Bill Esterson
Main Page: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)Department Debates - View all Bill Esterson's debates with the HM Treasury
Trade Bill (Second sitting)
Bill Esterson ExcerptsTuesday 23rd January 2018
(6 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Trade Bill 2017-19 View all Trade Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 23 January 2018 - (23 Jan 2018)
The Chair
Thank you. At quarter to three, I will stop you talking, even if you are mid-sentence.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Q
Dr Fowler: First, Parliament needs to be very clear whether it is happy that the Bill only covers the replicated agreement. You might want to decide that you are happier with these agreements and then do something stronger for the completely new agreements that the UK will be negotiating. I believe that is something that the Secretary of State has indicated he would be open to, but I suggest that Parliament might want to get that nailed down in some way at this stage.
As I have mentioned before, the main issues are the weakness of the CRAGA procedure at the moment—
Bill Esterson
Q
Dr Fowler: For example, you might simply want to have an affirmative motion, a motion for resolution, rather than the negative power that is applicable at the moment. That might be one option that the Government need to bring a motion for affirmative resolution. That is one possibility. Even more important is the preceding stage, which is processes around the signature of the new agreements, particularly where they might have been changed significantly from the existing EU ones. Again, there are things that Parliament could do about transparency, possibly having an approval motion, or recreating some kind of scrutiny reserve, possibly through a Committee. There are all sorts of institutional options, but I think the House might want to look at a set of processes around signature that the House might want to look at.
The Chair
We have a few seconds—I take the opportunity to thank our panel. You have been extremely clear and interesting and will greatly add to Members’ understanding of the Bill. Thank you very much for your evidence. Perhaps if you would like to shuffle off in one direction, the next lot will shuffle in.
Examination of Witnesses
Professor Alan Winters, Michael Clancy and George Peretz gave evidence.
Bill Esterson
Q
George Peretz: Not all WTO law is clear, but what is pretty clear is that we could not simply automatically carry over existing trade remedies imposed by the EU and say, “These remedies will apply to the UK now that it is a separate WTO jurisdiction”—if I can use that term loosely. We cannot do that for one very simply reason: it is a condition of all trade remedies that there is a domestic injury. A domestic injury is defined, and the UK is obviously not the same as the EU. It is potentially an issue that applies the other way around, incidentally, but that it a problem for the EU rather than for us.
As far as I understand it, the Department for International Trade is feeling its way to dealing with this problem. As a first step, it is asking industries that benefit from an existing trade remedy to set out why they think it should continue and to explain what the domestic injury is. There is probably also a need for the UK to discuss with the European Commission what the position is. After all, in its investigation of all these remedies, the Commission will have built up a case file that will include quite a lot of information about what the injury is, some of which will be pinned down geographically. It will be able to say that that is evidence of an injury in the UK. Perhaps that could be used to justify carrying on the remedy after we have left the EU, but it would have to be the judgment of the new Trade Remedies Authority whether that evidence was good enough to withstand domestic scrutiny and appeals and, ultimately, a possible WTO challenge. There is a very difficult set of issues there, which will be a challenge for DIT and the TRA.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
Q
George Peretz: I do not claim to be a great expert in parliamentary procedure, and I am not sure that I can add very much to what Brigid Fowler said about that—she is an expert on parliamentary procedure.
Plainly, there is an opportunity to challenge a statutory instrument that uses the negative resolution procedure, but clearly it is less likely to be challenged—just look at the statistics—than a piece of primary legislation, because one fundamental point about any statutory instrument is that the vote is simply an all-or-nothing vote on the instrument. There is no ability to have the primary legislation to say, “We agree with most of this clause but we don’t like clause 5, therefore we would like to amend that.” It is take-it-or-leave-it. The problem with a lot of this is that you will be told that the clock is running and you need to decide very quickly what to do.
Professor Winters: There is very little time, so be realistic about what the cost of a challenge would be and the pressures that that would generate.
Michael Clancy: It is the balance between speed and scrutiny—that is the whole point. To get that right is quite difficult with a negative or indeed an affirmative resolution procedure. Although theoretically each of these could be debated, I think it would be very difficult to get each of these debated. There simply is not enough time to do that—we are told that there are between 800 and 1,000 orders in relation to the EUWB. I do not know how many of them might be here—63 existing trade treaties, maybe more, and other things as well. That is the difficulty.
What are the defects? The defects are that we have an alternative procedure of super-affirmative if we need extra time to look at something—that is where the sift comes in. If the sift identifies a particular order as being important, it might then get better scrutiny, and better scrutiny might mean the affirmative resolution procedure on a super-affirmative basis. We do not know that the sift applies to these orders because the sift is not mentioned in this Bill. Will it be? Are you going to propose amendments? Is the Government going to take that forward to this Bill? That is another story for another day perhaps.
Then there is the issue—I think it is in one of the Hansard Society papers—of the difficulty, in fact the incapability, of amending these orders. They have to be taken back by the Minister and re-presented. That induces time and delay, and we are running out time and inducing delay.
Barry Gardiner
Q
Cliff Stevenson: Yes, what would definitely be of importance is to have a substantial report submitted to Parliament on an annual basis. In the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, there is a provision on reporting. There is already a proposal for there to be an annual report. The EU anti-dumping regulation is quite specific about what the European Commission must report to the European Parliament in terms of the statistics it must provide. A little more detail ensuring that certain things were provided in this report would be useful.
Tom Reynolds: The question about Parliament’s ongoing role with the Trade Remedies Authority is an interesting one, but so is Parliament’s role in setting up the rules for the system. The point made by Jude Kirton-Darling earlier on about the level of involvement of MEPs in scrutinising and offering amendments on, for instance, the new anti-dumping methodology and the TDI modernisation, which was mentioned, has been integral in improving that legislation from the Commission’s original proposals. I would be more comfortable if there was a more rigorous approach for parliamentarians to get involved in the setting of the rules for the system as well.
Bill Esterson
Q
Gareth Stace: Do you mean the board?
Bill Esterson
Yes.
Gareth Stace: The board needs to represent interests. From my point of view, I would like to see someone from industry and someone from the trade unions on that board to provide that balance, clarity and expertise as well. That could be set out in primary legislation. It is not there now.
Tom Reynolds: One of the most successful acts of Parliament in setting up a non-departmental public body over the years has been the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which stipulates that the Secretary of State, in making appointments to the commission—now the HSE board—must consult with organisations for three of the members. There could be representatives of the employers, and three of the representatives could be from the trade unions. That sort of model might lend itself well to the establishment of the Trade Remedies Authority and the appointments made to the non-exec board.
Gareth Stace: However, we would not want anything that you would add to it that would then create more work and delay measures in place or delay the investigations that would take place by the authority.
Bill Esterson
Q
Gareth Stace: There is a whole range of “if we don’t get this right”. If we get this very wrong, we become the dumping ground—not just in Europe, but for the rest of the world. Think of the steel sector, which thrives on free, liberalised trade. That is what we are. Over a third of all steel produced travels across borders globally.
Also, something crucial, in particular for the steel sector, is that in 1994 we agreed as a sector with Governments to abolish all customs tariffs for steel for developed countries. There are no tariffs. So when you think about us coming out of the EU, whatever agreement or not is put in place, we as steel will not be subject to customs tariffs. That is not an issue for us—non-tariff barriers are an issue for us, but not tariff barriers. That enabled us to be even more liberalised in terms of trade. What supports that? Trade remedies support that: they are the safety valve that enables free trade to take place. Sometimes the debate turns the other way round, as if trade remedies were there to provide protectionism. We would say that if there were not a strong trade remedies regime in the UK or anywhere else in the world then you would see a rise in protectionism, with weak trade remedies.
There is a whole range of things that could go wrong. When the investigations take place in the end, will they find that there is no injury or dumping for whatever reason, even if there is? If they do find that there has been injury or dumping, what are the tariff levels that are set? Are they high enough to stop the illegal trade in the UK—the dumped steel that is against WTO rules? If the endgame is not that those tariffs are high enough, then we have a problem.
Bill Esterson
Q
Tom Reynolds: We have a very similar experience. We are a sector that thrives on international trade: we export over half a billion pounds’ worth of products each year. We are not protectionist. However, as the Government have rightly pointed out, free trade does not mean trade without rules, and unfortunately some of our trading partners do not play by those rules. Examples from our sector include cases involving tiles and tableware. In the case of tiles, imports rose from a fairly stable level of around £4 million worth of tiles a year from China up to 2004, and rocketed in less than a decade to over £30 million worth of imports from China. If you were to look at volume, it was an even sharper rise.
The European Union introduced anti-dumping measures in 2011, which were not enormous—they are not the 230% tariffs that the United States has looked at. They were between 13% for co-operating companies in China, up to just short of 70% for non-co-operating companies. The introduction of those measures allowed our UK industry to stabilise and invest. As a result, employment has gone up by 40% in the sector, with even further boosts to the supply chain as well. All that could be at risk if we get things wrong.
It is worth noting that in 2011 the UK Government voted against the tiles measures in Council. That was understandable because the UK’s role within the European Union was as a liberal counterweight across the 28 member states. As we forge an independent trade policy we have a different role, but some of the most experienced civil servants and experts are steeped in that heritage of the UK being the liberal counterweight within the European Union. That is why we come back to this point about a non-exec board being a watchdog, ensuring a balanced system in the UK. It is an integral part of getting things right.
Bill Esterson
Q
Tom Reynolds: It is not something that the BCC or the Manufacturing Trade Remedies Alliance has made a submission on; it is something that we would have to consider, and maybe we can write to the Committee.
Faisal Rashid
Q
Cliff Stevenson: Obviously, the wording is not effective at the moment in terms of ensuring that there is a balanced composition of those members. If you look elsewhere and compare, the closest major trade remedy regime to the UK’s proposed system is Australia’s. It has a separate anti-dumping commission that works in a similar way to how the Trade Remedies Authority would work, but there is a big difference in the sense that it is headed up by one person, an anti-dumping commissioner: there is not a committee or a group of members in the way that is proposed for the UK.
One concern I slightly have with this is that it is an extra level of decision making. There is no detail on how the members might make a decision—whether they would vote if they disagreed—and that could hold up investigations, which are always subject to very severe time limits given the amount of work that has to be done.
In the US and Canada, for example, there are examples of independent bodies such as the United States International Trade Commission, which does the injury determination for the cases. It is a completely independent body that has six commissioners who vote at the end of the investigation. If there is a positive finding of injury and three out of six vote in favour, it will be an affirmative determination. In that case, where there is a quasi-judicial system where it is completely separate and not under any political control, there are these commissioners taking a vote on the basis of the technical information.
Gareth Stace: You have to look at what the TRA and the whole system is trying to achieve. Why is it being set up? It is being set up because we are leaving the EU. Is that an opportunity to have a system that is fleet of foot, quite simple and employs fewer people than the European Commission does?
That is why a year ago we, as UK Steel, said that actually what this arm’s-length, independent body could be doing is just looking at the dumping margin, because that is a really simple, straightforward—almost—calculation. It is what they do in the US, which is seen as a champion of free trade, and we want to create strong links with the US going forward. There was that opportunity to do that, and so the make-up of the TRA and the committee would not be as important as if it was then doing the injury calculation—that is much more of a black box. You stick a load of numbers in, and you hope that something will come out. You twiddle some dials as well, and the tariffs come out of that. So you probably do then need some independent committee to look at it, but how much are they going to influence—[Interruption.]
Faisal Rashid
Mr Jones, would you like to add anything?
Stephen Jones: No, I have nothing specific to add in relation to Africa in general.
On a more generic point in relation to the Trade Bill, it is obviously focused on existing trade agreements and economic partnership agreements. From a services perspective, we need to look beyond that and reflect on arrangements that exist beyond that, which are critical to the cross-border flow of trade in services, because there are very few provisions and services agreements in trade treaties that relate to services. There are lots of mutual recognitions and memorandums of understanding that relate to infrastructure, to recognition and co-operation between supervisors, to the flow of data and to the recognition of exchanges, but which do not exist within the context of a trade agreement. They nevertheless facilitate cross-border trade in services that already exists between the EU—including the UK—and other jurisdictions. It is very important that we do not lose sight of those specific provisions, but seek to mirror them so far as the financial services industry is concerned, simply because the existing trade treaty provision is so poor in services.
Bill Esterson
Stephen Jones, you are the UK Finance representative. Sorry, it has been a long day. Can I ask about the written evidence you gave to the Procedure Committee, where you indicated the benefits of a triage or sifting process and stated how you might apply those when looking at new trade agreements? For the purposes of the phrase “new trade agreements”, given some of the evidence we have heard today, can we include anything that changes the agreements that are part of this Bill? Can you explain what you think the merit of such an approach would be, how you might apply it, and the importance of such a sifting process?
Stephen Jones: Given the time available in the context of Brexit, from the perspective of the financial services industry, clearly continuity, speed and the correct process and scrutiny to transpose the existing trade arrangements that the EU has with the rest of the world to the UK are incredibly important for continuity. That does not directly benefit the financial services industry. It benefits mostly the customers of the financial services industry, but in that context it is very important.
To the extent that your question relates to prioritising whether one should seek to amend the agreements in order to ensure more robust coverage of services within the context of those agreements, I think that in the first phase that is unrealistic. There is not enough time. What we need is as much certainty as we can get. Business in general needs as much certainty as it can get in terms of the transposition of the existing EU arrangements.
In terms of the ongoing amendment of those treaties to seek to extend them and prioritise what should be done—the sifting process, if you like, for services—we can develop a modus operandi in terms of markets that are important. However, as I say, there are significant factors beyond trade agreements that influence the ability to conduct cross-border business between the UK and the rest of the world. Those are a susceptibility to inward investment; strong regulatory and supervisory co-operation; aspects of data protection and the willingness to mutually recognise the cross-border sharing of data; and infrastructure, with the recognition on a cross-border basis of critical market infrastructure in each jurisdiction, such that member firms in each place are able to access and utilise the infrastructure in the other country. To the extent that that can be captured within a trade agreement, that is great.
To date, that has failed and our focus very much is on an ambition for the UK with the EU to seek to build an ambitious free trade agreement that has not been attempted in services anywhere else in the world. But we believe it should be attempted in the current context, simply because of the importance of the cross-dependencies that already exist and the fact that we are starting with a fully converged rulebook, which is extremely unusual in a trade negotiation context. So we believe that there is the prospect of an ambitious mutual recognition-based trade agreement in services between the UK and the EU and that potentially should be the first focus, to the extent that we are talking about prioritisation of negotiation of trade agreements.
Bill Esterson
Q
Stephen Jones: I think we are talking about beyond transition. From a transition perspective, the only realistic thing that we believe can be achieved is a prolongation of the acquis, which is a full adoption of the existing rule book lock, stock and barrel. The chances of seeking to amend or renegotiate that in the time that is available are wholly unrealistic, and what is far more important is certainty through the transition period. The only way you can deliver that certainty is simply to take forward the existing rule book.
Bill Esterson
Q
Stephen Jones: In terms of the prolongation of the acquis—that is, the adoption of rules on day one—in a sense those rules are already on for the purposes of transition. Those rules have already been adopted by the UK. I recognise the sovereignty of Parliament and the importance of scrutiny, but to the extent that the rules are not being changed we are simply extending arrangements that continue to exist. The Bill’s provisions relating to Ministers’ 10-year power to use secondary legislation to renegotiate those rules strike me as pretty broad-brush, and they potentially should benefit from greater parliamentary scrutiny than is currently contemplated.
Bill Esterson
Q
Stephen Jones: Broadly, I do not think it is realistic to expect changes. In that context, the secondary legislation ministerial power provisions are broadly acceptable, but beyond that, to the extent that arrangements are adapted to the UK as an independent country with its own trade policy, I would suggest that they merit parliamentary scrutiny.
Bill Esterson
Q
William Bain: The nature of the transition impinges on terms in the Bill, and the retail industry is keen to have a standstill transition in all elements—in terms of the current customs rules, the current tariff rules and the current SPS rules—but it also applies to the trade facilitation that we get from the bilateral trade agreements, which fit into part 1 of the Bill. I cannot stress how important it is to the retail sector, which imports products from countries like Chile, Peru, South Africa and Turkey, that we do not have a discontinuity in our trading arrangements at any stage after 29 March 2019. There are some connections and points of commonality with the kind of transitional deal that is done, but in a sense this is a slightly separate question. It really demands clear attention from the Government in order to get the job done by 29 March next year.
Barry Gardiner
Q
We are talking about 100 separate agreements between the EU and Switzerland alone, some of which include free movement of people. There are going to be some major changes, such as those we talked about with Turkey and the customs union, and with Norway, free movement of people and the four freedoms. Do you not think, given that you have already recommended a sift Committee in one form, that a similar sort of mechanism for trying to distinguish between what is and what is not vital, and what should have parliamentary scrutiny, is a sensible way to proceed?
Stephen Jones: Yes, sorry; forgive me for the lack of clarity. My reference was really to the existing provisions between the UK and the EU in relation to financial services. In my assessment, for the purposes of transition and of business services in financial services, the chances of change, and therefore of the need for sift, are zero. There just is not the time. In the context of other areas, where there is an assessment that change is possible, the sift Committee strikes me as a very sensible mechanism to prioritise and assess those changes and the degree of scrutiny that is required.