lady Fairhead to try to achieve. Not to put it too mildly, the amendment that came forward was just an act of attempted appeasement to those noble Lords who were bent on obstructing anything related to Brexit. I say this to noble Lords: the world has changed. That amendment belonged in that era, and that era is behind us.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

My Lords, I plan to say a few words on Amendment 20, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I am also sympathetic to Amendments 23, 25 and 26.

Food production and environmental standards, as well as the safety that they enshrine, are crucial to a healthy agricultural sector that seeks to mitigate the dangers arising from poor practices and the low-quality products they produce. Ensuring continuity has been a big priority for a number of Members. Issues surrounding the responsible administration of antibiotics to livestock, for example, are not national issues but global public health ones. Despite the Bill covering existing trading arrangements, we should not forget that the raison d’être for leaving the European Union was the assertion of our sovereignty. It is therefore right that the existing arrangements, conducted while we were in the EU, ought to be scrutinised by the relevant departments to ensure that the UK does not inadvertently undermine measures to achieve reductions in the risk of disease or contamination—or, indeed, targets for antibiotic reduction.

This by no means seeks to discredit trading arrangements made while we were in the EU, which I am confident already abide by the regulations set forth in Amendment 20. However, the scrutiny put forward in this amendment will guarantee this and ensure that the UK reinstates its commitments to the environment, food standards and a safe and healthy agriculture sector globally through its existing trading partners. I look forward to hearing what reassurances the Minister can give us on this group of amendments, particularly on whether there is some way in which the broad drift of what many of them try to get at can be brought back in the hope that we do not have to table specific amendments on Report.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak to these amendments because I believe that each and every one of them is important—not least because of their implications as much as their substance, which matters a lot. After all, the legislation around which they are drafted was made entirely properly via the so-called community method, endorsed by Parliament during our membership of the European Union. As a result, they are as legitimate a piece of law as any domestic statute.

When we left the European Union, it was entirely sensible to slide the then acquis directly on to the domestic statute book and to add a provision enabling amendment by statutory instrument. After all, there is a need for all kinds of consequential adjustment. But it does not follow from this that they have to be amended by statutory instrument, merely that they can be. Equally, perhaps, they can as effectively be amended by Act of Parliament.

Clearly, too, when we left the European Union, the power that Parliament bestowed on the Union in respect of international agreements fell away. This means that such international agreements now again revolve around the use of the royal prerogative. However, as has been pointed out on many occasions, the character of the interdependent world in which we now live means that binding international commitments have a much bigger impact on this country than much domestic legislation, which of course is why the CRaG Act was put on the statute book. The reality is, as many people have pointed out, that the procedures under the CRaG Act are a shadow of substantive full parliamentary procedures in terms of scrutiny, checks and balances, transparency and so on, not least because the crucial international decisions are essentially completed before and not after UK parliamentary deliberation, and by then it is a bit late.

The reality of the world that we live in is that Parliament is given Hobson’s choice. In my mind, for serious, wide-ranging legislative change, that is very undesirable and comes about because of a congruence of our leaving the EU and the role of the royal prerogative. Its effect on legislators and the public is substantial in terms of diminution of their involvement, and scrutiny of what is going on. That is one thing for minor technicalities, but not for major policy changes.

The Government have argued this afternoon that they have made promises in respect of a whole range of these things. Of course they have, but, equally, it was interesting that the Chancellor said earlier today that he would try—I repeat, “try”—to deliver as many manifesto promises as he could. Already there is a bit of a let-out there. And let us be clear: it is not unheard of for Governments to change. After all, I think we have had four in the last five years and, dare I say it, sometimes promises are broken. While it is convenient for Ministers to have Parliament rubber-stamp their wishes, it is not Parliament’s role to do so. Rather, we should deliberate on and then accept, refuse or amend the Government’s proposals—and that is slightly different.

The bulk of the amendments in this group reinforce Parliament’s role in developing agricultural and/or food law. It is difficult to think of anything more important domestically than the quality, wholesomeness and origins of the food that we eat here, be it from the perspective of human physical and mental health, its impact on the NHS and public expenditure or its impact on land management and the environment across the country. In a properly organised world, I suggest that significant changes in respect of these matters merit full parliamentary scrutiny, and at least the amendment is a move in the right direction.

The environment and climate change are in the same category. After all, all carbon emissions, wherever they may originate, do not respect national boundaries, and the effect of excessive emissions, regardless of where they originate, is in general terms a bit like putting the whole globe into a microwave.

On top of all this, where proposed domestic change to ex-EU legislation involves breaches of international legislation—something which it is clear from the events of the last few weeks that the country does not like—I do not believe that the Government should be able to proceed towards that unless either the proper international withdrawal legal procedures have been followed or they have first had express parliamentary authority to proceed.

These amendments do not go as far as I would like, but they are a real step in the right direction.