Trade Bill (Fifth sitting)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Gareth Thomas]

It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair once again, Mrs Cummins. We had an interesting sitting in your absence on Thursday afternoon, at which three Conservative Members of Parliament applied to join the Co-operative party, the Government Whip tried to shut down a debate on what we could do to tackle an anti-northern bias in procurement, and the Minister gave the first hint that he recognises the Bill is in need of improvement.

Let me say at the outset that I want Britain to be ambitious in trade, in the deals we look to achieve, and in our determination to help imaginative and innovative businesses access new markets. However, I do not want us to sell ourselves short. That is why the amendments are so important.

Trade agreements done well create new economic opportunities. They can help inspire the generation of thousands of new jobs and expand the horizons of the very best of British businesses. They can and have helped to lift thousands out of terrible poverty and hunger, and they have helped to generate substantial tax revenues for better public services.

Trade deals done badly, however, cause myriad problems. They can lead to the loss of markets for vital companies, and in turn create left-behind communities and a race to the bottom in wages and conditions. When done well, trade agreements can help to generate competition, giving more consumer choice and lowering prices for consumers, but there needs to be fair competition. When done badly, trade agreements can entrench unaccountable corporate power and miss vital opportunities to improve our environment. That is why it is essential that we have effective, detailed scrutiny, with a Trade Ministry that is determined to be open and transparent, if we are secure the trade deals that can fulfil the country’s potential and avoid creating the worst of all worlds.

As the Committee will know, Parliament has its legions of critics, but the structures it provides for scrutiny—if Ministers are willing to allow both Houses to do their job—can help to create the consensus behind trade policy that business organisations are desperate to see, as they set out in our first witness session. Ministers have told us repeatedly that the Bill will provide the basis for the country’s future trade policy once we have left the European Union. In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, it was said that the Trade Bill would

“put in place the essential legislative framework to allow the UK to operate its own independent trade policy upon exit from the European Union.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 June 2017; Vol. 783, c. 437.]

If one potential trade deal serves to underline the failure of the Bill to meet that ambition and the need for proper parliamentary scrutiny, it is the deal that the Department seeks to negotiate with Donald Trump’s Administration. There are already a huge number of public concerns around food standards, the national health service, the use of investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, the future of geographical indications and whether the Bill will help to cement action on climate change. Let me run through some of those concerns. The Soil Association has very helpfully charted a series of concerns that highlight the need for proper scrutiny—proper scrutiny that is not as yet locked into the Bill—of a future US trade deal. We know that US negotiators are pushing hard for the weakening of UK food and farming standards, describing EU farming—and therefore, implicitly, UK farming—as the “Museum of Agriculture”.

The UK Government have made repeated commitments, including at Trade questions last Thursday, to high environmental and animal welfare standards, but those standards could be undermined by a US trade deal, as a series of Members from across the House have noted. That underlines the need for proper parliamentary scrutiny of a UK-US trade deal, which the Bill does not currently allow for. That is why our amendments are so important.

The Soil Association has a list of the top 10 risks for the US trade deal. The first is anti-microbial resistance. Experts are warning that by 2050, as many as 10 million people could die annually from anti-microbial resistance. The use of antibiotics per annum in US farming is, on average, five times higher than in the UK. Investigations have shown that antibiotics crucial to human medicine are still being used in unacceptable quantities on US livestock farms, despite rules being brought in last year to try to curb their use and combat the spread of deadly superbugs. A US trade deal risks undermining the efforts that UK farmers have been making to reduce antibiotic use, fuelling further anti-microbial resistance, with potentially grave consequences for public health. Surely we, the House of Commons, and indeed the other place, should have the opportunity to scrutinise on the Floor of the House and in Committee whether there is adequate protection from such an eventuality.

Secondly, a number of farmers’ representatives in the unions, a number of Conservative Members of Parliament, as well as Opposition Members, and a former UK ambassador to the US have warned of the threat to the UK farming industry if British farmers are forced to compete against cheap low-quality food imports. If UK farming is forced to compete on price with countries such as the US that operate to different or lower standards, UK farming may become unprofitable. That could create a race to the bottom, putting pressure on Ministers to lower existing standards here in the UK, including standards of food quality, environmental protection and animal welfare.

Thirdly, a US trade deal could affect EU market access for our farmers. The UK currently holds a suite of significant and valuable agri-food trade relationships with the EU27. A weakening of UK food standards or a future lack of alignment with EU standards resulting from a US trade deal could result in barriers to UK farmers and food companies wishing to export their products to the EU single market. In turn, those barriers would pose significant risks for food businesses and farmers’ livelihoods. Why would we not want, as the House of Commons, to have the opportunity to scrutinise whether that fear about a potential UK-US deal merits rightful concern?

Then there is chlorine-washed chicken. The American poultry industry is more intensive, with lower animal welfare standards than in the UK. The chicken produced has high levels of bacteria, so the industry has resorted to acid and chlorine washes at the end of the meat production chain, producing chicken that may not be safe for consumers to eat. Recent comments from a senior representative of the US Government have suggested that the US is “sick and tired” of UK concerns over chlorine-washed chicken, but it remains an important issue for UK citizens, who, I suggest, have no desire to see welfare standards lowered after the UK leaves the European Union.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on the point. For many people, quite rightly, this is about not lowering animal welfare standards. Has he seen reports from trade unions in the United States that, in order to speed up processes, there are now fewer inspections of the meat production process, particularly around chicken, which increases the likelihood that the acid or chlorine wash is less effective? There are not only animal welfare concerns, but concerns about the safety of food that we have been told we should not be concerned about because the chlorine wash removes the threat of food poisoning.

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not only is there a multitude of expert analysis that chlorine washing chicken is ineffective at getting rid of the risk of infection but, as he rightly points out, there are concerns that the inspection regime for the chlorine washing of chicken is not remotely as effective as we had been led to believe. That is all the more reason why it is so important that amendments 4 and 5, and the subsequent amendments, are added to the Bill.

The fifth concern that the Soil Association helpfully sets out concerns hormone-treated beef. The US Food and Drug Administration allows steroid hormone drugs for use in beef production, which we banned in the UK and the European Union in 1989. Cattle producers use hormones to induce faster, bigger animal growth, but there is a cost to that: an EU scientific review back in 2003 concluded that one of those commonly used hormones is carcinogenic. In the event of a UK-US trade deal, hormone-treated beef could be sold in the UK, posing potential public health risks. Surely it is the responsibility of the House to understand and scrutinise in detail a UK-US trade deal, to ensure that there are no such potential public health risks for UK consumers.

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[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend remakes my point for me. We need to have proper parliamentary scrutiny locked into the Bill. As we have been told, this the only trade legislation that is likely to come before this Parliament. There has been no hint of any other legislation to improve the parliamentary scrutiny of future trade agreements. That is why this group of amendments is so important.

[Bill Esterson]

Just for the benefit of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire who intervened, if he looks at the explanatory note to amendment 5, he will see that the amendment would apply the provisions of the Bill to trade agreements other than the EU roll-over trade agreements, so it covers trade agreements that go beyond those that were originally in the scope of the Bill. As my hon. Friend said, this is relevant, not only because of what the Queen’s Speech—

[Lee Rowley]

It is a series of hypotheses.

[Bill Esterson]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman is allowed to intervene when I am already intervening on my hon. Friend. He will get his chance to make a speech later. The important point is that we have tabled amendments precisely because of the need for the Bill to cover more than the narrow scope that clause 2 originally envisaged. My hon. Friend is right to highlight what was in the Queen’s Speech, but I want to remind the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire that it is actually in our amendments. They have been allowed by the Clerks and must therefore be within the scope of our debate.

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes his point to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, who intervened on me very well. I do not know whether the long title of the Bill was as badly drafted as some other parts of the Bill, allowing as a result for our amendments to be in scope, but they are. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire in his heckle suggested that I was making a series of hypotheses. I would not use his phrase, but I gently suggest that that is surely the purpose of parliamentary scrutiny—to test the concerns that the wider public and organisations outside the House have about particular pieces of legislation.

The Soil Association highlighted a further concern about nutritional labelling—so-called traffic light labelling—which has been a very important tool in supporting improvements in UK public health. The US is clear that it considers nutrition labelling a barrier to trade, and it has an ongoing dispute with the European Union over this. Imported US food already enjoys a voluntary concession to the UK labelling requirements. Any trade deal could weaken those consumer labelling efforts still further. A US trade deal could result in low-cost, ultra-processed foods flooding the UK market, placing a potential double health burden on UK citizens. That is one of the concerns of the Soil Association, and it is right that parliamentary scrutiny should give us the opportunity to test that.

There are serious concerns about the public health implications of genetically modified foods and pesticide regulations, which we will come on to under amendment 11. Incidents of food poisoning in the US affect 14% of the US population annually—10 times greater than in the UK, where just 1% is affected. Again, surely, it is the purpose of Parliament to allow our amendments to test whether or not a deal with the US or any other country in the world is likely to lead to an increase in food poisoning. Those are the Soil Association’s concerns around food standards.

There is a series of other concerns about a potential deal with Donald Trump’s Administration. Let us take the national health service, where Ministers have been desperate to try to reassure the public. If investor-state dispute settlement clauses were to be included in a UK-US trade deal, or any other post-Brexit trade agreement, there is a real chance that the corporate giants that had bought the right to run part of the national health service might be tempted to challenge a decision by a future Government about the provision of that part. If a future Government wanted to favour a public provider over the big private corporate provider, or renationalise parts of the health service that have been privatised, that could be challenged by the corporate giant using the investor-state dispute settlement system, potentially at huge cost to the British taxpayer and resulting in huge damage to the national health service.

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[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the challenge of ISDS. The debate about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which was dragged into the public domain when negotiating texts were eventually shared with the public, was the only way for the potential problems that he has highlighted to come into the public domain. The initial lack of scrutiny poses a great threat of the kind that he has set out.

May I add to the list the concerns about the negative list system, where every single service has to be named, and about ratchet clauses and standstill clauses? In addition to ISDS, they are a real threat to the ability of this country’s Government to have control over what is in the public sector and what services are delivered, whether the health service or other public services.

[Gareth Thomas]

Not surprisingly, my hon. Friend is ahead of me in making that concern clear. I underline the issues about negative listing that he sets out, which I will come to. To finish the point about medicine pricing, Donald Trump’s chief negotiator has made it clear that they wish to use a trade deal to challenge the NHS’s current purchasing model for NHS drugs. That could be done through them securing specific market access provisions or other clauses aimed at helping the US pharmaceutical industry. Again, surely it is the responsibility of the House, and indeed the other place, to have in place the scrutiny mechanisms to check whether that concern is justified.

My hon. Friend set out the concerns about standstill clauses and ratchet clauses in trade agreements, which can lock in levels of privatisation and other forms of liberalisation and accelerate them, which will limit the scope of future Governments to take sensible steps, when services are not being properly provided, to bring them back into the public sector. He rightly set out concerns about negative listing, which emerged in particular in the EU-Canada deal, which we will explore in more detail in the debate on amendment 9. There are concerns that NHS management data services could be opened up to US corporate giants as a result of a UK-US trade deal. Surely it is Parliament’s responsibility to explore those concerns.

If a UK-US deal were concluded by the Government, MPs would not be guaranteed a vote or a debate on the signed deal. The proposals in the Command Paper, which Ministers were forced to publish in February last year, allow a scrutiny Committee to recommend one, but leave it at the Government’s discretion whether to hold one.

The deal is being negotiated in secret, even though it could have huge implications for Britain’s post-Brexit future. Negotiations with the US are particularly controversial, yet after six rounds of preparatory talks and one round of formal negotiations, we still are in the dark, at least from a UK perspective, about the substance of what is being debated. It is true that the Secretary of State made a statement to the House. However, apart from listing the major areas of the talks, which were hardly revealing, and reassuring us all that the meetings were positive and constructive, again, no substance was offered on the real concerns that members of the public and organisations outside this House have set out on food, import standards and medicine prices. As Mr Lawrence from Trade Justice Movement reminded us all in last Thursday morning’s witness session, there will have been more scrutiny of the decision to proceed with High Speed 2 than there will be, as things stand, of a UK-US deal. Our amendments would help put that situation right.

[Gareth Thomas]

That is an extraordinary position, but sadly, it is becoming clear that that is how Members of Parliament are likely to find out about the substance of these trade negotiations. Let us again take the US as an example. We are finding out through evidence to Congress what many of the concerns of UK business organisations are in terms of the desire to secure access to UK markets, which is surely an entirely outrageous situation for the House of Commons. We were promised we would be taking back control after Brexit, yet the Houses of Parliament and the British public are being left in the dark.

There are real concerns from a UK-US deal about the potential for ISDS.

[Bill Esterson]

Before my hon. Friend moves on from the point about where evidence comes around what is a negotiating text, he will remember the evidence from Rosa Crawford from the TUC that the unions in this country are finding out what is in the negotiating texts for the US-UK talks from unions in the United States, which have access to those texts from the US Government. That is completely absent in this country. Is this not yet another example of how absurd it is that we have different approaches to scrutiny in this country compared with others? Surely those approaches need to be equivalent to ensure proper scrutiny and the right outcomes in the interests of the people of our country?

[Gareth Thomas]

We should thank the TUC for its work with American trade unions to help inform British workers and the British House of Commons, and for that little bit more of an insight into what is really going on in the UK-US negotiations. I hope Ministers will be sufficiently embarrassed by the British people’s reliance on what is being told to Congress to open up more scrutiny opportunities for this Parliament.

ISDS clauses have been favoured by the US in many of its existing trade deals. They potentially allow new investors, if included in a UK deal, to sue our Government over measures that harm their profits. We know that ISDS lawyers are already talking up the possibility of compensation for corporate giants whose profits have been hit by Governments taking lockdown measures to tackle the covid pandemic. In case Government Members think that is not a real threat, the American firm Cargill won more than $77 million from the Mexican Government after they introduced a tax to deter high-fructose syrup to tackle serious health issues in Mexico.

ISDS provisions create regulatory chill—the temptation for Governments not to introduce necessary public health or, indeed, other environmental measures, for fear of being taken to an ISDS tribunal by a big overseas investor. They create a two-tier system, since it is rarely small and medium-sized enterprises that are able to access these secret courts. There is normally no appeals system for the Government to access, and there is extraordinary secrecy around the nature of the settlements.

The irony is that there is little obvious benefit to businesses from those clauses being included in trade agreements. Indeed, the Government under David Cameron published an analysis of the pros and cons of ISDS clauses and could not find any great pros to champion. Business organisations tell us—although this tends to be in private—that ISDS clauses do not matter much to them; what they take serious notice of is the business environments.

There are real concerns about the labelling of geographical indicators, where products in the UK have a geographic indicator that prevents their being imitated: one thinks of Welsh lamb, Scottish salmon and Armagh Bramley apples, for example. The American negotiators do not like those types of food label and will seek to get rid of them. Surely it is the responsibility of this House of Commons to explore whether those concerns have merit and to push the Government to protect those labels.

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[The Chair]

Going forward, I am happy for Members to remove their jackets if they feel the need to do so.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West has given the Committee a tour de force that is worthy of parliamentary history. The Minister says it lasted an hour and a quarter. I hate to correct him on this occasion, because there are plenty of other opportunities to do so, but I made it one hour and 23 minutes, or possibly one hour and 24 minutes. It was slightly longer than an hour and a quarter but was very good anyway.

My hon. Friend made some incredibly important points about the amendments we have tabled, and about exactly why putting a proper set of parliamentary scrutiny procedures in place is so important. He described the 19 or 20 agreements that have gone through already, the lack of scrutiny of those procedures—some are more significant than others, such as the agreement with South Korea—the remaining 20 or so agreements that have to go through, and the prospect of having a scrutiny system for future international trade agreements. As he quite rightly pointed out, the framework of the Bill is to:

“Make provision about the implementation of international trade agreements”,

which provides the opportunity to get this right and to get it in place. That is why our amendments are so important.

In an intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney absolutely nailed this as well. I do not want to play down in any way the importance of the one-hour-and-23-minute contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West, and her single intervention did not go into the depth that he did, but she made a very good point about the scrutiny of trade policy in this country and the fact that it is going in the opposite direction to that taken by almost everybody else in the world, at a time when international trade agreements are so significant and so far reaching. They are about so much more than trade, which is the point my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West made later in his speech, when he described the way that our current procedures are based on the 1924 Ponsonby rule.

In an intervention, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, who is no longer in his place, made the Brexiteer point about taking back control, in all its lack of glory, yet I am afraid he was wrong. The European Union had full scrutiny arrangements. This is one of the points about our amendments. We are now left with a complete absence of those arrangements, and the fact is that we should be looking to replicate, at the very least, what we inherit from the EU.

I will read from the EU’s step-by-step guide to trade deals:

“After both sides sign, the Council examines the proposal for conclusion and sends the agreement to the Parliament for its consent (approval)…The Parliament receives the agreement. The Parliament and its trade committee (‘INTA’) consult with representatives of industry, trade unions, environmental groups and other outside experts about the agreement. The committee:

• writes up a report on the agreement

• votes on it

…The whole Parliament votes on whether to give its consent to the agreement. This is a ‘Yes/No’ vote.”

We have nothing on that scale of detailed scrutiny to replace such arrangements in order to look at the agreements to which the Government want to confine the Bill, or for future agreements. We are left with a process of rubber stamping, not scrutiny. In his analysis, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West set out the dangers of that lack of scrutiny when he described in detail the evidence presented to us that only three of 20 mutual recognition agreement chapters from the Swiss-EU deal are in place in the UK-Swiss deal; that only the goods element of the Norway deal has been rolled over; that the South Koreans want to renegotiate after two years; and that only two of 11 products from the equivalent EU-South Korea deal have been included at the same zero tariffs for export to South Korea.

My hon. Friend also made some good points about the lack of trade negotiating expertise, which he said has been raised by the Japanese and South Korean negotiators. It has also been raised by the US and Canadians as a reason that they are reluctant to engage with the UK. They feared that the quality of negotiations would be so weak as to affect the outcome of those negotiations so badly that it simply was not worth engaging. Things have moved on a bit on the American side since they raised those reservations last year, but we still await signs of progress with Canada. It must be the role of scrutiny, as my hon. Friend said, to try to avoid mistakes that we will regret for years to come.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington made several good interventions, including on the need to avoid mistakes. He is quite right about that. If we do not get it right now, we will pay for years to come. However, this place is about not only governance, but representing constituents. We are the only 650 people in the United Kingdom with the ability to scrutinise and potentially vote on such matters in Parliament, which is why it is so important that we have access to that level of scrutiny and that Parliament is able to play its full part. That European system is a good place to start.

On Second Reading and on other occasions, the Minister described this as a continuity Bill, and he described my speech—I do not know whether kindly or unkindly—as a continuity speech on a continuity Bill. He is keen to play this as a continuity Bill, and of course, for many of those agreements, it is; where there have been only changes of wording to reflect that the agreement relates to the UK rather than EU, that is true and we have acknowledged it. However, for many other agreements, it is not true—it is far more than that.

That is also true of scrutiny, because we have not applied continuity to the system of scrutiny. If this was a continuity agreement, that EU system’s level of scrutiny would be replicated as far as possible, by having a Committee with those responsibilities, having that level of engagement and consultation on the content of the deal and having those kinds of vote. However, that is not what is being offered. That is why our amendments cover it as one option, because that is precisely what we should be doing.

The Library note is a good place to go to as it sets out what is going on elsewhere in the world. We have no formal role in scrutinising most treaties while they are being negotiated, but while they are being negotiated is the only point at which the terms of the proposed treaty could be amended. The Minister may well want to say this, but I will say it for him; I will anticipate what he might say. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned the statement on the mandate for the US deal. There was a statement on the mandate for the EU deal. There was a statement on the first round of negotiations—

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On resuming—

[Bill Esterson]

It is appropriate to pause and reflect at this time to remember that terrible attack. The thoughts of all present in the Committee are with those affected—the victims, their families and the emergency services and civilians who intervened.

I was referring to the processes of scrutiny on trade agreements, as the Minister might describe them. The statements that we have had—statements in general—permit him to say what the Government are going to do. They allow for a five-minute response from the Opposition, a three-minute response from the SNP and individual questions from Back Benchers. That is not thorough scrutiny. It does not allow cross-examination. It does not allow scrutiny beyond the Chamber.

There is a limit to what a parliamentary statement can achieve and what it does achieve, and the idea that written parliamentary questions deliver very much other than a stonewall from Ministers—this Minister is very good at that—would be laughable, if that were to be used as an example of detailed scrutiny. Questions in the Chamber are invariably met with an ability by Ministers to avoid answering them, rather than shedding very much light. The Government control the timetable, so the ability to debate in detail is limited. Of course, we have Opposition day debates, but we are competing for time with so many other urgent and important topics, which limits our ability to scrutinise.

Committees are important and they can carry out scrutiny, but without access to negotiating texts and without detailed engagement in the development of mandates, all these processes are limited by definition. At this time, when other countries are looking to expand—whether that is Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United States—in all those countries there is far greater access throughout the process of the development of mandates and in the scrutiny of negotiating texts, and greater engagement of industry, trade unions, civil society, environmental groups and elected representatives.

There is a lack of continuity in scrutiny from what we have now, but, as the Library note sets out, there are at least four possible ways for Parliaments to be involved in treaties: first, by setting the negotiating mandate; secondly, by scrutinising negotiations; thirdly, by approving or objecting to ratification; and fourthly, by passing implementing legislation for treaties that need changes to domestic law. All those are covered by amendments. All those are what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West has covered in great detail, so I shall not go into that same detail on the amendments. That is set out for us in the Library note and covered by these proposals.

International trade agreements cover so much now that they deserve that level of domestic scrutiny. I thought the example of HS2 and the way its development has been subjected to massive scrutiny, compared with the minimal scrutiny of international trade agreements, made a pretty good argument about what is wrong and why there is the need to put this right. If not in the Bill, when?

[Gareth Thomas]

There is perhaps an even better example to use in comparing the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of a potential UK-US deal, or any other free trade agreement deal, with existing legislation. The Minister, as a London Member of Parliament, will remember that Transport for London sought additional powers in a private Bill and there was substantial scrutiny of that private Bill on the Floor of the House of Commons. That is vastly more than Ministers are planning for a UK-US deal or, indeed, any other free trade agreement.

[Bill Esterson]

That is another good example. I thought for a minute my hon. Friend was going to mention Heathrow, because the Minister, last time he was in this job, had to resign from it to vote against the Government. However, I think we are in different territory and the current Prime Minister and he were in the same place there, although I do not know whether the Prime Minister is talking of lying down in front of bulldozers these days—[Interruption.] I do not know whether the Minister will want to respond to that.

The Library note also mentions the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, or CRAG, provisions. The point about CRAG is that it does not require Parliament’s approval for the Government to ratify treaties. That is the point my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West made. There is such a democratic deficit here, which is why these matters need to be set straight. In the previous debate on this in Committee, the point was made that Labour introduced CRAG. Yes, we did, but we introduced CRAG in the context of being members of the European Union and in the context of the scrutiny system that I described a few minutes ago.

CRAG is no longer suitable precisely because we are no longer party to that European Union system of scrutiny—which, by the way, we were entirely able to contribute to and to access as much as any other nation, and which was far ahead of what is being offered now, albeit concerns were raised about the level of engagement over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under that system. That is why we should be pushing for a better system than that of the European Union and the one we have just left. TTIP showed that we need to continue to improve the level of scrutiny and engagement, and the involvement of wider society.

There is no continuity in scrutiny, whatever the degree of continuity may be in the agreements being considered. The House of Lords amended the previous Bill to give Parliament a role in setting the mandate for trade negotiations and approving the final agreement, which goes to the point made in the Library note. The Command Paper that my hon. Friend referred to was produced in time for the Report stage in the House of Lords. Although the Lords felt that the Command Paper did not go far enough, it started to make progress, so I am keen to hear the Minister’s response to my hon. Friend’s question about what has happened to the recommendations in the Command Paper.

There is quite a lot of support on the question of what good scrutiny looks like, as set out in the House of Commons Library paper and as in the evidence from David Lawrence, who described broadly similar points. The written submissions from a number of organisations make the same point about debates and votes on objectives; reports back to Parliament on progress; ideally, the publication of texts from each round; a debate and vote on the deal after negotiations; a public consultation; and an independent impact assessment that looks at social and environmental factors, which is why we tabled new clause 6.

As my hon. Friend said, we have scrutiny measures from world war two that are completely inappropriate. There is no way, as David Lawrence told us on Thursday, that trade deals can meet high standards without more scrutiny. As to future trade agreements, he told us that unless we get this right now, there will not be an opportunity to revisit how we approach scrutiny.

David Lawrence said on Thursday that sequencing issues are not being addressed in the Bill and that there should be priorities in respect of when we legislate. That goes back to my hon. Friend’s point about the response from Japan, South Korea and Canada. They want to know what is in the EU deal before they reach an agreement with us. The EU deal, because of its impact on the agreements that we were party to through our EU membership, should come first before the US deal.

We need a level of scrutiny in place for those agreements and for the US deal, which will concern public services, digital services and regulations on health and food standards, which are the subject of a series of amendments that I imagine we will reach this afternoon. There are similar concerns about Canada, which is why greater scrutiny needs to be agreed to in the Bill. We should be able to consider the exact consequences of that deal. The scrutiny should be of the same degree and nature as that described by my hon. Friend earlier.

My hon. Friend mentioned Sam Lowe’s evidence and his three boxes. The problem deals are in box 3: Japan, Canada, Mexico and Ukraine. Those countries want the certainty of an EU-UK deal before they negotiate with us, for reasons related to future arrangements for mutual recognition or rules of origin. The examples that my hon. Friend gave of what has already been agreed in the deals with South Korea and Switzerland show what those concerns might be.

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[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend will remember that Professor Winters described the information he got back from negotiators about how the UK-Japan talks were going as “studiously” vague. Is that not a fair description of all the information we have had back from Ministers thus far about the progress on free trade agreements? That is all the more reason why this group of amendments needs to be in the Bill.

[Bill Esterson]

The arguments set out by my hon. Friend were extremely well made by our hon. Friend the Member for Brent North two years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West has surpassed the formidable nature of the arguments made on that occasion.

[Gareth Thomas]

Harrow is always going to beat Brent.

[Bill Esterson]

Having sat and listened to both speeches—as did the Minister—my hon. Friend’s contribution has taken us to a whole new level, and the point he just made is exactly right.

George Peretz, QC made the point that scrutiny can help negotiators. Parliament just will not accept that point in this country, but the US uses that tactic. It is a strength to have the buy-in of Congress for the US trade negotiators, because they can say “I cannot agree that because Congress will not support it.” That is a standard negotiating tactic used across the world. It is used by trade unions that go back to their members. It is how good negotiators operate. They do it by having engagement, by building trust from their stakeholders and by using the strength of that engagement, trust and support as a negotiating tactic. There are many good examples around the world. We should be seeking to emulate them. These amendments give a good guiding light on how to do so, and I suggest to Members and to the Government that they seriously consider taking them on board in the same way as the House of Lords did last time.