Trade Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

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

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I believe I am unmuted. What an excellent debate. I join the welcome from across the House to the Minister and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn.

The Bill in its current form is at best a missed opportunity and at worst something a little more troubling still. It is a missed opportunity to safeguard parliamentary sovereignty and respect for devolution and for detailed scrutiny of trade policy. As others have said, it provides a lack of structures for that purpose. I also draw your Lordships’ attention to the sweeping delegated powers that are a key feature of this legislation, to which I really hope many noble Lords will return at future stages.

It is a missed opportunity to prioritise human rights, workers’ rights, food standards and, in particular, the fight against impending climate catastrophe as pillars of ethical trade policy in the vital years ahead. In its current form, it is a missed opportunity to enshrine protections for the world-envied treasure that is our National Health Service, watched in admiration by ordinary vulnerable people everywhere and especially during this current terrible pandemic—yet stalked greedily by many corporate interests that would seek to plunder its sensitive datasets and commoditise the healthcare that, in Britain at least, has been seen as a universal human right for 72 years.

The Government say—the Minister said it very ably—that this is just continuity legislation, so we need not seek extensive safeguards here. No doubt we will in due course be asked time and again to trust the Executive and their new personnel. But the likes of Mr Tony Abbott, with his expressed views and values, are on the way in to this Administration at just the time when the likes of Sir Jonathan Jones, head of the government legal department, appear to be on their way out. In the light of all this, I really hope that, following this passionate, expert and visionary debate, your Lordships’ House will feel confident to approach the Bill’s future stages with muscular scrutiny and confident amendment, especially in relation to rule of law issues.