Future Free Trade Agreements

Debate between Catherine West and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 21st February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to speak in this debate with so many other antipodeans: the hon. Members for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). The words “Australia” and “New Zealand” were in the longer title of the debate and therefore we seem to have been attracted out the woodwork. I cannot promise to compete with the knowledge of the hon. Member for Mole Valley about New Zealand sheep farms, but having grown up in Sydney I have a bit of a feel for some of the topics discussed, and it is a pleasure to be serving on the International Trade Committee and looking into the debate on this.

There are not many debates in the House where we go for three hours without a woman speaking. It took three hours for us to get there today, so I will try to set the tone by being brisk—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Quality not quantity.

[Catherine West]

Exactly.

We are in the bizarre position of not having a proper agreement with our main trading partner, the EU, with which we do almost half our trade, or a little bit more than half, depending on which academic work one reads. The question of Brexit remains unsettled and not at all a done deal, yet at the same time, because of the Government’s rather interesting negotiating style, there remain big questions about tariffs. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) hit the nail on the head when he said that the written statement on tariffs that will be published later really should have come in advance of this debate, so that the debate could have been possibly shorter and more meaningful.

We know that right now goods are on their way to Korea and Japan and their exporters do not know what tariffs will be charged on arrival, because in under 40 days Brexit could happen and there could be no deal. That is leading to a great deal of concern, not only about exports but about imports. The hon. Member for Yeovil said that he felt the farming sector was perhaps being a bit frightened, or need not be so worried or scared, but every time one opens a newspaper, one finds that reliable titles such as the Financial Times are citing extreme concern about what tariffs will be put on to goods coming into the UK.

The National Farmers Union spokesperson has been eloquent in expressing the union’s concerns. As a Member representing a London seat I would not want to say that I could be any more knowledgeable than she, and she is presenting some very important concerns from the agricultural sector and about our lovely countryside. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) made a good point about whether the sector could be more efficient without our losing the wonderful beauty of the countryside. A move toward an agribusiness model could have a big effect on the countryside.

I can describe the position we face today only as neither in nor out—halfway. With under 40 days to go, that is a dereliction of duty. I feel that to some degree industry is being let down, doubly so after Honda’s announcement this week. It is not just about industry but, of course, about the people who work in industry and all our partners.

Let me briefly set out some principles, because that is far as we can get today, given that we do not really know what is going to happen in the next 34 days. First, liberalisation may sound fine as a principle, but we know that there are problems. Members have mentioned issues relating to the ISDS provisions in various free trade agreements. A famous example is the tobacco companies in Australia taking the Australian Government to court for loss of profit because of changes in Government policy. People find the idea deeply anti-democratic and think we should be very careful in how we proceed. Furthermore, when the International Trade Committee visited Canada, we heard about the Dow v. Canada case, in which the US chemicals giant Dow sued Canada for attempting to ban the pesticide 2,4-D. The full details of the settlement were unclear, but it is likely that some concessions for the company were agreed, despite the environmental impacts of pesticide use. Those two examples show why, if we embrace a form of trade liberalisation, it is extremely important to remain vigilant about the long-term impacts.

The second principle is scrutiny. The Select Committee heard about some impressive best practice in Canada, where there had been regional consultations and the debates around equalities and human rights were an element of the consultation. That is a good way of engaging the regions in discussion about consultation and scrutiny. We need to look more closely at that. Given that the Government are trying to bring forward an industrial strategy—it is difficult to tell right now whether that has been successful—we should look at the best practice in that area.

The third principle is preparedness for our future, depending on what happens with Brexit. In the Select Committee’s evidence sessions on the Trade Remedies Authority, I have been concerned about the sense of unpreparedness. I felt that when questioned, the chief executive was not familiar with our current tariff levels with different countries. When questioned on her views about various trade matters, she seemed rather unprepared. That suggests that the Department desperately needs to do more work. Furthermore, on Member engagement, although I welcome today’s debate, there needs to be more in-depth consideration. It is a pity that Members had to look on the Swiss Government website to see details of the Swiss agreement, when we had asked as a Committee for more information and were not given it—and that is Committee members, who are interested in trade, let alone Members of Parliament as a whole. It is disappointing not to see more interest on the Government Benches in today’s debate and what our future is going to be.

The fourth principle is human rights. My fear is that we will lack clout with some of the big players, such as China. Put simply, China is more likely to countenance a dialogue about human rights with a partner with the clout of 500 million people than with the UK. We will struggle to maintain our integrity and what we believe to be important at the same time as managing our twin concerns about national security and trade. The three principles of trade, national security and human rights are hard to get right as a smaller country. It is easy to discount such a country, particularly when we may be giving off a whiff of desperation right now, with our debates and the sense that we need them more than they need us. We need to take that into account.

The fifth principle is standards. We currently have the EU’s gold standard for goods. Other Members have mentioned the challenges relating to animal welfare standards, particularly in respect of a US deal and sanitary and phytosanitary standards. That throws up a wealth of questions. I am convinced that the US would like agriculture to be a sectoral element of any future free trade agreement. Again, we need to get the balance right between protecting what we have, the beauty of our landscape and our traditions, and being open-minded about new ways of doing things.

The hon. Member for Yeovil mentioned the NHS and seemed relaxed about how the US health system might be able to “improve”—I hope I am not misquoting him—it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) intervened earlier to emphasise the fact that our national Government set the tone for the NHS and any intervention in it or other public services, but in respect of an interface with the NHS, we must be aware that the US healthcare system is among the most expensive and unequal healthcare systems in the world.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I wish to echo and strengthen the hon. Lady’s point. Bernie Sanders—I wish him the best of luck in his attempt at the presidency of America—made the exact same point. The idea that co-operating with America on health is going to make anything any cheaper is far from the truth.

[Catherine West]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for his leadership of the Select Committee. It is a very interesting Committee that he manages very well, given the breadth of views among its members.

I have a further point to make on TTIP, or what I call trip-up. Many of the TTIP proposals were quite anodyne, but they were politically mishandled. When the Select Committee visited the US Senate and the House of Representatives, the famous Democrat John Lewis said to us that had labour rights been raised much earlier in the discussions around NAFTA, there may not have been quite the problems that arose when Mr Trump first became President. Had labour rights been much more at the forefront and given much more scrutiny, and had everything been much more open and debated much more freely, perhaps messes might not have been got into. That applies to TTIP or any form of agreement. Any sense that the public are being kept out, that it is secret or that the trade unions or civil society groups are not involved can lead to a trip-up.

Offences Against the Person Act 1861

Debate between Catherine West and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

For a very long time, in many societies and in many cultures, the state and organised religion have had a stranglehold over the lives of women. That was why it was so pleasing to see the landslide vote to repeal the eighth amendment in the Republic of Ireland. Women in Northern Ireland will soon be the only women in the UK and Ireland who cannot gain safe access to abortion. We know that hundreds of women in Northern Ireland either travel or take risks with their own health to have a termination. We cannot stand by here while women and girls in any part of the UK are criminalised or put at risk for accessing basic healthcare.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady alluded to the stranglehold that the state can have over people’s lives, and one of the biggest strangleholds that the state currently has over people’s lives in the UK is the reprehensible two-child policy. That policy should be changed to make sure that, when people have more than two children, they do indeed have the children’s allowance to help and support them with those children.

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I was certainly in the Lobby when we failed to support that particular proposal.

It is high time that the House took action to end the treatment of Northern Irish women as second-class citizens. Let us look at the man, Leo Varadkar, who welcomed the resounding yes vote by saying that Ireland will no longer say to women, “Take the boat,” or, “Take the plane,” when they need an abortion. Instead, he said that Ireland will say, “Take our hand.” Is it not now time for us to offer our hand to the women of Northern Ireland and end the ban on abortion in Northern Ireland?