Australia and New Zealand Trade Deals

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Drew Hendry

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Andrew Bowie)]

It is a pleasure to have had the opportunity to listen to this debate, to contribute to it and, indeed, to close it on behalf of the Government, especially as I am doing so as the first Scottish Conservative Minister outside the Scotland Office for some 25 years, since the noble Lord Lang of Monkton, who served as Secretary of State for Trade in John Major’s Government.

May I start by thanking all Members for their contributions? It is clear from today’s on the whole positive debate that, on the whole, Members agree that the UK’s trading relationships with Australia and New Zealand are good for this country and for the world. In particular, the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) was right: trade has enabled the development of civilisation and human progress, and we need to make the case for it much more strongly. As the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) said, the trade deals that we are debating will bring positive benefits to our respective countries and economies. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who is a walking example of the positive benefits that antipodean trade can bring to this country.

The agreements will remove tariffs, make it easier for British businesses to invest in Australia and New Zealand and deliver growth to every part of our country. They will also address trade barriers faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, such as lengthy costs and procedures, and allow our citizens to work more freely in both countries, thanks to new environmental commitments for businesses and travel. In short, the deals provide real benefits to real businesses and our respective countries at large.

Before I address the points about scrutiny and environmental protections on which most of the contributions have been focused, let me turn to the contribution by my friend on the Scottish National party Benches, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). Time and again, SNP Members turn up to debates on trade deals and ask questions in the Chamber and elsewhere, professing to be friends of Scotland’s farmers and to be standing up for Scottish agriculture as champions of rural Scotland. There is just one problem: the record shows that, sadly, contrary to the rhetoric, the SNP are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers.

[Drew Hendry]

Is the Minister able to name one single amendment that the Government have accepted from the SNP on any trade deal?

[Andrew Bowie]

I would like, instead, to run through how the SNP are failing Scotland’s farmers, given how strongly the hon. Gentleman professes to be championing them. If they were friends of Scotland’s farmers, they would have voted with us, as the National Farmers Union of Scotland wanted them to do, on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill. If they were true friends of Scottish farmers, they would have listened to the National Farmers Union of Scotland, which has accused the SNP Government of operating in an “information void” due to the lack of information and slow progress of Scotland’s post-Brexit agriculture Bill. They say that they are friends of Scottish farmers, but when did the Scottish Government’s own agriculture and rural development board last meet? It was 10 months ago. That is absolutely shameful.

In only the last two months, the SNP has been criticised by Scotland’s rural bodies for having no plan for rural economic growth and no plan to support Scotland’s pig farmers. Its policies threaten thousands of hectares of good agricultural land. Let us remember, too, that it would take Scotland’s farmers back into the common agricultural policy. I suppose that without Westminster to blame, they would need to join the EU in order to have somebody to point the finger at.

[Drew Hendry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Bowie]

I will not.

The SNP are not champions for Scotland’s farmers. They are political opportunists who think that they can still get away with professing one thing in this place and practising another in Scotland, tied as they are to their Luddite partners in Government, the Green party. The SNP is not pro-farming; it is anti-business, anti-growth and, as we know too well, anti-trade.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

No, we have not. That is why our trade deals include specific measures to uphold them.

Before I go on, I must quickly correct the record. Earlier, the Minister for Trade Policy, who unfortunately has a prior engagement in his constituency, said in response to an intervention from the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) that the climate change agreement in the deal was Australia’s first. It is not; it is actually Australia’s second. It also has an environmental chapter in its agreement to the CPTPP. In addition, the Trade and Agriculture Commission has separately confirmed that our free trade agreements do not require the UK to change our existing levels of statutory protection in relation to any areas.

I now briefly turn to scrutiny, which is incredibly important. Contrary to the description of the right hon. Member for Warley of the scrutiny process, and always remembering that CRaG was introduced by Labour, the Government have made extensive commitments to support robust scrutiny of all new free trade agreements. These commitments greatly exceed our statutory requirements and we have met every single one.

I hear and understand the concerns of the hon. Member for Rochdale and I accept the challenge to go further and do better, but the Australian FTA was examined by Parliament for more than seven months and the scrutiny period featured reports from three Select Committees. I praise the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and it is sad that the Chair of the International Trade Committee, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), is not in attendance today.

[Drew Hendry]

It is important to make it clear that there have been substantial travel disruption and difficulties from Scotland today, so it is unfair to single out an hon. Member who has been hit by that.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I was about to reference the travel requirements. I was not blaming the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar for not coming, but it is sad. I am genuinely disappointed that he is not here to intervene on me at the Dispatch Box today.

By the end of the New Zealand CRaG period, hon. Members will have had the opportunity to examine the detail of the New Zealand deal for eight months. Of course, His Majesty’s Government also welcome the fact that we have a debate on both trade deals today.

It has been a privilege to speak in today’s debate. Our free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand are game-changing deals. They demonstrate that the UK is a confident, outward-looking, free-trading country that is ready to grab the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, and that we are a nation that is using the power of free trade to the benefit of great British businesses and the wider world—and as the right hon. Member for Warley said, to the benefit of all our people.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Australia and New Zealand Trade deals.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Drew Hendry

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. It is no surprise that in Scotland we have now had 15 opinion polls in a row that show that a majority of people support independence. That has not happened overnight; that has happened because they have been watching what has been happening here, and have seen the contempt with which Scotland and Wales’s Parliaments have been treated. The result is the growing demand for us to protect our Parliament in that way.

When it comes to devolution, the Tories used to wear a mask to hide their contempt, but the Bill, and recent comments from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House, have ripped it away once and for all. The Prime Minister recently told his MPs that devolution was a disaster and Tony Blair’s biggest mistake—the latest in a long line of statements that he has made to show his distaste. We all remember him saying that

“a pound spent in Croydon is far more of value to the country…than a pound spent in Strathclyde.”

The Leader of the House has called devolution a failure and is arrogantly dismissing it, while the Scottish social attitudes survey shows that only 7% of the Scottish people do not support devolution. As I have said, the Bill is an orchestrated attempt by this Tory Government to re-centralise powers.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way to me for a second time. I simply cannot sit here and listen to him describe this party and this Government’s position on devolution in the way that he is. Under the Calman commission and the Scotland Act 2016, we have devolved more powers to Scotland than any Government in the history of devolution. We have created police and crime commissioners across England and Wales. We have devolved power to our greater cities and regions across England and Wales. Next year we will publish our devolution White Paper. To stand there and say that the Government do not respect or believe in devolution is simply baloney.

[Drew Hendry]

This is the man who said:

“The UK Government is back in Scotland. Get used to it.”

We have seen the Tories for an awful long time. In Scotland, we have not voted Tory since 1959, I think. [Interruption.] Sorry, 1951. That is how long the Scottish people have seen what the Tories are at. We do not want a Tory Government making decisions for people in Scotland. That is why the vast majority of Scottish people voted, with a settled will, to have their own Parliament, and all polls and the social attitudes survey show that, more and more, they support not only devolution but independence.

The Government want to drive a wrecking ball through the devolved settlements. That is reflected by the fact that this Bill, as we have heard, has been ripped apart in the House of Lords. On the shared prosperity fund, it said:

“The Government should explain why such a broad power for the UK Government to spend money in devolved territories has been included in this Bill.”

It also said that the delegated powers in the Bill are “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”,

“and many of them are constitutionally unacceptable.”

Of course, we know from experience what happens when UK Ministers have control of spending. The former Tory Prime Minister John Major took much-needed cash from the highlands and redirected it to Tory marginal seats that were under pressure in the south-east of England. Decades on, nothing has changed. As we know from the pork barrel scandal whereby the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government directed funding to 61 towns that were key to the Tories gaining or retaining seats in the general election, priorities for Scotland will mean little or nothing to the Tories—probably the latter—unless they see some political advantage. Their naked intention to break devolution and break the law has been condemned across the world and even from their own Benches.

This Bill is not worthy of this or any other Parliament. Outside of Tory Government circles, it has been rightly and absolutely panned. Catherine Barnard, professor of European law at Cambridge University, said

“This is a remarkable piece of legislation and it expressly contravenes our international legal obligations to a point that the legislation itself says this is the intention”.

Imagine that. Steve Peers, a professor at the University of Essex, said:

“It is an obvious breach of international law.”

David Anderson, QC, tweeted:

“The Ministerial Code still mandates compliance with international law, despite a change to its wording, as the Court of Appeal confirmed in 2018”.

Simon Davis, president of the Law Society of England and Wales, said:

“The rule of law is not negotiable.”

Perhaps most tellingly, George Peretz, QC, tweeted:

“But it is hard to think of a better argument for Scottish independence than a UK government that is prepared to use Westminster’s unconstrained sovereignty to override a binding treaty commitment it entered into less than 12 months ago.”

Former Tory Prime Ministers, including a Member still sitting in this House, have savaged this shoddy piece of legislation. From their own Benches, the Government have been told that

“a willingness to break international law sits ill for a country that has always prided itself on upholding the rule of law.”

They have also been told by their own Members that it is an act of bad faith and that the rule of law is not negotiable.

The Bill has also been condemned in the United States. This is a Government who are really good at negotiating no deals, and it looks like they are about to negotiate another one with the US. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said:

“The U.K. must respect the Northern Ireland Protocol as signed with the EU to ensure the free flow of goods across the border.

“If the U.K. violates that international treaty and Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be absolutely no chance of a U.S.-U.K. trade agreement passing the Congress.”

We have also heard comments from the Taoiseach and others across the European Union. In America, Antony Blinken, the chief foreign policy adviser to Joe Biden, said that Joe Biden

“is committed to preserving the hard-earned peace & stability in Northern Ireland. As the UK and EU work out their relationship, any arrangements must protect the Good Friday Agreement and prevent the return of a hard border.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry]

Indeed, it should be the right of people living in any country to determine their own future, and he is right: if the people of Northern Ireland choose a different path, they should be respected, as should be the case for those in Wales and Scotland as well.

I will start to wind up my comments now, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could go on for much more time, but I know that you have packed Benches of Members waiting to come in. I was just about to talk about Joe Biden. He said:

“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”

That is what he said.

This Bill continues to facilitate a race to the bottom on standards, threatens our quality food and drink, opens the door to genetically-modified beef and chlorinated chicken, among other products, and opens the door to privatisation of our water and our NHS. As I have pointed out, the House of Lords has rightly carved up this disastrous, petty, grubby, law-breaking, power-grabbing, messy Tory Bill. Its amendments must be respected and agreed. The Scottish Government have always engaged willingly to take forward the common frameworks progress this devolution-wrecking—

[Andrew Bowie]

Rubbish.

[Drew Hendry]

The hon. Member says “Rubbish”, but he knows that is not the case. We understand that the Tories have a very casual relationship with the truth, but we expect them to at least have a one-night stand with it.

This Bill confirms the contempt that the Prime Minister and his Government have for devolution. People in Scotland see this clearly. As I have said, 15 polls in a row are showing that independence is the only way to save our Parliament’s powers and the voice of the Scottish people, and as the Defence Secretary confirmed earlier, we can have that discussion in the referendum that is coming.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Drew Hendry

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry]

I want to make some progress.

Organisations across Scotland are also deeply concerned about the proposals. NFU Scotland has confirmed the attack on devolution. It said that

“it is the clear view of NFU Scotland, and the other faming unions of the UK, that the proposals pose a significant threat to the development of Common Frameworks and to devolution.”

The General Teaching Council for Scotland said that the proposals

“would undermine the four UK nations’ devolved education functions.”

The STUC has warned:

“Johnson is uniting political parties, trade unions and wider civil society in Scotland against a power grab which would see UK Government interference in previously devolved matters and a rolling back of the constitutional settlement we voted for in 1997”.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I have resisted the temptation to ask the hon. Member to give way up to this point, despite the fact that he may be inadvertently misleading the House by pretending that, in some way, this Government are intent on grabbing powers back from Holyrood and taking them to Westminster when nothing could be further from the truth. I will bring him up, however, on his using the National Farmers Union of Scotland and its arguments as a reason not to back this Bill. The NFUS said:

“NFU Scotland’s fundamental priority, in the clear interest of Scottish agriculture…is to ensure the UK Internal Market effectively operates as it does now.”

That is what the Bill delivers. Nothing of what he has said up to this point is any way relevant to the Bill today.