Trade Bill
Debate between Anna Soubry and Barry Gardiner(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Barry Gardiner
I will not give way again on that point.
International trade agreements have the status of treaties under international law. They cannot be repealed in the same way that domestic legislation can be repealed, and they create real and binding obligations on future generations to uphold their provisions. In a word, they are serious undertakings that demand the most rigorous procedural safeguards if they are not to cause lasting harm. As we take back responsibility for trade policy from Brussels, do hon. Members really think we should end up with less scrutiny and accountability than we currently have as a member of the EU?
My party made a manifesto commitment to ensure proper transparency and parliamentary scrutiny of all future trade and investment deals. That means parliamentary approval of negotiating mandates for future trade arrangements; proper consultation with trade union, industry and civil society stakeholders; comprehensive impact assessments of the likely social, economic and environmental risks; a new scrutiny committee to fill the vacuum created by the loss of the existing powers over trade agreements; unrestricted access to the consolidated texts of trade and investment treaties as they are being formulated; the most rigorous ratification process, with a debate and vote on the Floor of the House—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering away from a sedentary position, saying, “That’s not what this Bill is about.” My point is that that is what it should be about, and it is what the Government promised it would be about. That is why, when it comes to the new agreements that the Bill is creating, we need the powers that I am talking about.
Barry Gardiner
I will give way a little later to both the right hon. Lady and the hon. and learned Lady, but in the meantime I propose to make a little progress.
There is nothing particularly remarkable about any of the strictures that we laid down in our manifesto. Many other countries around the world have such procedures to exercise oversight over their Executives. New Zealand requires its Government to present national interest analyses before its Parliament. Australia has a separate joint scrutiny committee on treaties. Even in the EU, Germany requires all trade treaties to undergo a process of scrutiny by parliamentary committee before ratification can take place.
Currently, the Council of Ministers sets a negotiating mandate and the Commission is charged with implementing it. Our representatives in the European Parliament debate it and scrutinise it in the trade committee. The resulting treaty is then put under the powerful microscope of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who chairs the European Scrutiny Committee in this House. Once we leave the EU, all those institutional levels of accountability are stripped away and we will fall back on the 1924 Ponsonby rule. It was interesting to hear the Secretary of State say, “No, no, it’s all about the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.” Does he not realise that CRAGA actually gives legislative effect to the Ponsonby rule, an arcane procedure from the last century that allows our Government to ratify a trade agreement—an international trade treaty—by simply laying the text before the House for 21 sitting days, with no need for a debate or vote? That is simply not good enough in a modern democracy. Hon. Members hold this House’s dignity very cheap indeed if they vote tonight to govern ourselves after the fashion of a tinpot dictatorship.
The Government have a woeful record on transparency and democratic oversight when it comes to international trade agreements, so it pains me to remind the House of the exchange of letters, which were revealed just before Christmas, between the Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, in which the Secretary of State gave assurances to President Trump’s Administration that he will deny Members of this House access to information on the substance of talks held in the UK-US trade working group. The letter says that the following approach will be taken:
“Proposals, accompanying explanatory material, emails related to the substance of the working group, and other information, exchanged in the context of the working group, are provided and will be held in confidence unless otherwise jointly decided.”
Yet when the Secretary of State responded to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who asked a trenchant question about the need for transparency, he said that of course he believed there should be full transparency. In fact, this obsession with secrecy should not be taken for a prudent desire to conceal our negotiating hand from the Americans. The provisions agreed by the Secretary of State are expressly designed to deny British MPs and the wider public any knowledge of what has already been discussed with the United States’ representatives. He will not tell us what he has already told them.
Anna Soubry
Talking of telling the House about policy, will the hon. Gentleman now tell us Labour’s Front-Bench policy on our future relationship with the European Union when it comes to the customs union? How does that differ from the Government’s policy, because I suggest that the Labour Front-Bench team is in agreement with the Government’s Front-Bench team?
Barry Gardiner
The right hon. Lady is free to suggest whatever she likes. I have dealt with the customs union at great length this afternoon and made our position quite clear.
All information exchanged between the UK and US officials will be kept secret until four years after the working group has been concluded. That is why hon. Members should not take on trust any verbal reassurances that the Government or the Secretary of State might give this afternoon. One has to establish good faith to earn trust.
Enterprise Bill [Lords]
Debate between Anna Soubry and Barry Gardiner
Barry Gardiner
My right hon. Friend has enormous knowledge in this area and I absolutely agree with her. The most successful instrument that the Government have created for energising and putting investment into infrastructure projects in this country is now being neutered. That is a tragedy, which these amendments seek to address.
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
It has been an interesting debate, but I must confess that I do not agree with many of the arguments advanced by the Opposition, so I hope that hon. Members will not support any of the new clauses.
If I may deal with things in reverse order, I will first address new clause 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), which seeks to ensure that the Green Investment Bank continues its green investments plans post-privatisation. We agree on what we want the bank to continue to do. We are seeking bidders who can fund the GIB’s legally binding commitments and who have the deep pockets to fund its ambitious green business plan. The bank’s management is clear that it needs access to private capital to fund its green business plan. That could be equity capital raised as part of the sale process, debt capital, which the GIB can raise when it is in the private sector, or private capital raised as part of a fund structure.
Business plans change and evolve as new opportunities arise, and we will not bind new owners into the current plan, so I cannot accept the hon. Lady’s new clause. The new owners of the GIB will have views on the future strategy and business plan. They will assess it as part of their due diligence and make it a part of their offers. Whoever the new owner or owners are, the special share ensures that the business plan, like the GIB, will continue to be green.
It must be said in response to many of the points and arguments that it is almost impossible to understand why anybody would want to buy the Green Investment Bank—the clue is in the name—unless they wanted to ensure that it continued to invest in green projects.
Anna Soubry
I disagree with the hon. Lady, because the privatisation and sale of the Green Investment Bank is about ensuring that more money is available from the private sector to carry out that particular sort of investment. Forgive me, but it really is not the role of Government to gamble and make investments with taxpayers’ money. That was right in 2012 when, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), the Green Investment Bank was set up because of an accepted market failure. However, the idea that the Government are throwing it away, as he put it, could not be further from the truth. The Green Investment Bank is a real success story. No one is seeking to pretend that it is anything else. We want its success to continue, but in the private sector.
Barry Gardiner
Does the Minister actually believe that there is no longer any market failure that needs to be addressed? The figures on infrastructure suggest quite the opposite. The point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the innovative and novel projects that the Green Investment Bank was set up to support is that they pay much less return into the private sector, which is precisely why risk-sharing between the Government and the private sector was necessary to launch the bank in the first place.