Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

This is a time when people and businesses across the nations of the UK are facing an absolute crisis. When it comes to our responsibilities for trade, it has never been a more important time to look at the detail and impact of the decisions made on their behalf about things like trade.

We should have the ability to look at the details. We should have the ability to scrutinise these things, see what the impact is, find out the granular effect and find out what is going to happen in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England. We should have details on all those things in front of us to make the correct decisions, but of course we do not. What we have today is this debate to approve the technical details to allow this trade Bill to pass. That is simply not acceptable: it is not what was promised, and it is not what people and businesses facing crisis deserve or want.

It is not too late for an epiphany. It is not too late for the Secretary of State to go away and say, “You know all those things that were said by all the various parties? We will take them on board today and get something done.” I am not holding out much hope, but it is not too late. Perhaps there will be a bit of listening.

Let us look at what the Government are publicising as the benefits for the people and businesses who are going through these pressures just now. They say that we will be able to get machine parts—I am sure that that will be good for some people—and Tim Tams, surfboards and boots. I am sorry, but none of my constituents is writing to me about the lack of availability of those kinds of items at the moment. There is a positive for Scotland—the export of Scotch whisky to Australia will be a benefit—but let us not forget that that market is three times smaller than the market for Scotch whisky in France, for example. All in all, there is a UK GDP opportunity of 0.02% with Australia, and not even that with New Zealand.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

As my hon. Friend mentions whisky, it would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to stand up. It should be noted that one of the things we highlighted was that Australia has to get its definition of whisky together. That is a real problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry]

Indeed, and I want to return to that point later. My hon. Friend makes a very good point about details and description.

The Government are trying to sign away the downsides of the deal—they are basically saying that there are no downsides—but when we listen to people who are actually affected, it is not the downsides that they are worried about; it is the cliff edge. First among them are the farmers in Scotland and across the other nations of the UK. This deal betrays Scottish and UK farmers—that is not my rhetoric, but a quotation from National Farmers Union president Minette Batters, who also talked about the detail causing “irreversible damage”. She was joined by Phil Stocker, the chief executive of the National Sheep Association, who said that the deal had “betrayed the farming industry”. Martin Kennedy, the president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, has said

“Our fears that the process adopted by the UK government in agreeing the Australia deal would set a dangerous precedent going forward have just been realised.”

Those farmers face a flood of lower-quality, mass-produced, cheaper cuts of meat into UK markets.

[David Mundell]

Is the hon. Member aware that the biggest concern expressed by upland farmers in Scotland about the future of the sheep industry relates not to these trade deals, but to the SNP Scottish Government’s plans to allow tree planting over vast areas of agricultural land that is currently cultivated for livestock?

[Drew Hendry]

The right hon. Member is skating over the fact that the Tory Government have neglected their tree-planting duties in terms of their actions on climate change. [Interruption.] Perhaps—if he will stop chuntering from a sedentary position—he should also have a conversation with Irish farmers to see what their position is on this matter.

As we have already heard, but I will now repeat it, the Government’s own trade impact analysis shows that the Australia deal will mean a £94 million hit per year to farming, forestry and fishing, and the New Zealand deal will mean a hit of £145 million to agriculture and food-related sectors. The New Zealand media have been reporting that New Zealand farmers are jubilant about the deal. They are nonplussed; they cannot understand it; they are baffled by this, because, as they have pointed out, the benefits to the UK are negligible.

The UK Government are kicking Scottish farmers while they are down. Farmers are gasping for air, and they already face spiralling uncapped energy costs, crops rotting in fields owing to a lack of pickers, rising diesel costs, the loss of EU farming subsidies, and rocketing fertiliser costs. I can assure the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) that the sector in Scotland will not forgive this. Food and drink manufacture is twice as important to the Scottish economy as it is to the UK economy. As we have heard, even the recent Tory Chancellor, who lost the race to the new Prime Minister by the slimmest of margins, has said that the deal is bad for farmers.

The news for consumers is, of course, not much better. Because we do not know what the split is across the nations and regions of the UK, we cannot say what the impact on people will be, but the best that the UK Government can come up with as a justification for the deal is a prediction that UK households will save £1.20, on average.

[John Spellar]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Drew Hendry]

I will in a minute.

Perhaps households can get together to buy a single cup of coffee at Starbucks if they pool their resources—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Or a unit of electricity.

[Drew Hendry]

Or a unit of electricity, as my hon. Friend has chimed in to suggest.

[John Spellar]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Drew Hendry]

I have said to the right hon. Gentleman that I will give way, but not at this particular moment. If he does not mind, I will continue with the point that I was going to make.

I have just talked about the risible benefits, in this crisis, to UK households. Perhaps the Government are counting on the fact that farmers, and others who are losing out, can drown their sorrows with 20p off a bottle of Jacob’s Creek. Now I will allow the right hon. Gentleman to intervene.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Can he make it clear to us whether he thinks we should have free trade agreements on agricultural products with any countries? If he thinks we should have them, why should we not have them with our great ally Australia? If he thinks we should not have such agreements with Australia or New Zealand, which countries does he think we should have them with?

[Drew Hendry]

I think we should have free trade deals with countries—of course we should—but we should take into consideration whether we will win or lose from them. Those deals should be scrutinised by the parliamentarians who are elected to scrutinise them on behalf of their constituents.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Perhaps the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) misunderstands the idea of free trade. None of it is free; it is just that there are various degrees of restriction. How restricted or unrestricted we make that trade is the issue at hand. No one is opening trade carte blanche—certainly not the Australians. They may come before Select Committees and tell us that they are very open, but they are not, as we see from the various areas in which they are restrictive. Australia may say that it believes in free trade, but it does not practise free trade as we understood it in the free market and the single market of the European Union. That is not happening anywhere.

[Drew Hendry]

Indeed; my hon. Friend has made his point very well. However, this is also about the pluses and minuses of what is signed, and what the Government are prepared to sign away just for the purpose of getting the deal done. For example, it was noticeable during the leadership contest that the newly elected—by our Tory Members—Prime Minister again refused to agree to enshrine animal welfare and environmental standards in trade deals, so intent was she on signing away Scottish farmers’ livelihoods, as this is the key factor in imports undermining domestic products on price. As it stands, the UK has placed no—none, nada, nil, zilch—environmental conditions on agricultural products that it will accept into the UK. Of course, it is not too late to set robust core standards for all food to be sold in the UK, and I will wait to see if there is a response on that.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman will share my fear that this trade deal will allow the import of food products produced in ways that would be illegal here—for instance, on land deforested for cattle production, or through systems that rely on the transport of live animals—and that such an outcome will disadvantage UK producers, penalising them for abiding by better standards.

[Drew Hendry]

Indeed, and of course we should have the promised opportunity to go into the detail of this. As FarmingUK has pointed out,

“The Australian-UK trade deal has gone through its scrutiny phase without MPs having a chance to have their say on behalf of constituents.”

Unless this Government take action, we will see the opportunity for imports, as a result of these deals, of meat from animals raised on land that has seen 1.6 million hectares of deforestation, and from animals raised in sow stalls, intensive feed lots and battery cages and treated with steroids or antibiotics. As for pesticides, even the UK Government’s own advisers have conceded that pesticide overuse is a valid concern. Less than half the 144 highly hazardous pesticides that are authorised for use in Australia are allowed here. Many of those in Australia are of the bee-killing variety. Food standards are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but, of course, the Scottish Parliament has no powers to stop imported products on the basis of how they are produced. I will say more about the Scottish Parliament in a while.

During the summer, the record hot temperatures caused by climate change should have caused the Government to think about the detail of trade business and how to incorporate protections and enhancements to ensure that we took measures to tackle that, but no. As we have heard, despite Australia’s huge reliance on coal and its less than impressive record on climate change, there is no reference to coal in the final text. Perhaps that is no surprise, given that Tony Abbott was involved in the process. This could and should have been pushed. The UK Government must go back and demand that specific parts of the Paris agreement references are reinstated in the pages that the UK removed just to rush this deal over the line.

[Anthony Mangnall]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting point about climate issues and accords. The problem that I have with the suggestion he is making is that if we asked every country to put those terms into every trade deal, we would not end up with the eight volumes and 2,000 pages that we had to go through in the International Trade Committee. Australia and New Zealand have signed up to the Paris climate accords. They have come to agreements in COP26. They have looked at this stuff, and they stand by those treaties, those agreements and those statements. There is not really a requirement to put them into the trade deals, because those countries are already committed to them on an international stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Drew Hendry]

I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman chose that for his intervention, because I have a great deal of time for him; he is a good speaker and very knowledgeable on this subject.

If we have seen one thing from this summer, it is that it should have been a wake-up call—an alarm bell to say that this is important enough to put into the detail of the agreement. The Scottish Government advised the UK Government to prioritise the Paris agreement in any deal with Australia, but as with all the Scottish Government’s other attempts to persuade the UK Government to add protections for Scottish consumers and businesses, including on the issue of climate, they were treated more as a nuisance than as a partner in this process.

There was no specific consultation on the content of the Bill, but—surprise, surprise—it includes provisions that constrain the exercise of powers afforded to Scottish Ministers and devolved competencies covering procurement. The Scottish Parliament’s legislative consent memorandum document states that

“there is fundamentally no reason why the UK Ministers need to hold this power in relation to devolved Scottish procurement.”

This Bill gives secondary legislation empowerment to Ministers in this place to undermine devolution without being required to seek further consent.

As if that were not bad enough, this Bill coincides with a deal that has just been signed by the EU and New Zealand. I note that this was not referenced by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), in his excellent speech. That deal has better terms and stronger farming conditions and safeguards than the UK managed to negotiate. In the first year, the UK will allow 12,000 tonnes of New Zealand beef into the UK, while the EU will restrict it to 3,333 tonnes across all 27 countries. By year 15, the UK will allow 60,000 tonnes into the UK, while the EU figure will be capped at 10,000 tonnes, again across all 27 countries.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The data that my hon. Friend has just read out helps to make a point. Although those two deals are both described as free trade agreements, anybody can see from those bits of data that the deals are very different. When people talk about free trade, they must remember that the devil is absolutely in the detail and that the headline usually bears no relation at all to what is going on or to the different levels of restriction.

[Drew Hendry]

Indeed, and with the safeguards and other measures in the EU deal, there is a similar position for sheepmeat, for example. There are also protections for butter and cheese. I am sure that that was the new Prime Minister’s favourite subject a while ago, but maybe she has moved on from dairy products to something else. As has been said, there are no agrifood geographic indicator protections in the UK deal—for example, for Scotch beef or Scottish salmon—but the EU has its own protections enshrined.

Let us recap the prospectus for Scotland. This is the UK Government checklist for Scotland: a betrayal of our farmers and crofters; job losses and reduced income in food production, forestry and fishing; no protections on environmental or animal rights; no inclusion of the Paris agreement requirements on climate change; and a further power grab on the Scottish Parliament. And, to top it all, a much worse deal than the EU. This UK Government continue, every day they are in power, to make a stronger case for Scottish independence than even we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

The Government have undertaken that and, indeed, the independent Trade and Agriculture Commission has given the deal a green light and a clean bill of health, in terms of its impact.

[Drew Hendry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

I will make some progress, but I will come back to many of the points that the nationalist spokesman made.

The issue of antimicrobial usage was raised. The TAC outlined in its report on the Australian deal that the free trade agreement will not lead to increased imports of products commonly produced using antimicrobials, largely because it does not reduce tariffs on those products. They are out of scope.

The nationalist spokesman and the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) talked about the role of the devolved Administrations in the process. The negotiation of trade agreements is a reserved matter, whether the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey likes it or not, but the devolved Administrations are responsible for implementation in matters of devolved competence, which includes certain provisions relating to public procurement. The Bill applies, as it should, to the whole United Kingdom and will confer concurrent powers on both UK and devolved Ministers, or on a Northern Ireland Department, to implement public procurement provisions in both the Australia and New Zealand free trade agreements. They are limited powers specific to implementing these agreements alone.

Not for the first time, nationalists are promoting an act of self-harm. These trade agreements have the potential to deliver sizeable benefits across the four nations; the Australia agreement alone could mean an increase in GVA of about £200 million for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which will be valued by their citizens. My Department is seeking legislative consent from each devolved legislature and is engaging with the DAs, building on the extensive engagement—acknowledged on both sides—that was undertaken during the negotiation of both trade agreements at ministerial and official level.

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in her opening remarks, we are committing not normally to use these concurrent powers without a devolved Administration’s consent, and never without consulting them first. The same commitment was made regarding the use of powers in the Trade Act 2021 and has been honoured by the UK Government.

The nationalist party spokesman—[Hon. Members: “National!”]—was positively wistful for a European agreement with New Zealand. What he talked about is much more protectionist, offers far fewer benefits for UK consumers, and if we were still in the European Union, he would have had no scrutiny or influence over it.