Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join many others in offering the Green group’s welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, and will take a moment to reflect on the last time I shared a platform with our new Foreign Secretary. He might recall that it was at the Oval cricket ground in 2016. He was standing in front of a blue Mini, Harriet Harman was in front of a red Mini, Tim Farron was in front of a yellow Mini and I was in front of a green Brompton bicycle. He might take that as a lesson in what to expect from Green scrutiny of foreign issues: we take a different approach and offer fresh, new perspectives. The Green Party is the future.

In reflecting on that, I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick. Ideas from the past—from the 19th and 20th centuries—about free trade and the desirability of more and more trade have gravely depleted our planet, heated our climate and inflicted human rights abuses, poverty and suffering on vulnerable communities and individuals, particularly women and indigenous people. The noble Lord counted the pounds in saying that the

“policy of self-sufficiency comes at a price”.

I point out that the policy of free trade at all costs has come perilously close to costing us the earth and has done huge damage to the health and well-being of billions of human beings.

Further, we are now in the age of shocks. I have noticed that, over my four years in your Lordships’ House, fewer and fewer people talk about going back to normal—some age, presumably, before the 2007-08 financial crash. Global, complex, just-in-time supply chains have gone out of fashion, for good reason. Instead of chasing maximum profits—an extra halfpenny if an item is shipped around the world for one bit of processing and then shipped back again—companies are focusing increasingly on resilience. So should Governments, particularly when it comes to food, in both their actions and policies. Rather than focusing on growth at all costs, they need to focus on security.

I turn to some specific elements of the CPTPP, starting with a point made strongly by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, about the investor-state dispute settlement procedure, also known as the secret courts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year that this presented a huge risk to essential action on the climate. A study in the journal Science found that Governments could be liable for up to $340 billion of payouts through ISDS, if they take away the essential environmental measures that we need to keep us all safe. High profile cases have seen Governments challenged by private investors over a phase-out of coal-fired power, bans on offshore exploitation of oil and gas, and moves to strengthen environmental assessments.

In reference to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Livingston, I say that taking cases and dragging through the ISD process over years at a huge cost has what the IPCC and others have identified as a chilling effect on Governments taking action, whatever the final outcome of the case, years and many millions of pounds or dollars later. That has an impact.

The UK has agreed side letters with CPTPP members Australia and New Zealand to disapply the provisions of the secret courts. The key question I put directly to the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, is about Canada, which is a particular concern. Canadian companies have been particularly litigious, having brought 65 ISDS cases, which could have a profound negative impact on the UK’s right to democratically regulate our own conditions. In October, a letter was sent by 30 NGOs and trade unions and 50 professionals from both the UK and Canada calling for an immediate negotiation for a side letter. Will the Government at least consider that, given the Canadian track record?

I also want to pick up on the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle—and I speak now as a former resident of Thailand with some awareness of the environmental and farming conditions in south-east Asia. When we look across all the CPTPP countries, we see that 119 pesticides that are banned in the UK are allowed for use in one or more of the group’s members. Many of these countries will be keen to export agri-food products to the UK, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Curry, said, this risks further undermining our farmers after the potentially disastrous impact of the Australia and New Zealand deals. Of course there will be huge pressure, again in Canada, where hormone-treated beef is used, and, as he said, there is huge public concern about that in the UK, for good reason.

I also want to pick up a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, about the end of the tariff on palm oils in Malaysia. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said in March in the context of the CPTPP that palm oil was “a great product”. I am afraid it is not if you are an orangutan, a member of a critical endangered species of our close relatives, who have seen their homes destroyed and once-biodiverse rich forests storing masses of carbon turned into serried ranks of sterile plantations. Indeed, it is also not great if you are a consumer of much of that palm oil in ultra-processed products, the damage from which is being set out right at this moment upstairs, as the All-Party Parliamentary Food and Health Forum hears from Dr Chris van Tulleken, author of the best-selling book Ultra-Processed People. That pretty well describes our current diet, and we certainly do not want to make it worse.

Finally, I want to cite the very useful Trade Justice Movement briefing for today’s debate, which said that this is an important opportunity for parliamentarians to debate the flaws in the UK’s trade scrutiny process and to highlight, as the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, did, that using what I would call whiteout—possibly that is an Australianism—on scores of documents to replace “the EU” with “the UK” does not amount to “a benefit of Brexit”.

As I often say, democracy—it would be a good idea. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, highlighted, the opportunities for democratic oversight of this Government’s trade policies are severely lacking. We have to take what opportunities we can to hold the Government to account on many issues, not least our relationships with the rest of the world. I finish by promising the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that I will be doing that particularly on the development part of his portfolio, on which he as Prime Minister had a positive record, as he did on the subject of antimicrobial resistance. I remind him that, as we learned through Covid, no one is safe until everyone is safe. Antimicrobial resistance is very much an issue that it is in our interest to tackle all around the world.