Trade Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Trade Bill is a bad Bill. It is bad because it fails to establish a proper framework whereby Parliament can scrutinise, ratify and implement all future international trade treaties; because it creates one of the weakest trade remedy authorities in the world, and because it pretends that it is necessary to roll over our existing agreements with third countries through the EU. So necessary is the measure that the Minister will have great difficulty when summing up in explaining how the Government have managed to roll over the majority of them before the Bill has passed into law. This is legislative prestidigitation of the highest order. The Government say that they need the Bill to do what they proudly boast they have already succeeded in doing without it. The truth is that the Bill is about the Government’s abrogating to themselves all future power in relation to trade agreements, freed from the inconvenient scrutiny of Parliament.

The procedure for ratifying international agreements is set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—CRAGA. It stipulates that any treaty need only be laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days. If there is no vote against it during that period, it passes into law. But the Government decide Parliament’s business and can simply arrange that no vote takes place. When CRAGA was introduced, a huge number of democratic scrutiny processes were in place through the European Union. There was the European Council’s negotiation mandate and formal consultation procedures. The Committee on International Trade—the INTA Committee —scrutinised treaties before passing them to the European Parliament to vote on. Treaties then came to the European Scrutiny Committee in the Commons for further examination before the CRAGA process ratified them. Under the Bill, all that is left is the rubber stamp of CRAGA. All other layers are gone. The Bill should try to replace those layers. It cannot be right that there is no democratic oversight whatsoever of trade agreements.

Members of Parliament may disagree about whether an agreement will benefit jobs or adequately protect standards, but they should have at least the right to debate those matters and hold the Government to account. The Bill denies us that right. This is not Parliament taking back control, but Government snatching it from Parliament. That is why I believe the Bill is dangerous.

Let me remind Conservative Members of what they claimed to be fighting for at the last general election. They said that sovereignty meant not accepting the rulings of supranational courts such as the European Court of Justice. Do they therefore agree with us that the use of investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms in future trade agreements should be ruled out in any form? They give higher rights to foreign investors than to our own domestic companies, allowing them to sue our Government in private courts for policy decisions that have an impact on their potential profits. So much for gaining freedom from a supranational court.

Conservative Members said that Britain had to be free to chart its own future in the world. Do they therefore agree that negative lists of services should be banned? It is impossible to specify in a list a service that has not yet been invented. The negative list process would stop the UK Government making a decision about how such services should be provided in future. So much for making our own way in the world.

Conservative Members said that they would safeguard our domestic environmental protections, food safety regulations and animal welfare laws, but simply keeping our regulations for our farmers here does not protect them in a free trade agreement. Allowing the importation of goods produced elsewhere to lower standards will undermine our producers and lead to a race to the bottom—so much for safeguarding our food and welfare standards.

The Government said they would not sell off the NHS, and of course they cannot. The NHS is not an entity that can be sold, but free trade agreements can contain an innocuous-sounding provision about the restructuring of pharmaceutical pricing models. That is the way to undermine the health service—by downgrading our bulk purchasing power against big pharma companies. So much for the NHS being “safe” in their hands.

Finally, does it follow that if this Bill is enacted, by necessity we will end up with all these measures? No, it does not. It does mean, however, that if they exist in any proposed FDA, Parliament will have no means of stopping that. This debate is about more than trade; it is about the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. It is about the sovereignty of Parliament—something that every Tory who will vote for this obnoxious Bill swore in their manifesto to defend.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am afraid we cannot hear Richard Graham at the moment, so I will now call Robert Courts.

Trade Bill

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

rose—

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Hands]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)—it is great to see him back in trade.

[Barry Gardiner]

The Minister talks of CRAG as if it is a process under which this Parliament has any power. He knows that it is the Government who enable Parliament to have a debate whereby it could vote against what is tabled under the CRAG process. He must look again at the way in which real scrutiny and accountability can be brought to bear in the way that the hon. Member for Huntingdon suggests.

[Greg Hands]

It is good to see the hon. Gentleman back. I remember that he was originally a Blairite Minister in Tony Blair’s Government, and it has been really instructive to see the journey that he has been on over some time. I saw him take the seat in the extreme corner of the Chamber earlier and thought, “Not only has he taken on the views of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but he has now even taken his previous seat.” The hon. Gentleman voted for CRAG in 2010, as did I. [Interruption.] We both voted for CRAG in 2010. CRAG allows Parliament to block a trade deal. It allows Parliament to block international treaties. That was the intention—his Government designed it in that way to give Parliament the ability to block an international agreement, and that remains the case today.

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[Greg Hands]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct that our scrutiny offer compares very favourably with Australia’s and New Zealand’s and is at least equal to Canada’s. He is right in other regards as well. Some of these amendments would obligate the Government to publish the text after the end of each negotiating round. At the moment, we publish a written ministerial statement. The idea that we publish the interim text with the United States so that Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all our partners could see it when this Government—this country—are undergoing simultaneous negotiation with different partners is not a sensible way of proceeding.

[Barry Gardiner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Hands]

I am going to make more progress.

This Government understand the desire of Parliament to have effective scrutiny of our FTA programme. That is why we have gone above and beyond the baseline provided by CRAG in committing to publishing comprehensive information ahead of entering into negotiations with partner countries. We have already done this—

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[Bill Esterson]

I will give way in a moment. Our amendments attempt to rectify the Bill’s serious shortcomings and the lack of accountability. We were promised a modern framework for international trade negotiations in the Queen’s Speech. The Bill was supposed to be the opportunity to deliver that framework. It does not. The Bill gives Ministers powers to make changes to retained EU law upstairs in a Committee of 17 MPs after a maximum debate of 90 minutes. These powers are retained for up to 10 years. That is quite some grab by the Executive—and it is far from the whole story, either.

The final text of an agreement depends on the Government granting debates to the Opposition during a 21-day period: something that did not always happen in the last Parliament. It relies on the Opposition using their limited opportunities to determine the agenda for such a debate. The Government should be holding the debate and a vote in both Houses as a matter of course. New clause 4 is an opportunity to address some of the democratic deficit in the Bill.

Only half of the 40 agreements covered by the Bill have been signed. We are told by the Minister that they have already been scrutinised by the European Union. But these are not the simple matters of continuity that the Minister would have us believe. Only three out of 20 existing mutual recognition agreements have been signed with Switzerland, our third largest non-EU trading partner. South Korea has only signed a temporary agreement and wants to start again, and a number of the remaining 20 are going to be completely new. Japan—new agreement; Turkey, our 10th largest non-EU trading partner is in a customs arrangement with the EU and is waiting for the UK to sign a free trade agreement with the EU. Canada is in no hurry to negotiate at all. As I said, these are far from being simple matters of continuity, which is why they need proper scrutiny.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does my hon. Friend share with me the sense that the Government have told us that they needed the Bill to be able to produce these roll-over agreements? Yet the Minister has stood at the Dispatch Box today and said that we have concluded 20 of these roll-over agreements. In fact, they have managed to do that without this Bill having passed into law. Is not what he is saying absolutely relevant? It is these future agreements that we need legislation for, and it should be proper legislation that sets out the framework under which this Parliament scrutinises what is going on.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to his time as the shadow Secretary of State and the work he did on scrutinising and opposing this Bill first time around. He is also absolutely right to say that what we have heard already from the Minister just bears out everything that we have been saying for the past three years.

As I say, these are not simple matters of continuity. That is why we need proper scrutiny. The problems do not end there. The Bill will put in place the framework for a new generation of new agreements, including those with the United States and Australia, and the controversial so-called Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership: CPTPP.

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[Stewart Hosie]

I want to be careful in how I answer that. I hope the hon. Gentleman understands that perhaps those who can afford to shop in Waitrose—the Minister boasted in Committee that he was Waitrose fan—have a choice; perhaps somebody who is counting every penny and does not have access to anything other than the cheapest food is not in the position to make the same choice.

In effect, new clause 7 would do two things: it would affirm the UK’s rights and obligations under the SPS agreement—that is, the application of the sanitary and phytosanitary measures in annex 1A of the WTO agreement; and it would prohibit the import of food into the UK if standards in the exporting country were lower than those in force in the UK. I do not think there is anything contentious about that.

It is not just campaign groups like the Trade Justice Movement that back this. It is not just Scottish Land and Estates and the National Farmers Union that back measures like this one. The British Medical Association has weighed in, saying:

“The Bill presents an opportunity for the UK to present itself as a global leader on standards on food imports for the benefit of human, animal and plant health, and the environment. To fulfil this opportunity, it is vital that our current high standards are upheld and protected in any trade deals.”

It suggests that new clauses 7 and 11 should be backed in order to achieve that.

It is also necessary to have this on the face of the Bill because the Government’s approach to protecting food standards is slightly confused. In Committee, the Minister said:

“This Bill is about…continuity… Imports under continuity agreements must continue to comply with our existing import standards.”

I welcomed that. However, he added:

“Decisions on those standards are a matter for the UK and will be made separately from any trade agreements.”––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 25 June 2020; c. 305-6.]

There is the point of concern, right there. The UK could, if it wished, lower standards, opening the door to all sorts of imports. Let us make sure that that is not possible, at least in the roll-over arrangements, by including the UK’s obligations under the WTO phytosanitary agreement in the Bill. That is important because although the purported objectives of the Bill are about roll-overs, the definition of “trade agreement” is very wide and the long title does not restrict its use only to roll-overs.

New clause 8 would ensure that the UK Government have a duty to restrict market access to healthcare services, including medicines and medical devices. We tabled the new clause precisely because trade deals potentially have a negative impact on health services. While the UK Government have repeatedly pledged that the NHS is not on the table in trade negotiations, leaked documents detail conversations between UK and US negotiators and reveal that health services have been discussed, including the US probing the UK’s “health insurance system”, and the US has made clear its desire for the UK to change its drug pricing mechanism. The new clauses therefore include specific carve-outs for the NHS, all relevant services and regulation, meaning that it would be illegal for the Government to conclude a trade agreement that altered the way that NHS services are provided, or liberalised further, or opened up to particular sorts of foreign investment.

There could be no use of negative listing because such clauses require that all industries are liberalised in trade agreements unless there are specific carve-outs, and it is not always easy to define what services count as health services. For example, digital services may seem irrelevant to health, but NHS data management and GP appointment systems are increasingly digitised. There could be no standstill or ratchet clauses, because these provisions mean that after the trade deal has been signed, parties are not allowed to reduce the level of liberalisation beyond what it was at the point of signature.

There are many examples of real-world potential impacts; I will give just one. The Scottish Government had private cleaners in the NHS and quite a high degree of hospital acquired infection. The private cleaners were replaced by NHS cleaners, and the level of hospital acquired infection fell dramatically. Had a ratchet been in effect, let alone ISDS, it might not have been possible to do that, with detrimental mortality and morbidity consequences for real patients. The clause also states that there should be investor-state dispute settlement clauses in trade agreements. They only allow private investors to challenge Government policy when it affects their profits. The BMA piled in to this debate, as well, saying:

“The Bill must rule out Investor Protection and Dispute Resolution mechanisms which undermine the supremacy of UK courts and risk deterring, delaying or blocking public health improvement measures.”

We have seen examples around the world of where that has happened. It is fundamentally quite wrong for large corporations to be able to use ISDS-type arrangements to sue Governments simply for taking steps to protect the wellbeing of their citizens, or for enacting public health measures that they believe to be right and for which they may well have an electoral mandate.

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech. Does he agree that it seems a considerable irony that those Government Members who were so determined that this country should not be subject to any supranational court system should hereby, in an ISDS clause, enable our Government to be sued by foreign companies in specialist supranational courts in a way that is not even accessible to our own domestic companies?

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[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a great honour to speak in this debate, having spoken briefly on Second Reading and sat on the Bill Committee and being a member of the International Trade Committee. We had a wide-ranging, well-informed and constructive debate in Committee, and it is good to see so many of its members speaking in the debate.

I would like to address a number of points, including the clauses relating to the NHS and to scrutiny, but because of the time limit, I will confine myself to just one, which is standards, and in particular new clause 11. Simply put, new clause 11 would allow the import of agricultural goods into the UK

“only if the standards to which those goods were produced were as high as”

the standards that apply under UK law. On the face of it, that sounds reasonable because it just seeks to ensure what we already have. Nobody has any difficulty with that—everybody here wants to maintain the high production standards, animal welfare standards and environmental standards that we have. That is why the Government have been absolutely clear that they will do precisely that. That is why the Minister stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that. That is why I stood on a manifesto commitment to do exactly that, as did all my hon. Friends.

There are a number of misunderstandings, which I will briefly address. We have already heard a number of times from Opposition Members about chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef, and I am sure we will hear about it again before the end of the debate. Those are already illegal in UK law. They are illegal because they are in European Union law, and European Union law is put into UK law by the terms of the withdrawal agreement. When Opposition Members plaintively say, “Why won’t the Government just put this in primary legislation?” the answer is because it is already there. If it were to be removed, the Government would have to bring something to the House and get us to vote on it—they would have to change the law, and we have all expressed our view about that. That prohibition is already there, so new clause 11 is simply unnecessary.

New clause 11 seeks to go further than maintaining our high import standards. It is crucial that we distinguish between import standards, which is the safety of food brought into this country, and safety standards, which is the way that they are produced domestically. The new clause seeks to have us say to all our trade partners, “We want to go further than ensuring that we import safe food. We want to reach into your domestic legislation and tell you exactly how you produce that food.” No self-respecting independent country will want to do that.

[Barry Gardiner]

That is patently false. All the new clause does is to say, “If you want to produce food to export into our market, it must be produced to these standards.” It does not in any way seek to impose legislation in the United States or anywhere else that would govern the way in which they can produce food.

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[Catherine West]

I rise to speak to new clauses 17 and 11, and on the principles of workers’ rights, national health service protection, and environmental and human rights. First, in relation to workers’ rights, we could not imagine a trade deal with such a country as Colombia when we know that the International Trade Union Confederation rates it as the most dangerous place to be a trade unionist. That means that the lives of many Members in the Chamber, who may be members of a trade union, could be at risk. To begin a trade deal with such a country without even mentioning workers’ rights seems to me to be absolutely ridiculous.

The problem with the Bill is how silent it is. It is silent on workers’ rights, as I have said. It is silent on the real protection of the NHS. We have had some reassurance on the NHS, but in particular I am worried about medicines and the cost of medicines, and about our data. We know that the national health service, unified as it is, provides the most fantastic data for research and for pharmaceutical companies. My fear is that, if we do not have more protection in the Bill, it will be open to those companies, through whichever country they are based in, to have a kind of values-free trade negotiation, which we as MPs will not be able to scrutinise effectively, and they could end up using our data, which, given the extent, longevity and detail of that data, is probably the best health data in the world. I therefore seek reassurances from the Minister on that specific point.

On environmental concerns, in leaving the European Union, we are leaving the gold standard of environmental protections, but it would be easy to write that protection in and lead on that in this Bill. Instead, the Bill is almost values free in terms of the importance of the environment. After covid, climate change and dealing with the climate emergency are probably the biggest concerns of our generation.

Many Members have mentioned the gold standard of food. I would also say that not everybody can afford to shop at Waitrose, which is the supermarket that has said that it will not buy low-quality goods. Many people will not be able to afford not to buy the cheapest food, particularly following the economic crash we are entering, the worst recession for 200 years, so we have to see the Bill in that context.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many people who go to restaurants or to fast-food outlets will have no way of knowing the provenance of the food that they are consuming? It is not simply a matter of labelling in the supermarkets.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend makes such an important point. It is one that I will not repeat.

On the question of our role in this place, surely the past four years have taught us that people want us to be here to make these decisions. Tucking away a bit of legislation in the Library for 21 days is not what we are here for, and nor is running upstairs to an SI when we are in the middle of all-party group and all the rest. We need to have proper scrutiny in this place and the Select Committee needs to have an enhanced role. Having enjoyed my time on the International Trade Committee, I feel very strongly that it should have a key role in ratifying the role of the Trade Remedies Authority Commissioner. If that six-month commission continues, the Committee should also have a role in appointing its head. I will be lobbying very hard with colleagues who represent very rural seats—unlike Hornsey and Wood Green, which is one of the most urban seats—to have a proper commissioner continue in that role. Why have it for six months; let us have it forever. Let us have the International Trade Committee ratifying those two appointments. Let us also have a trade union voice and an industry voice on the TRA. If there is one thing that we have learned from covid, it is how well the TUC has worked and how well the CBI has worked together. They have led our Government and told them what to do on covid. Why cannot they do that with the Trade Bill?

We can get on. We can move forward together, but we must try to militate against this strong executive model that we have been saddled with by having these other checks and balances in place. We can do that through this Bill tonight and by supporting the sensible cross-party clauses, which share a lot of support. Let us try to enjoy that consensus building because we are in a new chapter. Let us not spoil it by having an inferior Trade Bill that is silent on the key issues of the day that concern us, be they human rights in China, environmental standards, which we have had a legacy of from our 40 years in the European Union, or the important question of what we are doing here as MPs.