Turkey: Free Trade Agreement

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on obtaining this debate; I thank him for it because I speak as chair of the International Agreements Committee. In that capacity, I thank him also for the kind remarks he made about the committee’s work. We are very fortunate with the quality of our members, who are engaged and knowledgeable, and the quality of our staff. It is therefore important that these debates take place; I am glad that this is taking place, although three minutes is hardly adequate for other members of the committee to be able to respond to this debate.

Turkey is the United Kingdom’s 19th-largest trading partner, accounting for 1.3% of total UK trade. It represents a valuable market, especially for goods, and it was therefore important to conclude an agreement to preserve the maximum access for UK exporters and manufacturers. I accept that, because of Turkey’s close relationship and alignment with the EU, the rollover process was complex. I would have liked to be able to congratulate the Government wholeheartedly on delivering such a complex agreement in time, but there are deficiencies, to which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has already referred.

The committee reported the agreement for the special attention of the House because it considered it politically important, and because it is significantly different from the precursor EU-Turkey agreements so as to warrant debate.

Our pre-Brexit trading relationship with Turkey was governed in part by the EU-Turkey customs union. That had to be transformed into a free trade agreement —by definition and, unavoidably, that means less favourable trading terms than under a customs union. For example, there are now new rules of origin and paperwork requirements for traders. Fellow members of the committee will cover that issue and others in more detail. Although in converting the customs union to a free trade agreement the EU arrangements have been preserved as far as possible, areas that one would usually expect to see covered in a modern, comprehensive trade agreement have been excluded: services; trade in agricultural goods; investment; sustainable development. Again, colleagues will reflect on these omissions.

Two key omissions that I want to focus on are human rights and workers’ rights. Although they did not feature in the underlying EU agreements, the Government had an opportunity to push for their inclusion when negotiating the new agreement and, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, has said, the negotiating advantage lay with us—we had the leverage. Their absence, therefore, appears at odds with the Trade Secretary’s vision of “values-driven free trade”. In its latest World Report, Human Rights Watch provided a damning assessment of Turkey’s continued attacks on human rights and the rule of law. Thousands of people in Turkey face arrest or worse for daring to criticise the President or the Government, with terrorism widely used as a pretext to restrict the rights of Turkish citizens. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has also previously highlighted child labour, refugee labour and hostility towards trade union membership as issues of concern.

The Minister has previously said that

“trade does not have to come at the expense of human rights”.—[Official Report, 23/3/21; col. 752]

Well, I shall ask him the first of three questions. What reassurances can he give that these matters will be pursued in the negotiations for an expanded UK-Turkey agreement, which are due to begin within two years? We welcome plans for an expanded agreement and the Government’s commitment to undertake a public consultation to inform future proposals, but my second question is: can the Minister also confirm that the Government plan to publish their negotiating objectives for the expanded UK-Turkey agreement and that, should the International Agreements Committee call for a debate on these objectives, such a request would be met? Finally, what plans do the Government have to extend their commitments to facilitating parliamentary scrutiny of negotiating objectives to all agreements that are subject to renegotiation?

Economic Partnership Agreement: Kenya

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Goldsmith]

That this House takes note of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of the one part, and the Republic of Kenya, a Member of the East African Community, of the other part, laid before the House on 17 December 2020.

Special attention drawn by the International Agreements Committee, 2nd Report.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the International Agreements Committee’s second report, which covers the economic partnership agreement between the United Kingdom and Kenya. As the committee’s chair I extend my thanks to the members of the committee for their important contribution to this report, as well as to the staff. I also thank the noble Lord the Minister for his constructive engagement with the committee, both publicly and in private, and for facilitating this debate.

Before I turn to the contents of the report I will take a few moments to make some general comments on the scrutiny by Parliament of international agreements. The House will have heard me say before that international agreements—treaties—affect us all. They can affect important aspects of our lives: the economy, goods and services, our security and our rights. Scrutiny by Parliament must therefore be not an afterthought but an integral part of the overall treaty-making process. As we all know, at the moment Parliament’s role is limited and focused on the end of the process, when a treaty has already been signed.

I have said before that I believe Parliament should have a role at an earlier stage: when the objectives for negotiations are set. This is particularly relevant for trade agreements, and it happens in other countries such as the United States, and in the European Union. So I welcome the two commitments that the Minister made in this House during last week’s debate on the Trade Bill. They were made in response to a Motion put forward by a member of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, whom I thank for his efforts in this regard.

I am pleased that the Government have agreed to facilitate a debate on draft negotiating objectives for trade agreements, subject to parliamentary time, if it is requested by the International Agreements Committee, and that the Government will not ratify a trade agreement until a debate has been held, provided it has been requested by a relevant committee in good time.

The subject matter of the report is the UK-Kenya Economic Partnership Agreement—EPA for short. It is, on the one hand, a standard rollover trade agreement that seeks to ensure continuity of trade relations after the Brexit transition period. It replicates the treaty arrangements between the EU and Kenya.

On the other hand, however, it is not a straightforward rollover agreement. First, the underlying agreement—the EU agreement with the East African Community partner states, of which Kenya is a member—is not actually in effect. Instead, Kenya enjoys duty-free access to the EU through something called the EU’s market access regulation.

Secondly, and most crucially, the underlying multilateral EU agreement has been turned into a bilateral one, even if states belonging to the East African Community can apply to join it later. In signing a bilateral agreement with the UK, Kenya has effectively followed a go-it-alone approach. There were clear incentives for the Kenyan Government to do so. As the only country within the EAC not classed as a least developed country, it does not qualify for zero import duties under the general scheme of preferences for least developed countries. As Kenya is a lower-middle income country, it can expect reduced rates of import duty on only some goods. Considering that the UK is among Kenya’s top five export markets, one can see why it could be considered to be in Kenya’s immediate interest to sign a bilateral trade agreement with the UK to avoid import tariffs.

There are, however, issues and questions about what this agreement does to regional coherence. There are concerns that it could have disruptive political and economic consequences for the wider East African Community. For example, the EAC partner states have agreed to a common market protocol which commits them to co-ordinate trade relations among themselves and between the bloc and third parties. The UK EPA appears to undermine this obligation. Also, the EAC has been a customs union since 2005, applying zero customs duties on goods and services within the bloc and applying a common external tariff to imports from countries outside the EAC. The UK-Kenya agreement could undermine this arrangement, as Kenya would be applying a separate and more generous tariff regime for UK imports. While the committee acknowledges in its report that the UK-Kenya EPA could indeed have been the most efficient option for maintaining Kenya’s preferential access to the UK market, we would welcome an assessment from the Minister of the potential disruptive consequences for the EAC.

We would also like to ask the Minister that, were similar concerns to emerge in future agreements, they would be more clearly spelled out in the explanatory materials. The Written Ministerial Statement made by the Minister in response to our report helpfully explains that the UK’s overall objective remains to secure a regional deal with the whole of the East African Community. It also acknowledges that some EAC members

“were not ready to enter into negotiations with the United Kingdom”

at the time. The Statement concludes by saying that it is the Government’s intention that the EPA be a “stepping stone” to stronger regional integration. So I would welcome it if the Minister could specify what steps the Government are taking to make sure that regional integration remains a priority for the UK Government and is not undermined through the bilateral agreement with Kenya.

Conscious of time, I will leave it here for now, having set out the two broad themes of parliamentary scrutiny on the one hand and the impact of the UK-Kenya agreement on regional cohesion on the other. I know that colleagues on the International Agreements Committee speaking this afternoon will reflect on other points of detail raised in the debate. I look forward to what I hope will be a constructive debate. In particular, I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald. I thank him for choosing this debate in which to make his maiden speech. I welcome him to the House. I worked with him in government and I remember being hosted by him when he was the ambassador to Israel a few years ago, and I am therefore very keen to hear what he has to say now. However, I am also keen to see the huge contribution that I am sure he will make to the House, given his considerable experience and expertise. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been very valuable, and although noble Lords had only a short time for their contributions, those have all been significant. I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford, on his maiden speech, which was, as anticipated, eloquent and impressive.

I welcome the Minister’s assurances that this was not intended in any way to disrupt the arrangements for the rest of Africa. I thank him for his explanation. We will watch what is said: we will watch closely to see if other countries accede, as he has explained is now possible, and we will look at that closely.

The other issue raised by noble Lords is parliamentary scrutiny. That is important to the International Agreements Committee, as I have said. Whether it is the Purvis protocol, the Grimstone rule or even Lansley’s law, we are pleased with the changes that are taking place: we are edging towards greater parliamentary scrutiny, which is important because we should not be just paying lip-service to it. We will continue to watch that.

I thank the Minister for what he said about not ratifying. The department could perhaps have said that it would extend the time, but I suppose the effect has been the same. With that, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Trade Bill

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to support Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and to follow the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, with whom I largely agree on this matter and on many similar matters we have debated in recent weeks.

The House is indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for finding a way around the difficulties which were raised against amendments in these areas in Committee and for overcoming the hurdle imposed by the prerogative considerations relating to trade deals. I cannot agree with the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on this dimension. His Amendment 12 could have an application for devolved Parliaments, for reasons I will qualify, but I recognise the general reasons he has put forward and will support him if he presses his amendment to a vote in due course.

As noble Lords might well anticipate, I speak from the viewpoint of the devolved Governments and Parliaments. In the context of Wales, in Committee we addressed several of the issues which might arise in the negotiation of free trade agreements. In Amendment 6, particularly subsection (9) of its proposed new clause, the obvious issue is whether the implications of free trade agreements could have an adverse impact on the economies of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The need for these devolved Governments to be drawn in at an early stage is twofold.

First, it is to enable them to alert the UK Government to any negative impact they might not have fully taken on board, not least negative effects on, say, farming, environmental dimensions or food safety considerations, which conflict with the devolved Governments’ policies on such devolved matters. Secondly, the beneficial provision of the proposed new clause in this amendment is to enable the devolved authorities to flag any special dimension that might help the devolved nations capitalise on new opportunities arising from trade negotiations, which would be beneficial for them and, possibly, the people of England.

I realise that trade treaties lie outside the ability of Parliament to amend as they progress, and that the devolved Governments will also have to work within parallel constraints. It is for another occasion for us to debate that principle, and I suggest that there are two sides to that argument. There can, however, be no doubt that the devolved Parliaments should have just as strong a voice on the impact of trade deals on matters within their competence as Westminster does on issues that impact policies that affect England only.

I would go further than this amendment provides, as we have in other legislation before Parliament, by requiring that, if the devolved Governments are not agreeable to the steps taken by the UK Government, there should be a requirement for ministerial explanation and a cooling-off period. That, however, is not before us today.

I have one last point. If Westminster is implacably opposed to the devolved Governments having their say in these matters, it will certainly only hasten the day when these Parliaments seek the powers to make international treaties for themselves to protect the interests of their people. Is that what noble Lords really want? I urge all sides to support this reasonable amendment and for the Government to accept it.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and his underlining of the importance to be attached to the views of the devolved Administrations when dealing with trade agreements. I will speak to Amendments 6 and 12, on parliamentary scrutiny, with the experience I have gained as chair of your Lordships’ EU International Agreements Sub-Committee, but not on its behalf, save to the extent that I draw on reports already made by the committee. In any event, members of the committee are free to give their own views, and I note that some, including the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, are speaking in this debate.

There are two points I want to deal with. The first is to comment on the commitments made today by the Minister in the Written Ministerial Statement, to which attention has already been paid. I thank him for sending me a copy of that and I fully underline, support and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that the Minister has been courteous, co-operative and helpful, so far, in his engagement with the committee on the trade agreements he is responsible for dealing with.

I welcome that the Government have put the commitments in the Written Ministerial Statement on the record today, and I look forward to hearing them repeated in this debate and to discussing and developing the detail to ensure that Parliament is able to scrutinise all future UK trade agreements meaningfully. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly underlined, these amendments deal with trade agreements only and not other international agreements. The committee that I chair is involved in those other agreements. The UK will be making many important new trade agreements, which can be just as crucial as the laws we make in Parliament. I will return to that point. Therefore, Parliament’s ability to scrutinise these agreements comprehensively will be of great importance.

I therefore commend the Government for their commitment to work with the International Trade Committee and the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee to ensure that we are briefed throughout the negotiations and have access to treaty texts and other related documents, to the extent necessary, on a confidential basis and at a reasonable time, before the start of the short 21-day scrutiny period set out in CRaG. This approach was introduced for the UK-Japan trade agreement, but will be particularly important for the upcoming US, Australia and New Zealand agreements, for which, unlike the Japan agreement, there will be no underlying EU agreements to refer to and make a comparison with.

Effective scrutiny, however, also requires that those who are affected by trade agreements, and experts, have the chance to comment on the consequences of any agreement. While “extensive stakeholder engagement”—I quote from the Government—on trade negotiations by the Government is welcome, it is imperative that specified stakeholders and experts also have early enough sight of the agreements to enable them to form a view and to feed into parliamentary scrutiny of the agreements. Again, this will be particularly relevant where there is no underlying EU agreement standing as a comparator and baseline.

Comprehensive Economic Partnership (EUC Report)

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Goldsmith]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Trade Agreement between the United Kingdom and Japan for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership, laid before the House on 23 October (16th Report from the European Union Committee).

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate is on the UK-Japan trade agreement, on which the International Agreements Sub-Committee reported last week. I shall provide a summary of its key findings, but the debate is also an opportunity to talk about the process of scrutiny with a test case before us. It is a novel process, and we can draw some initial conclusions about what works well and what does not. I trust that Members will permit those remarks about the bigger picture. I look forward to the debate and to hearing what noble Lords will say; I look forward in particular to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Darroch of Kew, about which more will be said later.

The report is the culmination of months of talking to stakeholders and discussing negotiations in confidence with the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who is in his place today and has been generous with his time—I thank him for that on behalf of the committee—and senior officials, including the chief economist and the chief negotiator. We also spoke to and corresponded with the Secretary of State before the summer.

The International Agreements Sub-Committee has sought to work in a complementary fashion with the Commons International Trade Committee, whose report on CEPA largely concurred with ours. The report principally contrasts CEPA with the JEEPA—the Japanese-European agreement that existed and still does—looking to understand impacts of any deviations and what stakeholders wanted the Government to achieve. Parliamentary scrutiny is a second route for their concerns and ambitions to be heard, and we tried to do justice to that evidence base in our report.

Where appropriate, we have considered the Government’s published objectives, but they are, to be frank, generic, and the Government have not cross-referenced CEPA with those published aims to set out whether all of them in their view have been effectively met. Parliament is not involved at the moment with that objective-setting process. We can say after the fact whether we think that they got the objectives wrong and what other objectives might have been sought, but our role here is severely limited. That is a matter which the House may wish to think further about.

We have also evaluated the Government’s final claims about what CEPA achieves and what it does not. Our principal conclusion in this regard is that the Government have oversold several provisions in a way that risks undermining what is ultimately a respectable continuity-plus agreement.

Looking at our specific key findings and starting with the successes, we note that CEPA goes beyond JEEPA in some of its digital and data provisions, which is welcome. This will benefit UK and Japanese businesses across sectors, in particular those in service industries. Those provisions have found favour with many of our witnesses, such as the City of London Corporation and the Motion Picture Association. However, some others, such as the consumer organisation Which?, and the Open Rights Group, have asked whether CEPA’s provisions might indicate a change of thinking from the Government about how to ensure the protection of personal data. Overall, we did not view CEPA as creating a potential personal data protection loophole, but we would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the UK envisages diverging from the EU on data protection.

Another key area of provisions relates to agri-food products. Those provisions are split through several chapters in our report, but I shall summarise them here together. First, overall, CEPA is useful to UK producers. Tariff reductions and their staging are maintained, allowing UK exporters to continue to be competitive with EU exporters. I do not really want to mention the supposedly cheaper soy sauce—the little incident on Twitter—but Members may recognise that as an allusion to an unfortunate and wrong statement that the deal would make soy sauce cheaper. Our report covers some areas such as trade in malt and tariff-rate quotas because the Government made quite a big deal of them, although they are relatively small in trade terms. Regarding the malt trade, the Maltsters’ Association of Great Britain told us that this agreement

“offers the same benefits as the existing system”—

access to the Japanese market tariff free through Japan’s autonomous tariff-rate quotas—yet the Government have advertised CEPA as delivering “more generous market access”. The Minister might like to comment on that.

Tariff-rate quotas, or TRQs as I will call them, were one of Japan’s key concessions to the EU to avoid greater liberalisation of tariff lines. Japan liberalised 97% to the EU’s 99%. In this UK deal, 94% of Japanese tariff lines are liberalised, to 99% of ours, but CEPA maintains access to only 10 of JEEPA’s 25 tariff-rate quotas, and then only after EU exporters have used them as much as they wish. That creates some uncertainty for UK producers and Japanese importers, who may now need even to provide bankers’ guarantees when importing UK products lest additional duty eventually needs to be paid. That does not make UK goods attractive, and access for the UK via the headroom left by the EU may disappear in only a few years. The Government say that joining the CPTPP will fix this, but that seems a contingent basis for dismissing the difficulties that exporters will face.

Finally, on a matter on which other noble Lords may touch later, there are new provisions for geographical indicators. The Government advertised CEPA as though they had won these protections, but in fact there is still an application process to be completed during which there may be objections from any of the 11 CPTPP countries or other producers.

Turning beyond agricultural and food products, CEPA has significant effects on trade in other goods. We thought particularly and had evidence particularly about automated manufacturing, as that is an area of key inward investment in the UK. Let me be clear: CEPA’s provisions are necessary and therefore welcome, but they are not sufficient. CEPA enables UK and Japanese manufacturers to use EU products and count these as their own for the purposes of cumulation. However, what the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and the North East England Chamber of Commerce told us was most vital was cumulation for products exported to the EU. CEPA cannot deliver this on its own; only the UK-EU deal can, and it seems increasingly from press reports that it is unlikely to do so. I hope that other noble Lords may cover this topic.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, regrettably cannot be with us for debate today, but I know that he would have wanted to highlight the sustainable development provisions of CEPA—the noble Lord, Lord Oates, may touch on some of these issues later. CEPA retains JEEPA’s sustainable development chapter but does not go any further. We were concerned at the lack of focus on environmental goods in CEPA overall. Cornwall Council highlighted in evidence to us the absence of any mention of green technology and the North East England Chamber of Commerce wanted more attention paid to low-carbon goods and services, including renewable energy, which are an important part of its regional economy.

As for the Government’s impact assessment, that itself notes uncertainty about whether CEPA can increase investment fall and the export potential of low-carbon goods and services. Again, I hope that the Minister will say something more about these issues in his speech.

I will illustrate how these issues are all interrelated. The North East England Chamber of Commerce highlighted that the accumulation of Japanese content in UK automotive manufacturing products being exported to the EU was “crucial”, in particular for electric vehicles, as the EU is not well developed in electric vehicle production and many parts come from Japan.

I will say a word about the Government’s explanatory documents. The brief summary of our findings that I have just given indicates the importance of looking closely at variations from the existing Japanese-EU agreement, JEEPA. However, the Government’s impact assessment does not allow us or the public to answer the question of whether the UK-negotiated deal serves UK businesses and consumers better than the existing one. The impact assessment compares CEPA only with no deal with Japan—that is, with WTO terms.

The committee does not want to use this report to relitigate Brexit, of course; that was not the purpose or intent behind that conclusion. However, we think the question is important and that the information to answer it should have been provided. We note that the Government’s own impact assessment of JEEPA estimated a GDP increase of £2.1 billion to £3 billion. That is much more than CEPA’s estimated £1.5 billion boost. We understand that the methodology and context of those two assessments differed, but we believe that the Government should have addressed this issue head on.

Our conclusion is thus forward-looking. For Parliament to best scrutinise the Government’s exercise of their new powers, which will be increasingly important for the country as we develop more new trade deals, we must have the data necessary to judge whether the Government have done a good job.

The Grand Committee previously debated our report, Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices, and allied reports, when there was significant support for an enhanced mechanism for parliamentary scrutiny of treaties, including trade deals. That has also been evidenced in debates on the Trade Bill, and is likely to feature on Report when it comes about. Our inquiry on CEPA and those on the ongoing talks with the US, New Zealand and Australia—all of which are under way—have all yielded evidence from stakeholders about parliamentary scrutiny processes and their importance. This is not simply Members enjoying an opportunity to talk about themselves, but an important issue that we must get right.

Producing this report has been challenging. It is a testament to the willingness and ability of Members and staff to absorb and consider a vast amount of information quickly that we have been able to produce this report to allow the House to hold a debate within the CRaG scrutiny period. As we said at the working practices discussion, that is a short period. However, success that we were able to produce this report should not lead the House or the Government to think that this has been easy or will be easy in the future. We had notice and we planned accordingly, and because the deal is largely identical to an existing one, it does not raise some of the thornier issues, such as respect for human rights or food standards, that may well arise in other deals and agreements, and still it is very challenging to do CEPA justice.

We said in our working practices report that we reserve the right to recommend changes to CRaG if we conclude that, overall, the required pace is detrimental to the House’s scrutiny function. Nevertheless, I want to recognise that DIT has worked hard to make the process as it is work as well as it can in the circumstances, and the Minister and his staff should be commended for their efforts—I thank them, and particularly him. I look forward to hearing what noble Lords say in this debate. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for those remarks and his thorough observations on what noble Lords have said, but I particularly thank noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. When we first thought we would have a debate on this agreement, I was a bit nervous, because I knew that some of the very controversial areas that concern trade—the things that fill newspapers—would not arise on this agreement: it would be some sort of continuity agreement. I was quite wrong to think that this might not be a valuable debate; it has been very valuable. I, for one, will come back to things that many noble Lords have said in this debate when we look at other agreements; they are valuable and important.

I thank noble Lords for what they said about the report. To the extent that there is credit, it goes to my colleagues on the committee, but particularly to our staff. I pay particular tribute to the staff, who worked very hard under very pressing circumstances to get this scrutiny done, led by Dr Dominique Gracia, who is leaving us today, I think. She can rest on the laurels of a successful report and a debate in the House of Lords as, perhaps, her final official act, and I thank her.

Like other noble Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Darroch of Kew, and welcome him. I had the privilege and pleasure of working with him in government, as did many noble Lords, and knew what a tremendous contribution he would make to this House. His clarity of thought, perceptive insight and incisive judgments will be very welcome here—perhaps much more than they were by the outgoing president of another country. I therefore very much look forward to his further contributions.

Time does not permit me to go through the important themes of our debate now, but we will return to them, including the question of scrutiny. I worry that we were able to do this in the time that we had partly because of the co-operation of the noble Lord Grimstone, and his staff, and on the back of an agreement that largely replicated an existing one. How we could have done so on something completely new, with a new text, worries me enormously. We will come back to that, and not just in debates on the Trade Bill.

Meanwhile, we are feeling our way. I think the Government are feeling their way as well, but I heard the Minister say that they have found this scrutiny helpful. That is what we intend: to be helpful to the people, but also to the Government. We think that, as examples in other countries demonstrate, scrutiny can help in negotiations. On that note and with those hopes, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Trade Bill

Lord Goldsmith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, it is indeed a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and to be reminded of a pleasant afternoon we spent last month debating reports from the Constitution Committee and the EU Committee on the handling of treaties. I think it would be helpful to remind ourselves of some of the things that were in those reports. I have to say that that afternoon I was, as I shall be today, no doubt, the only participant supporting the Government, and the rest of the participants in that debate were repeating lines we have heard already and will continue to hear on this issue.

The Constitution Committee looked in particular at the European Parliament processes which were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh, and it recommended not replicating them. There was a very clear finding that we should not replicate them, and the committee pointed out the differences with the European Parliament as a supranational Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, earlier referred to Jack Straw in relation to the CRaG Act. Noble Lords might be interested that he gave evidence to the Constitution Committee and advised it that he thought that copying the European Parliament’s processes was a rabbit hole down which we should not go.

The other important aspect of the Constitution Committee’s findings was that we should not fetter the royal prerogative and that some of the processes that have been put forward by noble Lords, and that have been put forward again today, do indeed fetter the royal prerogative, as my noble friend Lord Lansley said. That applies in particular to a role in negotiating objectives. The committee did not recommend that Parliament should fetter the royal prerogative in that way.

That debate and these debates come back to a lack of happiness among noble Lords with the CRaG processes. I remind noble Lords that the CRaG processes were not invented when the CRaG Bill was brought forward by the last Labour Government. Those processes were based on the Ponsonby rule, which has existed for a very long time and served Parliament extremely well on the ratification of international treaties. The CRaG Act effectively codified those processes into law and recognised the role that Parliament should have, which is at the end of the process once the royal prerogative has been used to negotiate treaties.

There has been a lot of talk about whether 21 days is enough. We have to remember that it is 21 sitting days, so that would be a minimum of five weeks and sometimes quite a lot longer, so this is not a minimalist period for parliamentary committees to go about doing their work, and I believe that on the whole that has proved adequate for scrutiny take place.

Coming on to whether extra time is needed, which is in Amendment 63 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley, we have to remember that CRaG allows the other place not to ratify a treaty—so, de facto, the other place already in effect has the power to require extra time by the simple act of denying approval of the ratification. That can be done an infinite number of times. The other place does not have the power to make changes to treaties but does have the power simply to refuse ratification, and that can be used effectively if the Government were perceived to be acting reasonably. As my noble friend Lord Lansley said, the Government have said that they will respond where possible to any reasonable request for further time, and I think that that is a perfectly reasonable position for us to be in.

I will comment on only one other amendment in this group, Amendment 98, which seems to be another opportunity for Parliament to disapprove of a no-deal Brexit by denying this Act to come into effect if it does not approve a no-deal Brexit. As we know, the Government do not want a no-deal Brexit, but we may not achieve a free trade agreement with the EU, and if we have to exit on a no-deal basis, that is what we have to do. Had this amendment gone into the Bill we were considering a couple of years ago, it might have had some purpose to it for those not of a Brexit persuasion to have a last gasp at trying to keep us in the EU. However, with the current electoral result in the other place, with a large majority that was elected on a clear campaign promise to get Brexit done, I cannot believe that Amendment 98 has any real place in the Bill, and I hope very much that the noble Lord will not press it if it comes back on Report.

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is the first time I speak on the Bill; I apologise to noble Lords that I have not done so before. I am prompted to do so because of the references that have been made in this debate and in some of the amendments to the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee, which I have the honour to chair. I want to speak not so much about the detail of some of the amendments —I cannot speak with the authority of the committee as it has not taken views on some of them as such—but to lay down a marker. If some of these amendments come back on Report, I may well not be quite so reticent.

I will make some basic points about the job that we have now been tasked to do by your Lordships’ House, which is to scrutinise international agreements—not simply trade agreements, although they are obviously an important part of that. Reference has already been made to the debate which took place on 7 September, if my memory serves me right, on three reports: the report that we had produced on Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices, alongside the report of the Constitution Committee, which is chaired by my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the Lessons Learned report of your Lordships’ EU Committee. As we noted in our report, which is the most recent of them, at paragraph 23:

“all three reports called for greater transparency; a role for Parliament much earlier in the process of negotiating international agreements; and a proper role for the devolved institutions. Significant concerns were also expressed as to whether it was possible to conduct meaningful parliamentary scrutiny within the timetable permitted under the CRAG Act.”

We had a good debate; I repeat the thanks to noble Lords who participated in it. Sadly, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, was not the Minister on that occasion, so we did not have the benefit of hearing his responses to those reports—I hope that today will provide an opportunity for him to do so. However, I believe that he shares our belief, if I dare take his name in vain, that parliamentary scrutiny of international agreements is crucial and that we have moved on from the days when it was thought that the sovereign—read now the Executive—could simply enter into agreements without any involvement of Parliament.

I acknowledge that the CRaG process has changed this, at least to some extent. However, it is still ex post facto—after the agreement has been made—which gives rise to the serious problem that Parliament, whether it is the other House or the comments that this House make on it, has to take it or leave it. Under CRaG, strictly interpreted, it is not until the deal is done that the matter is subject to scrutiny, and then, in the case of the other place, the sole weapon is to withhold consent.