Baroness Laing of Elderslie
Main Page: Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Laing of Elderslie's debates with the Department for International Trade
Monday 20th July 2020
(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Trade Bill 2019-21 View all Trade Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 20 July 2020 - (20 Jul 2020)
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. In case the House is not already aware, after the next speaker, we will have a time limit of four minutes on Back-Bench speeches, which, of course, does not apply to Mr Stewart Hosie.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
There are four significant flaws with this piece of legislation: the absence of devolved consent, real protections for the NHS, the preservation of food standards and meaningful parliamentary scrutiny. I believe that our amendment 10 and new clauses 7 and 8 deal with the first three, and that new clause 4, tabled by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), deals with the final issue.
I wish to speak to amendment 10 and new clauses 7 and 8, which are in my name, and I will start, slightly in reverse order, with amendment 10. It relates to the powers of the devolved Administrations, or as I said in Committee,
“more accurately, the ability of the UK Government to make regulations under subsection (1), which makes provisions within devolved competencies, without the consent of Scottish or Welsh Ministers or a Northern Irish devolved authority”––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 237.]—
granting consent. It strikes me as fundamental that if we are to genuinely respect the devolved settlement in the UK, Ministers must self-evidently gain the consent of the devolved Administrations before making changes to regulations that directly affect them, possibly in a negative way, or in a way that runs counter to those Governments’ policy objectives.
I am aware that in the previous Trade Bill, under consideration between 2017 and 2019, there was a problematic provision for regulation-making powers to be available to the UK Government, but the good news is that those provisions have been removed from this Trade Bill. It is the case, however, that there remains no statutory obligation for the UK Government to even consult, let alone seek the consent of, Scottish Ministers before exercising the powers in this Bill in devolved areas.
I know that the Minister has said that these powers would not normally be used without seeking consent, and his predecessor did offer a number of a non-legislative commitments to the Scottish Trade Minister Ivan McKee in March. I am genuinely pleased that the Minister, during the Bill Committee, committed to honouring those non-legislative commitments. He said:
“I restate the commitments made by my right hon. Friend, when he was a Minister, in his March letter to the Scottish Minister Ivan McKee”,
and that is genuinely very welcome. However, he went on to say, in opposing what was then amendment 8 and similar Labour new clauses that dealt with the same issues:
“In short, we are already delivering the engagement envisaged by proposed new clause, and we have achieved that while continuing to observe the important constitutional principles enshrined in the devolution settlements.”––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 23 June 2020; c. 240-241.]
I disagree. Giving the UK Government the ability to directly effect devolved powers without the statutory requirement to even seek consent is not observing the devolved settlement.
Stewart Hosie
Yes, and I made that point. It is wrong for these provisions to be available only to investors in the way that has just been described. If we want a supranational body that adjudicates, arbitrates and works, let us have the UK Government put some pressure on their friends in the United States and get the WTO appellate body back up and running and functioning again. That would be the best thing for trade around the world.
New clause 8 would also instruct that there should be no changes to drug pricing mechanisms, which could also happen through intellectual property and non-patent exclusivities. That would be bad news for patients, taxpayers, health boards and trusts around the country, and our view is that trade deals should not be used to facilitate it.
In opposing a new clause like this one in Committee, the Minister said that
“the NHS is not, and never will be, for sale to the private sector”.
Fine. He said:
“We have always protected our right to choose how we would deliver public services in trade agreements, and we will continue to do so.”
Fundamentally, his argument was that “however laudable” the new clause was, it was “unnecessary”. He went on to explain that the UK already had
“rigorous checks and balances on the Government’s power to negotiate and ratify”
trade agreements
“via the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010”.––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 25 June 2020; c. 315.]
There are two big issues that jump out, given what the Minister said—and I have it in full if he wants to re-read it. First, there is absolutely no practical reason why protections for the NHS demanded by the public should not be included in the Bill. Secondly and more importantly, because the so-called “rigorous checks and balances” in CRAG amount to little more than a take-it-or-leave-it choice at the end of the negotiations, the need to protect the NHS from the outset in legislation is paramount.
I commend amendment 10 and new clauses 7 and 8 to the House, and I hope—time permitting—that we can press new clause 7 and amendment 10 to a vote.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. We now have a time limit of four minutes.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill because I believe that removing unnecessary barriers to trade can boost jobs and growth, but I hope that the Minister and the Government will consider seriously whether changes can be made to strengthen parliamentary oversight, whether via the amendments we are considering today or in the other place.
I was one of 18 Conservative MPs to back new clause 2 of the Agriculture Bill. I did so because I believe our trade policy should be consistent with our values. The Government were elected on a manifesto with stronger commitments on the environment and animal welfare than any of their predecessors, but maintaining our domestic rules on animal welfare and environmental stewardship of land will have less and less real-world impact if more and more of our food is imported from countries with lower standards and fewer qualms about these matters than we have.
I would therefore like to hear the Minister confirm this evening that the Government will keep in place the import ban on chicken washed in disinfectant and will not at any stage ask this Parliament to remove it from the statute book. I hope that he will say the same about the ban on beef from cattle whose growth has been artificially boosted by hormones. We know that in the United States, many of them are intensively reared on feedlots containing thousands of animals fed off soy production, contributing to deforestation in the Amazon basin.
The reality is that more or less every country in the world reflects sensitivities over food in its approach to trade policy for the good reason that food security is crucial to any society. I warmly thank the Minister and the International Trade Secretary for agreeing to establish a commission to consider how we can secure the economic advantages of free trade agreements without undermining our world-class food standards. Those standards would be undermined if we allowed an unrestricted tariff-free influx of food produced using methods that would be illegal in this country. A good deal with the United States, a mutually beneficial deal, could see tariffs coming down even in sensitive sectors such as beef so long as incoming food complies with animal welfare and environmental standards that are equivalent to our own. Many US producers are perfectly capable of doing that, and it should not be beyond the wit of man to develop a certification and compliance system.
Contrary to what some have claimed, this is not a rerun of the debates on the corn laws, and it is a caricature to suggest that those of us raising concerns have somehow been captured by producer interests as our Victorian forebears in this House were. All I am asking is that we do not sell ourselves short in this country. The UK is the third biggest market for groceries in the world. Even conditional access to that market is a valuable prize. Just because we would like a trade deal with the US does not mean that we should give it everything that it wants. There is so much that we can offer our trading partners in the US and in other countries, and is it so unreasonable to say that, when it comes to food, there are limits to liberalisation?
Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
It is always unsettling when I speak in the Chamber and my colleagues seem to leave and the Whips come in. I reassure them that I am on their side this time. I commend the Bill in its entirety.
I listened carefully to Members from across the House as they raised concerns over food standards and scrutinising the quality of our trade deals, but we must take the Bill alongside the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill, and the Fisheries Bill when it comes through this place. The Agriculture Bill took the steps that many in this House and in this debate have been calling for. On welfare standards, the Government have moved to a position where they are performing a consultation on labelling, which I assure hon. Members does not yet go far enough for me; I will be hot on their heels in making sure that we have an extensive labelling system for agricultural produce that is sold in the UK and that goes through restaurants and supermarkets.
However, the Government have also committed to a commission—I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) that its six-month remit should be extended—which actually gives us the opportunity to scrutinise and to uphold the standards of our food and the welfare standards of our imports. That is important, and I do not think it can be expressed enough. It is what the NFU called for and it is what the NFU got, which we should be very clear about. That commitment is there in black and white in the Agriculture Bill, and it is exactly what the Opposition want, so to keep going on and on that we are lowering our standards is a fallacy.
Ladies and gentleman—sorry; Members, if I may—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I think the hon. Gentleman means “Madam Deputy Speaker”.
Anthony Mangnall
I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Reading the Bill and looking at the amendments, I see that one of the benefits is recognising the export potential. We are trying in my constituency to take the benefits of Brixham fish or oceanographic technology manufactured in Totnes and export it across the world and open up new markets for it. The Bill allows that.
I am afraid that my colleagues from Northern Ireland pipped me to the post by mentioning the fishing sector, but there is a huge opportunity in the Bill. We can now open up new markets in the far east. The Bill allows us to do that, and we must support it in its entirety. I should also add that in doing so, we can start allowing ourselves to strengthen the Union.
I have listened to Members from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland talk about their produce and exporting it around the world, and it is time to revamp and strengthen the Board of Trade, listening to what is the best of each of those areas and then helping export it to the international community. That will not only strengthen the Union, which I am sure all Members of the House will agree about, but allow us to be able to reach those markets.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. After the next speaker, the time limit on Back-Bench speeches will be three minutes. That does not apply to Kate Osborne, who has four minutes.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Ahead of today’s debate, and like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), I received hundreds of emails from constituents asking me to ensure that the NHS is kept off the table in any trade negotiations. I share their concerns. We know that the United States and Donald Trump expect a trade deal very much on their own terms. We also know that for the President of the United States the interests of corporate America come first and that he will demand that the NHS pays higher prices for US drugs in a trade deal with the UK.
Over 60% of my constituency of Jarrow voted in favour of leaving the European Union in 2016, but they did not expect it to lead to our NHS being controlled from outside the UK. Over the past few months, the NHS has coped tremendously throughout the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, even though it has not been properly funded for years—over 10 years—owing to the Government’s unnecessary and unwelcome programme of austerity. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the importance of healthcare being accessible to all. However, as the Bill currently stands, it gives no protection to our NHS. We know that our NHS has already been turned into a market, making services vulnerable to being included in the deal unless they are clearly and comprehensively excluded. I can see no evidence so far that the Government want to ring-fence the NHS and keep it out of trade discussions.
The Bill also gives no role for Parliament to review or oversee trade agreements, weakening parliamentary democracy. Those on the Government Benches argue that the UK has taken back control of its trade policy, but do they not find it ironic that, compared with what is being proposed now, there was more parliamentary scrutiny and democratic oversight of trade policy when we were part of the European Union?
We also need to ensure that both public health and social care data relating to UK citizens are protected. Research by Global Justice Now concluded that the United States wants its companies to have unrestricted access to UK data, including NHS health records. The value of that health data is estimated to be about £10 billion a year. The Bill in its current form gives free rein to UK data being moved to servers in America. That could mean that the NHS would be unable to analyse its own health data without paying royalties and could find itself buying back, at considerable expense, diagnostic tools, medical technologies and expertise, even when they have been created from freely exported NHS data.
It is not just the NHS that is at risk. The Bill, as it currently stands, says nothing about climate change, human rights or workers’ rights. We need to ensure that any Bill passed protects the employment rights or terms and conditions of employment for public sector employees and those working in publicly funded health or care sectors. Failure to protect our NHS will be yet another broken promise from Boris Johnson that insults us all, but particularly the sacrifices made by our wonderful NHS and care staff. Failing to protect our NHS will mean that instead of a pay rise and a stronger NHS, we will get more US companies profiteering from our ill health. However, it is not too late to put in place strong protections for our NHS, and I call on the Government to commit to protecting our health service so that it cannot be subjected to yet more privatisation through trade deals.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Members might wonder why I am persistently calling those on the Opposition side of the House and no one on the Government side of the House. I will pre-empt a point of order by explaining that because of the rigid system that we are currently operating, when someone pulls out of speaking, I have no flexibility to go on to the next person on the other side of the House. Therefore, we will have another speaker from the Opposition—I call Navendu Mishra.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. With Britain heading out of the EU on 31 December, it appears that the Government are determined that everything must go in their post-Christmas sale, from food standards to our environmental commitments. This should be an opportunity to improve and strengthen existing trade deals and use them to provide an even better return for this country. Instead, we are faced with the prospect of everything being on the table and sold to the highest bidder, as President Trump stated on his visit to the UK last year. As we know from the leaked documents that the Labour party was able to obtain last year, the US is seeking full market access to even the jewel in Britain’s crown: the national health service—and that is just what we know from the papers that were not heavily redacted.
Food standards should be sacred. We do not want chlorine-washed chicken in a can or, for that matter, meat treated with growth hormones, or pork from animals that have been injected with drugs to make them leaner. We should also reject the long list of foods being produced in the United States by dangerous and cruel methods, regardless of whether higher taxes are applied to them, because even those tariffs will be scrapped within just 10 years, as the International Trade Secretary has stated, further enabling the US to secure comprehensive access to our food markets while at the same time achieving the ultimate goal of “reducing or eliminating tariffs”.
More than a million members of the public have signed a petition to protect food standards, but to date it appears that the Government have taken little notice. It is little wonder, therefore, that they are now facing the rebellion by their Back Benchers. There must be proper scrutiny of this process and Parliament should have a veto on any trade deal. Both this place and the other place should have a say over whether to approve any new deal that is agreed with any other country. Why should we leave ourselves at the mercy of the word of this Government, who cannot be trusted to deliver anything, without legislative guarantees and beholden to US food trade associations, which have enormous lobbying power and one goal in mind—profit? It should not be left to big business to challenge laws and regulations simply because they inhibit foreign investment.
Like human rights, the issue of climate change should be central to our future considerations of trade policy, but worryingly there is no mention of it in the Trade Bill, and the record for different countries, when it comes to environmental protections, is not suggested as a consideration in negotiating future trade agreements with them. New trade agreements must be compatible with our commitment to stop global warming passing the point of no return. We cannot simply trade away our commitments on climate change in pursuit of trade deals. Indeed, it should be quite the opposite: trade agreements should be used to improve environmental standards abroad and ensure that climate justice and fairness are at the heart of future trade deals. The Government must think again before selling their standards for a quick buck.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
As three Government Back Benchers in a row have failed to appear in the Chamber, we will go straight to Carla Lockhart.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is vital that as we shape our future trade policy, we do it in a way that maximises the benefits of our new-found independence but does not sacrifice key industries in the UK. In the context of an economy facing the greatest challenges in my lifetime due to covid-19, we are certainly not in a place where we can sacrifice any industry, let alone the backbone of our economy: our agriculture industry.
It is not too long ago that the Agriculture Bill was debated in this House. In my contribution to that debate, I made clear the importance of protecting British farming and the high standards that it upholds in any future trade agreement. The opportunity to enshrine all that is good about our agriculture industry in that Bill was not taken at that time. That was deeply regrettable and caused much concern among my constituents.
In this Bill we have another opportunity—an opportunity to make it clear to the farmers and agri-food businesses that have been an essential component of the national effort against coronavirus that they will not be sacrificed in any future trade agreements. Indeed, we ought to be exploring how we can help the industry to thrive in coming years and to share in the benefits of life outside the EU. To do that, the fundamental building block is standards. In the context of our agriculture industry, future trade policy must respect the high production standards in terms of animal welfare and environmental protection to which our farmers adhere. We know that comes at considerable cost to local farmers and that overseas farmers have significant cost-of-production advantages due to lower regulatory requirements. In simple terms, if the UK market is flooded with substandard products, it will result in the demise of the industry.
To that end, the establishment of a trade and agriculture commission is very welcome, and I thank the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for ensuring that the voice of Northern Ireland is heard on the commission by appointing Mr Victor Chestnutt, the incoming president of the Ulster Farmers Union. In addition to that forum, however, we need to ensure that Parliament has a strong voice and a meaningful say in the shape of future trade agreements in relation to mandating, negotiating principles and approval of any such deals. Our role should be proactive, not passive. That is why we support new clause 4. Parliament’s role must be enhanced ahead of negotiations; it should be for Parliament to scope out the critical negotiating objectives; to ensure that the interests of all parts of the UK are actively considered and prioritised, the devolved Administrations should also have a meaningful role.
We recognise the important provision the new clause makes for sustainability impact assessments, such as of environmental effect, the impact on animal welfare and health concerns. That ensures compliance with current—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady has exceeded her time by quite a long way. I call Antony Higginbotham.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart). Having spoken on Second Reading and been a member of the Public Bill Committee on the Bill, it is a pleasure to speak today. I intend to speak mainly about new clause 4, but first I want to say that it is worth the House remembering that this is a continuity Bill, designed to give confidence and continuity to the hundreds of thousands of businesses in this country that export to many, many countries, from Switzerland to South Korea to Chile, that they can continue to do so. I also want to voice my agreement with everything my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) said about how many of the amendments tabled, particularly those to do with standards, are actually anti-trade measures that will do nothing to support our exporters and everything to kill off trade.
In relation to new clause 4, it is important that we remember and that our constituents are aware that Members of Parliament already have and will continue to have the ability to scrutinise international treaties that the Government negotiate. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act gives all Members of Parliament those powers, so under the law as it already stands, if we are not happy with the contents of an international treaty, it will not be ratified. Also, I cannot subscribe to the view that Parliament needs to be more involved in negotiations, because I, like all of my constituents in Burnley and Padiham, watched the scenes in this place not that long ago when Parliament tried to be involved in negotiations, and instead of helping, it hindered them. This place was paralysed and the country was paralysed. Votes held on options were not helpful at all. I do not want to see that happen again, and in December my constituents voted to end the paralysis and embrace the new opportunities that are available to us.
When we were a member of the European Union, no MP in this place was involved in trade agreements, but since January the Secretary of State for International Trade and all her ministerial team have made sure that we are involved, with consultations on the parameters of free trade agreements and objectives published in advanced. Members of this House have engaged not just through parliamentary questions but directly. I have been able to speak to Ministers about the objectives we have, the benefits they will bring to my constituents and where my concerns are, and I have every intention of continuing to do so.
I will support this Bill and vote against the amendments. We need to embrace the opportunities and move with speed if we are going to embrace the new world.