Trade Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

My Lords, we will now resume the Committee. I call on the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, to complete his remarks.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make two final points in respect of the Minister’s speech. My second point is that he said that ISDS cannot force the privatisation of public services. That is absolutely right, of course, but we cannot overlook the fact that ISDS permits a challenge to taking previously privatised services back into public ownership—something that Governments of all persuasions have done from time to time in the past, especially in times of emergency.

Finally, the Minister said that the Government were considering the merits of a multinational investment tribunal in place of the secret arbitration under ISDS. Of course, one accepts immediately that the EU’s proposal for an MIT gives transparency instead of secrecy, which is very desirable. But it does not resolve the central evil that ISDS challenges, on very broad terms, parliamentary decisions by the chilling effect of a threat of compensation which is measured in billions—a disincentive for any Government.

The issue of ISDS is obviously controversial and the Minister is plainly aware of the concerns of members of the Committee. I hope that those concerns, and those reflected in other amendments, will cause the Government further reflection. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendments 18 and 19 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 20. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate.

Amendment 20

Moved by

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[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to several of these amendments, but I shall stick to dealing with Amendment 20—indeed, part of Amendment 20. If it was being redrafted, Defra should be added to the list of bodies in paragraph (a): the Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland. It is not generally appreciated, but in 2010, when there was an attempt to abolish the UK-wide Food Standards Agency, the consensus in government was to remove aspects of its work to the Department of Health—nutrition and one or two other issues—and labelling and country of origin went to Defra. In fact, it was as a direct result of that action that Food Standards Scotland was set up, because the Scottish Government were perfectly satisfied with the way that the UK-wide FSA was operating. That is a minor point, but I want to concentrate on paragraph (b), which deals with the mechanism and the bodies charged with the enforcement of standards of food safety and quality, to make sure that they have the capacity to deal with the extra work.

It is worth pointing out, by the way, that although it is not politically sexy, the definition of food generally encompasses food and feed—feed being food for food production animals. That has not been taken very seriously in the past by the enforcement authorities. They are, generally speaking, local government. In the main, the Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland use local authorities for that role. Some issues they run themselves—the FSA runs the Meat Hygiene Service directly—but local authorities and environmental health officers are the unsung heroes of food safety and standards for the public.

The Government give us bad news in that respect. In the UK, local authority food hygiene interventions include hygiene inspection audits, sampling visits, verification and surveillance, advice and education and intelligence-gathering. It is absolutely crucial, but all of it will be under pressure with extra work from trade deals. Between 2010-11 and 2018-19, the total number of interventions in the UK reduced by 11%. They went down from 431,852 to 383,494. In England, the fall was from 331,000 to 305,000. In Northern Ireland, the fall was from 21,000 down to 14,000—a huge decrease. In Wales, interventions dropped from 31,000 to 25,000, and in Scotland, they went down from 47,000 to 38,000. I appreciate that with more modern risk techniques and technology, there can be reductions in certain checks, but these reductions are so substantial over that period that the position will be serious if extra pressure is put on because of the work from these trade deals.

I shall give just one local authority example to illustrate how serious the situation is in terms of people checking on our food safety. In Uxbridge in London—I just took it at random—there are 263 food business operations. Twenty-one of them, 8%, have not even been inspected. Thirty of them, 11%, have a food hygiene rating score of zero, one or two. Those are the three scores, of course, that are less than satisfactory, so nearly 20% of the food business operations in one local authority area are definitely a cause for concern. So, the issue in sub-paragraph (b), which aims to make sure that

“the Secretary of State is satisfied that … bodies charged with enforcement”

have the resources to do it, is quite serious, and is the one I want to concentrate on, because I do not want to repeat what others have said.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I remind noble Lords to switch off devices while we are in Grand Committee. It is quite disturbing and disruptive.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for introducing this group of amendments. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on beating me to the starting post. I, too, pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Fairhead on this amendment, which had cross-party support as an amendment to the Trade Bill 2019 in the previous Parliament, and for her patience in meeting all of us who were involved in its drafting. She was very kind in taking different parts of the various groups of amendments, and it is bewildering to see that it is no longer part of this Bill.

I pay tribute also to those campaigns. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, referred to the Daily Mail. I add the Farmers Guardian and, closer to home, the Yorkshire Post. Yorkshire has a massive food cluster, in terms of farmers and food producers and processors, so this is a subject that is very close to their heart. The background to Amendment 23, as far as I can see—and also Amendments 24 and 25, which I shall come on to in a moment—is that it should reflect the work and the debates and the amendments on the Agriculture Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, set out. It also reflects the manifesto commitment, with which the Minister will be even more familiar, that we want to have high environmental standards and animal welfare going forward in our rollover agreements and in future agreements as well.

I go further and say that we have to have fair competition and a level playing field. I would like to have an assurance today from the Minister that he expects that imported food products will meet the same standards and that it is not the intention of the Government to allow in food products which will actually undercut our own producers, and then to proceed to place a tariff on them, with a label on the finished product to say that that is what it is. “This is chlorinated chicken, it does not meet our animal welfare standards, but it is safe to eat if that is what you want to eat.”

This takes us back to the very sorry situation we found ourselves in under—dare I say it—a previous Conservative Government, which I supported, where we unilaterally imposed a ban on sow stalls and tethers but allowed producers to produce pork with sow stalls and tethers in Denmark, Poland and other countries and then allowed those imports to be introduced onto our supermarket shelves. The consumer did not understand the farm tractor label and went on to buy on price, and the result was that more than 50% of our pig producers went out of production almost overnight. Surely, that cannot be the intention of the Government in this case. I make a plea to my noble friend to reinstate the original clause by adopting the amendment, either today or on Report. That is what most of us would like to see.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, for lending their support to Amendment 24. I would like to add food safety to this for the reasons that we discussed at the time with my noble friend Lady Fairhead, and which I repeat now. The case has been strengthened by the reference made by my noble friend Lord Gardiner when summing up the Second and Third Readings of the Agriculture Bill. He referred to the multiple protections that the Government have put in place, not least the role of the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland to which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred. Keeping food safety in Amendment 23 would protect that.

On Amendment 25, I again thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and my almost noble friend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for supporting this amendment. I would like to put my noble friend Lord Trenchard’s mind at rest because when we have these debates he frequently says that he would like an assurance from the Minister that whatever we negotiate will be WTO-compliant. If he looks at the World Trade Organization pages, he will see:

“Environmental requirements can impede trade and even be used as an excuse for protectionism. The answer is not to weaken environmental standards, but to set appropriate standards and enable exporters to meet them.”


That is what we are trying to do here. We want to ensure that we make provision through any future regulations under the Bill—or any future trade agreement —that those regulations will not have the effect of lowering animal health, hygiene or welfare standards, the protection of the environment, food safety, hygiene, traceability or human and workers’ rights below EU or UK standards. The World Trade Organization goes on to say that we should be looking to have higher standards that could be met by all those wishing to participate in a particular free trade area agreement.

I will conclude by drawing my noble friend’s attention to the Dimbleby report that he was kind enough to read over the weekend. The executive summary on page 7 of National Food Strategy Part One states:

“Grasping the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to decide what kind of trading nation we want to be. The essence of sovereignty is freedom—including the freedom to uphold our own values and principles within the global marketplace. In negotiating our new trade deals, the Government must protect the high environmental and animal welfare standards of which our country is justly proud. It should also have the confidence to subject any prospective deals to independent scrutiny: a standard process in mature trading nations such as the United States, Australia, and Canada. If we put the right mechanisms in place, we can ensure high food standards, protect the environment and be a champion of free trade.”


I would like an assurance from the Minister today that that is what he intends and to put at rest the minds of farmers such as Mrs Joan Riddell who has written to me from Banbury in Oxford. She wants an assurance that the high standards of our farmers in this country will be met. Will my noble friend say whether that is what we intend? What is the status of the Dimbleby report? Sadly, the Government will not have responded to it before we have passed the Agriculture Bill or the Trade Bill here or in the other place. Presumably, if the Government have asked Henry Dimbleby to report on this matter, they intend to follow his advice.

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

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, who gave a comprehensive presentation in relation to this issue. I particularly support Amendments 23, 24 and 25.

To put it succinctly, food imports must, and should, comply with the highest food standards, which should be enforced in statute. Having said that, I think the general public want to know whether the animals and the produce that they eat are imported or indigenous, and that the husbandry involved and the agricultural production of the land are carried out in a safe way and are of a certain quality. It is important, therefore, that such regulations are placed in statute. This applies to rollover trade agreements and any future trade agreements.

I am a little perplexed as to why the government amendment that is captured in Amendment 23, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, was not carried over into this particular piece of legislation. Again, I ask the Minister to outline to the Members of your Lordships’ Committee why the Government decided not to include this amendment. Is it their intention to accept a cross-party amendment on Report, to which the Government would also be a signatory, thereby underlining their commitment to ensuring that food standards, food safety, animal health standards and other standards to do with imported agricultural produce are placed in statute, and thereby safeguarding lives and the good, safe quality of food?

We heard many conversations on this issue during the Committee and Report stages of the Agriculture Bill, and there is obviously a direct read-across here. But the bottom line in both Bills is the need to maintain statutory protection, because, without that, we could import food that could be often of inferior quality, which can impact on public health outcomes. Like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, I would like an update from the Minister on the Government’s position on Henry Dimbleby’s report, evidence from which we took for our report in the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee back in February. What his report said was very cogent and very apposite at that time. Now, particularly with the Covid pandemic, it illustrates the point that there needs to be the highest levels of protection, but they must be placed in statute. That is why we called for the trade and agricultural standards commission to be given statutory permanency in the Agriculture Bill, because we wanted to see that protection. We want health and food standards to be protected. We do not want chlorinated chicken or hormone-infused beef being imported, which is of a lower standard than the food that is already indigenous to the United Kingdom.

I hope that the Minister can give us an update on the Government’s attitude and response to the Henry Dimbleby report and explain why Amendment 23 was not captured as it was in the original Trade Bill last year.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

One day, I am going to send round a notice about how to say my name—but it does mean that I start every speech with a smile.

Noble Lords have covered almost every issue that I was going to speak on today, so I will be like a sparrow under a bird table and hop around to find things that I feel particularly strongly about. Noble Lords have spoken about environmental protection, animal welfare and sentience, and public health. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for his kind comments about Amendment 74 in my name, which is basically about ensuring food standards, food safety, environment protections and so on—that is what you would expect from a Green, of course.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, mentioned the good progress that we made on the Trade Bill before with the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead. She worked with us and I thought that we found a way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was also involved. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, is not in the same place—his party now has a majority of 80-plus in the Commons and he therefore does not need to talk to us in the same way—but the fact is that almost all the speeches have been united on our need for such protection in the Bill. That is partly because we simply do not believe the Government. It is not about individual Ministers, for whom we have a great deal of respect, even a liking; we just do not trust the Government. They have proved again and again that they have no respect for either the law or Parliament. We therefore need protections in the Bill because if they are not there, we do not believe that they will happen.

It is a case of understanding that trade is not trade on its own; trade has an impact on virtually every area of our public life. A climate emergency is happening now. Parts of America are burning to death and parts of the Arctic are melting into the sea, never to be ice again in our lifetimes. We must understand that trade has an impact on that. There is no argument with that. Personally, I feel that there is no option but to embed these ideas for how to be a more sustainable country in the Bill—in fact, in every Bill that we debate.

Next year, we will host COP 26. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, asked an Oral Question today about sponsors and so on. The Minister came back and said, “Well, you know, we’re going to judge our sponsors and their short-term action plans and that sort of thing.” I am afraid that that is just not good enough. We do not trust the Government to judge anything as sustainable or climate-friendly. You have to go outside the Government to find people who understand what sustainability means and what the climate emergency is. We have an opportunity as a country to show some leadership. Quite honestly, we do not have leaders in the Government at the moment; we have children who bluster and act like clowns. It is all very embarrassing, I am afraid.

I mentioned the Government’s majority in the House of Commons. The fact is that that majority lets the Government off the hook, unfortunately, and absolves them of any meaningful scrutiny. However, we scrutinise here and we can tell you that this Bill is not good enough.

I am still hopping around under the bird table. My Amendment 74 would prevent the ratification of any trade agreement that does not comply with UK standards, or at least

“standards that are comparable in effectiveness to those of the United Kingdom”.

It is a simple, effective amendment. I hope that the Government will read it and see that I am trying to be helpful, not difficult.

I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, who pointed out that we do not yet know what criteria the Government are using for their trade deals, that they have not given us any sort of meaningful policy intent or criteria and that we do not know how they will approach and evaluate trade negotiations and trade deals. I assume that that is because they do not know themselves, but it would be really helpful if we had some guidelines from the Government on how they will take these issues forward.

With that, I will finish. I am deeply, deeply furious about the way in which this Government are handling the whole country. I cannot blame the Ministers here but, as British citizens, we should all be thoroughly embarrassed.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, much of what I wanted to say has already been said in this useful debate. I am supporting the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, again. I have been doing that quite a lot in recent weeks. I have to say to him that it might not continue for very long after today, but it has been fun so far.

The House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment made the important recommendation that food imports must be required to adhere to the same health, environmental and animal welfare standards as food produced in the UK. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I sat on that committee, and I was convinced by the evidence we received that it was necessary to put that on the face of the Bill. We have tried it with the Agriculture Bill, but it is also worth trying to get it in this Bill.

Let us be absolutely clear that restricting imports that are below standard will not solve the health problems of this country. We produce a lot of good, healthy food in this country, but the food industry turns it into processed rubbish that poisons us. As the Prime Minister said this morning, it was his obesity that caused a lot of the problems that he had when he got Covid. So it will not be a panacea, but it will help.

We need to be very careful that we do not malign the USA too much. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, mentioned chlorinated chicken. I have been to the USA every year for the last 21 years —except for this year, because I was banned from going because of Covid—but in each of those years I have eaten chlorinated chicken, and delicious it was, too. We chlorinate a lot of the food that we eat; a lot of vegetables are chlorinated. The point is that it is not the chlorination that is the problem but the standards in which the hens are kept before chlorination. Those animal welfare standards are the most important thing in this discussion.

So I am happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, once again, and I wish him well with this amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call Lord Judd. We appear to be unable to reach the noble Lord, Lord Judd, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Beith.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

I am sorry about that. I had problems unmuting, and I was slightly taken by surprise because I thought I would be speaking after the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick.

My Lords, these are essential matters. Animal welfare, food safety and the environment affect us all, and they have huge implications for public expenditure because, if you get it wrong, the pressures on the health services and other care facilities become all the greater.

My noble friend Lady Henig dealt with the disturbing statistics from the United States. It is not very nice to think about dear American cousins in this light. However, it is true that deaths and hospitalisations in the States are—I called them troubling, but in a way they are quite threatening. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said, these things know no national frontiers.

We know that in the pressure for trade—trade is an end in itself—there could be terrific pressures to undermine all that we have built up, because we have built up a great deal in these spheres and can be quite proud of our record, although we cannot be satisfied with it yet, and to see that undermined with a scramble for trade would be shocking. We must monitor and have scrutiny in this area. Our families, friends and children are at stake. I so much agree with my good friend and fellow Cumbrian the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that it is sad about our having left the European Union. We need to work on these things effectively internationally and here was a chance to do that and contribute what we have—and we have a lot to contribute—to raising standards across Europe as a whole and from Europe moving into the world as a whole. This is a sad moment in our history—I state it again.

I commend all those who have tabled these amendments and all those who have worked and fought and struggled so hard over so many years to build up our standards. There is a great deal of understanding in the agricultural and farming community in this country about the importance of these things. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, was right: these amendments are a significant step in the right direction. They are not enough because we cannot give up the international struggle on the basis of our own standards.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I now call the noble Lord, Lord Beith. As we seem to be unable to reach the noble Lord, Lord Beith, we will move to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering has already intimated that she expects that I will be presenting a different viewpoint from that which most noble Lords have presented on these matters, and she is completely correct, although I was indeed most happy to have support for what I am going to say from my noble friend Lady Noakes and, to some extent, from my noble friend Lord Caithness.

As I am one-quarter American—my mother was half-American and my grandmother was a farmer in Illinois and Iowa—I strongly resent the widely held belief encouraged by the Daily Mail that American food is bad and inherently worse than ours. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, criticised food safety standards in the United States quite strongly and quoted Henry Dimbleby, but she quoted him selectively. He also said in his report:

“But negotiating trade deals is hard. Any blanket legislation requiring other countries to meet our own food guidelines would make it nigh-on impossible. We already import many food products from the EU that don’t meet UK standards. A blanket ban would make it impossible to continue trading even with this most closely aligned of partners.”


Chickens reared in Poland also come to mind, where stocking densities are massively higher than what we tolerate in this country. Are we quite as good as we think we are? From what I have been reading about pollution in the River Wye and other waterways in Herefordshire and the west country, I am not so sure.

To my noble friend Lady McIntosh, I would say that she is correct that the WTO permits countries to apply higher than international standards to food production, but only when it is not for protectionist reasons, and only when justified by science. The WTO has found the EU bans on GM crops and on hormone-treated beef not to be consistent with that: in other words, it does not believe that the science justifies the ban. Indeed, examination of the science behind the ban on hormone-treated beef suggests that the incidence of the hormone substance in the beef is absolutely minuscule and of no great significance: far less, for example, than found in half a dozen free-range eggs, commonly available in any supermarket.

I believe that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, is unnecessary, and since the Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency and other bodies have the statutory powers to maintain food safety, I am surprised that he sees it as necessary. I oppose his proposal to require trade agreements to comply with retained EU law relating to food standards, for the reasons I just mentioned. As noted in a previous debate, it will be a matter solely for the UK to decide on our food safety standards in future. The noble Lord is also misguided in thinking that all EU rules contribute to the maintenance of high safety standards: some do not. For example, the incidence of campylobacter infection in the UK is five times what it is in the United States because EU regulations prohibit the washing of poultry products in peracetic acid. I think it likely that in this respect, the US, as well as some other countries, might well have an issue with the UK’s food standards.

My noble friend Lord Caithness said that what is described by most noble Lords as “chlorine rinsing”—that is actually out of date, because peracetic acid is generally used instead of chlorine—has nothing to do with food safety. Indeed, American chicken tastes very good, so I agree with my noble friend. When I go to America, I do not worry about eating chlorinated chicken: it is not bad, it has nothing to do with food safety.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, stated that his Amendment 23 is similar to a government amendment made to the Trade Bill introduced to your Lordships’ House in 2019. That may be so, but I nevertheless hope that my noble friend the Minister will resist it, for the reasons I have mentioned. UK levels of statutory protection will in future be a matter to be determined by UK statutory agencies and this Parliament. The same applies to Amendments 24 and 25 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I think my noble friend’s attention to animal welfare standards compromises her attention to food safety. Furthermore, her Amendment 25 shows that she thinks standards are two-dimensional, higher or lower, rather than multidimensional. I ask the Minister to confirm that the UK will not enshrine in law any measure that treats EU and UK standards as identical. This does not mean that I am suggesting that the UK should depart from its current high standards in connection with the environment, food safety and workers’ rights.

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While I happily acknowledge the expertise and sincere beliefs of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in the light of these reassurances, I ask for his amendment to be withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

My Lords, I have had a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Grimstone has just confirmed my worst fears about this interchange of terminology between food safety and food standards. We owe the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, a great debt of gratitude because he clearly stated what Heather Hancock, as chair of the Food Standards Agency, has said on numerous occasions: that our current food safety standards can be changed overnight by the passing of a regulation—that is, a statutory instrument. I think he said that that could happen via the negative procedure, not even the full affirmative procedure.

There we have it. That is the problem. We are not even speaking the same language, which concerns me greatly. On food standards, whatever chemical you want to rinse with—such as chlorine—or hormone you want to inject your beef with, it is not something that the consumers of this country want to consume. I just wish that my noble friend Lord Grimstone would accept that this goes to the heart of our concern, reflected in this group of amendments and the other amendments that we will come on to when we discuss the International Trade Commission and what the future criteria will be.

It is not that the chicken or beef might be unsafe to eat; it is that the product does not meet the high standards of production that our farmers must meet. It will therefore undercut our farmers, who could potentially be put out of business. That is precisely what happened under a previous Conservative Government in the mid-1990s; as a result, 50% of pig producers—who were largely in north and east Yorkshire, I might add—went out of business. That is a position to which I do not want to return. Will my noble friend accept that this terminology is extremely important and that what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said in regard to the regulation being amended literally by the sweep of a pen is what goes to the heart of this argument?

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 26. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate.

Amendment 26

Moved by

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[Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I begin by apologising for not having been able to take part at Second Reading. Amendment 27, tabled by my noble friend Lord Bruce of Bennachie, to which I have added my name, continues the theme that he and I highlighted at Third Reading of the Agriculture Bill: how we deal with conflict created by power being conferred on the Secretary of State or UK Ministers to make regulations in areas of devolved competence. I make absolutely no apologies for repeating our arguments in relation to the Bill today. It is in many ways similar in its objective to Amendment 26 and other amendments in this group to which noble Lords will be speaking. In essence, we are all seeking recognition by the UK Government of the powers of the devolved Administrations and, at the same time, a mechanism to ensure that their views are sought and taken account of.

In Clause 2, as the Senedd’s Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee report on the Welsh Government’s LCM on the Bill points out:

“The international trade agreements potentially covered by this provision will encompass a wide range of policy areas falling within the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales”—


as it was at the time of writing—

“to include agriculture and fisheries.”

We all understand that the details of devolution settlements can be complex, but as the Senedd’s External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee acknowledges and clarifies, international relations and the regulation of international trade are reserved matters, but implementing obligations arising from international agreements that relate to devolved matters, to which Clause 2 applies, are primarily the responsibility of the devolved Governments and legislatures. So why are the Government overlooking this?

The Senedd’s LJC Committee is also concerned, as I am, that the powers in Clause 2 (6)(a) allow UK Ministers to make regulations that amend the Government of Wales Act 2006, a legislative provision that is worthy of attention and scrutiny by this Committee as well. These powers, we are assured by the UK Government, will not be used to legislate in devolved areas without the consents of the devolved Governments. This wording, it has been argued, has presumably been used to exclude the devolved Parliaments from consultation. I would be grateful if the Minister will clarify this.

Herein lies another problem for those of us who wish to support and defend our devolved legislatures. Are we to believe those words, “We are assured by the UK Government”? There was a time when a response from a Minister at the Dispatch Box would be accepted as the word of the Government, but experience has shown us that we need to be wary. How easily, it seems, the hard-earned powers gained by the Senedd and the other devolved Administrations can be clawed back by this Government. For more than 20 years, successive Labour, coalition and Conservative Governments have added to the powers of the devolved Administrations, making them the effective legislatures we have today. They crave more powers and, in the case of the Senedd, more Members.

Sometimes Governments can behave in the same way as the very worst of parents in exercising their powers. Domineering and unthinking, they eventually and sometimes belatedly understand that removing rights bestowed on their children leads only to resentment. The best of parents listen to the opinions of their offspring and build a relationship of mutual respect and trust, ensuring that the family remains close. The UK has often been described as a family of four nations, but it is a union that we all agree is most unequal. For many of our citizens, it is a union that is no longer working as well as it could, hence the calls for Scottish independence and a growing openness to the prospect of independence for Wales. Chipping away at the powers of the devolved Administrations only adds to the volume of those calls.

I know how willing the Welsh Ministers are to work co-operatively with the UK Government and the other devolved nations. They have contributed effectively to the development of frameworks in many areas and are content to take that process further. In reacting to the publication of the internal market Bill the Counsel General for Wales, Jeremy Miles, said that the Welsh Government were the first to highlight the need

“to develop a new form of joint governance .... in order to manage the intersection between devolved competence and the internal market”.

His comments are equally relevant to this Trade Bill.

As a signatory to Amendment 27, it has my support. Proposed new subsection (6A) would allow for consultation with the devolved Parliaments in order to obtain their consent to regulations and proposed new subsection (6B) would provide qualified majority voting, ensuring that if more than one Parliament withheld consent the regulations could not proceed. It would provide a mechanism for that co-operation, consultation and consent.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of previous speakers on this group. I want to put Amendment 26 in context. I have supported these amendments because of the difficult interface between the power to undertake trade negotiations, which is reserved, and the right of the devolved institutions to legislate on and regulate those areas of policy which have been their responsibility for more than two decades, such as plant and animal health, food standards and environmental standards. Amendment 26 would ensure that the devolved Administrations consent to legislation that UK Ministers wish to make which is within devolved competence when that legislation is a consequence of trade agreements they have entered into. This should be wholly uncontroversial. If you decide to tarmac over the driveway to your house and think it would be more effective and look better if your neighbours’ drive was similarly treated, you would ask for their agreement before instructing the contractor to do it.

Of course, it would not cause a problem were the UK Government serious about working with the devolved institutions to ensure that their interests are reflected and respected in negotiations. Unfortunately, there is some doubt about that and some fear that there is no desire to work with the other nations of the UK. If the Government are not putting in the work to build such a consensus agreement with the democratically elected institutions of these islands, then we must try to induce them to do so. If they are they will find willing partners, certainly in the Welsh Government; I am sure we will return to that theme later in the internal market Bill. For smooth functioning, a market must have common frameworks; that will not be achieved with a system of diktats from Whitehall.

Amendment 31 is simple but important. The sunset provision suggested by the Government allows for the powers to be renewed again and again. Others may have a view on the appropriateness of that, but the amendment simply requires the consent of the devolved Governments for those extensions to be granted. As I made clear, the Bill and its consequences potentially constrain the powers of devolved institutions to operate freely in areas of devolved competence. The case for this seems unanswerable.