Global Britain

Anthony Mangnall Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but it looks to me a bit like two people meeting to play chess and the two of them sitting there looking at the board, not moving the pieces, and eventually deciding to shake hands and declare a draw. The Secretary of State might say that that is what continuity agreements are and the Government just kept things as they were, but if that is her argument I do not understand why the deals were left until the last minute and why a number were not done at all. Most fundamentally, what is the point of being an independent trading nation, what is the point of choosing to negotiate our own trade agreements, if we are happy to just replicate every deal that was done years ago by the European Commission, rather than include any new provisions of our own?

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

Let me make a little progress, then I will.

In many areas, the failure to make these deals is particularly stark, including the total lack of progress on any of the aspects of future job growth the Secretary of State highlighted in her speech, on just two of which I shall focus now. First, it is amazing and deeply disappointing that in the 30-plus continuity agreements secured by the Government over the past two years there is not one single new provision that strengthens the global fight against climate change—not even in the enhanced agreement with Japan. Secondly, it is not just a missed opportunity but a failed responsibility that there is no sign in any of the 30-plus agreements of the Government giving even the slightest consideration to human rights.

Egypt and Cameroon are by any standards among the most brutal regimes in the world today, yet the Government signed deals with both countries in December, with no apparent hesitation over their human rights records at all, and no apparent effort to strengthen human rights provisions in those agreements to gain some leverage over their behaviour. With Singapore, Vietnam and Turkey, the Government went one step further, signing new trade agreements which contain no substantive clauses on human rights at all, and not as much as a side-letter to address the issue. Is it any wonder that Members in the other place, with an increasing number in all parts of this House, believe that the only way to get Ministers to take human rights seriously when it comes to future trade deals is by obliging them to do so by law?