Bilateral Free Trade Agreements

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I take that question with great sensitivity. It is very important to separate the two concepts. In these FTAs, we have a great focus on labour rights, which are more relevant to the concept of product arbitrage. That is more relevant in looking at the FTAs and the good work we can do to align our values with the sorts of countries that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, wanted us to do more trade with, rather than those that do not necessarily share our values and are not aligned with our security direction.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister what aspect of a free trade agreement with the 56,000 people who live in Greenland will contribute to us being a global superpower?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

Every country has its advantages, as the noble Lord will know if he has read his Ricardo. Greenland is actually one of the greatest exporters in the world of fresh-water prawns, so when he looks forward to his prawn cocktail sandwich in the Lords Dining Room, he will be grateful for the free trade agreements that we have negotiated. I add that the geostrategic importance of FTAs is not to be underestimated. Some smaller countries that fit within our trading ambitions are extremely relevant to us in the alliances we are now creating as the next trading superpower.

Education (Environment and Sustainable Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate and pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth.

I welcome this Bill. Noble Lords have made a convincing case for it. I do not intend to go over that ground again, except to repeat the point made by my noble friend Lord Blunkett that substantial research shows that environment and sustainable citizenship education has many diverse benefits for students, and that they perform better all round with it.

I expect that the Minister will agree but will, graciously and on behalf of the Government, decline to take advantage of this Bill as all is fine. I also expect that her response will echo the Lords’ Library briefing, which reports that, in 2019, when Labour argued that climate change should be a core element of the school curriculum, the Government countered that climate change is already included in several places. That may be true, but is it sufficient? I can think of no better way to test that than, once again—I make no apology for this—to draw your Lordships’ attention to Gavin Williamson’s own words in the form of his written evidence to the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member.

The evidence was published on Wednesday and was given in response to a short questionnaire deigned to elicit information about what the department is doing in preparation for COP 26. When asked how the department sees its role in the preparations for COP 26, the answer revealed this:

“The COP26 President Designate, Alok Sharma has written to the Education Secretary setting out DfE’s role”,


including

“profiling England as a trail blazer on climate education”.

In response, apparently the department is

“currently exploring what a climate policy and programme package could look like.”

That is it.

In the answer to question 3, we are told that the department

“is currently preparing a Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy. We aim to launch the strategy for public consultation to coincide with COP26. The DfE sustainability strategy is likely”—

“likely” is underlined—

to centre on four strategic aims”,

one of which is “Citizens connected to nature”.

When asked what the department considers

“to be the biggest challenges related to climate change mitigation and adaptation that fall within its remit”,

the answer covered 60% of the whole submission in 15 paragraphs under three headings. Fourteen of them are about the education estate, the department’s capital and school rebuilding programme, carbon reduction and how the department will deliver net zero, as well as the Green Jobs Taskforce and the skills challenge. One paragraph, of one sentence, refers to the department’s core function and is headed “Preparing a generation that will have to live and work in a world affected by climate change”. It reads:

“Through the development of our Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy we will explore how we can best prepare this generation for the world in which they will live.”


The curriculum gets no mention. There is nothing about what is currently being taught to our children.

I regret that it appears that we do not have a strategy for this and that the best we can hope for is that the department may develop a broader strategy that may be ready for consultation coinciding with COP 26. If ever there was evidence that this Bill is necessary, it is the Secretary of State’s own evidence to our Select Committee.

Women in Elected Office

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as I have mentioned, much of the abuse is online. The Government have committed to introducing the online harms Bill, which will provide the framework around which those platforms will be regulated. There is also a DCMS-led review conducted by the Law Commission looking at how we need to potentially update legislation to tackle abusive behaviours online. The Government have also committed to introducing a new electoral sanction against intimidation. But, as I say, I hope that the legislative framework around online harms will affect the culture of how people engage with one another online.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, shamefully a recent survey of MSPs revealed that 46% of women had received death threats, 29% threats of sexual violence and 75% threats to themselves, their family or staff. Women disproportionately are targeted and are the sole victims of threats of sexual violence. Social media, the source of much abuse, could deploy algorithms to reduce this content but does not. Last week we heard that operators are frustrating the efforts of police to prosecute racist abuse. Will the online harms Bill include provisions to deal with their failures and provide agents?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the online harms Bill is designed to look at those platforms and ensure that they have a duty of care placed on them—that is the current proposal. However, the behaviours that the noble Lord outlined are mostly criminal and therefore can currently be dealt with. We know that many police forces have been more engaged in helping elected representatives, their families and their staff when they receive those kinds of threats.

Trade Bill

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, since my introduction into your Lordships’ House, on each occasion when I have risen to speak from these Benches, I have endeavoured to find some point of common cause with the previous speaker—some point on which we can agree, or some way in which I can seamlessly weave myself into the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, will appreciate that, on this occasion, I choose to divert myself from that and to take this opportunity to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, to your Lordships’ House. I particularly congratulate her on her maiden speech. I was privileged to be here in person to listen to it. She has a compelling personal story. I have not practised law for some time but, when I did, I spent a lot of time trying to persuade judges of what was in the best interests of children. If she intends to use her opportunity as a Member of this House to do this, she can guarantee that I shall be behind her. I honestly think that people are much more likely to listen to her because she can translate her personal circumstances into a compelling argument, and I thank her for that.

In the third or fourth sentence of the Minister’s opening remarks, she said that the principle that guided the Bill—I think this is the phrase used by Liam Fox in the other place—was that of continuity. She suggested in her peroration that the purpose of the Bill is substantially to preserve the status quo. During the passage of the Bill through your Lordships’ House, to the extent that I can engage with it, I intend to test whether it in fact gives any bankable guarantee of continuity or whether it creates a series of opportunities, which I suspect that the Government will not resist, to do the opposite in some specific cases. I intend to use my time to identify some of them and ask some specific questions of the Government about their intentions.

I begin by going back to a point made by several speakers, including my noble friend Lord Grantchester and the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Indeed, before we even started on Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, asked the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, about this. My noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford also asked about this in his intervention. We are promised that, in summing up the debate, the noble Baroness will come back to address the issue of whether the Government can achieve what they set out to do, which is to roll over these trade deals in the time available in a way that generates continuity.

Whether the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, likes it or not, third parties are involved, and that guarantees that we cannot just cut and paste these trade deals. First, the European Union has to take action and then the third-party countries have to agree. Some of these countries are required by their constitutions to ask their Parliaments whether they can agree to the novation of these trade deals; in some, the head of state has the equivalent of our prerogative power to do so; in others, it is relatively simple, and departments can do it.

This point was brought to my attention by press reporting over the weekend. I am thinking specifically of the report in the Independent—it may have been only online—on 8 September of an answer given to an FoI which revealed that, beyond trade, there are more than 750 such deals with at least 168 non-EU countries. They cover a wide variety of issues: airline services, nuclear safety, fisheries, agriculture and data sharing, over and above those that relate to trade, which we are specifically dealing with here.

I ask the Minister to address the specific question asked in the FoI: whether the Government have central information on the number of those agreements and whether information is held about their individual status—in other words, the degree to which a likely positive response from a third-party country had been gained by discussion and negotiation, principally by her department. I understand that, in answer to that question, Charles Marquand was told that the Government do not hold the information relevant to the request.

It was reported that none of these 168-odd countries have given clear agreement to roll over any deals, yet there is no date for asking them to do so. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was told by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in Oral Questions—that these all have to be rolled over by 29 March—perhaps the Minister can confirm in her promised response to this debate that the Government do know how many third-party countries have promised or agreed to roll over agreements. Perhaps she can persuade your Lordships’ House that the Government are confident that this information actually exists somewhere. Can she quantify the risk of loss of trade after Brexit if any of these countries refuse to roll over agreements or require significant changes to them?

I have a few minutes left in which to make a second point, which relates to geographic indications. No one who knows my history of representing a Scotch whisky constituency for 13 years will be surprised at this. In case I run out of time, I repeat to the Minister what the Scottish Whisky Association, which has briefed me on this issue, has asked me to put to her:

“If the UK does not agree to reciprocal protection, it risks the status of the UK’s GIs”—


there are 86 of them and a lot of rural economies utterly depend on them—

“in the EU and globally with those countries that have trade agreements with the EU”.

I make this point because the Minister of State for Trade Policy went to the Scottish Parliament on 5 September to give evidence to its Finance and Constitution Committee. He told it specifically—it is in the Official Report—that the Government do not agree with the European Union’s position on geographic indicators because they consider it to be a barrier to free trade. That suggests to me that the Government intend to undermine many of these geographic indicators. That would be a very significant detriment to many rural communities, particularly in Scotland.

I have taken up too much of my time in making these two points. At later stages of the passage of the Bill, I also want to engage the Government about devolution issues. Again, Ministers went to the Scottish Parliament and said some really interesting things about that.