Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but I do not believe that he was here at the beginning of the Statement.
Australia Free Trade Agreement
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I shall look into it but I do not think that I agree with that point. As I said, I think the devolved Administrations have been kept on board with the negotiations that have been going on—I really do. I certainly would like to reassure noble Lords further on that point.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I am sure that the devolved Administrations were informed in the sense that they were told that there had been a round and various things had been discussed, but it is clear that the result came as a surprise—that there should be such an asymmetrical deal on farm products. I do not myself believe that it is a disaster, but it certainly came as a surprise. Would the Minister agree that it would be better if the documents that the Government published at the start of a negotiation—the negotiating objectives documents—were a little more specific? They are cast in such broad-brush terms that it is very difficult to deduce from them what a likely outcome might be, so the risk of a surprise is quite high.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I would like to park that—I am not going to be drawn into it—but I would like to move on to discuss scrutiny, which is probably along the lines of the noble Lord’s question. This is an important matter, raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord McNicol. Again, I hope I can give some reassurance on this.
The Government have made extensive commitments to support robust scrutiny of the new free trade agreements. As the International Agreements Committee acknowledged in its report, we have upheld those commitments. In particular, the Government committed that we would ensure that there would be at least three months for Parliament to scrutinise the agreement and for Select Committees to produce reports before the formal scrutiny period under CRaG. In fact, there was six months of scrutiny time prior to commencing CRaG, and I was very pleased to receive the IAC’s report on 23 June. In addition, we published the advice of the Trade and Agriculture Commission on 13 April, two months before commencing CRaG, and our own Section 42 report on the impact of the agreement on relevant domestic regulatory standards on 6 June. Of course, I am delighted that we are here today taking the opportunity to debate the agreement as part of that scrutiny process. In total, by the end of the CRaG period, the agreement will have been under the scrutiny of Parliament for over seven months and benefited from the formal views of three Select Committees.
Travel Disruption at UK Airports and Ferry Ports
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked all the right questions, and I greatly look forward to the Minister’s reply—
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I am sorry, but I was not aware that the noble Lord was down to speak.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I do not think anyone was aware that the noble Lord intended to do so but, with the House’s indulgence, maybe we can allow the noble Lord to speak for four minutes.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
I was saying that I greatly look forward to the Minister’s reply to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I hope that what I am going to say now will not be taken as any criticism of her; she defends her department’s brief in this House with style and stamina.
However, I have to ask: where is the Secretary of State for Transport? He is Macavity, the mystery cat: when things go wrong, he is never there. We have gridlock at Dover, chaos at the airports; queues at the pumps; a tube strike and a looming train strike, and it seems that none of this has anything to do with the Government and there is nothing they can do to put it right. The Government’s job is to govern. When problems like these arise, it is time for Mr Shapps to step forward.
I heard a rumour that he is moonlighting—that he has something else. Perhaps he is running for the leadership of his party, or maybe he is doing as he did when he first came into Parliament: running, under a pseudonym, a private business offering to make one very rich in return for sending him a small cheque. Whatever he is doing, he should stop it and revert to the job of the department and try to put right the problems so clearly set out by the noble Lord, Lord Davies. I greatly look forward to the Minister reassuring me that that is indeed what will happen.
Queen’s Speech
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
The Queen’s Speech said that we
“will lead the way in championing security around the world.”
In “Yes Minister”, the Permanent Secretary would have said, “Very bold, Minister”. It is quite a bold assertion. We used to be good at understatement. Conservative Foreign Secretaries such as Alec Douglas-Home, Peter Carrington, Geoffrey Howe and Douglas Hurd tended to speak rather softly, although they still carried quite a big stick. They tended to get their way. The stick is now a little smaller, as the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson, convincingly reminded us, but we seem to be shouting rather loudly and not getting our way quite so often.
I want us to be trusted. Trust is quite a good thing to have. I want people to believe that, if they conclude a deal with us, that deal is likely to stick. This makes it easier to conclude a deal. I would like people to think it unthinkable that we would break a treaty commitment and start a trade war. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Frost—I am sorry he is not here to hear it—that this House still champions the rule of law. I think we showed that during the passage of the then internal market Bill and, if we have to, we will show it again in connection with a Brexit Bill.
The Queen’s Speech does not say anything at all about development; the noble Lord, Lord Collins, was absolutely right to pick that up. The slick brochure published by the Foreign Office this week is unconvincing and alarming. It is alarming because it is clear that we are switching aid away from multilateral to bilateral, back to more tied aid. We will give less support to the international agencies fighting the causes of global insecurity, such as famine, disease, unrest and mass migration. Three out of every four cross-channel migrants and refugees come from a country fighting severe famine right now, but it seems from the Foreign Office publication that we plan to cut back on what we do to stem the flow at source—although, of course, the Queen’s Speech said that we will be hard on refugees. Apart from the moral imperative, is it not in our self-interest to do more, not less, through the multilateral agencies?
The noble Lord, Lord King, was absolutely right—as he usually is—in pointing to the imminence of the global famine. It is here already, but it is going to get much worse. Before Putin’s invasion, 80% of Egypt’s wheat came from the Black Sea; 75% of Sudan’s; 75% of Lebanon’s; 50% of Libya’s; and 50% of Tunisia’s. Global stocks were already at their lowest for seven years. The World Food Programme was already telling us that we were facing an unprecedented global hunger crisis before Putin’s invasion. As the noble Lord, Lord King, pointed out, protectionism in India and Indonesia —export bans—means that it is not just wheat that will be in very short supply in the Middle East. There are 9 million people in Tigray who are starving right now. The WFP says that there will be 20 million in Sudan within three months.
Should we not be urgently doing more, not less, for the WFP, the FAO, the UNDP, the UNHCR and the WHO? The WHO says that Covid has already killed 6 million and is still killing 1,000 a day. Those are probably underestimates, because the statistics are patchy. Some 75% of us are fully vaccinated, but only 23% are in Uganda, 19% in Ghana, 6% in Tanzania and 5% in Malawi. These disparities shame and threaten us. Do we not owe it to our Commonwealth friends and to ourselves to do more to help them do better?
It is not just them. In tragic, war-torn, blockaded Yemen, only 1% of the population has been vaccinated at all. Are we using our undoubted influence in Riyadh to persuade the Saudis that lives must be saved in the Yemen? I hope so, but I do not know.
The key global responder is the WHO. Some 80% of its finance comes from voluntary national contributions. Are we up there as global leaders showing the way? No, we are way down the pack. Up at the top are Germany and Japan; we are down with New Zealand. Global Australia contributes more than global Britain; the Gates Foundation contributes more than global Britain. Should we not put that right? It is a global pandemic and, if we aspire to be champions of global security and lead the way, should we not be doing something about global insecurity and its root causes?
My last point harkens back to my first. When working in Washington and Brussels, I was lucky enough to witness a virtuous circle: the more the White House trusted us, particularly because of our policies on Northern Ireland through John Major and Tony Blair, the more our perceived influence in Washington strengthened our hand in Brussels—and the more we were seen to deliver on common purposes with our friends in Europe, the more the White House listened to us. I worry about the very real risk of a vicious circle, which works the other way. Picking fights with the 27, particularly over Northern Ireland, is the best way of losing friends in Washington. The more we drift away from both Europe and America—
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, it is a very long last point and I do urge the noble Lord to conclude.
Northern Ireland: Customs
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My noble friend makes some good points, and he allows me to reiterate that, below the surface, there is a lot of extremely important and constructive work going on to ensure that what we have said—what we have promised and guaranteed—will indeed be undertaken.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
The problem is that “pacta sunt servanda”. However unattractive we may find it—like the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I find it very unattractive—the fact is that for 15 weeks now, we have been under a legal requirement to establish Mr Johnson’s frontier in the Irish Sea by the end of the year, with two-way checks, and to help the EU supervise its new single market frontier inside our United Kingdom. Yet we seem to have done nothing and to still be in denial. It seems that we are even refusing to let the EU have a base in Belfast. How come, since “pacta sunt servanda”? When will the Government come clean with Northern Ireland about all this?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
First, my Latin is not so good. But there are no plans, and there is no wish, to allow the EU to have an office in Belfast. Originally, that was for diplomatic purposes. I understand that the intention is more for doing monitoring and checking. I also reiterate what I said earlier: there is no need to change the dates for the transition period.
UK-US Trade Deal Negotiating Objectives
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
Viscount Younger of Leckie
There were several questions from the noble Lord, so I will not be able to answer all of them, but I say at the outset: the respect is there between the two countries—it always has been. We have very strong and close relations with the US for a whole range of reasons and there is no reason why that will not continue in terms of our negotiations. In fact, as I said earlier, talks in the working groups have been extremely constructive, and we very much hope they will continue in the same vein. Having said that, I have no doubt that the US will talk tough. We are prepared to talk tough and have said that we are prepared, if necessary, to walk away from negotiations if we feel that any of the issues that we are negotiating on do not fall in with the national interest.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, I think we risk being a little churlish. What we have here is what I recognise as a White Paper. We have a serious document with some serious economic analysis resulting in some serious consultation with a serious attempt to quantify the effects of the policy the Government chose to follow, broken down sectorially, geographically and in different categories of citizen, and there has been consultation with the devolved Administrations. In all these respects, this is admirable and in striking contrast with what we got last week about the negotiation with the European Union, which started today.
I think that one should give the Government credit for being honest about how small the likely scale of increase in trade would be if one managed the scenario that is sketched out here. If, optimistically, one achieved what is here, one would be gaining, after 15 years, a fraction of 1% of GDP, whereas, with the European Union, the Government’s own economic analysis shows that they would be some 5%, 7 % or 8% down in GDP. So this is small stuff.
I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that what matters is what the traders do. More than two-thirds of transatlantic trade in goods is intra-company trade, so it is issues such as taxation that matter as much as any of this here. I also find the optimism of this quite striking. I was always struck, when in America, that the land of the free is not the land of free trade: it is the land where might is right. Remember that the Jones Act is still on the statute book in the United States, that we are the small party—the demandeur—and that the United States is out to, “Make America Great Again”. It is out to bring home jobs; it is not out to support jobs in this country, even though we are a close ally.
It is an admirable document; I see no harm at all in the attempt the Government are making, but let us be realistic. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, is right: it is in Asia, not America, that there are the real prospects for expanding trade. In America, we will come up against fierce protectionism: America is the most protectionist economy of all our trading partners.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
It is praise indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has said that the document is admirable and I am pleased to have been able to listen to that very carefully. I take note of what the noble Lord says about the US and our prospects, but I do not agree. If we take, for instance, SMEs as one particular issue, there are 5.9 million small businesses, but relatively few export to the US. This new deal will provide a tremendous opportunity for SMEs to do business in the US. From the analysis we have done—the noble Lord will have probably read the document—we believe we have more to gain in the UK in terms of business with the US than the US has in return. I think it is exciting and I am not at all dismissing the point made by my noble friend Lord Howell and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about the importance of the Far East. The point is that, as we have left the EU, and as we go through this transition period, the opportunities are absolutely tremendous in terms of what we can do in global deals generally, but it makes sense for us to start with the US.