Trade Bill (Fourth sitting)

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

I come back to this issue of co-operatives being able to access public procurement and the importance in that sense of amendments 24, 25, 26 and 27. Germany has a co-op sector four times the size of the UK’s as a percentage of GDP and France has one six times the size. The co-op sectors in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and New Zealand account for between 5% and 10% of GDP compared with 2% in the UK. I fear that, in part, that is because those managing public procurement contracts do not understand how to engage as much as they might with the co-operative movement and the opportunities that are there. If amendment 26, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has tabled, helps in a very small way those small and medium-sized businesses in the co-op sector to get access to public contracts, that can only be a good thing.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I, too, would like to see a greater diversity of types of enterprise and we should do anything that we can in that regard. Co-operative, owner-managed and small businesses are all worthy of our support. I did not want to let the comments that are being made and the amendments that are being spoken to conclude without recording the fact that, if we look merely at the thrust of the amendments, one would conclude that the hon. Gentleman does not fully understand the benefits of free trade, or the substance of what we are trying to achieve in terms of creating wealth, prosperity and opportunities for people, lifting people out of poverty, making sure that our economy is competitive, and creating the tax and the wealth that will produce our public services and make us thrive. I just wanted, by means of an intervention, to give him the opportunity to place on record all those positive benefits of trade, as well as the opportunities that he is seeking to create through the amendments.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will send him the Co-op party membership application form as a result of this exchange. It is very nice to find a new convert from the Conservative Benches to the need for a more diverse economy. I had thought that the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) was the only such enlightened Member of Parliament on those Benches, but I am glad that the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs is first up of the new intake to catch my eye.

Trade Bill (Fifth sitting)

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

These amendments would widen the scope of the Bill to include all international trade agreements that Britain seeks to make, setting out a process to give the British people a powerful say, through the people they choose to sit in this great House, about what those trade agreements can say. The amendments would require Ministers to secure, first, a mandate from the Houses of Parliament for their negotiating positions, instead of merely publishing, as they do at the moment, a brief outline of what they hope to achieve.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

May I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his damascene conversion to parliamentary democracy and scrutiny of trade, which are things that, as part of our membership of the European Union, we would never have been able to engage in? It is only because the Government are getting Brexit done that we can even entertain these ideas.

[Gareth Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman opens up a whole new area for discussion and I am grateful to him for doing so. Let me confess in these secret discussions here in this House that the biggest mistake that I made when I was a Minister was to agree in 2007—in the run-up to the general election in that year that never was—to appear before seven Select Committees in the space of two weeks, confident in the knowledge that a general election was about to happen and that, actually, I would instead be spending my time with the great people of Harrow West.

Imagine my horror when I discovered that we were not going ahead with a general election and that I would have to appear and talk about our trade policy to seven Select Committees, one after the other over a two-week period. Boy, did I know the detail of trade policy by the end of those that two weeks, and crucially I also had confidence that the negotiating teams working on the EU negotiations knew the detail, too.

The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs mentioned Brexit. The decision of the British people to go ahead with Brexit gives us the opportunity to rewrite the UK’s deal with Canada, which we will consider when we debate amendment 9—I suspect that the whole House could potentially be grateful for that opportunity. I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman’s interventions then, too.

As well as seeking a mandate, the amendments would require Ministers to be much more open and transparent with the British people about the likely impact of the negotiations and, crucially, how each round of the negotiations have gone. They would require the consent of the British people through their representatives in this great House of Parliament to agree to any trade treaty. In short, our amendments would genuinely help the British people to take back control of who the businesses they work in can trade with and on what terms. They would give, for example, key workers a say in how the services that we all recognise as essential—such as medicines and drugs and our health services—are delivered, and whether trade agreements should impact on them or not. They would give British people the chance to say, “These are the standards that we want those selling goods and services to us as consumers to abide by.”

I do not think it is unreasonable to expect Ministers to put their plans and their record for securing better trade terms to the House of Commons for approval. Under cover of lots of offers of consultation, Ministers seem determined to keep for themselves and No. 10 a power to decide with who and on what terms a trade deal gets done. The picture is painted already, but let us imagine for a moment that the Prime Minister decides to ignore the concerns of Government Members as well as Members across the House about a potential trade deal with China. The negotiated plans would not need the approval of the British people. We would not have access to any of the detail of how those negotiations were going, and potentially only a handful of MPs would have a say. Parliament would in effect be sidelined. The British people, as a result, would be sidelined.

Let us be honest: Government Ministers would pack any statutory instrument Committee with ambitious young Turks, such as the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, who recently intervened on me, who are desperate for advancement and so inclined to ask tough questions that they would sit on their hands throughout the entire process. If the Prime Minister would not listen to Conservative MPs’ concerns over Dominic Cummings’s future, what confidence can we have that he would listen to their concerns about a future free trade agreement with China or anyone else?

Modern trade agreements are wide ranging and comprehensive. They do not only cover tariff reductions, but a whole range of regulatory issues, including issues of public health, social standards, labour rights and environmental standards, so detailed parliamentary scrutiny, making Ministers work to convince the British people of the merits of a deal, should be seen as entirely appropriate.

There is a need to properly consider the trade-offs in a trade agreement. The Committee might have heard of a book that five-year-olds like called “The Enchanted Wood”, which I am currently reading with my five-year-old. In it there is a magic faraway tree. At the moment the central characters are going up the magic faraway tree and out through a hole in the clouds to a new land: the land of take-what-you-want. I gently suggest that that is the way in which Ministers are presenting the merits of the trade negotiations that they are seeking to do at the moment. They are not seeking to explain the difficult trade-offs that such negotiations involve. They seek to give the impression that it is all wins for the British people and that there are no downsides to trade agreements.

Once they are signed, trade agreements are very hard to unpick. They are not benevolent arrangements.

Trade Bill (Sixth sitting)

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert—

“(4A) Regulations under subsection (1) may make provision for the purpose of implementing an international trade agreement only if the provisions of that international trade agreement do not in any way restrict the ability—

(a) to make public services at a national or local level subject to public monopoly;

(b) to make public services at a national or local level subject to exclusive rights granted to private operators; and

(c) to bring public services at a national or local level back into the public sector for delivery by public sector employees.”

We have significant written evidence to support this amendment—from the TUC, the British Medical Journal and the Trade Justice Movement. It is about ensuring that international trade agreements do not undermine the ability of Governments at national or local level to run services in the public sector or in a public monopoly in the private sector. Importantly, it also has provision for bringing services that have been privatised back into the public sector—as we have just seen with the probation service—when they have failed after a botched privatisation. We have seen the desirability of doing that all too often with outsourcing, as more and more councils seek to bring services back in-house.

However, with negative lists, standstill clauses and ratchet clauses in international trade agreements, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Governments to do these things. Negative lists ensure that only those services that are specified can be considered in the public sector. Standstill clauses mean that services cannot be brought back into the public sector. Ratchet clauses mean that we see increasing privatisation, with no prospect of a reduction. Failure to abide by them enables overseas interests to take legal action against the Government in this country. The proposed provisions need to be included for those reasons; otherwise, we face real problems in our national health service and elsewhere in our public services.

The Conservative party pledged in its manifesto last year that the NHS would be off the table in a trade agreement, but the pledge did not specifically cover any of the aspects that I have just described, including negative listing and standstill and ratchet clauses. There is digital trade as well. I did not deal with digital trade in my earlier remarks, but it is important because it covers areas such as NHS data, including patient data, which is of great concern to many people.

There is an opportunity for Government Members to rectify that omission from their manifesto by voting for our amendment. If they are committed to the NHS and our other public services, they can support the amendment and ensure that the opportunities are available for the public sector to deliver public services in the public interest.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Bill Esterson]

I have finished.

Trade Bill (Eighth sitting)

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Stewart Hosie]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As in the previous debate, the Minister has said that there will be no compromise on standards. I do not doubt for one second his sincerity, but let us just put it in the Bill so that everyone is absolutely satisfied. In that sense, my hon. Friend is absolutely right—let us rule it out in legislation.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I would love the hon. Gentleman to expand on his theory of harm in respect of health services. If ever there was an example of the global effect of the law of comparative advantage, it is the advances in modern healthcare. There is a remedy available to him should he wish to remove himself from the benefits of diagnostics from Düsseldorf, biogenomics from Boston or pharmaceutical projects from Dublin. There is a mechanism known as a living will, whereby he can instruct his heirs and his family to ensure that he is at no point treated by any of those marvels of modern healthcare and that he can go back to experiencing the benefits of herbal potions and remedies and all those other forms of modern medicine that he would seem to prefer by cutting himself off from the benefits of free trade with the world.

[Stewart Hosie]

I have benefited from the national health service; indeed, it has probably saved my life on a number of occasions.

I have no doubt that some of the drugs purchased are still under patent by private companies. Some of the diagnostic testing machinery was made in Germany. Nobody, but nobody, is talking about restricting any of our health services in terms of purchasing. We are talking about marketisation, which has failed when it comes to the health service.

The new clause has a specific carve-out for the NHS and all health-relevant services regulation, making it illegal for the Government to conclude a trade agreement that altered the way NHS services are provided, liberalised further or opened up to foreign investment by dint of a trade agreement—not by a policy change, not by part of the NHS somewhere on these islands saying it would be a good thing to do, but by dint of a trade agreement being forced on us from somewhere else.

On negative listing, these clauses—we know this from other examples—require all industries to be liberalised in trade agreements unless there are specific carve-outs. The reason this is an issue is that it is not always easy to define what services count as health services and what are more general. For example, digital services may seem irrelevant to health, but NHS data management and GP appointments are increasingly digital. Negative lists therefore make it harder for Governments to regulate and provide health services for the common good. No-standstill clauses are ratchet clauses, because these provisions mean that after the trade deal has been signed parties are not allowed to reduce the level of liberalisation beyond what it was at the point of signature. That can make it difficult to reverse NHS privatisation.

Let me give an example of where had a standstill or ratchet clause been in effect, it would have caused real harm. In Scotland, cleaning in hospitals was historically carried out by private contractors, and the rate of hospital-acquired infections rose dramatically. The SNP Government took the decision to return it to NHS cleaners, and the rate of those infections fell dramatically. Imagine if an investor-state dispute settlement had been in place, if a ratchet clause had been in place—we would have been unable to do that, and if people had died from hospital-acquired infections because the Government were not allowed to take the public health measure of returning cleaning to the public sector, it would have been an absolute scandal.

I mentioned ISDS. There should be no ISDS clauses in trade agreements which only allow private investors to challenge Government policy when, for example, it affects their profits. Failure to abide by those clauses can result in legal challenge from trade partners or, if there is a separate ISDS clause, a challenge from private investors. I have used a number of examples on a number of occasions, and I will use another today very briefly. It is from April 1997. The Canadian Parliament banned the import and transportation of the petrol additive MMT because of concerns that it posed a significant public health risk. The Ethyl Corporation, the additives manufacturer, sued the Canadian Government under chapter 11 of the North American free trade agreement, an ISDS-type arrangement, for $251 million to cover losses of what it called the expropriation of both its production plant and its good reputation. That was upheld by the Canadian dispute settlement panel, and the Canadian Government repealed the ban and paid that corporation $15 million in compensation. That was over a petrol additive that was deemed to have a negative impact on public health. We believe it is quite wrong for large corporations to use these ISDS-type arrangements to sue Governments simply for taking steps to protect the wellbeing of citizens or for simply enacting public health measures which they believe to be right and for which they may well have an electoral mandate.

The new clause also instructs that there should be no changes to drugs pricing mechanisms. We know that the US, for example, has stated that it wishes to challenge the drug pricing model which keeps prices low for ordinary people in the UK. This could also happen through intellectual property and non-patent exclusivities. We need to be very alive to that. It would be bad news for patients, taxpayers, health boards and trusts around the country. In our judgment, trade agreements should never be used to facilitate that.

Our new clause 13 is an adjunct; we simply sought to add a different degree of protection for the health services in the nations, and to ensure that the Government would not be able to lay before Parliament a trade agreement that would have an impact on the provision of healthcare services without the consent of the devolved Administrations. That is secondary to the substantial points we are trying to make and the protections that we wish to put in place with new clause 12.