Trade Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 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)]

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.