Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, there is a tradition in the House of Lords that maiden speeches are received only with approval. Today I must break that tradition. While congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone of Boscobel, on his maiden speech, it was made by him as a Minister, for the Government, and expressed a philosophy that is urgently in need of explicit challenge.

In his introductory remarks, the Minister said that globalisation, trade and investment are the best routes to prosperity and peace. These sentiments attracted wide support during the debate, reflecting the 19th-century and earlier origins of the political philosophies that dominate in your Lordships’ House. For the Liberal Democrats, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that free, open and fair trade is “the bedrock of our political movement”. These are the antiquated ideas that gave us the world we have today, one wracked by poverty and inequality, facing a climate emergency and a nature crisis, a model that Covid-19 has helped expose as profoundly insecure and unstable.

Pursuing our current economic model, based on economic growth, multinational-dominated trade and the exploitation of vulnerable workers and nations, has given us a world in which one in nine people regularly goes to bed hungry. The planet is treated as a mine and a dumping ground—including the forest destruction to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred. That destruction has been to the benefit of a few and not to the majority of the people on the planet.

In today’s other maiden speech, which I commend, the right reverend Prelate said that he would work to ensure that the House heeded the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities, noting how many of those are in northern England. This region enjoyed a period of relative prosperity built on trade and on the backs of child labourers and exploited women workers, but that was at the cost of the impoverishment of what became Britain’s colonial possessions, as the noble Earl, Lord Devon, noted earlier in his excellent speech. There is a chilling reminder of this period in the astonishing appointment of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott. He is now an adviser to the Board of Trade—or, to get into the full formalities, the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations. It seems we are not so much heading into the 21st century as the 18th.

However, there are positive possibilities. The Green Party believes that we need strong local economies in all parts of the world, built on a foundation of local independent businesses and co-operatives with money circulating around those economies, doing its work of meeting people’s needs rather than the place of money in our trade-focused world, which is all too often concentrated uselessly in tax havens, with the financialisaton of more and more areas of life. It is a threat to the security of us all, as the increasingly regular arrival of financial crises has demonstrated.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I will address the provisions of Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, and use this opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of questions.

One clear advantage of leaving the European Union was that we would leave behind the European procurement programme, which is very similar to this one. That would open up possibilities for our home producers of meat, cheese, dairy products and other products, particularly foodstuffs, to win contracts in our hospitals, schools, prisons and so on. The threshold that I remember was €135,000, but that may of course have changed with the passage of time.

Does the Bill limit the opportunities for small businesses and others to bid for contracts, particularly with public bodies such as schools, hospitals, prisons and others, or will the opportunities be exactly the same as we currently enjoy under the EU? Further, will my noble friend explain what the threshold will be? Will the threshold that we adhered to under the European Union be followed by the GPA, as we are already deemed to be members through our membership of the EU? Who will be party to setting the threshold and the conditions of procurement? I hope my noble friend will put my mind at rest that, as we transition out of the EU, there will be more and greater opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses to bid for these opportunities, not fewer.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I offer the Green group’s agreement with the legal aims of all noble Lords who have spoken so far. Amendments 1 to 5 seek to keep environmental and public health protections, and in particular workers’ rights protections. I note that there has been very strong support for Amendment 5. I offer support, too, for Amendments 100 to 102, because of the need for democratic control of this House—something that we seem to spend a lot of time talking about these days. I also agree very much with the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, about how they would keep basic minimum standards here, so it is very hard to see why the Government would disagree with any of them.

However, I can perhaps offer different sentiments to some of the ones expressed in the debate thus far. The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, said that we had seen a century of rising standards. That is broadly true if you start from the beginning and go to the end, but in recent decades there have been real falls in standards, and when we look at the state of the world, whether we consider the natural environment or the climate emergency, we see that there has been a massive degradation.

The noble Lord, Lord Fox, said that there is no point having trade that reduces our standards. I very much agree with that, but we have a real problem in that so much trade has done just that. On Friday, I was at the launch of a report by the Green House Think Tank and the Green European Foundation on trade and investment requirements for zero carbon, which set out how much damage trade has done historically. However, what we are debating are the amendments, and however much we might want to shape towards a trade world that has less trade in it but far better trade that does not build in environmental destruction and exploitation of workers, we do not want to go backwards. These modest amendments, as other noble Lords have said, seek modestly to ensure that we do not go backwards. I therefore commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree entirely with the speech of my noble friend Lord Hain. We have moved a long way from when public contracts and the wages thereof were governed by the 1946 House of Commons fair wages resolution. We do not want to go back to those days, but we will if we are not careful.

Before making my main point, I want to reinforce the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in her question about small traders. I agree with the sentiment behind her questions to the Minister, but in relation to schools, hospitals and prisons, there is an real ongoing problem: it is not possible to create a situation where someone can bid—or feel that they have a chance of bidding—for a particular prison or school, or for a group of prisons or schools, simply because we have devolved the administration and awarding of contracts to the lowest possible level; there is no central control. Small firms will miss out unless something is put into the process that allows them to benefit. On the other hand, I do not want to leave the EU, so I do not want small firms to benefit either way; there is a better way of reorganising the EU.

The only reason I asked to speak on this group is Amendment 100. It is another example of how this Government are constantly trying to make sure that this House does not get a voice. The Bill talks about scrutiny as a resolution of either House of Parliament. That is not good enough. The amendment would correct it: it should be each House of Parliament. The contempt shown by Ministers for the parliamentary scrutiny process is abysmal and on a massive scale, and it has to be pulled back constantly. The House of Commons will try to make that provision tomorrow, and we have to do it in this Bill. I therefore offer 100% support for Amendment 100.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I call the noble Baroness, Baroness McIntosh of Pickering. No? I think the noble Baroness is unable to join us at this point, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I rise to speak primarily to Amendment 11, to which I attached my name, as moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I thank the noble Lord for his very clear introduction.

We are well aware that compliance with international law is something of a sore point now, so on the basis of that sensitivity, one would hope that the Government would adopt this amendment as a matter of course. They have the opportunity, by agreeing with this amendment, to demonstrate their belief in the rule of law. However, it has to be said that we have, as the amendment includes, signed up to the sustainable development goals, but we are not on track to deliver a single one of them, even in our own country. UK trade and UK actions are damaging the push towards sustainable development goals all around the world. We need accountability and leadership, and we need a legal framework, which Amendment 11 would supply.

I will also speak briefly in support of Amendment 18, which seeks to guarantee the ILO conventions and the European Social Charter. Many years ago, I prepared a report for the ILO on child labour in Thailand. If I had needed a reminder of the importance of regulation, the rule of law and the risk of exploitation, I certainly had it with that. Given the reports that we have had from the garment sector in Leicester, those experiences are not as foreign as we might once have thought. Protecting workers’ standards around the world has impacts on workers’ standards in our own country.

I will also speak briefly in support of Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. In doing so, I will quote another Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, in a meeting this morning of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, of which I am a co-chair. He spoke of a sense of moral values being a bigger part of our foreign policy. I very much agree. I suggest that we also need to see that in trade policy, particularly in the purchasing practices of our Government. This amendment allows democratic oversight of key government procurement.

Finally, I will speak to Amendment 45 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, reflecting the need to undertake human rights and equalities impact assessments of all trade deals before and after implementation. I am very aware that noble Lords have not yet spoken to all these amendments—I am reflecting the written material —but the same argument applies as in Amendment 33, and also the comments I made in my first contribution to this Committee. “First do no harm” is a medical phrase that, if applied to trade over recent decades, would have produced far less trade and a far healthier, less poverty-stricken, more rights-respecting, less damaged world. Given the fragile state of this planet and its people, we have no alternative but to apply that principle in our future trade policies, and the amendments I have named take us some steps in that direction.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 18, which develops one aspect of Amendment 11, so ably introduced by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

It is usual in free trade agreements to have a chapter which contains provisions on labour standards. Chapter 23 of the much-discussed EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is typical. It requires each state party to ensure that its labour law and practices embody and provide protection for the fundamental principles and rights at work, which it lists as

“freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; elimination of forced labour; abolition of child labour; elimination of discrimination”.

In that free trade agreement, the parties affirmed their commitment to respect, promote and realise those principles and rights, in accordance with the obligations of the members of the ILO and the commitments under the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and its follow-up. They undertook that their labour law and practices would promote

“health and safety at work; minimum employment standards for wage earners, and non-discrimination in respect of working conditions, including for migrant workers.”

That is all very well, but it is not enough. The United Kingdom has ratified many ILO conventions, including the core conventions. Indeed, 70 years ago this summer it was the first nation on the planet to ratify fundamental ILO convention 98 on collective bargaining. However, its potential trading partners may not have such a fine record. The USA is sadly lacking in this respect. Any free trade agreement should require a prospective partner to ratify those conventions which the UK has ratified—otherwise, there will be asymmetry in labour standards.

Ratification by partners is not enough. We should insist that our prospective trading partners customarily observe standards we have ratified. That is an obligation in CETA too, which states:

“Each Party reaffirms its commitment to effectively implement in its law and practices in its whole territory the fundamental ILO Conventions that Canada and the Member States of the European Union have ratified respectively.”


That principle should apply to all the international treaty provisions that the UK has ratified, not just those of the ILO. We should therefore include those of the Council of Europe, its convention on human rights and the articles of the European Social Charter 1961, which we have ratified. Non-European states cannot ratify those provisions but they can certainly undertake to implement them. The effect, I hope, will be to uplift the labour standards of some potential trading partners to those we purport to uphold. It will also prevent the creation of an unbalanced playing field on labour rights, contrary to the level playing field that the Government claim to advance. Likewise, the free trade agreement should be compatible in all respects with the ILO conventions that this country has chosen to ratify; otherwise, standards can be watered down.

The amendment is surely uncontroversial in requiring that prospective FTA partners must uphold the sovereignty of Parliament, the authority of our courts, the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law. It is hard to conceive of a rational objection to the proposal that the minimum standards referred to in the amendment are required of any prospective trading partner, whatever may be said about our own Government’s record on these points. I ask the Government to ensure that these requirements are embodied in the Trade Bill.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 51. I thank my noble friend Lord Bassam for setting the scene for this debate. The amendment inserts a new clause into the Trade Bill which protects the NHS and publicly funded health and care services from any form of control from outside the United Kingdom. Like my noble friend, I thank the BMA and the Trade Justice Movement for their briefings and the Library for an excellent brief. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for their support.

The Government are pressing ahead with trade negotiations with the United States, the EU and elsewhere, despite there being no system of transparency or scrutiny of trade deals. Your Lordships’ House passed an amendment to the previous Trade Bill on parliamentary scrutiny. Since then, the Government have not made good on promises to give Parliament a say in new trade deals. Noble Lords should support a similar amendment to this Bill. The Trade Bill should be amended to protect the UK’s high food and animal welfare standards, and to protect the NHS and public health from provisions in trade deals.

The Covid crisis has hit global trade. It is essential that the UK’s trade policy maintains the right to regulate, protects the NHS and supports countries in the global south. We are concerned that, at present, Parliament does not have adequate powers to guide and scrutinise trade negotiations. My noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lord Lennie explained this to the Committee on Tuesday and the current process provides no legal mechanism to directly influence or permanently block trade agreements. This could mean the UK entering into trade deals that have a significant impact on public health and the domestic healthcare sector without Parliament having a meaningful role in scrutiny. As the Trade Bill is currently the only legislative vehicle for Parliament’s oversight of trade negotiations, we believe that additional scrutiny mechanisms are vital to protect the NHS and public health as the UK begins to negotiate independent free trade agreements in earnest.

As my noble friend said, this amendment seeks to ensure that our NHS is protected. It is necessary because this Government, and the one before them, have form in this area. Last year, noble Lords discussed the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill. It gave the Secretary of State powers, as the Constitution Committee put it, to make any healthcare deal with anyone, anywhere in the world. I am pleased to say that your Lordships’ House successfully refocused that Bill on to the issue of 27 million European health insurance card holders and their interests at the time, instead of laying the groundwork for trade deals involving our NHS. On 5 February last year, I said that

“it seems to open the door to healthcare negotiations across the rest of the world. In other words, it also lays the basis for trade and foreign affairs discussion concerning healthcare. One must ask: which countries do the Government have in mind, and for what purpose and why is the Bill addressing world issues and not limited to the European Union?”—[Official Report, 5/2/19; col. 1484.]

That was remedied by your Lordships’ House. However, it is clear that if that Bill had been agreed as originally drafted, it would have opened the way for this Government already to be in negotiations with the USA and others, and to give them open access to our NHS.

While the Government have repeatedly pledged that the NHS is “not on the table” in trade negotiations, leaked documents reveal that that is not the case, as my noble friend Lord Bassam outlined. Let us be quite safe. The Trade Bill should be amended to protect the NHS; we should have these safeguards in place, in statute. It is vital that the Bill protects the health and social care sectors by safeguarding future options for rolling back either privatisation or restructuring. We need to protect our right to restructure our health and social care services into a more collaborative model. Trade agreements must not be permitted to lock in current or higher levels of privatisation within the NHS in England, nor lead to privatisation in the devolved nations without their say so.

To do this, the Bill must ensure that the health and social care sectors are excluded from the scope of all future trade agreements. The Bill must rule out investor protection and dispute resolution mechanisms in UK trade deals to ensure that private foreign companies cannot sue the UK Government for legitimate public procurement and regulatory decisions that we decide to take with regard to our public services, including the NHS. If a future Government want to change the structure of the NHS, they must not be prevented from doing so by trade deals.

It is worth noting that an EU investment treaty recently resulted in the Slovakian Government being ordered to pay €22 million in damages to a foreign private health insurance firm after it decided to reverse the privatisation of its national sickness insurance market. Investor protection mechanisms have also been used extensively to challenge public health initiatives like tobacco plain packaging. There is a great deal at stake here. We need to include protections to ensure that NHS price control mechanisms and the UK’s current intellectual property regime are maintained.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I begin by addressing Amendment 13 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton—ably introduced by him—to which I was pleased to attach my name. Looking at this, I cannot but think of the many wearying social media debates I engaged in about how our membership of the European Union did not stop the bringing of disastrously outsourced public services back into public hands. But that is now all history. I think all sides of the House can agree about what won the 2016 referendum. The result was a clear direction from the public on this, if not much else: take back control. That must surely apply, as a matter of priority, to public services. I look back to the 2012 Olympics, an age ago now, but it is hard to forget the G4S security fiasco, when the Army had to step in. That is what has now happened with our railways: the control that the public has long been asking for. I recall that, even in 2015, a majority of Conservative voters wanted to see our railways run for public good, not private profit. It is what should happen with the disastrously underperforming, privatised, national Covid test and trace system. The private sector can always walk away. It makes a mess and leaves the public sector to pick up the pieces. The service users suffer, the providers are loaded with debt, the public pay more and a few walk away with the profits, usually stashed in a handy tax haven.

Given the rigid ideology of the Government, I will not even ask the Minister to agree with me, but I will ask him to agree with the idea of democracy, of keeping options open, including the option to take back control of public services. It is a legal principle that one Parliament cannot bind future ones, but locking us into trade deals where a country has given its word does, presumably, have that effect under the rule of law. The amendment does not force the Government to do anything, despite the obvious public good of bringing public services back into public hands. It does prevent the closing down of democratic decision making: it keeps control. I invite the Minister to tell me why keeping our options open is a bad idea and to support Amendment 13.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has ably laid out the detail of Amendment 51, to which I was pleased to attach my name alongside those of the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Fox. There is little doubt that, of all the elements of the Trade Bill, protection of the NHS has attracted the greatest attention. As many Peers have already reflected in the Committee, this is a reminder that trade Bills are of far greater public interest and concern now than they were when this House and the other place last considered them. It is a powerful path for the argument for new systems of oversight equal to those our MEPs enjoyed and the US Congress regularly utilises.

I recall taking part in a march in 2014 with the group called 999 Call for the NHS. It started in Jarrow, following in famous footsteps, although I only walked the Luton to Bedford leg. We stopped for a comfort break at an establishment along the route. A young man behind the bar asked: “Why are we suddenly so busy?” We told him: “We are marching against the privatisation of the NHS.” He said: “What? It still says NHS above the door of my doctor’s surgery.”

Of course we know that that is not true: there is significant privatisation already. To cite just one statistic, 13% of in-patient mental healthcare beds in England are privately run. In Manchester, patients have a 50:50 chance of being admitted to a privately owned hospital and a one in four chance of the bed being provided by an American-owned company. We have lost control in significant areas of the NHS. This amendment makes sure that we can take it back and not lose further control.

Finally, I will refer briefly to Amendment 75. We have yet to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and I look forward to her explanation, but my eye notes with approval the amendment’s provision against the use of investor-state dispute settlement procedures—another great threat to public democratic control and decision-making and something that the Green Party has long campaigned against. Protection of access to generic affordable drugs and preventing excess windfall profits for pharmaceutical companies: I cannot see anything not to like in this amendment.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 75 in my name. Intellectual property rights, if governed badly, can result in monopolies and unethical practices, particularly when it comes to pharmaceutical companies and medicines. In recent years, these practices have become more commonplace. Indeed, the NHS’s spiralling drugs bill led even the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, to recognise that pharmaceutical companies are trying to, in his words, “rip off taxpayers”, and that big business must be more socially responsible. Something must be terribly wrong. In an interview in the Times, he condemns profiteering on products that rely on government-funded research and NHS patient data.

In the UK, high prices have put pressure on national health budgets and led to the rationing of treatments—for example, on breakthrough medicines for hepatitis C and cancer. There are also significant delays for cystic fibrosis patients to get access to the drug Orkambi given the unaffordable price that the pharmaceutical company Vertex was demanding. It took years of stalled negotiations between NICE and Vertex and the threat of a compulsory licence to push Vertex to lower the price. In the meantime, 200 people died. The breast cancer drug trastuzumab—I hope I said that correctly—is unavailable to the vast majority of women across the developing world because Roche holds multiple patents on the drug in South Africa, blocking biosimilars from being sold in the country until 2033. This is despite the fact that trastuzumab is included in the WHO’s essential medicines list.

These and other examples of unethical pricing regimes by pharmaceutical companies prompted me to put forward my Amendment 75. It aims to ensure that a Government’s right to use internationally agreed safeguards—such as they are in medicines—to protect public health, with a particular focus on securing access to less costly generic medicines, is not undermined or restricted by international trade agreements to which we are a party.

The amendment is rooted in the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966, which is a binding international human rights treaty that we in the UK ratified in 1976. The ICESCR ensures the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, including—and this is the part that is pertinent to the amendment—the right to the highest attainable standard of health. What Government would not aspire to the best available healthcare for their citizens? But whether they would want that or not is immaterial; if they are a party to the ICESCR then this is a statutory duty that they owe their citizens. That is the point of the amendment. It puts on the face of the Bill something that is not just nice to have but that the Government are already committed to and should be proud of: to proclaim their commitment to the highest standard of health for all their citizens.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Suttie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, both of whom always speak with such passion and conviction, particularly on these matters. This group of amendments, including Amendments 61and 62, to which I have added my name, is about establishing the principle of the need for consultation and consent with the devolved authorities and legislatures, and about laying down some markers for how we can establish open and effective methods for dispute resolution in our unwritten constitution.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has said, more than 20 years on since the various devolution settlements were agreed, the stresses and strains of our uncodified system are in danger of being tested to breaking point as a result of Brexit. Future United Kingdom trade deals risk highlighting these stresses and strains yet further, which is why it is so important to test the Government’s responses to many of these issues as we debate these amendments this afternoon.

Twenty years ago, when the devolution settlements were being devised, there were fewer party-political stresses on the system, as Labour was in power—in coalition or otherwise—in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Westminster. Clearly, now that we have an SNP Government in Edinburgh, a Labour-led Administration in Wales and a re-established power-sharing Executive in Belfast, as well as a fairly nationalist Conservative Government in Westminster, our mechanisms of consent and trust are being tested to the limit.

I should perhaps declare an interest as a Scot with an Irish passport currently living in the county of Kent. Those of us who are not nationalists have a collective interest in ensuring that we find ways to make our future constitutional settlement and trading relationships work effectively throughout the whole United Kingdom. I therefore hope that the Minister agrees that providing the necessary information to the devolved legislatures to allow scrutiny of any future trade agreement—as set down in Amendment 62—is the very least that can be expected and is surely in everyone’s best interests. Providing the text at least two months before the agreement and inviting comment from the devolved legislatures would provide the kind of buy-in and involvement that will assist in developing coherence in policy-making across the United Kingdom.

We should remember that this should always be a two-way flow of information. The UK’s devolved legislatures are often in a stronger position to understand the impact of new trade deals on local businesses and communities. Obviously, this is particularly true in the case of Northern Ireland, where the impact on SMEs could be very significant, not least because of the complex supply lines. Does the Minister acknowledge that free trade agreements will have a direct impact on the effectiveness and scope of devolved policy-making and legislation? Does he also accept that consent mechanisms with the devolved Governments are vital to maintaining the coherence of our United Kingdom?

I will turn now to a very specific FTA: that of Japan. Can the Minister say to what degree the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly were kept informed during the negotiations, given the very particular set of circumstances faced by Northern Ireland resulting from the Northern Ireland protocol? Does he accept the analysis of a Stormont official who said the week before last:

“Some Japanese goods sold in Britain as part of a new trade agreement may not be available in Northern Ireland due to the Brexit deal”?


Turning to the future role of the Joint Ministerial Committee—covered in Amendments 50 and 76—it should be noted in passing that, despite his new title of Minister for the Union, the Prime Minister has not yet presided over a plenary session of the JMC, as far as I am aware. The JMC has until now been a consultative rather than a decision-making body but, given the likely increase in tensions, surely it makes sense to increase both the frequency of meetings and their capacity for decision-making.

As Professor Nicola McEwen said in her evidence to the Lords Constitution Committee a couple of weeks ago, the JMC on EU negotiations is currently the best-functioning of the JMCs, but is likely to cease to exist at the end of transition period and, as yet, there are no clear indications of how it will be replaced. Can the Minister say whether there are plans to ensure that the JMC meets more frequently? What plans are there to replace the JMC on European negotiations from 1 January next year? Does the Minister agree that it is increasingly vital to have regular meetings of the JMC, so that we can have greater consultation and co-ordination? Can he also say whether thought has been given to establishing additional sub-committees within the JMC framework to discuss such issues as international trade and international relations?

No doubt the Minister will say in his reply that all sorts of assurances on consent and consultation have already been given, but, for those kinds of assurances to carry weight, there has to be a significant level of trust. Tragically, that trust has been eroded throughout the whole Brexit experience, which has led to the very real need for the amendments we are discussing, and the need to put mechanisms for both consultation and consent in the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the three noble Lords who have opened our session and to express my broad agreement with the direction of everything they said.

I have attached my name to Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I do not intend to go through each amendment in this group one by one, except perhaps to note that Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and Amendment 76 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, seem to be the strongest and to address the key issues. But all the amendments address issues of concern and at least seek to prevent what we could describe as a dictatorship from Westminster.

On the broad picture of what is happening with this group of amendments, as we have said again and again during our discussions on the Bill, trade is now understood to be a far more complex matter than it was thought to be decades ago when your Lordships’ House and the other place last considered it. Occasionally we hear from a small rearguard, saying that trade has nothing to do with the environment or labour standards or considerations beyond the narrowly neoliberal economic —indeed, that such issues should not be raised at all here. But that argument is clearly well past its sell-by date.

Carbon emissions from the products we consider trading have an impact on us all, as does the environmental destruction associated with them. If we think about the origins of the current pandemic, we see that the destruction of nature anywhere in the world has an impact on us all. The impact is also very directly onshore. If we think about the exposure of the situation of the garment industry in England, particularly in Leicester, the nature of trade and the failure of regulation—indeed, the failure to have the will to regulate—are part of that story. And, of course, bringing junk products in produces waste that must be dealt with.

That brings me to devolution. The aim of devolution —the direction of travel—is to allow nations to choose their own routes and, for example, set higher environmental, labour and food standards, as we have sadly seen happen for England. We will look at that a great deal more when we come to the Internal Market Bill, but in this context we are talking about foreign trade. Whatever Westminster might seek to inflict on England in the form of free trade zones or the destruction of standards by bringing in inferior, damaging, disastrous products, the whole point of devolution is that nations can make their own democratic choices in systems far more democratic than in Westminster, and not see them undermined by an influx of low-standard foreign goods or services. They must be able to say no to these goods and services in their trade. In these amendments, we seek to ensure that that possibility is there. It is a democratic essential.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I refer Members to my entry in the register of interests. It is a pleasure to follow the preceding noble Lords, who have made particular cases in respect of several amendments. I will address Amendment 61 in my name—to which the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, have added their names—and Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, to which I and the noble Baronesses have added our names.

Before I explain the need for proper consent and scrutiny arrangements with the devolved Administrations, it is important to note that those two amendments deal specifically with Northern Ireland. Although there have been devolved settlements in the regions of the United Kingdom over the past 20 years, we in Northern Ireland have been subjected to in-and-out periods of devolution. We have sometimes had periods of direct rule, although the last time the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly were not sitting and we did not have the other infrastructure associated with the Good Friday agreement, basically Westminster made some decisions, but it was not a form of direct rule because amendments to the then Northern Ireland Executive Bill addressed those particular issues.

Because of the sensitivities of dealing with the devolved arrangements in Northern Ireland, and because of their intricate nature, it is important that the relationships that were manifest in the Good Friday agreement—relationships between unionists and nationalists in the north, between the north and south of Ireland and between Ireland and Britain—are nurtured and not set aside or fractured in any way. Yesterday, the good bishops of the Catholic Church in Ireland stressed the importance of underscoring that shared space. Their fear was that Covid, Brexit, all these trading arrangements, the Trade Bill and the Internal Market Bill could fracture those relationships in a very unnecessary way.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak first to Amendment 97, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, to which I have attached my name. It is a pleasure to follow both the noble Lords. I particularly associate myself with the comments on ending fossil fuel subsidies made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.

Since they have already amply explained the amendment, I will simply note that we are coming out of an arrangement as an EU member where there was—as I was frequently forced to repeat during the Brexit debate—the generalised scheme of preferences, which meant that there were no tariffs and no quotas on goods from the least developed countries, except on arms and ammunition. Some of my reservations about the role of trade have already been expressed and will be extended in my comments on Amendment 39. We often hear words about development aims from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, in your Lordships’ House. We can only hope that we will not be damaging the least developed countries with our trade policies. A regular report would be a way of checking on that. This is a modest amendment with which I hope the Government will agree. They could use it to display the progress on one of their avowed policy aims.

I also support Amendment 39, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lord, McConnell of Glenscorrodale. As I am a regular proponent of the sustainable development goals as a way of bringing systems thinking and understanding of planetary limits into our policies and plans, this will probably come as no surprise to this Committee. I confess—and I acknowledge in advance—that the other proponents may not thank me for my support. I go back to the words of the amendment:

“Any future international trade agreement ... shall only be eligible for signature or ratification ... if the provisions ... do not conflict with, and are consistent with, the provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals”.


I remind the Committee that the United Kingdom is not on track to meet one of those goals—to which we are of course a signatory. Business as usual will not do it, for us or for the rest of the world. Globalisation and trade have done great damage to the social, environmental and economic fabric of our world.

I have already referred to the trade and investment requirements of the Zero Carbon report by the Green House think tank. Any agreement meeting the sustainable goals or any such trade would require a total transformation of our current system. If passed, the amendment would do nothing less than ensure a peaceful economic revolution—one that could greatly boost the national steel industry and the growing of fruit and vegetables. It would utterly transform our economy, very much in line with Green Party policy for one-planet living. But that is—perhaps I do the signatories to the amendment a disservice—something more than they intended.

There is no justification for the fact that salmon accounts for 74% of our fish-trade carbon footprint. In 2019, we exported 125,000 tonnes of salmon—48,000 tonnes of it by air—over half of which was flown to the US and China. We also imported almost the same amount—101,000 tonnes. The air-freighted salmon we exported was 64 times more carbon-intensive than the almost identical, if cheaper, salmon that we imported. No trade deal aligning with the sustainable development goals could allow that.

In 2019, just 16% of the fruit and 54% of the vegetables we consumed in the UK were grown here. We have a climate which is ideal for growing apples and pears yet, in 2019, we imported 438,000 tonnes more than we exported. The greatest carbon impact came from those imported from furthest away—South Africa and New Zealand.

Then there is the massive water footprint of the flowers, fruit and vegetables we bring from around the world, and the human misery—literally blood, sweat and tears—in the seams of fast fashion. A trade deal aligned with the sustainable development goals could not allow this to continue, for of course it would be about delivering the sustainable development goals for other nations, as well as for ourselves.

Two-thirds of the 2 million tonnes of higher-grade steel used in UK car manufacturing is imported, yet we currently export four-fifths of our scrap steel, which could be an important resource for making new steel through renewables-driven arc furnaces. This is a sustainable development goals approach that would reshape and largely end both directions of trade.

Trade policy and trade deals currently lock in harms, encourage and support the production of dirty products and fill our shores with rubbish. A lot of it is utterly pointless. We export 1.25 million tonnes of ice cream every year and import 3 million tonnes. Those figures have both doubled in the past decade. Let us think of the waste and pointlessness of such exchange and acknowledge that in a sustainable world, one meeting people’s needs and not trashing the planet—a world achieving the balance of economic, social and environmental goals that are the sustainable development goals—the trade landscape would look very different. I commend the amendment to the Committee and urge everyone to back it.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am glad to see this important clause being proposed as an addition to the Bill. I am also glad to see that Amendment 97 is before us. Sustainable development requires a global response and the commitment of all those who have signed up to the development goals. Either we take the development goals seriously or we do not. It is no good joining the world in saying that we are determined to establish these goals and work towards them and then, by something we do in the sphere of trade, undermining the very principles on which they are based. If the Government are serious in their commitment, as given to the international community at the UN, this clause should be totally acceptable. I really cannot see any reason why it would not be.

Amendment 97 is very important. Having spent much of my life working on the issues of the third world, it can be very sad to see how trade arrangements can undermine years of effort towards development and progress in some of the poorest parts of the world. We know that the world is not a level playing field. I have often heard it said by different Governments that one must ensure that developing countries have a level playing field, but it is not quite as simple as that because many of them are not fit to play on that level playing field. There has to be a situation in which they can be brought to be active players on it.

This is rather like what I was saying on the proposed new clause: either we are serious in our commitment or we are not. We have now had set up by the Government this great new department, which brings so many aspects of our international relations together, including overseas development and what used to be the responsibility of a special ministry. We are constantly assured, and reassured, that things are going to be better on the front of commitment to the third world than before because all these different elements are working together.

This is a test of how serious we are and how far those new arrangements are really working for a better lot for the third world. Again, as I said on the new clause, this amendment should be totally acceptable to the Government if they are serious about their commitment to the goals that they have undertaken. The Government tell us with great passion that, in our efforts to determine our post-EU role, we are going to be positive, constructive and key players in the international community. Well, if we want to be that, we must not just pass airy-fairy resolutions and make airy-fairy statements. We actually have to deliver in the nuts and bolts of the world the policies that are necessary—and nothing is more important in the nuts and bolts than the trade arrangements.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

The main point is that logistics people will do what they are asked to do, but it is up to the Government to make proper arrangements. If these are inadequate, both physically and operationally, it is unacceptable for the Government to try to lay the blame not on themselves, having not prepared the ground properly, but on the operators—they are often very low-level employees—who are bound to carry it out. There was some talk in the press this week of fining the National Health Service because it is falling behind in routine operations. If that is the way the Government are going to treat the logistics industry, we are in for a very rough ride.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I speak to offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 46 and closely associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lords presenting it, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull.

I was going to be brief but I really want to respond to what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said. She suggested that the amendment seeks to recreate what was lost. No, it is trying to save what is threatened: the businesses, livelihoods and professional lives of people who have, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, alluded to, spent many years studying—and invested their time, energy and finances—to develop lives that are now under serious threat.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, in her useful setting out of the different ways in which the exchange has happened, spoke about where services are an integral component of a good being sold. We think of companies that have offered long-term service contracts for goods sold into the EU and EEA and the difficulties that they might experience in continuing those service contracts unless we have the kind of mobility framework offered here. We are now on a rescue mission.

I do not think anyone else has referred to this in detail but we have to go back to what we will be missing if we do not have the opportunity for EU/EEA citizens to come into the UK under this kind of mobility framework. There is the important area of language studies. Sadly, we have seen some documentation since the vote in 2016 showing that interest in language study, at least in our schools, has actually fallen. If we are to continue to operate in this world, where we are going to have much more complex relationships with other countries in Europe than we do now, we will desperately need those language skills. The reciprocal side of this is of course that Britons have the very valuable skill of being native English speakers that they can take around the continent and beyond.

We need to have quality of language teaching and development of language skills in the UK. Most of the teaching assistants in our schools are native speakers from other parts of Europe. These are crucial issues, so I commend the amendment to the House.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too support the amendment. It is very important, and noble Lords who have spoken have made some very good arguments in favour of it. As we all know, free movement within the EU has been very important for education, services and other businesses as well as for people getting to know each other. It could easily and should still happen after Brexit, but that needs the Government to support the idea positively and proactively even after we have left.

Transport is of course part of mobility. It must be cheap, reliable and accessible. Although Covid-19 has caused a massive reduction in demand, it is still there and it still needs to be there. However, the situation regarding the Government’s support is still very confusing and uncertain for services and their users. I have been trying to get answers from the Government for several months on how much in loans, guarantees or grants they have given to each of the international transport sectors, by which I mean air, sea, road and rail. I have had two Written Answers saying that that information per sector is commercially confidential. Surprisingly, maybe, I got a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, this morning saying that providers have many options as to how to find money, but with no comparators.

I can see why the noble Baroness could not see tell me about comparators. If one digs a little deeper, one finds that in the maritime sector—ferries—the Public Accounts Committee recently reported that the Government had written off £85 million for cancelled ferry contracts, which included a settlement with Eurotunnel of £33 million because apparently the Government had forgotten that Eurotunnel took the same kind of traffic that the ferries do. Noble Lords will remember that the Government spent £14 million on a company called Seaborne Freight, which owned a non-existent ferry and whose terms and conditions of carriage on its website appeared to have been copied from an online takeaway.

In the air sector, airlines have had soft loans to keep them alive. The noble Baroness said in a Written Answer that the Government were

“working closely with the aviation sector to support it to ensure there is sufficient capacity”.

They have spent £3 billion on keeping the franchise railways going, and that is good, but for cross-channel rail there is not a penny to ensure sufficient capacity. According to a presentation by the High Speed 1 chief executive Dyan Crowther to the all-party rail group last week, Eurostar has received no government guarantees or support and is likely to reduce the number of trains a day that it operates, possibly to between three and five or even fewer in order to survive. These are of course low-emission services, and I remind Ministers that, according to Eurostar, if all the passengers who took Eurostar in the last few years were to transfer to air, the increase in emissions would be equivalent to 40 new Luton Airports. We love Luton Airport but the emissions from 40 of them is hard to imagine.

Is there a solution? I suggest there are many that the Government ought to adopt. The European Union Council has adopted emergency measures to give member states the opportunity to reduce infrastructure charges to zero for trains. Italy and France are thinking about it, Austria has done it and the UK could do the same; it would be nothing to do with Europe but they could do it for HS1 to reduce the track access charges to just the direct costs. That might cost HS1 about £100 million but let us not forget that the Government made about £2 billion selling HS1 to the private sector, so they could afford to do this through HS1. It would mean that all train operators got the same benefit on that loan.

I hope the Minister can provide some comfort that Eurostar services can survive, providing the availability of a cost-effective and environmentally friendly transport service for those who want to work, live or study for the purpose of trade and goods. It would be a disaster if it were forced to close.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak only to Amendment 82 in this group. I generally try not to speak on matters about Northern Ireland, because life is too short.

I completely agree with what my noble friend Lord Lansley said on the trader support service. In particular, I am sure that, if there were a need for further support at the end of the two years, any responsible Government would ensure that such support was available. I remind noble Lords that it is a temporary facility in order to help traders become accustomed to the new arrangements, whatever they finally turn out to be. It includes training. It is not to take over from the traders handling the paperwork; it is to train them so that it becomes part of their everyday activities. In that context, two years may well still be enough, although I accept that there is uncertainty at the moment.

The amendment says that the service can be accessed at no cost—that is, of course, no cost to the trader, but there will be a cost to the public purse. I just say to noble Lords that, if they pass the amendment, they are walking straight into financial privilege.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I will be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, have outlined clearly the sad and urgent need for these amendments. I particularly commend the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, speaking from the heart from a lifetime of experience on the ground. Lives and businesses have been peacefully and productively intertwined between Northern Ireland and Ireland and must not be torn asunder.

It is a year since I came into your Lordships’ House. I did not appreciate then—although, in retrospect, perhaps I should have, given that it was just after the unlawful Prorogation of the other place—that in 12 months’ time I would have to join a broad coalition of fellow Peers speaking up simply for the rule of law, the Government having explicitly disavowed adherence to it.

We are daily reminded of the fragility, instability and weakness of our current institutional arrangements and the pressing need to make the UK a modern, functional democracy. I go back to a paper from the Constitution Society in 2019, which noted:

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’”.


The gendered nature of that phrase is telling but not my main point. The paper concludes that general standards of good behaviour among senior UK politicians can no longer be taken for granted.

Reflecting on the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that these amendments are unnecessary because they are already covered, my response would be that, on an issue of this importance, we need to seek every possible protective mechanism in these circumstances. That is the context in which these amendments come before us. The practical reality is that they create laws that then may well have to be enforced on the Government. I urge the proponents to pursue them to the utmost.

[Baroness Suttie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, in his eloquent speech, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, set out the background and the history to this important group of amendments on Northern Ireland. I am pleased to have been able to add my name to the amendments. I am also delighted to have received the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on Amendment 58, although I felt that there were perhaps some contradictions in his argumentation. I look forward to seeing him in our Division Lobbies when we come to vote on this on Report.

We heard some extremely passionate speeches from other noble Lords, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, who has also signed these amendments and who spoke so movingly about the realities and threats that we face on the ground in Northern Ireland. I shall limit my remarks to Amendments 58 and 59.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, if a year ago there was already a strong case for these amendments, since the introduction of the internal market Bill they have become ever more important to safeguarding the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. I hope that these amendments, or similar, will be retabled on Report, so that we can test the opinion of the House.

It is worth briefly recalling how the Government have taken us to this point. We are in this situation because from the outset the Government have promised a series of incompatible things, namely that the whole of the UK would leave the customs union and the single market, that special status for Northern Ireland was ruled out and that there should remain no border on the island of Ireland.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise as someone with many years of experience in supply chains, including just-in-time supply chains. This area is often a problem in trade agreements, and indeed in the operation of such free trade agreements. I remember all the difficulties affecting our shoppers when quotas and rows between the EU and China held up bras and shoes on the high seas—not perishable, but as important as chicken for many of us. Food is trickier than goods, as noble Lords will remember from strikes affecting Channel crossings and the Icelandic ash cloud.

The point I want to make is that EU exit, or any continuity or future trade agreements, are likely to lead to changes in supply chains. We should embrace this, and I am afraid that I am not convinced that we need Amendments 70 and 95.

My own view is that the combination of more border checks, whether we agree a deal on trade with the EU and EEA or not—that is the reality—will change trade flows. New FTAs will bring changes in tariff schedules, rules of origin and perhaps new provisions on standards. This could be a huge opportunity at home for British industries and parts of British agriculture, as buyers turn to home production to avoid the complexities. Of course, they will also face competition, but I know from experience as a business executive that competition makes business sharper and better.

There may be a need for some transitional arrangements in EU or other FTAs—fisheries is an obvious area—and even help for small firms wrestling with new checks. But we should not seek an additional transition period with the EU, as my noble friend Lady Noakes has just said. We should not try to preserve existing systems in aspic, however good the intentions of those debating this Bill today. We will do much better if we lead the way in embracing the opportunities of EU exit and of new trade agreements.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak first, briefly, to linked Amendments 70 and 95, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I note that a Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, today found himself getting some attention for a claim that traders were taking a “head-in-the-sand” approach to trade post Brexit. I do not think that I could do better in response than quote the chief operating officer of the Food and Drink Federation:

“If any traders have their head in the sand it’s because, after many frustrating months awaiting critical answers, they probably think it’s more likely they’ll find those answers in the sand than they will from the Government.”


That was coming from an organisation which is not, I think it would be fair to say, a natural critic of the Government. I hope that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, do not accurately reflect the view of the Government, and in particular that they do not indicate that they do not understand the extremely difficult position of small businesses, with so much else to deal with at the moment. We do not want to risk seeing them battered further on an uneven playing field by larger firms that are more likely to have the resources to react—something to which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just alluded.

I want to speak mostly to Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I appreciate the chance to support an amendment in his name, since we have had some disagreement on other elements of this Bill. I think that this is the first time that the issue of free zones has come up in this Committee, and I want to express the Green group’s strong opposition to the whole concept, noting that there were seven free ports in the UK at various points between 1984 and 2012 and that they were seen to have failed. Going back to the 1980s is surely not the answer for today.

I also note that the European Greens have been strong in their opposition, highlighting the links of free ports and free enterprise zones to tax avoidance, as exposed in the Madeira papers. To quote the historian, Quinn Slobodian, what they do is

“splinter the world into jurisdictions engaged in a constant competition to attract multinational companies, locking nations into a global ‘place war’ to offer businesses the most enticing incentives and the lowest labour costs.”

However, today we are mostly focusing not on the principle but on what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has created in his amendment, which is at least the chance of some democratic oversight and, crucially, a commitment to some local consultation. I would like to see in this amendment both a stronger position on local consultation and national oversight, noting that the impact is not only in the immediate area but in other economically similar areas, which are likely to see a loss of business and jobs to new zones. However, I hope we can return to that on Report. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response and perhaps what plans the Government have, particularly on local consultation and oversight, if they wish to push ahead with this revival of an old, neoliberal failure.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw this grouping, I hoped that these speeches would identify the golden thread that linked them together. There is not one, so I will speak to them separately. I will talk to Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, before coming to the other two.

I, too, agree with the noble Lord’s conjecture that there should be some parliamentary process that brings these free zones into being. I am not a fan of them, and I do not think our party is either. We think that they tend to move activity around rather than create new or larger activity, but that is not the point that we are here to debate, which is how these things are brought about and approved. I do not know about your Lordships, but I have been involved in a hell of a lot of statutory instruments in the past while, and they seem to be on some very big issues and some very trivial issues. It seems that there is no allergy in your Lordships’ House to taking on statutory instruments and trying to make decisions. Therefore to add a few more—I guess there would be a few free zones—does not seem a hugely controversial issue.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about applications coming in that had not had any form of local consultation, I can give him one idea of where people might object. There will almost certainly be planning things that will happen subsequent to the creation of a free zone, unless it is already an industrial zone. If you look at the sprawl outside airports, you start to see distribution centres and warehousing and all sorts of planning things. If I was a local resident living on the edge of or just outside somewhere that wanted to be a free zone, I would start to worry about some of those kinds of issues. So traditional planning issues would come forward—some would call them nimby and others straightforward—which would create problems, and do so for local politicians if not national ones. I am therefore very supportive of Amendment 93.

On Amendments 70 and 95, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that it would not work, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that manufacturers and so on need to embrace change. They may be right in both those instances, but I should caution a little compassion for the individuals concerned who are trying to make a business work. They are trying to do so when they still do not know what the rules are and in the face of all sorts of other pressures, not least Covid but also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, immense international pressure and price pressure on what they are trying to do. Therefore, while the noble Baronesses might be right, I ask them, and in particular the Minister, to approach this with some compassion. Change is easy enough for some people. My father milked cows. You do not suddenly go from producing milk to producing pork pies overnight. Those kinds of changes can and do happen, but they do not happen at the turn of the year, when, eventually, the rules emerge.

I have one final point. Perhaps all of us could spend some time reading the latest edition of the GB-EU border operating model. I think my colleague my noble friend Lord Purvis, has mentioned it before. It should be compulsory reading for everyone working on this Bill. It is 138 pages, and every page has a list of at least 10 to 20 things that have either been changed or inserted in the latest edition, which was published last week. These are the things these people who have to change or get on with it have to embrace. It is hugely difficult to understand; it is a massive issue. So, the helpful slogan

“The UK’s new start: let’s get going”


is somewhat missing the point.

There is a huge amount to be done between now and the turn of the year, and the Government and the people in this Chamber need to have some air of understanding the extent to which it is threatening people’s livelihoods and putting them under pressure. These amendments are just two ways of trying to alleviate that. Overall, there has to be a wider understanding of the role of government in getting businesses past this huge change which is happening.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this group covers a lot of ground, including some more discussion on the Trade Remedies Authority, on Board of Trade appointments and on trade advisory groups. In rising—not literally—to move Amendment 81, I shall speak also to the other amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Bassam.

I think that we were all surprised and somewhat shocked at recent appointments to the Board of Trade, but the key issue here is accountability and transparency around appointments to such important bodies. Amendment 81 seeks to establish a public process for board of trade appointments, including advisers to the board. When the Minister comes to respond, I would like him to explain why such appointments do not follow the recruitment processes set out in the Governance Code for Public Appointments, why they are not made under the supervision of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and why prospective appointees —and certainly the senior ones—do not appear in front of the International Trade Select Committee.

Amendments 83 and 106 seek to broaden representation on the trade advisory groups and the TRA. Over the summer, the Government, rather surprisingly, cancelled all their previous arrangements for discussion about trade and launched 11 new trade advisory groups

“to support the UK’s ambitious trade negotiations.”

Apart from the agri-food trade advisory group, there is a considerable lack of wide representation, particularly for the trade unions, which Amendment 83 seeks to address.

Amendment 83 also refers to NDAs—non-disclosure agreements. In June, the Government requested that members of the expert trade advisory groups sign an NDA for seven years to be able to see confidential material relating to trade negotiations. One appreciates that there will be confidential material, but seven years seems out of proportion. Many groups, including the TUC, said that they simply could not sign such an NDA because it would limit their ability to consult their members. That is an important point to bear in mind. The sharing of documents is obviously not to be encouraged while trade negotiations are continuing, but can the Minister say when he comes to respond that the process of reviewing the NDA will end, why seven years was selected and why he thinks it so important that it should be in place?

In previous debates, I have said that Labour is also worried about the Trade Remedies Authority lacking effective stakeholder engagement across sectors and regions. Therefore, Amendment 106 would:

“ensure that the Trade Remedies Authority includes, among its non-executive members, representatives”

of

“producers … trade unions … consumers, and … each of the United Kingdom devolved administrations.”

On the TRA, the TUC has said that without trade union representation

“There is no guarantee provided that the non-executive members will represent the interests of workers in manufacturing sectors who will be severely affected by the dumping of cheap goods such as steel, tyres and ceramics.”


Such dumping has already happened recently. Amendment 108 would also ensure five-year terms for members of the TRA, renewable for a further term, to ensure a reasonable turnover.

Ultimately, we need to ensure a degree of transparency and accountability for trade advisers and trade negotiations. The Government insist on trying to hold these away from public scrutiny. These bodies are part of the process and they could, with advantage, listen to these arguments and open them up to a wider group of people. I hope the Minister will view these amendments as proportionate and see them as offering solutions that actually strengthen the Government’s hand in negotiations. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak primarily to Amendment 81, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, ably if very restrainedly just set out by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and to which I attached my name, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. Since we have yet to hear the explanations for Amendments 83, 106, 108 and 113, I will simply say that I offer the Green group’s support to all of them to increase the transparency and representativeness of advice to the Government. I particularly note the strong cross-party support for Amendment 106 and look forward to hearing the explanations for Amendments 110 to 112.

However, I turn to Amendment 81, which is about Board of Trade appointments—or, to give it its full title, the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations. As an aside, I think that the Government might use this legislative opportunity to bring our constitutional arrangements out of the 17th century, at least in a small way, by modernising the name.

However, Board of Trade appointments might normally be considered a rather arcane matter and something that would be of little public interest, although there would probably be a general assumption, if you were to be brave enough to survey 100 members of the public in the street, that such important roles would, of course, be filled by a fair, competitive and transparent procedure.

Then, of course, we come to Tony Abbott. Should my accent have yet to do so, I remind everyone that I maintain a residual interest in Australian politics. Your Lordships’ House has a tradition of politeness and a different kind of language to that often used in the other place. Normally, I do not find that a constraint; today, I do. Therefore, I will simply produce a factual list: there is clear evidence of misogyny, homophobia, climate change denial, a lack of trade expertise and a clear conflict of interest. The Government really could not have done a better job of highlighting the importance of the amendment. They might have intended the appointment as a blow in the culture war—it is hard to think of another explanation—but they set out their position of intending to use an important technical role for a clearly political purpose. I say very seriously to the Committee that your Lordship’s House has a major constitutional responsibility in ensuring that this amendment is sent to the other place. Defending the Nolan principles should not be necessary, but it clearly is.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will say a few brief words on Amendment 81, to which I attach my name. It would strengthen the individuals concerned when they have been through quite a rigorous public process for appointment. It would legitimise them and give them greater confidence and an assuredness in dealing with outsiders. If they have been slipped in under the net there is always that residual feeling that, from their point of view, they know that they are there illegitimately.

I speak from personal experience because I have appeared in front of a House of Commons committee. Paragraph (c) does not say that the appointment has to be approved by the House of Commons Select Committee; it just says “appeared”. There have been occasions where people have appeared and there has been a majority against, but the Government still carried on and appointed, which is within the law; they are perfectly entitled to do so.

Those House of Commons hearings are not perfect. I appeared, as an ex-Minister, as the putative chair of the Food Standards Agency. It is true to say—as the record shows—that I was asked more questions in the session about my previous role as Housing and Planning Minister, dealing with some of the constituency matters of the members, than about food standards. It was a bit frustrating, but, nevertheless, they are the ones who ask the questions, and that is what they chose to do.

However, the fact of the matter is that it gives you a greater degree of legitimacy if you have gone through a process. If there has not been one and it has been a ringing-up by chums or a tap on the shoulder, you do not seem legitimate. In the end, it shows. Therefore, I strongly advise the Government to beef up the public appointments process. There may be other ways of doing it, but the fact is that we have some tried and tested systems in this country for public appointments. We have been able to lead in some areas, and this is one where we should not be backsliding; we should use the most rigorous public appointments process that we have because it legitimises those so appointed.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 8. Unlike the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, I also support Amendment 9.

In opening the debate on this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked whether we have a consistent approach on human rights. The Prime Minister spent a lot of time when he was Foreign Secretary, and since then as Prime Minister, talking about going global. That is not just about trade, which concerns the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, but about a wider set of interests and principles. We can trade widely but is that all that we should be doing? I do not believe that it is mere virtue-signalling to suggest that, if we want free trade agreements, we should also think about wider issues associated with the countries with which we are trading.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, is right that there are difficulties in adjudicating on genocide. Whenever genocide is raised with the Ministers at the FCDO, they say, “We cannot possibly talk about it unless it has been brought as a legal case and confirmed by the courts.” That is why Amendment 8 is important as a wider amendment that talks about human rights more generally, but the two go together.

As my noble friend Lady Northover pointed out, it is important that the Government support this amendment. Free trade should not be the only thing that matters. If, as an independent country now separate from the European Union, we seek to play a major role in the world, surely that should be based on our fundamental values and principles—not just on the value of trading contracts but on the value of relationships more generally. Trade in goods that comes from forced labour, modern slavery and concentration camps is surely not something that anybody in this country or Her Majesty’s Government can condone. As my noble friend Lady Northover said, surely the Government can support this amendment. If they cannot, it is even more important to have it in the Bill. I support Amendment 8.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my position as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, which may have some relevance to this. I join with many other noble Lords in thanking those noble Lords who have tabled and supported these amendments. I should warn the House that, in about the next minute of my contribution, I am going to be very concrete and graphic—this needs a trigger warning for anyone who has been a victim of torture or abuse.

This is an account provided by Ömir Bekali, a Uighur Muslim from Xinjiang in the far south-west of China, the former owner of a small tourism business, who spoke to the “Varsity” magazine in Cambridge in October. The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, talked about the big picture of what is happening in Xinjiang, but this is one man’s story. Ömir said:

“They shackled my hands and put black fabric [over] my eyes … I feel my body tremble whenever I remember that moment … My feet and my hands were tied up with iron shackles and they beat my hands, they beat my feet … they beat my back and my stomach … They put needles in between my nails and my fingers”.


After I have spoken, I will tweet a link to the report, which contains much more and worse than what I have just put on the record.

The world has, sadly, been hearing reports of human rights abuses for decades, centuries and millennia. I have to respectfully disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who suggested that these amendments would not help the Uighurs. What we are doing is making sure that we do not go backwards from the inadequate but still existing controls that we have with regard to human rights and trade under our former EU membership. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who said that the calling out of human rights abuse and putting it on to the international agenda is crucially important in terms of influencing the behaviour of peoples and nations.

In the UK, we have often had the cover of saying, “Perhaps little can be done in far-away places with few connections with over here, and there is little that we can do to help.” It was often the excuse—a very thin and inadequate excuse—that that was only the word of one individual; it was not hard evidence of what was happening. But that is not the case anymore, because we now have satellite pictures of massive so-called re-education camps, concentration camps or straight-out prisons in Xinjiang. We have even, due to the globalisation of the economy, the occasional desperate note pleading for rescue from abusive forced labour falling from a holiday present into the living-room of a shocked British household. That is a practical demonstration of the fact that we know well: our trade, companies and society, and our prosperity, are inextricably linked in a crucial way to the economic structures that are fed by these abuses. Our economic structures and political arrangements all too regularly, either tacitly or even explicitly, condone or accept such behaviour.

I note that Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, has been criticised as being too weak, but it is a start and a step in the right direction of acknowledging the link between trade and human rights. Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, steps up to and links with Amendment 9 that we will consider in the next group. The Green group will support them all. The amendment provides a strong and clear focus on genocide, even if it is limited in scope.

Let us start here and see how far we can get. I would say to Members of your Lordships’ House that if you will not be joining the many Lords who have said that they will back at least some of these steps, my question is this: what will you say to Ömir, who has spoken out bravely in the hope of action to protect people still in Xinjiang and people around the world who are suffering human rights abuses? Choosing not to do something is not a neutral act, but an active choice, a choice of morality, a choice about the kind of world we all live in, now and in the future.

I am sure that many noble Lords will be familiar with the short story by the late and brilliant Ursula K Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. For those who are not, it is about a wonderful, prosperous and flourishing city that relies for its prosperity entirely on the permanent misery and the deliberate abuse of the human rights of a single child. Those who walk away are those who reject this bargain. We have today a trade system built on the misery not of one but of millions. Will noble Lords reject that bargain?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have an opportunity to contribute to this important debate. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Alton of Liverpool, my noble friend Lord Blencathra and other noble Lords for bringing forward amendments. They give us an opportunity to consider some important issues. I will talk about Amendments 8, 10 and 45, and refer to Amendment 9. Having done so, I will not speak on the next group.

With Amendment 8, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has set out an encompassing process for an examination of the human rights situation in countries with which we might enter into international agreements. The list of agreements to be included at the end of his amendment is very wide ranging indeed. Many of these agreements would extend far beyond trade, but it is not criticised on that account; it is intended to be encompassing. This is a very wide-ranging process on the route into trade agreements, on the point at which they are laid before and, if necessary, reported to this House and subsequently in annual reports.

The question that immediately comes to mind is what happens as a consequence. What happens is that one of the two Houses of Parliament has to do something about it. From listening to the debate, noble Lords have specific and sometimes compelling examples of the human rights abuses, violations and even—as Amendment 9 refers to—genocide that may be the responsibility of states with which we enter into agreements. The first point to make is that we should be responsible for thinking in precise terms about whether to enter into those kinds of agreement with those states and under those circumstances. We should not set up a wide-ranging, encompassing, endless process of bureaucratic scrutiny but take responsibility for determining with whom we have relationships, the character of the relationships we enter into and whether to sustain them.

That brings me to my second point, where I agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes: how can we abdicate that responsibility to the High Court? We have spent a lot of our time debating whether Parliament should intervene in the Executive’s prerogative power to initiate, conduct and enter into trade agreements and treaties. Here we are discussing an amendment in which people seem to think that Parliament should not do that but hand responsibility to the High Court to determine whether we remain in an agreement or should revoke an agreement that we have entered into. I cannot, for the life of me, see that it is right for Parliament to abdicate its responsibility to the High Court.

In practice, I come back to how we have to take that responsibility ourselves. Everybody has talked about China, but the noble Lord, Lord Collins, made an interesting speech illustrating this by reference to Egypt. I am not going to take a view on that today, because I do not have the knowledge to argue that it is right or wrong to roll over the agreement with Egypt in the way in which we intend, but the noble Lord asks the right question, in my view, at the right time. We have all the powers available to us to decide whether to enter into such an agreement. We do not need to change the Bill to change that fact; it is a matter only of looking at the circumstances of an individual agreement with an individual counterparty, and asking whether we should do it or not.

Another thing to mention is the timing of this. There is always, “If not now, when?” This is difficult because, yesterday, the Government initiated a review of our own human rights legislation. Our Human Rights Act requires that, if a court were to determine that we are acting in a way that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, it can make a declaration of incompatibility. Then Ministers can make an order—they do not have to—to remediate that incompatibility.

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[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred to the genocide in Rwanda. When that happened, I was a graduate student writing on the European Parliament. I happened to be visiting a friend in Italy, and she had a visiting Catholic priest from Rwanda who said to me, “Please help”. I was in my 20s and I was involved in a political party, but I was not able to speak in a Parliament. I certainly could not go and stand in the European Parliament and try to effect change. But I always felt that there was something wrong and that there ought to be a way to deal with something that is called genocide without waiting for the UN Security Council to come to a decision, where it is always possible for one state alone to veto the idea of genocide.

Since arriving in your Lordships’ House, I, like other noble Lords, have heard the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, again and again raise the issue of genocide. From the Government Front Bench we always hear the same refrain: “We cannot do anything unless there is a legal ruling. There needs to be a judgment. Unless something is called genocide by a court, we cannot act.” As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out, this amendment will begin to effect that change. It is not court interference or damaging the separation of powers; it is enabling this House and the other place to remind the Government that there are times when it is vital to act.

Her Majesty’s Government, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, repeatedly tell us that there needs to be a legal case for us to talk about genocide. This amendment would allow that to happen. Surely it is time for the amendment to be passed, for the other place to be able to think about this and to take a lead. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, pointed out, this might be a novel act, but that is no reason not to make that act. Surely, if we want to play a role in the world, sometimes it is necessary to act first.

It is not about virtue signalling; as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, it is about virtuous behaviour. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I think there are times when one has to say that, however important trade is, some issues are more important. You cannot simply equate trade and the value of human life. This is about human life, and we must stand to be counted. I urge noble Lords to support this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham. I join many other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lords who tabled this amendment. I will be brief, because I want to ensure that as many Members of your Lordships’ House as possible have the chance to vote tonight. I must humbly associate myself with the highly powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who made the crucial point about the international importance of our deliberations here tonight on this novel and innovative legal move.

This brings me to the first of the three points I would like to make. In discussing a previous group of amendments, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said that the UK has been a leader for many decades in human rights developments. UK civil society, lawyers and campaign groups certainly have been, and Governments of various stripes have often been dragged along by those campaigners. That is what we are seeing here tonight: individuals in your Lordships’ House and campaign groups saying that we cannot tolerate the current situation and we have to act.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, referred to the Magnitsky sanctions—another new and powerful weapon in the human rights armoury, which has developed from the actions of US civil society and campaigners. I always like to highlight good news, and I think we can see in that pairing a real sign of good news. Although, as many noble Lords have commented, the international community and the United Nations have been inactive or unable to act in hideous case after hideous case of genocide, we are seeing new attempts, new approaches and new ways of ensuring action. That is why this is so important.

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I will not be putting my amendment to a vote. However, its main points will be brought back when this House debates the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill on Report.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. I support her Amendment 43 and share her concerns about big pharma, although I would go further and suggest that the profit motive should have no place in healthcare. Chiefly, I will offer three brief paragraphs in support of the cross-party Amendment 11, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton.

Looking at the excellent UNISON briefing on this amendment, I was taken back, as was the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, to the Committee debate on the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill, in which we were discussing the place of artificial intelligence and big data in care and, of course, the dreaded algorithms. Clearly, this will be a fast-growing area of care, needing careful monitoring and democratic oversight, which is what this amendment seeks to achieve. What is decided by Parliament must not be undermined or overturned by free trade agreements. As the medicines Bill debate highlighted, these are big issues and there are huge issues around discrimination and potential misuse—accidental or otherwise—of the data, the algorithms and the whole approach.

I wish briefly to point noble Lords to the case of Henrietta Lacks in the US, including the treatment of her cells, the treatment of her data and the destruction of her privacy. It is an experience that surely should be studied as we face the loss of the protection of GDPR, as there remains uncertainty about the plans for WTO e-commerce rules and as there is grave concern about the way in which the UK-Japan agreement undermines UK domestic digital and AI regulation in healthcare services.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the health data aspects of Amendment 11, which has been mentioned and was so well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I would add to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton: I join her in deploring the fact that we are debating this group of amendments, which are so important in this area, impacting on the NHS, at this late hour.

NHS data is a precious commodity, especially given the many transactions between technology, telecoms and pharma companies concerned with NHS data. In a recent report, EY estimated that the value of NHS data could be around £10 billion a year in the benefit delivered. The Department of Health and Social Care is preparing to publish its national health and care data strategy in the new year, in which it is expected to prioritise the

“safe, effective and ethical use of data-driven technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to deliver fairer health outcomes.”

Health professionals have strongly argued that free trade deals risk compromising the safe storage and processing of NHS data.

Through this amendment, the objective is to ensure that the NHS—not US big tech companies and drug giants—reaps the benefit of all this data. This is especially important given what the Ada Lovelace Institute called in its report—The Data Will See You Now—the “datafication” of health, which, it says, has profound consequences for who can access data about health, on how we practically and legally define health data and on our relationship with our own well-being and the healthcare system. Health information can now be inferred from non-health data, and data about health can be used for purposes beyond healthcare. So harnessing the value of healthcare data must be allied with ensuring that adequate protections are put in place in trade agreements if that value is not to be given or traded away.

There is also the need for data adequacy to ensure that personal data transfers to third countries outside the EU are protected in line with the principles of the GDPR. Watering down the UK’s data protection legislation will only reduce the chances of receiving an adequacy decision. There is also a concern that the proposed National Data Strategy will lead to the weakening of data protection legislation, just as it becomes ever more necessary for securing citizens’ rights. There should, however, be no conflict between good data governance, economic growth and better government through the effective use of data.

The section of the final impact assessment of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement—CEPA—between the UK and Japan on digital trade provisions says that the agreement contains:

“Commitments to uphold world-leading standards of protection for individuals’ personal data, in line with the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018, when data is being transferred across borders. This ensures that both consumer and business data can flow across borders in a safe and secure manner.”


The Department for International Trade, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, issued a document headed “UK-JP CEPA—a good deal for data protection”. However, the agreement has Article 8.3, which appears to provide a general exception for data flows, where this is

“necessary to protect public security or public morals or to maintain public order”

or

“to protect human, animal or plant life or health”.

The question has been raised of whether this will override data protections and what its impact will be on access to source codes and algorithms. There is also the question of the combined effect of Article 8.84, on the free flow of data, which provides that:

“A Party shall not prohibit or restrict the cross-border transfer of information by electronic means, including personal information, when this activity is for the conduct of the business of a covered person.”


Article 8.80, on personal information protection, says:

“Recognising that the Parties may take different legal approaches to protecting personal information, each Party should encourage the development of mechanisms to promote compatibility between these different regimes.”


It is all very well making reassuring noises, but what public legal analysis of the language in the relevant articles—and how advocacy will be permitted despite this—are the Government going to provide? Why, for instance, are these articles included, which the EU for its part will not sign up to? Unless the Government do this, there will be zero trust in future trade deals, especially regarding the US.

To date, there have been shortcomings in the sharing of data between various parts of the health service, care sector and Civil Service. The development of the Covid-19 app and the way the Government have procured contracts with the private sector for data management have not improved public trust in their approach to data use. There is also the danger that the UK will fall behind Europe and the rest of the world unless it takes back control of its data and begins to invest in its own cloud capabilities. Specifically, we need to ensure genuine sovereignty of NHS data and that it is monetised in a safe way, focused on benefiting the NHS and our citizens.

With a new national data strategy in the offing, the Government can maximise the opportunities afforded by the collection of data and position the UK as a leader in data capability and protection. As Future Care Capital says in its briefing on the Bill:

“Any proceeds from data collaborations that the Government agrees to, integral to any ‘replacement’ or ‘new’ trade deals, should be ring-fenced for reinvestment in the health and care system, pursuant with FCC’s long-standing call to establish a Sovereign Health Fund.”


This is an extremely attractive concept. Retaining control over our publicly generated data, particularly health data, for planning, research and innovation is vital if the UK is to maintain its position as a leading life science economy and innovator. That is why, as part of the new trade legislation being put in place, clear safeguards are needed to ensure that in trade deals, our publicly held data is safe from exploitation, except as determined by our own Government’s democratically taken decisions.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

I also reiterate that I had the opportunity to practise EU law in two different European practices—“boîtes”, as they are called—in Brussels. I was also an intern, or stagiaire, in the European Union. I have been contacted in my capacity as the co-chairman of the British-Danish All-Party Group. There are currently 30 or 40 interns from Denmark coming to London alone, and it is hoped that that will continue from January. I gather that this is not in the first order of the negotiations and is outside the Erasmus agreement, but the Danish Chamber of Commerce and the Danish Business Club operating in the UK hope that this will continue. Can the Minister say whether that offer of internship and the responsibilities which pass to the employers in London and other parts of the UK also will continue on a reciprocal basis? With those few words, I welcome the opportunity to speak in favour of this amendment this afternoon.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and to see her acknowledging, as she often does, the benefits and opportunities that freedom of movement gave to her life, and to see her seeking to preserve at least some of those for young people in the future. It is also a great pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, such champions in your Lordships’ House of the creative industries. We have heard a great deal of powerful testimony about the economic importance of those creative industries. I will take a second to focus on the importance to the quality of life for all of us and the way in which cultural exchange enriches all our lives. The loss of that will make us much poorer in the most fundamental terms, rather than just focusing on the economic ones.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for tabling this amendment and all noble Lords who backed it. I urge that this be put to a vote, and very much hope that those on the Labour Front Bench find themselves able to support that vote, for the opportunities and freedoms which have already been outlined.

Picking up on the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I am not sure, given that we now have a deal along the lines of what has been outlined here with Switzerland, how this can be labelled a “pipe dream”, given that it has already been achieved with one small part of Europe. The Government obviously do not think that it is a problem with taking back control to have that agreement with Switzerland. We know that Switzerland is particularly famous for its banking and financial sector, but one would hope that was not the only sector that the Government are focused on and wish to see this kind of freedom of movement in.

The Government’s statement on that Switzerland mobility agreement says that

“UK suppliers will be able to do business in Switzerland as they do now. There will be no economic interest tests, no work permits and no lengthy processing times…This offer will be open to businesses of all sizes, including the self-employed.”

What are the Government trying to achieve in the coming few days? What is the aim for next year? What is the aim for the future?

I also note that it would appear that we have lost a chance of involvement in Erasmus+. This is built on the kinds of relationships that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, referred to, with internships, interchange studies and apprenticeships. They set up the relationships that then create the opportunity to deliver these services for British businesses. How do the Government plan to ensure that those relationships are built in the future, so that the opportunities remain for British businesses and creative people to have those interchanges?

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak in support of Amendment 13, so eloquently moved by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, despite the technical difficulties. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, with great pleasure. It is good to see her back in the Chamber. I agreed with everything she said. I also welcome the comments of the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bull.

The amendment touches on a matter that is now assuming immensely greater interest among the people of these islands, as the harsh possibility of a no-deal Brexit dawns on them. People are awakening to the reality that their right to move to work in EU countries might now be limited as a direct result of the 2016 vote, notwithstanding the multitude of platitudes expressed by Brexiteers during that referendum.

Perhaps I may refer to one particular group in the service sector, and, in doing so, I draw attention to my registered interests. I highlight the need for those in the performing arts sector to have unrestricted free movement across the countries of our continent. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has already very effectively addressed this dimension, which is so close to his heart. Such freedom of movement is absolutely basic to the cultural services they provide. Many of them, particularly those who are self-employed, have been devastated by the Covid lockdown, and restrictions on their movement once the Covid threats ease would be a second body blow that they just could not endure.

The Government claim that they support the securing of mutuality for the creative sector between the UK and the countries within the European Union. When the Minister responds, will he clarify where they stand on the Creative Europe programme? It is so important for the devolved nations in developing their existing links and helping them maximise their contribution to the UK’s soft-power objectives.

Other people are expressing horror at the fact that they will not be able to take their pet dogs with them when they travel to and forth in our continent without pre-arranged veterinary certificates. Lo and behold, we do not have the number of vets required to handle such cases, as so many of them originate from the European Union and have been given the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they are no longer welcome here. With a proportion of them now opting to go home and very few new vets coming to the UK given the Brexit uncertainty, the whole of the animal sector faces a crisis. Apparently, there have been a significant number of qualified vets among refugees seeking a home in Britain. It would be very helpful if the Government could fast-track them to enable them to help us out in the plight that faces us.

The harsh, cold reality of a no-deal Brexit is now staring us in the face. There is something ironically, cruelly appropriate that the free movement of people—one of the original attractions of having our continent reunited after two disastrous wars during the first half of the 20th century—is now one of the first potential casualties of Britain’s retreat into offshore isolation, hiding behind an array of gunboats to secure our place in the world. Presumably, that is the new normal to which the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, referred. And is it not cruel that we—the generation who have enjoyed freedom of travel for work, education and leisure purposes—are the ones taking that great boon of unhindered travel away from our children and grandchildren? We should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, and I can only shudder at how history will judge us.

I fully support the amendment, although I do not pretend for one moment that it will somehow begin to put right all the negative impact of Brexit in its worst, ugly guise that now stares us in the face. I say no more.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and to support the amendment in his name along with the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Hain, as well as supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Both amendments seek to safeguard our environment and are completely consistent with all our international agreements under the Paris Agreement, which turned five at the weekend.

Trade is so much bigger than just imports and exports. It is arguably how we leave our mark on other countries. However, it is not something that most of us think about day to day. Trade deals are not usually rushed through. Many take absolutely years to happen and a lot of thought goes into them. They also last a very long time.

Having high standards is something we should be proud of, and the huge opportunity before us to trade on our own terms means that we must seize this moment to say no to other countries: “We will not trade with you if you are damaging the natural environment and worsening the effects of climate change”. We are at a junction now where it is not enough simply to partake in these practices at home—something we do well. We need to make sure that we are not indirectly causing them to happen abroad. People often use the phrase: “Evil succeeds when good men”—I would say women—“do nothing”. If we fail now to put these provisions in the Bill, we are as good as doing nothing in the face of all that we know.

I am proud that this country has led and continues to lead the way in decarbonisation. Some of this has been market-led. But 12 years ago we passed a Climate Change Act, and between 2012 and 2017 emissions from energy halved. That is not a coincidence; one logically followed another. Because this was legislated, successive Governments—we are on the fifth since it was passed—have absolutely had to pay attention to the process of decarbonisation. While it has not always been the number one priority, it has been absolutely impossible to ignore. To misquote Benjamin Franklin: “There are three certainties in our life: death, taxes, and now carbon budgets.” The comparison I am trying to draw is that when we have foresight of an issue and put it into legislation, we get the rewards. That is what we must do with our trade policy. We are literally writing the book on blank paper. It would be incredibly remiss of us to miss out this crucial chapter.

At previous stages, Ministers have mused on the importance of halting climate change, but why are they reluctant to put it in the Bill in case there are “unintended consequences”? I argue that the unintended consequences of not placing this in the Bill will be far greater. David Attenborough said to this very House in January, in the Royal Gallery next door, that we are at a tipping point and that “once we pass it, it will be impossible to come back from”. I do not think we have actually reached it yet but, as a responsible global leader, we need to say out loud and clearly, “We will not trade with you if you do not protect the environment.” I worry that without one of these amendments, and given the competing priorities the Government have about so many things, as we are hearing this afternoon, these considerations could end up falling by the wayside. The only way for the Minister to ensure that this remains a priority is to put it in the Bill.

These amendments are fundamentally useful, as they will ensure that whoever is negotiating a free trade agreement will have to stop and think about the impact it has on climate change and, in the case of Amendment 14, find a mutually beneficial way which produces fewer emissions or ensure that in some way they are offset. This could be a key moment when we stand up and say that from now on the UK will not enter anything that increases global emissions. To reach net zero we need to cut our current emissions as well as not making any more.

I understand that Ministers are reluctant to allow certain amendments as they think it would cause a lot of work in the departments, and I understand that a popular Minister may not remain popular for very long if his staff have to do this. However, in the case of Amendment 14, the work will already have been done. I welcome the Written Statement that the Minister’s colleague in the other place laid last Monday, which said that

“the Government will publish an independently verified impact assessment which will cover the economic and environmental impacts of the deal.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/20; col. 22WS.]

While I am not sure whether that is the full net-zero assessment I asked the Minister about in July, I recognise that this is progress and I thank him and his colleagues for making this happen. My point is that environment includes climate change and biodiversity. If I understand it correctly, the assessment should cover the work needed for Amendment 14 and for the greater part of Amendment 21. By putting this in the Bill we can give it the permanence that a ministerial Statement, however well meant, absolutely cannot. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity or that he takes the issue seriously, but I worry that this conversation will have to be had every single time we have a reshuffle or a change of Government.

I have tried to show that when something is put in legislation it creates certainty and unlocks investments. This will not be a hindrance. The summit we hosted on Saturday shows the direction the world is going in. We have said that we will no longer invest in fossil-fuel projects abroad. Low carbon is our future, and the countries that are not on board risk being left out in the cold—or, indeed, in the increasingly hot world.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and her powerful speech, which clearly outlined why one of these amendments should be on the face of the Bill. Ministerial commitments are just words which apply only to that person in post. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for outlining Amendment 14, for which I express my support, but I will speak to Amendment 21 in my name, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support for it.

Given that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has already outlined Amendment 14 so clearly, I will briefly reflect on the practical reality of it. A radio talk-show host was talking to me and complaining that “Everyone talks green now.” She got a little upset when she saw that I was smiling when she said that. As I said to her, although talk is great, there is a lot of truth in that statement, as it is only hot air until we have delivery and commitment. It is clear that the Government are making these commitments; as the chair of COP 26 they are taking their place at the forefront of the world’s talk on these things. It is therefore hard to see why they would have any objection to either amendment. Amendment 14 in particular is on the climate emergency, on which the Government claim world leadership, and surely that leadership should be reflected in every Bill that goes through your Lordships’ House.

I will focus mostly on Amendment 21. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has already started on this point but I will go back to the words of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, who on our first day of debate on these amendments answered an Oral Question from the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. The Minister said:

“The key principle of the convention on biological diversity is that biodiversity should be mainstreamed”,—[Official Report, 7/12/20; col. 950.]


which means “present in everything you do and everything that is done”. Biodiversity on its own does not entirely cover every environmental aspect we are looking at—there is obviously the COP next year on biodiversity, matching up with the COP on the climate. There are many other issues to raise, from soil health to plastics, but those are two good places to start.

I admit to your Lordships that Amendment 21 is rather long, so I will not go through it all in great detail. I will refer just to some of the key points. It is about

“the maintenance of the United Kingdom’s levels of statutory protection in relation to … human, animal or plant life or health … animal welfare, and … the environment.”

It is about

“achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050”,

and the

“goals and targets contained in an Environmental Improvement Plan, including the 25 Year Environment Plan”.

It is about the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. What is notable about all those things is that I am not setting out some wonderful Green Party targets for a transformed world. They are all things that I am sure the Government would tell your Lordships they have enthusiastically embraced and signed up to. This is about the Government living up to their own commitments and legal responsibilities.

We know—and your Lordships’ House has played its part in ensuring—that when the Government skated up to dodging their international legal responsibilities in other Bills, they were then pushed away from doing it. That has done real damage to the UK’s international reputation, so putting an amendment such as this into the Bill would go some way towards restoring the UK’s international reputation.

I have one more point to reflect on, because it has been a long afternoon and may be a longer evening. At the moment, in the midst of a global pandemic, there is of course a huge focus on public health. Amendment 21 refers to public health, but it is not that public health and the environment are two separate things. We can have a healthy society, and have our people being healthy, only if they live in a healthy environment. These amendments are closely linked and essential to restoring the public health and well-being of the people of Britain, not just the environment as a separate category.

[Baroness Hayman (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a co-chair of Peers for the Planet. I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for tabling these amendments and for the way in which they introduced them, and for the speech of my noble friend Lady Boycott in favour of them.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate about how climate change obligations and aspirations can be integrated into the UK’s trade agreements going forward. As has been stated, if the Bill remains silent on these issues we could risk offshoring our environmental impact, increasing emissions and undermining UK producers by allowing goods produced to lower environmental standards to be imported into the UK. But by being clear about our commitments on climate change in the Bill, we can do more than simply preventing harm.

In the last two weeks, we have heard a great deal about building back better and greener. The Government have published their Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. The Committee on Climate Change’s report on the path to net zero has set out a detailed plan to take us to 2050. The energy White Paper was published this week, as was the report of the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House on post-Covid economic recovery. All these reports point to the opportunity and the urgent need for that green industrial revolution, and for it to be on a global scale. The need to ensure our future economic well-being and the need to address the climate crisis are not in conflict or extraneous to trade policy.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer my support to Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. I regret that we have not yet heard his explanation for it, but I look forward to that. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I also speak in opposition to Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, although for somewhat different reasons. I regret we are not being joined in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, who gave an excellent outline of the problems with ISDS in Committee, and I urge noble Lords who have not caught up with that to go back to it, because it is an excellent explanation from an expert viewpoint.

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[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in connection to Amendments 16 and 25, I really would prefer to go down the continuity agreement route than to adopt these two. It is my understanding that the UK has reached—I think the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said this in moving Amendment 16—a rollover agreement with Kenya. Indeed, it was signed this month, less than a week ago, which I welcome. I know that we had a long debate in Committee about the asymmetry of many of the free trade agreements, but I do not know if that applies in this case. It would be my strong preference that we press the Government to continue their good work in reaching agreements, with the rollover economic partnership free trade agreements.

My question to the Minister is therefore very simple: could he say where we are in reaching agreement with Ghana—which reached an EPA with the EU relatively recently, in 2016—and Cameroon, which reached an EPA with the EU in 2014? Rather than at this stage lumbering the Government with even more add-ons, as set out in Amendments 16 and 25, it would be my preference to carry on the work that they have achieved with the Kenya rollover agreement. I urge my noble friend the Minister to continue to complete the agreements with Ghana and Cameroon.

My noble friend said earlier—it was not his exact phrase—that it takes two to tango. It takes two to complete these agreements, and if any specific obstacles have been raised with any specific products relating to the rollover agreements we currently enjoy, through our membership of the EU, with Ghana and Cameroon, it would be very helpful to know what they are this afternoon.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in favour of Amendment 16 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and Amendment 25, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.

I want to reflect on the context in which we are having this debate: a double blow has come forward in terms of our international aid budget. Someone came to me on Twitter and said, “I’m really confused, because it seems like our GDP is going down, so our aid is going down anyway, so why are we also cutting the percentage of aid?” I had to say, “No, you’re absolutely right, this is a double blow.” We have often given very effective help to some of the poorest people in the world, so it is important that we do whatever we can to make sure that aid is directed in the right kind of way.

The second, contextual, point I want to reflect on is why these countries are in the least developed and lower middle-income categorisations. If you go down the road to the Foreign Office, up to Liverpool or across to Bristol, you will see the colonial legacy of lots of the wealth of these countries, which was sucked out in the past. That legacy continues to have extremely deleterious effects. There is also the impact of multi- national companies—very often corrupt—today, which hold down the essential development of many least developed and lower middle-income countries. I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said too about the history of how DfID came to be split from the Foreign Office, and the concerns that have to be expressed about that reunion.

In those contexts, it is really important to do whatever we can in your Lordships’ House to defend, to hold the line and to keep whatever we have now. We will have the fight about the aid budget percentage when it comes along, but let us do what we can now in the Trade Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and to speak to these two amendments.

May I first say a word about Amendment 25? As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, said in introducing it, we had an interesting debate in Committee on the trade preference scheme—our unilateral preference scheme —and, indeed, I might say to my noble friend the Minister, an even more useful subsequent round table, although we were virtual, about the structure of the trade preference scheme when it comes.

As far as I can see, Amendment 25’s objectives should be able to be encompassed within the trade preference scheme using the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, and the regulations under its Section 10. I just want to see those regulations and have an opportunity for us to talk about them to check that they achieve that objective.

Trade Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Altmann. I join her in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hain, on the ingenuity of his important Amendment 26. As he and others have recognised, Amendments 17 and 18 have, to a large degree, been overtaken by events, but I believe that something along the lines of Amendment 26 must be incorporated in the Bill to give reassurance in Northern Ireland. I would go so far as to say that the success of the deal concluded on Christmas Eve, which I welcome, hinges to a large degree upon Northern Ireland.

In his very moving words, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, indicated that the fact that the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is also the border between the United Kingdom and the European Union is a matter of great significance. He also pointed out the sensitivities in Northern Ireland, sensitivities of which I became acutely aware during my five years as chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place and which, for me, were seen at their most acute and most moving at a meeting I had the privilege to address in Crossmaglen village hall in 2009, following the brutal and sadistic murder of Paul Quinn.

Northern Ireland is a precious part of the United Kingdom. The Belfast agreement must not be put at risk. Free passage across that border, with its 300 points of crossing, must remain and anything that can give reassurance where, at the moment, there is uncertainty, as the noble and right reverend  Lord, Lord Eames, so graphically outlined, must be to the betterment of our relations not only within the United Kingdom—which I pray remains the United Kingdom—but between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Anything that can give such reassurance must, surely, add strength and purpose to the Bill.

I am not going to attempt to rehearse the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Hain. He put them succinctly and graphically and I believe they should command the support of your Lordships’ House. I therefore have pleasure in supporting these amendments, particularly Amendment 26, and I beg my noble friend on the Front Bench to give a reply that means that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, does not need to divide the House. We should not be divided on an issue that, above all, should unite us—the future of the Belfast agreement. If this amendment cannot be accepted for some technical reason, then I beg the Minister to undertake to introduce an amendment at Third Reading that will encapsulate the fundamental points of this one and underline its purpose. I am glad to give my support to the noble Lord, Lord Hain.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to offer the Green group’s support to all these amendments, particularly Amendment 26. It is a pleasure to follow the detailed, highly informed expositions of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I do not feel there is a great deal to add, so I will be very brief, but I want to ask two questions of the Minister. First, what assessment have the Government made of the understanding and ability to deal with this of small businesses, particularly in Northern Ireland but also those exporting goods and services to Northern Ireland? How are they dealing with, and how will they be able to deal with, the trading co-operation agreement arrangements? Is the Minister confident that there is sufficient support for those, given the uncertainties that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, just referred to?

Secondly, venturing into a very complex area but one that I know is of great importance to some people, as I understand it there is a hard border down the Irish Sea for seed potatoes and possibly also for fresh potatoes. Can the Minister explain the situation with potatoes going to and fro across the Irish Sea?

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and to support very warmly the vital point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who has shown such great commitment to Northern Ireland over the years and continues to do so, particularly in the dimension of the Brexit process. I also warmly support the comments made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Ritchie and Lady Altmann, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. I address these remarks particularly to subsection (1)(b) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 26, relating to goods originating in, or moving from, Northern Ireland and entering Great Britain.

Assurances were given to business in Northern Ireland by the Prime Minster that there would be no bureaucratic hindrances whatever on the goods they trade with other parts of the United Kingdom. It now appears that in some circumstances there can be documentary imposition placed upon them. This has serious implications for those selling such goods and those operating ports such as Holyhead. I remind the House that many of the products from Northern Ireland destined for UK markets have in the recent past been coming via Dublin and Holyhead. This is a matter I have repeatedly raised here in the Chamber. If trade such as this requires documentation, whereas trade directly from Northern Ireland to English ports does not, clearly this represents discrimination against Holyhead whether the goods, or part of them, originated wholly in Northern Ireland or were partly imported from third countries.

Holyhead has already suffered in recent days since the conclusion of the Brexit deal, with shipments that previously would have come from Dublin via Holyhead to English markets or on to continental markets now shipped from other locations in Ireland and not coming via Holyhead. Some, indeed, are going directly to the European mainland. We need clarification, so I hope that the Minister will accept Amendment 26 and can give some assurances, which are needed by those operating the port of Holyhead.

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[Lord McNally (LD) [V]]

My Lords, as ever, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I also want to speak in support of the amendment. My intervention is based on a long-term commitment to seeing age-appropriate design embedded—as it was in the Data Protection Act 2018—activated and written into future legislation. That commitment owes much to the efforts and persistence of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, as has been noted by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and others.

My fears for the future of that commitment have not been helped by awaiting the implementation of the long promised internet harms Bill. The harms identified by the 2018 Act are real and present now, and delay leaves ongoing harms unchecked. For over a year I have been working with the Carnegie UK Trust on a paving Bill intended to ease the passage of the online harms Bill. In its briefing for this Bill, the Carnegie team had this to say:

“At Carnegie we remain concerned about the opaque nature of the discussions on the UK/US Trade Agreements and the risks that the wholesale imports of provisions relating to section 230 of relevant US legislation”—


that is, the legislation referred to earlier in the debate—

“may significantly restrict the ability of the UK to enact the systemic online harms regulation it intends”.

My concerns were further increased by the briefing from the 5Rights Foundation, which warns that the US tech lobby is working to ensure that US domestic legislation protects big tech companies from liability, and that that is written into all US trade agreements—a warning that Lord Sheikh emphasised.

If such clauses were to appear in a future UK-US trade deal, they would have a chilling effect on all the advances the UK has made to protect children online. So I believe that this amendment is necessary to protect safeguards already in law or proposed in future law, but which could be voided by clauses written into trade treaties.

I believe the good intentions expressed by the Minister, but we are only six days into our new liberties, so claiming that there are no problems is a little premature. I am a little worried about the self-styled buccaneers in his party, whose idea of behaving in accordance with commitments to the law may be equal to that of the old buccaneers.

Although the amendment would be a valuable addition to the Bill, we must also address the wider issue of the use of the royal prerogative in making treaties. There is an urgent need to review how Parliament deals with trade and other treaties. The 2010 Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—the CRaG Act—is now not fit for purpose. It was drawn up when we had already spent 30 years in the EU, which then had responsibility for our trade treaties. The CRaG Act is out of date, but so too is the concept of the royal prerogative, which is a useful fig leaf for giving Ministers power and preventing Parliament from having power.

A Government who came to power promising to return power to Parliament, not to the Executive, should really examine the CRaG Act, the royal prerogative, and how we handle trade treaties. As has been said, there are lots of Governments, chiefly the US Congress, who have powers to scrutinise. American Ministers, and other Ministers in the same situation, simply have to live with that kind of scrutiny. Let us pass this amendment, but let us then put down a firm marker that there is other work to be done before Parliament can regain sovereignty over treaties.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for tabling Amendment 23. My noble friend and I do not usually speak on the same amendment, but there is a particular range of issues that I want to speak to on this one—issues that no other noble Lords have addressed. I am talking about controlling advertising, a fast-rising area of concern.

When I talk about advertising I also mean some of the broader online issues such as product placement and payments to influencers, which are effectively indirect forms of advertising. This is where I agree with a comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, yesterday, which may surprise the House. He expressed concern about differential controls on advertising for broadcasters in the UK, which do not apply online. Yet we know that consumption of media is very much blending now; indeed, the divisions between broadcast and online material, from consumers’ point of view, are pretty artificial these days.

In some areas we already have quite tight controls in the UK for broadcasters and others—on smoking advertising, for example, as well as some controls on gambling advertising, and limited controls on alcohol advertising. We have also seen, particularly in the London underground, controls on the advertising of unhealthy food. As we start to face up to our role as chair of COP26, and face the climate emergency and the nature crisis, a broader concern about advertising is rising, in relation to its place in driving consumption, and driving the destruction of our planet.

The amendment is about children in particular. It is Green Party policy that all advertising directed at primary school age pupils, who psychologists tell us cannot distinguish between advertising and programmes, or editorial content, should be banned. In the online context, it should be possible to create a situation in which we can protect children up to a certain age from online advertising.

I note that just before Christmas, on a question about gambling advertising, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, speaking for the Government, said:

“We very much welcome moves by the major platforms that give individuals greater control”.—[Official Report, 14/12/20; col. 1518.]


over gambling advertising. Should a future Government decide to enforce even the rights of users to block advertising, I suggest that we do not want to see trade Bills stopping that happening.

I conclude by referring to what the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, said. What we are talking about here is giving guidance and democratic control—sovereign control—to our trade negotiators in future trade deals.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all speakers for their contributions to this rather important debate. I was happy to sign up to Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, because surely ensuring online safety for children and otherwise vulnerable people is one of the key issues of our time. Secondly, while the age-appropriate design amendments your Lordships’ House made to the Data Protection Act 2018 have made a start in ensuring that the UK is a safe place for children to be online, much still hangs on the progress of the as yet unpublished online harms Bill. Sadly, there is still rather a long way to go before that become law. If, and when, the online harms Bill, assuming it retains its present ambitions, becomes law, it may provide a bulwark against any tendency the Government may have in future to trade away current or future protections for our children and other vulnerable users. But we are not there yet.

The points made by my noble friends Lord Knight and Lord McNally about the way in which the US tech giant lobby has been forcing changes on recent trade deals are, frankly, chilling. This is not the time to weaken current protections for children online. We must ensure that future trade deals protect our current, and prospective, domestic legislation, and we can do that by taking this issue off the negotiating table.

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[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 24 is in my name. Although devolution is a settled fact in our constitutional arrangements, it is odd how often we find that legislation brought before Parliament either ignores it completely or makes token gestures in that direction. The recent experience of those involved in this Bill and the then United Kingdom Internal Market Bill has made this abundantly clear.

The proposed new clause is offered to the Government as a template that I hope they might find of interest as they consider matters relating to the devolved settlements. Building on successful amendments that were made to the then United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, which were accepted by the Government, they propose a two-stage approach: where devolved competences are engaged, there is a separate process, and, where they are not, committing to consult and seek consent from the devolved Administrations should be combined with setting a one-month time limit for the consent process. This proved successful in what became the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, and, as far as we are aware, it is acceptable to the devolved Administrations. I hope it will be of interest to the Minister when he comes to respond, and I thank others who have decided to support this amendment in this debate. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and to back his amendment. As the noble Lord said, this is territory that we have covered over and over again, so I will not take a great deal of time. The sections of this amendment say that the devolved Scottish Government should not be overruled on matters within their purview; that the Welsh Ministers should not be overruled on matters devolved to them; and that the Northern Ireland Government should not be overruled on matters devolved to them.

We have here something of a reflection of what happened on 30 December, when many noble Lords participated, in one way or another, and in one day both Houses passed a Bill to which we had no consent from the devolved Administrations—indeed, there was opposition from two of them. This amendment aims to create, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, said, a blueprint for the way forward. It is a balanced amendment. Clause 5 says that if the Westminster Government seeks to overrule the devolved Administrations, that has to be explained to both Houses of Parliament.

We hear an enormous amount about sovereignty and taking back control. This Bill seeks to ensure that the nations of the UK are in control of their own destiny in the areas where they have been given powers. I very much hope that your Lordships’ House will back this amendment.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, for tabling this important amendment and presenting us with the opportunity to debate, yet again, the issue of powers and responsibilities in areas of devolved competence being overlooked or ignored—in this Bill and, as we have seen, in other Brexit Bills that have recently come before Parliament.

I acknowledge, as does the Senedd’s External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee, that the regulation of international trade is a matter reserved to the UK Government, and that on the other hand the implementation obligations arising from international agreements are primarily the responsibility of the devolved Governments and legislatures. Another of the Senedd’s committees—the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee—agrees with this analysis, pointing out that the international trade agreements covered by this provision will encompass a wide range of policy areas that fall within the legislative competence of the Senedd, including agriculture and fisheries.

It is of some comfort that Clause 2 of this Bill confirms the respective responsibilities of the two Parliaments by confirming that non-tariff regulations can be made by UK and Welsh Ministers, alone or concurrently, and are then subject to the affirmative procedure in the appropriate Parliament. Nowhere in this clause, however, is there a recognition of the role of the Welsh Government in trade agreements in their areas of devolved competence. I accept that the agreements themselves are a reserved matter, but omitting the devolved Administrations from playing any part in the process indicates the desire of the UK Government to control and create trading agreements in their favour—agreements that might not meet the needs of the devolved nations.

Sadly, we are faced once again with an example of the UK Government ignoring the powers and responsibilities of the Senedd and the other devolved Administrations, and the lack of a reference to them in Clause 2 makes their omission obvious to all. It is another example from this Government of what I have referred to before as “attempted constitutional change by stealth”.

Actions such as these are perceived in Wales as making a mockery of the promise of taking back control. Control is now seen as being consolidated in Westminster, and evidence is mounting that these omissions act merely as a recruiting sergeant for those who wish to promote an independence agenda.

This amendment seeks to provide that, if trade agreements contain provisions relating to the devolved competences of Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland Ministers, the consent of those Ministers is required to authenticate that agreement, and it has my full support.

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[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House; clearly the message that I had scratched from this group has not got through. I reflected on the fact that three Liberal speakers on this group would spoil the House too much, so I have nothing to add after the very able way in which my noble friend moved this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the very humble noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I shall speak to Amendment 27, which stands in their names and to which I have added mine. I shall also speak to Amendment 47, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, to which I have attached my name, and to Amendment 48, which I think might best be described as a friendly amendment to Amendment 47, as it makes just a small addition to it.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said in introducing this group, these amendments very much fit together. Amendment 27 refers to the fact that the TRA should listen to a wide range of representative groups. That very much relates to the debate on the preceding group, where the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and many others made a powerful case for the importance of food standards and labelling standards. If consumers were listened to by the TRA, it would certainly be very helpful. As we are in a climate emergency and a nature crisis, we need to make sure that expert voices from that area are listened to as well. It is something that perhaps we do not always see traditionally as part of trade, but it is becoming very obvious that it is a crucial part of the whole issue.

On Amendments 47 and 48 in particular, we know that we have a huge problem with the bodies or organisations that are appointed, particularly by Westminster, being representative of all parts of the country in terms of region, background, knowledge and skills. As has just been highlighted by the appointment of the new chair of the BBC, it would seem that, under this Government, there are very few positions in UK society that a long career in the financial sector does not qualify you for. Crucially, we need our government institutions and bodies to be far more representative of our society as a whole. That means including different voices, genders, backgrounds, regions, educational backgrounds, et cetera. These three amendments taken as a package are a modest but important attempt to ensure that, when we formulate and make decisions about trade policy, a range of voices is heard.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I shall speak to Amendments 28, 29 and 30, which are intended as probing amendments. I refer in passing to the report on the Trade Bill from the Select Committee on the Constitution, published in September of last year. The committee says at paragraph 11:

“We remain of the view that the Bill’s skeletal approach to empowering the Trade Remedies Authority is inappropriate.”


It goes on to say at paragraph 12:

“We recognise that there continue to be significant uncertainties regarding the UK’s trading relationships at the end of the Brexit transition period”,


which of course has now passed, and it concludes:

“However, it is not clear why, more than two years after the previous version of the Bill was introduced, the functions and powers of the Trade Remedies Authority cannot be set out in more detail in this Bill.”


Therefore, I gently nudge my noble friend the Minister to say, when he responds to Amendments 28, 29 and 30, what the intention behind the original Clause 6 was.

With Amendments 28 and 29, I seek in particular to focus on understanding better what limits might be appropriate to a request to the Trade Remedies Authority to provide advice on matters of international trade, and, with Amendment 30, to clarify the purpose of the initial consultation before proceeding to a request. At this stage, I should say that I am most grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for its assistance in briefing me and preparing these amendments.

With regard to Amendment 30, it is not immediately clear from the legislation why the Secretary of State would consult the Trade Remedies Authority under Clause 6(3) and how this is different from issuing the original request under subsection (1). I might be missing something but, if you are issuing a request, that seems a little odd. I am grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for raising this with me and, in turn, for the House this afternoon. Surely, if you make a request to the Trade Remedies Authority, you do not need to consult the authority beforehand on the nature of that request.

Can my noble friend clarify whether there is any distinction between the two actions, making it clear that the duty to consult in Clause 6(3) relates to framing or scoping a request to the Trade Remedies Authority, just so we can understand why it is appropriate to shape that request when, in fact, the Trade Remedies Authority is meant to be independent and impartial? By going through this process of consultation, I am slightly concerned that that impartiality and independence may be impugned or compromised.

Amendments 28 and 29 point to the fact that the Trade Remedies Authority has already existed, and exists in abstract, having been incorporated by reference in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, although we are formally constituting it in the Trade Bill before us today. If it is the case that the Trade Remedies Authority is responsible for carrying out investigations and advising on remedies as set up under the cross-border trade Act, while it is an essential aspect of international trade, it is only one part of that. The proposed amendment therefore would ensure that requests for advice are limited to matters on which the Trade Remedies Authority is competent to advise, having regard to its remit and functions.

The purpose of this group of three amendments is simply to explore a better understanding from my noble friend and the Government through the department as to what the remit of the TRA should be and to ensure that the independence and impartiality of that body will not be infringed through the present drafting of Clause 6(3).

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This amendment is therefore intended to keep the Government honest in their approach to the GPA by ensuring that each House has the opportunity to examine, debate and vote on measures proposed by the Government. An affirmative resolution of each House would be required before proceeding to introduce proposals to the GPA. This would allow each House to carry out its proper function. In the case of this House, that would be scrutiny of the proposals to consider whether, if taken to the GPA, they will fulfil the Government’s ambitions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, for tabling Amendment 46, to which I was pleased to attach my name. I also thank the noble Lord for setting out some very clear and important questions that have not been answered, even at this very late stage of the debate on this Bill.

I note the thinness of this part of the debate. It is very clear that, despite the hard work of the Minister and noble Lords still engaged in this debate, at this late hour, the ability of this House to scrutinise the Bill line by line has been greatly damaged by the disjointed manner in which it has been progressed. We can only do our best.

The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, set it out clearly: we find ourselves saying essentially the same things, again and again. Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House want statutory protections for hard-won environmental standards, workers’ rights, food standards and public health standards. We keep hearing from the Government, again and again, “Oh yes, we want to keep these things”, but we encounter thumping resistance to any attempt to put that in writing so that they can be held to account in the courts for their promises—in the way in which the Government have so often been held to account in recent years. Empty words and hot air cannot be taken to court.

It is late, so I will be brief. I have three bullet points to conclude, outlining the reasons why this amendment should be included in the Bill: sovereignty, democracy and taking back control. For the benefit of Hansard, there is an implied question mark at the end of that last bullet point. It seems that, day by day, in your Lordships’ House, in Parliament and in the country, we are losing control, handing it over to executive authority and all too often to the vagaries of the market. We are seeing a society run for the benefit of the few, not the many.