Trade Bill
Debate between Lord Haskel and Lord Purvis of TweedThursday 1st October 2020
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
I have also received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, in his remarks, the Minister referred twice to the mandate that the negotiators have for a future trade deal with America and stated that the mandate excludes the NHS. The language that the Government have always used is that they do not have a “mandate” for these negotiations, but “negotiating objectives”. If there is a mandate, as the Minister referred to, will he write to me about what it is? If he would prefer that to be confidential, he can write just to me, but it would also be beneficial and helpful if he wrote to the International Agreements Sub-Committee about it.
Secondly, the Minister must have been briefed before the debate on this group of amendments on both the consequences and the global implications of my noble friend Lady Sheehan’s very proper amendment, which raises these questions. My question to him—on the Government’s policy on utilising the TRIPS flexibilities that exist for medicines patents, which could then be available through our trading relationship with the least developed countries—could not have been more specific. He did not respond to it in his winding-up speech, so what is the Government’s position there? If they have not implemented legislation, as Canada did in March, why not?
Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for that question. I draw no distinction between our negotiating objectives, which were made public before we started the US FTA negotiations, and the mandate. When I used “mandate”, I was referring to our negotiating objectives. I apologise if that caused the noble Lord any confusion. I will write to him on his point about TRIPS.