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.