Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Shinkwin

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Lansley. I, too, pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Alton for the way he has brought noble Lords together in support of the Muslim Uighur people and the crucial principle of our common humanity.

I have only two points to make. First, I am saddened by the Government’s position, because the genocide of the Muslim Uighur people cannot be swept under the carpet as the Government’s rejection of the amendment passed by your Lordships’ House implies. The reason is simple: to be able to sweep an issue under the carpet, one has first to be able to lift the carpet. The carpet is too heavy to lift, because it is saturated with the blood of the Muslim Uighur people, who, as we have heard, are being subjected to genocide by the Chinese Communist Party regime for the supposed crime of being Muslim.

Secondly, in a few weeks’ time, on 6 May, Muslims will vote in the local elections. I trust they, and all who care about human rights, will ask their candidates what their party is doing to stop the genocide of the Muslim Uighur people.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for joining the debate about three minutes late. I was in a minor road traffic accident with a slowly reversing delivery vehicle. While my chariot has a few scratches on it, I do not, so I live to fight another day.

I congratulate all Peers on the superb speeches we have heard yet again today, and I thank the Minister, who has been exemplary in his courtesy in dealing with us troublesome Peers making the amendments, for his patience in defending the Government’s position. But I simply do not understand why the Government I support, which are so robust on so many matters, are so lily-livered when it comes to China—or the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party, to be more precise.

As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, we all know and understand that we have to trade with China for the time being, because we get too many vital supplies from them, and we do not yet have sufficient alternative resources onshore. So it is legitimate to say, in the medium term, and possibly even in the long term, that we have to carry on trading; and calling China a trading partner is legitimate. But in this House, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has described China as a “strategic partner”—the terminology that we would usually use to describe a NATO ally, not a country behaving as China does.

What does China do? This so-called strategic partner of ours has destroyed what remains of democracy in Hong Kong and removed all human rights. It is stealing sand banks in the South China Sea and turning them into military bases. It is threatening all its near neighbours. It is increasingly flying armed aircraft sorties into Taiwan’s airspace. It is building up massive military forces capable of invading Taiwan in the future. It has lied and lied again about the origins of Covid. It has launched a trade war with Australia, which had the effrontery just to ask for an independent inquiry into the cause of Covid—something we have never done. It has a massive cyberwarfare capability and has used it against companies and government organisations of the United Kingdom. It is running concentration camps in Xinjiang province, with up to 1 million people detained. It has been accused of genocide by Canada, Holland and the United States.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said again in his excellent speech today, last week, more than 50 lawyers published a 25,000 page report stating that every single article in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide had been broken by the Communist Party in Xinjiang. These are not the actions of a strategic partner; these are the actions of a hostile state.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Blencathra and Lord Shinkwin

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that the failure to consult his committee provides further evidence, if any were needed, that those who most protest their allegiance to parliamentary democracy are actually doing the most to undermine it by ramming this Bill through your Lordships’ House in one day?

[Lord Blencathra]

My noble friend makes a fair point; I will leave him to make his own point in his own way later in today’s proceedings.

I do not wish to read the whole report, although it is very short and I will cut out the introductory paragraphs. The House might be interested if I cut to the chase. If I can do that, then I propose to not press my amendment to a vote.

We say in our report:

“In the Government’s original European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which became the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 … exit day was wholly a matter for regulations without any named date on the face of the Bill. The regulations were subject to no parliamentary procedure at all, whether of the negative or affirmative type. The Bill allowed Ministers to decide on exit day and set it out in law without recourse to Parliament. We objected to this, arguing for the affirmative procedure, meaning that both Houses were required to debate the regulations before they could be made. The principal reasons were the political and legal significance of the date that the UK left the EU, and the allied public interest in the matter. The Government accepted our recommendation.


The principal justification for clause 2 of this Bill is that it might be necessary to legislate at speed next week to change exit day. The affirmative procedure might cause delays, with the risk that exit day in domestic law might not be aligned with exit day agreed under EU law.


There is some force in this argument, but we are not convinced by it on grounds either of principle or pragmatism. The date of the UK’s exit from the EU remains a matter of the greatest political and legal significance. It is right that the matter be debated in Parliament before the current date of 12 April is changed in our domestic law. The Government have previously changed exit day from 29 March to 12 April, and they did so by a statutory instrument subject to the affirmative procedure. The Government have the time to do the same again, having afforded Parliament the scrutiny required by the 2018 Act. Negative resolution scrutiny is necessarily scrutiny after the event (that is, after exit day has already been changed in law). Scrutiny after the event is best avoided in a matter as significant as this, not least because the consequences of a successful prayer against the instrument would lead to the new exit day being legally invalidated (albeit with prospective effect only) perhaps some weeks after it has taken effect.


Clause 1 of the Bill would, in certain circumstances, give the House of Commons a vote on a proposed exit day at EU level, making it perhaps less pressing for them to have one on the consequential change to UK domestic law made by the relevant statutory instrument. But clause 1 does not apply to the House of Lords, meaning that the House of Lords would be prevented from participating in the process of approving a new exit day at EU level. It is correspondingly more important, therefore, that the House of Lords can scrutinise the relevant statutory instrument before it is made, rather than after the event, again arguing for the affirmative procedure (which is the current position). For the reasons set out above, we recommend that clause 2 should be removed from the Bill, thereby restoring the affirmative procedure to statutory instruments amending exit day”.


There you have it. I therefore urge the House to have Second Reading today, let us all—those in favour of it and those who disagree—study my committee’s report and come back to Committee, or a later stage, no later than Monday. That will give us a chance to table amendments implementing, if the House wishes, what my committee recommends. There is nothing in the Bill that justifies us casting aside the procedures we have followed for 27 years and ignoring the Delegated Powers Committee, which every Member of this House says does an excellent job.

I inherited a committee with an outstanding reputation and, not through any skill of mine, it still has an outstanding reputation. We are on a slippery slope if we decide to cast aside our procedures when we do not have to. Whenever we use the excuse of national emergency or crisis, we inevitably get bad legislation. The Bill may be perfectly okay or it could have unexpected consequences. It gives considerable power to the Prime Minister—in view of her work and behaviour over the last few weeks and months, is the House willing to give her that unfettered power? That is a decision only the House can make. Again, it is not what the Prime Minister says she will do but what the law would permit her to do that worries me and my committee.

Last night in another place, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU said of the Bill:

“There are problems with the speed of its passage, the constitutional principle of it and the way it will interact with any decision reached by the Council that differs from the earlier decision taken by the House. I hope that the constitutional experts in the other place will address some of the Bill’s flaws”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/4/19; col. 1146.]


I leave it to others to address the Bill’s flaws, whatever they may or may not be. My concern today is that we follow our normal procedures and give due consideration to my committee’s report and meet tomorrow if necessary, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, says. Give us time to study the report; let us table amendments, if that is what we wish to do, to correct the serious flaws in the Bill. I urge the House: let us do our job; let us report in ample time so that the Bill can get Royal Assent next week in ample time for the Prime Minister to go to Brussels on Wednesday.