Trade Bill

Chris Leslie Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Magnificent. We are very grateful to him.

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

This group of amendments is about parliamentary scrutiny, and in a way it is a shame that some on this subject are in later groups. The key thing I want is to ensure that appointments to the Trade Remedies Authority are subject to confirmation by the International Trade Committee in the same way that the Treasury Committee has confirmation hearings on the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee.

New clause 12 gives me a little tickle, a little laugh, because it says that Ministers will now come to report to the House when there are any significant differences in the free trade agreements we have as a member of the EU that will be rolled over. Apparently the agreements will be cut and pasted, and it was only at last year’s Conservative party conference that the Secretary of State for International Trade himself promised that, one second after midnight, all 40 agreements will be rolled over and available from March 2019. Well, it has not quite been going his way, because the Government have not got a single other jurisdiction to sign up legally to doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Two-minute speeches are now required.

[Mr Leslie]

Surely new clause 17 is a no-brainer. If we are going to preserve anything, we must surely keep the frictionless flow of medicines and treatments for our national health service going. If ever there were an example of an ideology getting in the way of common sense, it would be that of a hard Brexit attitude physically placing itself at the border in the way of the free flow of those medicines. We know that 45 million packages of medicines cross that border every month. That is how essential this is, so new clause 17 has to be supported.

New clause 18 has been tabled by the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). I have to say to him that he is being incredibly generous to the Government in relation to this proposal. He is giving them the benefit of the doubt on the free trade area in goods. It is true that, whatever we get, the lowest common denominator will be a free trade area in goods. We will have to get that. But frankly, I am really quite surprised by the way in which some Conservative Members have been treated by the Government in respect of the ERG amendments—all of which were accepted without any objection—when some of them are trying their best to preserve the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan. Those Conservative Members are being very generous, but I think it is reasonable to put in place a safety net in the form of a customs union in January. I hope that, on this one occasion, we can put party politicking to one side and do the right thing for our country.

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you. Two minutes, please. I call John Redwood.