Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Purvis of Tweed

Report stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and did so very happily. I will comment on a couple of points that have been raised in this short debate and then, without adding to what I said in Committee, highlight the reason why strategic debates about the UK’s trading relationship with China are important.

One of the reasons I was attracted to my party was that the Liberals were part of the founding movement for free trade. At that time, we traded with China and we will trade with China in the future, but this is a debate not about trading with China but about the UK’s resilience and our strategic trade interests. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, made the point that Parliament’s role is not to assess trade negotiations or assess whether China would meet the benchmarks for accession to the CPTPP. His argument was rejected by his noble friend Lord Lansley, who came to the conclusion that China is a long way from meeting the benchmarks. I cannot second-guess what the other members of the CPTPP will say, and nor can we hold them to account, but we can hold our Government to account for the assessments that they make. There will have to be a public process because the difference—I put it to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—is that China’s accession is less of a negotiation; it is an accession process, which is different from a bilateral FTA process. On that issue of substance, it is quite different.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, also said that it would be wrong if we sought, by approving this amendment, somehow to provide a veto or to bind Ministers’ hands. It would not be a veto: there is nothing in the amendment that would allow it to be a veto. I refer also to the comments of his noble friend Lord Lansley, who said that there would be nothing to stop the Government bringing a report anyway. Opposing something that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, suggested was in the Government’s interest to do is a bit of a stretch, but the Government have the ability to present a report, and this amendment says that they should. We have argued consistently for this in the Trade Act and on other trade negotiations.

The reason why China is particularly important, as was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, is not just the scale of the UK’s trade with China but how resilient we are in relation to it. It is absolutely right that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the issue of Taiwan. I have just written to the President-elect, whose DPP is a sister party of ours on these Benches, to congratulate him on a remarkable victory. UK trade interests with Taiwan and shipping coming from that area are of critical importance. It is not just that British consumers enjoy the benefit of buying Chinese products, but we have the biggest trade deficit in goods with one country in our nation’s history. The trade deficit of £40 billion with China comes at a time when the whole narrative of UK government policy is that we would do trade with other countries in Asia, not China, that would offset any theoretical reduction with trade with Europe. We know that is not the case; it has proven harder to replicate the trading arrangements that we had with our European partners with those in Asia. We also know that the growth in trade in Asian economies, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, said, is because of their trading relationship with China. We cannot have it both ways.

If there is anything that suggests why we should have more of a strategic debate about how resilient the UK is when we have the biggest trade deficit of any nation on earth with China—I remind the House that Germany has a trade surplus in the export of goods to China—it is last Friday’s actions by the Royal Air Force. The shipping of goods from China, which we depend on for our consumers, comes through the very area where we have deployed military assets in the last few days, which we discussed last night in this House. It is in our geopolitical and strategic trading interests that Parliament debates our relationship with China. Given the potential for interventions in our trading and shipping through the Red Sea and through Suez, interruptions to our trading through the Taiwan Strait or other interruptions—because China can, without notice, change its national security profile and how it seeks to impact on a country such as the UK—we are uniquely vulnerable to another nation state’s decisions about its strategic position on exporting to the UK.

On the one hand, one might argue that the more that China being more of a part of the rules-based WTO mechanisms is in our interest—that is right, but it is a separate debate. Here, we are discussing how our Parliament will hold any Government to account for decisions that they may take on an assessment of whether it is in our strategic interests to support China acceding to the CPTPP. Asking for a report and for it to be debated in Parliament is the very least that could be asked for, and I hope that will not cause any big division across the House. We should all support this, and the Government should perhaps accept the need for a report and a debate in Parliament. That is what this amendment seeks to do.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, is to be commended for this amendment. I will briefly develop one point made by my noble friend Lady Kennedy, who referred to the work of Sheffield Hallam University on trade, which I have read in considerable detail and previously raised in this House. That work clearly shows that, while China is one of the world’s biggest growers of cotton, it is also the world’s greatest cotton launderer, hiding where its cotton products are grown by laundering them around the world. The work at Sheffield Hallam has shown this, and, as a result, the Americans stopped importing the cotton.

As I have said previously, the Government have taken no action whatever to check the source of the cotton, but it is possible to do so. A lot of the cotton in China is grown in the Uighur area—this is a slave labour issue. I say to noble Lords, and to ladies and gentlemen, that any cotton in the clothes they are wearing at the moment can be analysed to show where it was grown and whether this was in Xinjiang or in another part of China or Egypt or somewhere else. Paper-based monitoring systems are worthless simply because China is hell-bent on laundering the cotton in its products and hiding where it comes from. Therefore, although we talk about free trade, it is not free trade if you are laundering your cotton to hide where it has come from. The Government have repeatedly been asked to do something about the products they buy on behalf of the British public. Have they used any of the element-analysis processes organised by Oritain to check the source of their cotton? The answer is no.

They have never taken any steps whatever to source the cotton and see whether it was grown in Xinjiang or not. Is that because we do not care about the use of slave labour or the source of materials? Well, I think we should and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has given the House a further opportunity for this issue to be raised.

Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 9) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Purvis of Tweed

Monday 23rd May 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, the Liberal Democrats support this instrument, having consistently maintained views the Minister has indicated. This is the ninth sets of such regulations that we have scrutinised and supported. The Minister is absolutely right that, as this illegal aggression continues, depressingly, we continue to see horrors inflicted on the people of Ukraine. Therefore, the Government’s response, supported by the Opposition—to use every mechanism to seek to impact on the decision-making of the Putin regime—is to be supported.

There are early signs that the collective imposition of the sanctions from the United Kingdom and our allies is impacting on the Russian economy. We are mindful that many people in Russia are in receipt of the lies and misinformation of the Putin regime, in addition to those around the world, and they are likely to be victims of this. That is why, as President Zelensky has indicated, it adds to the pressure on the Putin regime to come to a diplomatic solution and to cease the violence.

I want to probe just a couple of areas, and then ask the Minister a couple of questions on aspects related to these sanctions, rather than the sanctions themselves. First, we have been aware of the European Union sanctions on social media on 2 March, and then the reciprocal decisions by Russia on Instagram determining Meta as an extremist organisation on 11 March and blocking Euronews on 21 March. On 14 April, it registered as foreign agents under its laws 79 NGOs and 131 media outlets. The Putin regime is not only waging war on the people of Ukraine, but it is waging war on free media around the world. It is right, therefore, that the European Union, the United States, Canada and the UK, as the Minister said, work in lock-step.

Will the Minister demonstrate how robust these measures will be, given that there has been a gap between the EU operating its sanctions and the measures before us, and that there is some indication that RT and Sputnik have been successful in working around some of the EU regulations? The Minister has highlighted the designated persons measure, which I support, but we have already seen in respect of the equivalent for those indicated by the European Union the use of proxy sites and other social media platforms to disseminate information. The use of visual content bearing RT logos but not originating from RT, uploaded by users, has been co-ordinated and has an absolute purpose to work around the sanctions. How robust does the Minister consider these measures will be, in the light of what we have seen of RT-hosted material on other platforms around the world? How easy is it for those to be used in the United Kingdom?

Will the Minister confirm that these measures will cover virtual private networks? Use of VPNs and RT content through other countries has increased by 50%. If someone is seeking to access RT, Sputnik or other material from designated persons via a VPN, is that an offence under UK law?

My second question regards the extraterritorial jurisdiction nature. It is right that the designated persons are overseas entities, but can the designated persons be operating across all groups seeking to use the disinformation tactics of the Putin regime? I mention specifically Wagner Group, one of the arms of which has been sanctioned by the UK as named individuals. That is correct, and the Minister knows I am on record as wanting the Government to go beyond that and have it proscribed as a terrorist organisation. It is active, as are other mercenary groups, as the disseminator of disinformation and misinformation.

Can mercenary groups be designated persons under these matters? I know that the Minister will say that they keep the list of designated persons under review, but I should like him to go beyond that and say that there are no limits under the terms of the legislation on who designated persons could be. It would be regrettable if there were those seeking actively, with resource from the Putin regime working in many countries, to work around sanctions such as these, but they were not included. Can Ofcom police them if they are designated persons who are groups outside the UK? What legislative powers does Ofcom have to work with international partners on policing?

Finally, I ask the Prime Minister—the Minister, although I see I had a Freudian slip into a dream world I have, even if the Conservatives are in power, that someone might be doing a better job than the Prime Minister. Now that I have emphasised that point, Hansard will not be able to correct me.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman is now on record as indicating why we are not in lock-step with one of our allies, Canada, on the sanctioning of Alexander Lebedev. As the Minister will well know, the Canadians have been working extremely closely with the UK and others and the Minister said that we are working in lock-step, but when it comes to the judgment of the Canadians that Alexander Lebedev should be sanctioned, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said,

“it’s not for me to comment on the judgment of a different country”.

What do we believe the Canadian judgment to be and why do we not share it? Alexander Lebedev has been singled out by the Canadians as worthy of being sanctioned. What mechanisms do we have in the United Kingdom to ensure that this individual, sanctioned by one of our closest allies, or any of his family members will not be able to use the United Kingdom to circumvent Canadian sanctions? With those questions, I support the regulations overall.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I support what was just asked about Canada. Canada is not just some other country; it is part of Five Eyes. If Putin sees Five Eyes as split, it is just as bad as the EU being split—even worse, in some ways. There has to be a better argument than Ministers have so far given as to why we have not joined Canada.

It is a long time ago since I spoke on the first sanctions. I praise the Government, because what they have done on sanctions overall has been very good. I have sometimes been surprised about the extent to which they have gone and I want to give praise where praise is due. We can always do more, but it has been a good job so far.

I note that this has been raised before, but I cannot remember the answer. The regulations talk about the UK. Where is the Isle of Man in this? People are using the Isle of Man to get around all kinds of financial things—we have had this with Brexit. For that matter, there are the Channel Islands, but the Isle of Man is in a different geographical situation. Can the Isle of Man be used to subvert sanctions such as these?

My final point is a question that I suspect the Minister cannot answer. I assume Ofcom is being fully supported by GCHQ. To have such a facility as that and not be able to use it would be a complete and utter waste. He does not have to confirm it or not, but I assume it goes without saying that Ofcom has the ability to call on GCHQ for issues relating to the edge of the sanctions.