Trade Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I inform the House that the Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of Nusrat Ghani.

Before I call the shadow Secretary of State, I inform the House that there will be a three-minute limit on speeches for Back Benchers. There is a countdown clock for those in the Chamber, and for those participating virtually it will be on their screens.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

By my calculations, it has been three years, two months and two weeks since this House first debated the Government’s proposed Trade Bill, so if today’s debate proves to be the final one on a long drawn-out Bill, it would be appropriate to thank all Members of both Houses, all the parliamentary Clerks and all the officials in the Department for International Trade who have contributed to its passage.

Looking back at the very first day of debate in January 2018, I was struck by two things that were said by the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the then Secretary of State, which seem very prescient in retrospect. The first was:

“Trade is an issue that transcends party politics”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 220.]

Time and again over the past three years, we have seen that to be the case, as Members from all sides of the House have campaigned together on different issues from farming standards to online harms. It seems fitting, after more than three years, that we should have been left with one final issue to resolve: a cross-party consensus on where we stand as a Parliament and on what we believe as a country will be most important.

That relates to the second thing that the former Secretary of State said three years ago, which I believe is equally relevant today. He said that

“trade is not only about self-interested commercial gain.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 209.]

For me, that simple statement of principle goes to the heart of the debate we have had in recent months, and especially in the past week, about human rights and trade. It goes to the heart of the decision that we have to take today on the Alton amendment to the genocide amendment.

I know that some people believe that the choices we make as a country on with whom to sign trade deals should be entirely dictated by our commercial interests and that considerations about human rights should be dealt with entirely separately. But there is another point of view—I believe it is shared by the majority of people in this country and by the majority of MPs in this House—which is simply this: there is a line that needs to be drawn; there are certain countries whose crimes are so great that they cannot simply be ignored on the basis of commercial self-interest; and Britain as a country must be willing to say no to trade deals with countries that cross that line.

The Alton amendment, as advanced today by the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), seeks to draw that line by giving Parliament the power to debate whether Britain should sign any form of bilateral trade or investment deal with a Government held responsible for genocide by our country’s most experienced judges. Whether Members in this House decide to support the amendment today should have nothing to do with what party they represent. It should have nothing to do with the long overdue sanctions against Chinese officials announced by the Foreign Secretary earlier today. With all due respect to the Minister for Trade Policy, it should have nothing to do with the points of constitutional precedence that he made in his opening speech.

Whether we support the Alton amendment should only come down to the fundamental question, which is one we must all ask ourselves: should Britain be willing to sign trade agreements with Governments who are committing genocide? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are engaging in torture, mass detention, slave labour, organ harvesting and non-judicial executions—not on an isolated basis, but on an industrial scale—against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are separating hundreds of thousands of children from their parents and re-educating them in different languages, religion and history in an attempt to wipe the Uyghur culture off the Chinese map? Should Britain be willing to sign trade deals with a Government who are carrying out the systematic sexual abuse, rape and sterilisation of hundreds of thousands of women in Xinjiang in an attempt to guarantee that this current generation of Uyghur children is the last?

I cannot see how anyone in this House can read the evidence of those crimes being committed against the Uyghurs and think that a potential trade or investment deal with China can be considered only on its commercial merits and not on the basis of morality. That is surely where we need to draw the line, and that is what the Alton amendment seeks to do. That is why I urge Members from all parts of the House to look into their souls this afternoon, to vote with their conscience and to make clear that this is the line that Britain is not prepared to cross.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I beg to move amendment (a), to leave out from House to “with” and insert “agrees”.

I rise to continue the debate that has been going on among us about what constitutes a fair and reasonable settlement with the Government. I started by moving the amendment standing in my name, and that of my hon. Friends the Members for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), because I think that the Government have got themselves twisted up in knots, and I think my right hon. Friend the Minister knows that.

My right hon. Friend knows very well that, when the amendment was first put through the Lords, I spoke to a number of Ministers. I must say that the reaction of each of them was, “I don’t think there is a problem here. You have met our red lines, and this is a Committee in the Lords.” Suddenly, late in the day, they discovered this phenomenal red line called “quasi-judicial”.

On the definition the Government have given us today, “quasi-judicial” can be applied to any Select Committee in the House of Commons. Here is what a quasi-judicial committee is defined as in legal terms:

“A proceeding conducted by an administrative or executive official”.

That is important, because Parliament does not have any of those on its Committees—Parliament is separate from the Executive—so that does not apply to Parliament. The Minister knows very well that in this amendment, we have allowed the Government to set the terms of how the committee will sit, the balance of evidence and the kind of peers who would sit on it, which is to do with the judiciary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I would have no hesitation in voting against a trade deal with a state that commits genocide, nor would I have any hesitation in voting against a trade deal with a state whose oppressive behaviour and conduct fell short of the legal definition of genocide. But either way, those are political decisions and should be taken here; therefore, we need a political process to deal with those.

That is why, despite the changes, there still remain difficulties with the latest iteration of this Bill to come back from their lordships. The problem is given away by the language, which was recognised by the shadow Secretary of State when she referred to a finding by our country’s most experienced judges. That is the rub of the wording of the amendment. When it talks about a “Parliamentary Judicial Committee” and “a preliminary determination”, later defined as “a public finding”, that is the language of courts rather than of Parliaments.

The tension is further revealed by the provisions specifying the procedure by which judges may be appointed to the parliamentary judicial committee. That is constitutionally inaccurate, never mind anything else, because once former members of the judiciary sit in the other place, they sit there as former members, no longer as judges. They have ceased their judicial function. To pass this amendment with its current wording would be constitutionally illiterate. Although the expertise of the former members of the judiciary is very great and very welcome, it is surely objectionable in principle to create a parliamentary Committee on which only one class Member of either House can serve by reference purely to their previous occupation.

Secondly, it seems to me undesirable that, by statute, we should seek to circumscribe so closely both the membership of a Committee of either House or the proceedings by which such a Committee operates, which normally should be a matter for Standing Orders. I would have thought that that was much the better way to go.

[Emily Thornberry]

rose—

[Sir Robert Neill]

I will give way to the shadow Secretary of State, as I referred to her speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

The thing that has always concerned me about the hon. Gentleman’s amendment is that it is for Select Committees to make decisions about whether there has been genocide, but the Chairs of the Select Committee who would be the primary candidates have all said that they do not think that they are up to it, that they do not feel that they have sufficient experience, and that it would be the sort of thing that someone with judicial experience would be better able to do.

[Sir Robert Neill]

That would lead the right hon. Lady back into the constitutional problem that was recognised and rejected by this House on a previous occasion with the first version of the Alton amendment. Secondly, I posit that the better way forward is to use the Standing Orders of this House to set up a Joint Committee of both Houses to scrutinise the matter. That could, of course, from the Crossbench Members of the other House, include Members of the House of Lords with former judicial experience, but they would be there as Members of the House, not as former judges and that is their proper constitutional position. None of them has sought to suggest that they will be doing so otherwise.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of Thailand. We have a bilateral relationship worth £5 billion a year and he is doing a fantastic job as our trade envoy to that great country. We are currently conducting a joint trade review to identify priorities in agriculture, pharmaceuticals and food and drink, and this is strong groundwork for a future FTA negotiation.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I am delighted to see that the Secretary of State is answering questions about the 2.9% of our global trade that we have with ASEAN countries, having refused to answer questions about the 47% of our trade with Europe. However, as that is clearly her priority, can she tell us this: why has she decided not to suspend Cambodia’s trade preferences, given the escalating human rights abuses in that country? How bad would these abuses need to get before the so-called “last resort” was reached?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I would point out to the right hon. Lady that the trade that I am responsible for covers 80% of GDP, and the reason why we have not hitherto had as much trade with that part of the world is because of the high trade barriers that we are seeking to remove through these trade agreements. I do, however, share her concerns about human rights violations in Cambodia, and this Government continue to raise the issue with the Cambodian Government at every opportunity.

[Emily Thornberry]

I listened carefully to the Secretary of State’s answer, which I find very interesting indeed. Is she not aware of the guidance that has been given by her Department to UK companies doing business in Cambodia? It was published by her Department last week and contains this reassuring advice:

“while political disputes could trigger protests, these would be broken up rapidly by the security forces.”

That sounds to me like her Department does not care. How does the Secretary of State think it sounds in Cambodia?

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I have said, we are concerned about the situation in Cambodia, but it is important to recognise that trade sanctions can often have impacts on the poorest people in a country. The best way that we can achieve our objectives is through the work of the Foreign Office and my colleague the Foreign Secretary, in raising this issue at a political level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I know my hon. Friend was delighted with our Japan deal, which gave more access for malt in the Japanese market, where we are the second largest exporter of malt. We will be looking for more such opportunities under the CPTPP for malt and whisky, to make sure that the barley barons continue to do well.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State explain the recent comments from her top adviser on trade and agriculture, Mr Shanker Singham? He said:

“I think it would be fantastic to get the EU into the CPTPP”,

which is interesting, but not as interesting as what he said next. He said that the EU

“would not be able to join at the moment…With their approach on agriculture and standards, it is impossible for them to accede.”

Can the Secretary of State explain what he means?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I do not know what Mr Singham means. He is an adviser to the Government; he is not the Government. The important point is that now we have left the European Union, we have an opportunity to develop more innovative policies in areas such as agriculture. For example, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recently launched a consultation on gene editing. We will be able to use new technologies to benefit farmers in Britain and across the world—technologies that historically the EU was averse to.

[Emily Thornberry]

I do not really think that gene editing was the answer to the question. The question was: what does Mr Singham mean? Perhaps I can help. I think he means that joining the CPTPP not only means eliminating tariffs on meat exports from other member states; it also means abandoning the precautionary principle when we decide which meat imports to allow. If the Secretary of State disagrees on that, perhaps she will answer this: under the terms that she is proposing to join the trans-Pacific partnership, will Britain have the right to ban the import of meat produced using growth-promoting antibiotics?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sure that the right hon. Lady, being an avid student of the CPTPP, will have read the fact that the same standards on SPS—sanitary and phytosanitary—are in the CPTPP as are in the World Trade Organisation, which the UK has already signed up to. I have been very clear that in every trade deal we sign, we will not lower our excellent standards in the United Kingdom, and we will not expose our farmers to unfair competition.

Trade Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I am not going to take further interventions —there is only an hour for this debate.

It is up to Committees how they report, but such a report could come about in response to evidence produced by their own inquiries or to a finding of genocide by a competent criminal court, whether international or domestic. Such an approach rightly puts Parliament, not the courts, in the driving seat on this issue, which is who generates a debate in Parliament. Our policy on the legal determination of genocide has not changed. It has long been the Government’s position that genocide determination is a matter for the relevant court, which includes international courts and domestic criminal courts. However, whether to have a debate in Parliament should be a matter for Parliament.

I hope the House agrees that the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee is a reasonable middle ground: it delivers the result envisaged by the Lords amendment—that is, to have a parliamentary debate—and the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, but it does so through Parliament, not the courts. It allows Parliament to act quickly and decisively on the issue of genocide and, crucially, places a specific duty on the Government to act on the Committee’s concerns. It does so without upsetting the delicate separation of powers and without judicial encroachment. It ensures that Parliament has a clear role and that the Government have a clear duty when credible reports of genocide are raised with regard to a proposed bilateral FTA partner. I hope that Members from all parties will come together in support of the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

At the outset, I thank the hon. Members for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and the many others from all parties who, like our colleagues in the other place, who have worked with great persistence, and always in good faith, to achieve the right outcomes today.

Do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? It was 52 years ago this week that the House of Commons debated the introduction of Britain’s very first Genocide Act, which made genocide a distinct offence in our country and gave our courts the power to determine when it had been committed. When one looks back at that debate, it really strikes one that, were it not for some recognisable names, one would not know which MPs were Labour, Conservatives or Liberal, such was the unity in the House on the issue. Such obvious pride was taken by all Members in being part of a decision, taken by the British Parliament and led by the British Government, that would resonate around the world.

I fear that today, the atmosphere and outcome of our debate may be very different. Any future generations who choose to look back will ask themselves why on earth the Government of the day were playing procedural parliamentary games on an issue as serious as momentous as the genocidal crimes being committed against the Uyghurs in China. Rather than dwell on the shameful, shabby and shifty behaviour of the Government Whips in seeking to prevent a straight vote on the genocide amendment, let me instead address the key point of substance in the amendment that the Government have put forward to wreck it.

In the space of the last three weeks, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Trade Secretary have all stated on the record that the courts can determine what is and what is not genocide. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) himself, the Chair of the Justice Committee, wrote an article, which has already been quoted. Let me quote another bit of it, in which he said:

“Successive governments have said that the attribution of genocide is a matter for judicial determination.”

Yet he and the Government are now proposing an amendment that would remove the courts from that process entirely and hand the responsibility instead to the Select Committees, which have already said publicly that they do not have the capacity to make such judgments. In other words, the Government wish to take a strong, substantive and historic new process for attributing genocide through the courts and acting on those rulings through our Parliament, and replace all of that with a weak, flawed and, frankly, entirely forgettable adjustment to the existing powers of Select Committees, and that is not good enough. I hope that Members on all sides will reject what I am afraid has to be said is a shameful wrecking effort, and vote instead for the original amendments 2B and 3B.

The Government’s other wrecking amendment today, on non-regression of standards, is equally flawed and equally contemptuous of Parliament’s will. It has been, I am afraid, very deliberately drafted to apply only to the continuity trade agreements already signed by the Government over the past two years, not to the trade agreements that the Government are negotiating with the likes of America and Australia today. In other words, the amendment would act retrospectively to prevent our standards for food safety, animal welfare, NHS data and online harms being undermined by the deals we signed two years ago.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am not going to take any interventions, because my view is that we have so little time, I think it is only fair just to continue. [Interruption.] I have made it clear that I am not going to take any interventions.

The amendment the Government have tabled is one whereby we are just talking about continuity agreements, not about agreements to come. Those deals are deals such as the ones we signed two years ago with Lesotho or with Liechtenstein, and this will have no bearing whatever on any trade deal that we negotiate in the next two years with Washington or Canberra. That is the level of contempt with which the Government Whips are treating the House of Commons today. So again, I would urge Members on all sides to reject this ridiculous wrecking effort, and vote instead for amendment 6B.

In closing, I think we can all do something today even more powerful than rejecting those wrecking amendments and standing up to the shameful tactics employed by the Government Whips. We can draw the only logical conclusion from today’s events—namely, that if we do not act to guarantee the rights of Parliament to scrutinise and approve the Government’s decisions on trade, then we leave ourselves entirely at the mercy of the Government Whips, who have shown today that they will stop at nothing to deny us a voice and deny us a vote.

We have it in our power today, by backing Lord Lansley’s amendment 1B, to guarantee Parliament a vote on all future trade deals and take responsibility in this House for ensuring that our standards and our values are not undermined by the deals that we do abroad. It is a very simple idea, and in the absence of a straight vote on what I would call the Alton amendment, passing the Lansley amendment would be the very best safety net that we could put in place to prevent the agreement of trade deals with countries that commit genocide and the very best rejoinder that we could provide to anyone who would seek to suppress the will of this Parliament. If we can achieve that outcome, we can turn this from a day of shameful, shabby, shifty tactics to a day a pride for our democracy and a day of promise for the Uyghurs.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There is a three-minute limit on all Back-Bench contributions from now.

Trade Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I am very interested in this topic, but it is not for me as Minister for Trade Policy to make Government policy on which court would be involved, or where that court should be, or on aspects relating to genocide. However, I think the amendment before us is flawed and should be rejected by this House.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Greg Hands]

No. The right hon. Lady will have plenty of opportunity to speak, and I can respond to her points in due course.

The lack of evidence for the effectiveness of such action underscores the need for the Government to take targeted, appropriate and effective measures on human rights, such as those we are taking towards China in the package of measures announced by the Foreign Secretary.

Lords amendment 2 seeks, among other things, the publication of risk assessments, annual reports and determinations on whether trade agreements comply with the UK’s international obligations. Such legislative requirements would again represent serious constraints on the royal prerogative powers to negotiate, ratify and withdraw from treaties. Erosion of the royal prerogative is a red line for the Government, so we cannot support that amendment, either.

I need to make a little more progress, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am conscious that we are 18 minutes in and there are a lot of speakers. I turn to Lords amendment 4, which would introduce a wide range of restrictions on the regulations that can be made under clause 2. Those relate broadly to the delivery of free, universal health services, the protection of medical data and scrutiny of algorithms, and a prohibition on the use of investor-state dispute settlement, ratchet clauses and negative listing provisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

I am going to make a little bit more progress, with apologies to the right hon. Gentleman. He obviously has a special interest in this space, but I am conscious that time is moving on.

Turning to the amendments concerning the Trade and Agriculture Commission, the Government have offered alternatives to Lords amendments 9 and 10. We also accept Lords amendments 11, 12, 29 and 30. These amendments put the commission on a statutory footing to help to inform the report required by section 42 of the Agriculture Act 2020. The Trade and Agriculture Commission was originally set up by the Department for International Trade in July 2020 to boost the scrutiny of trade deals. That is alongside other steps that the Government have taken to ensure that relevant interests are taken into account at every step of the negotiation process, from public consultation at the start, dedicated trade advisory groups during the process and independent scrutiny of the final deal at the end.

The Trade and Agriculture Commission will advise the Secretary of State for International Trade on certain measures set out in section 42 of the Agriculture Act concerning the consistency of certain free trade agreement measures with UK statutory protections for animal and plant health, animal welfare and the environment. The Government amendments were modified in the other place, however, also to include advice on human health. The Government do not consider the inclusion of human health to be appropriate for the Trade and Agriculture Commission, as it would duplicate the work of other appropriate bodies. Just because human health will not be in the remit of the Trade and Agriculture Commission does not mean that there will be no scrutiny in that area. It must still be covered in the section 42 report under the Agriculture Act, for which the Secretary of State may seek advice from any person considered to be independent and to have relevant expertise.

I hope that that has been a useful introduction to the Lords amendments we have in front of us. I am looking forward to the debate and to responding later.

[Emily Thornberry]

It is a pleasure to open this debate for the Opposition. I want to thank Members from the other place for all the work they have done on these amendments, which follows the considerable amount of work on the Bill’s previous iteration, all of which is welcome.

It is a great tribute to how deeply Members on all sides and in both Houses have engaged in our debates about trade over the last few years that we have such a wide range of important amendments before us today. They reflect the values, priorities and safeguards that we believe the UK should apply when negotiating new trade agreements. We have one amendment that reflects our desire that young boys and girls growing up in this country should be able to learn, play and interact with their friends online without the fear that those experiences will be tainted by bullying, grooming or exposure to harmful content. We have another amendment that reflects our equally strong desire that young boys and girls growing up 4,000 miles away should be able to live in freedom, practise any religion they choose and one day have children of their own without the fear that those rights will be taken away by the criminal actions of the Chinese state. I want to focus most of my remarks today on the amendments relating to human rights and to parliamentary scrutiny, but let me first talk briefly about the other key amendments we have before us.

We welcome Lords amendment 4, which seeks to exclude NHS patient data from the scope of future trade deals. This amendment cuts to the chase of the debate over whether the NHS is on the table when it comes to trade negotiations. To some people, that concept would mean private healthcare companies from overseas being able to compete against the NHS to provide taxpayer-funded healthcare, but in fact it is much more realistic and pernicious. What it means is those same companies winning a greater right to provide services to the NHS through open procurement contracts and thereby gaining access to the vast resource of NHS patient data, which, quite frankly, they have been actively pursuing for years. This amendment seeks to prevent that, and I cannot see why any Member of the House would disagree with it.

We welcome Lords amendments 6 on standards affected by international trade agreements, which rests on the very simple notion that the international trade agreements we negotiate should not undermine the domestic standards we apply on everything from environmental protection to employment rights—again, something we would have thought everyone would support.

I have spoken already about Lords amendment 7 on the protection of children online, which seeks to protect the very welcome progress we are making in the UK to keep our children safe when using the internet, and to force major service providers to help prevent children from exposure to illegal content or harmful activity. We know for a fact that the major US internet companies have sought to use trade deals with Mexico, Canada, Japan and Korea to exempt themselves from liability over the harms caused by their services and to guarantee unrestricted access to user data, including that of children. The Minister might well assure us that the same thing will not happen here, but I would simply urge him to allow the passage of this amendment to ensure that the same thing cannot happen here.

We also welcome Lords amendment 8, the Northern Ireland amendment, on non-discrimination in goods and services, for which we thank my good friend the former right hon. Member for Neath—a much missed presence in this House, but still a good friend to the people of Northern Ireland. When we look at the delays, disruption and economic damage that has been caused by the loss of unfettered access for goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland surely we would all agree how important it is that we protect the unfettered access for goods travelling the other way and for the exchange of services in both directions. Indeed, if the Government are promising to maintain that unfettered access, I cannot see why they would urge Members of this House to vote against the opportunity to put that promise into law.

Finally, let me turn to the other amendments. We welcome amendments 9 and 10, which would expand the remit of the Trade and Agriculture Commission to cover the impact of food on public health. If the Government are to leave it to the commission to protect our food and farming standards against low-cost, low-quality imports, rather than putting those protections into law, then the least they can do is ensure that the commission’s remit covers all the standards that we wish to protect, including those related to public health. I understand that the Government are trying to lift the public health aspects of this amendment, but, before the Minister does that, I urge him to speak to his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about Government undertakings that may have been given before we had clause 42 of the Agriculture Bill.

There is a common thread running through all the amendments that I have mentioned and through those that I will come on to relating to human rights. The common thread is this: if we do not have the right procedures in place to allow proper parliamentary engagement in the Government’s trade negotiations and proper parliamentary debate and approval of the Government’s new trade deals, then, inevitably, Members will seek instead to ring-fence what the Government can give away and protect in law the standards that we want to preserve.

I just do not understand why the Government are so stubbornly holding on to the Ponsonby rule and CRaG and laws that come from a previous century and a previous age. Why we cannot step into the 21st century as a confident democracy is beyond me. In other words, if we do not have proper scrutiny of the Government’s trade deals, we must have proper safeguards on what the deals can do. Personally, I argue that we should want the best of both worlds—proper safeguards coupled with proper scrutiny—but surely every Member of this House can agree that the worst and most illogical of all worlds is to have neither. I urge Conservative Members, when they are instructed by the Government later to vote down not just the amendments relating to NHS data, online harms, standards, public health and unfettered access, but Lords amendments 1 and 5 relating to parliamentary scrutiny, please to say to the Government that one set of amendments or the other may be opposed, but logically they cannot oppose them both.

[Anthony Mangnall]

It is somewhat unfair to suggest that the Government have not moved on this issue already. I serve on the International Trade Committee and the facts are that the Trade Committee is able to scrutinise each trade agreement, Parliament is then able to debate that, and there is CRaG. That means that there is scrutiny, so it is not acceptable to go back to constituents and say that there is no scrutiny mechanism for our trade deals. Does the right hon. Lady not agree that that is enough?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he has said, but as he and I know, the International Trade Committee was promised access to the Japan deal and to the assorted documents attached to it by a certain date, and that did not happen. First, the Committee did not get the time that it should have been given. Secondly, notwithstanding some fairly wild claims made by the Minister about the ability of Parliament to vote on these matters, the reality is different. An international deal can be signed on behalf of Her Majesty by this Government and the only way in which this Parliament can vote against it is under CRaG, which means that Labour needs to use an Opposition Day to have a vote. What happens—and this has happened—when we do not get Opposition Days during the period in which we are allowed to debate a trade deal and have a vote on it? It cannot be claimed that the roll-over deals that we have had so far have been followed by time given to Parliament to debate them.

The hon. Gentleman is in a privileged position as a member of the International Trade Committee, because he has a greater opportunity to scrutinise any deal, but the rest of Parliament does not. We are making deals with countries that come from the same stable—because of historic reasons, have developed their democracies on the back of learning about democracy from our country—and yet they now have a greater chance than we do to scrutinise those trade deals. What holds up a trade deal is not British Parliament having the time to scrutinise it, but the other Parliament in the country with which we are signing the trade deal.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will the right hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Emily Thornberry]

I do not think I am going to allow double-dipping; we are talking about democracy but there is no one on our side here in Parliament because we are all participating remotely. The Labour party has taken the decision that the correct way to react to the pandemic is to work from home when necessary, so it is more difficult for Labour Members to intervene in these circumstances. I do not mean to be unreasonable or unfair, but frankly that is the reason why.

[Mr Djanogly]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

I will one more time and then no more.

[Mr Djanogly]

Is not the situation at the moment that, effectively, the amount of scrutiny provided is at the whim of the Executive? If they want to give us hundreds of pages of Bill the day before we have to sign, they can do that. If they want to give another country a month for scrutiny, as with Japan, but us no time at all, they can do that. We need a system here.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I do not think we should go much further down this line. I have 59 Back-Bench Members who wish to participate in this scrutiny now, so let us not go down the rabbit hole of scrutiny but stick to the purpose of the amendments before us.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. My argument is simply that the scrutiny amendment among these amendments is perhaps the most important, because if Parliament could be allowed scrutiny, we would not focus on other particular issues, because we would know that, in the end, Parliament could make the decision. I would find it particularly astonishing if any Government Minister or Whip is able to look their colleagues in the face and ask them to vote down the amendments on parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals after the shambles we saw in December with the supposed scrutiny of the new continuity agreements—10 deals that were agreed too late to complete the 21-day ratification process before they came into force.

The Minister is an intelligent man, and I am surprised that he is so uninformed. Four of those deals were finally laid before Parliament on the afternoon of new year’s eve, just a few hours before they took effect. The deal with Cameroon has still not been laid before Parliament, almost three weeks after it came into force. Needless to say, there was not a single word of parliamentary debate about any of those 10 agreements before they took effect, let alone any suggestion of parliamentary approval. The very fact that it is possible for all that to happen without falling foul of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is all the evidence we should need that the procedures set out in CRaG for the scrutiny of the Government’s trade deals are simply not up to the job.

The Government might make the argument that, since those 10 deals in December did not sell any NHS data or alter our standards on food hygiene, their agreement does not make the case for the amendments I mention or for new levels of parliamentary scrutiny. However, that brings me to the issue of human rights. What happened in December makes an incontrovertible case for Lords amendments 2 and 3, on human rights, and 1 and 5, on parliamentary scrutiny.

It is understandable and right that many Members will focus their contributions on the situation in China and the plight of the Uyghur people. We have all read with horror the first-hand accounts of torture and extrajudicial killings, mass incarceration in detention camps, forced sterilisation and abortions, servitude and slave labour. It shames the world that this is happening in our lifetime and it disgraces the Government of China. It is absolutely right that if a UK trade deal with Beijing is proposed or agreed, representatives of the Uyghur community should be able to seek a ruling from the High Court that the crimes they face in China meet the criteria for a charge of genocide, in turn requiring the UK Government to consider revoking that trade deal. When the Minister has an opportunity to look at the compromise amendment, as it has been called, he will see that that is what is being suggested.

There have been various arguments by Ministers as to why the proposed genocide amendment is neither appropriate nor necessary. I will deal with one of those in particular. It has already been suggested that no trade deal with China is imminent, and so measures to block such a deal are premature—a point well made, Members may think. However, the problem is that it cannot be squared with the fact that both the UK and China have to different degrees announced their plans to consider joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, the trans-Pacific trade partnership.

If the Government cannot guarantee, first, that they will beat China to the punch, and secondly, that they will be given veto power over any future bid by China for membership, I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is not in a position to guarantee to Members of the House that a trade deal with China is not on the horizon, because in the shape of CPTPP it most obviously is. That was why I was trying to intervene on the right hon. Gentleman—to see what his answer was. I would be happy to give way again, or perhaps he can answer at the end of the debate.

That dispute about the potential timing of any China deal raises a very important issue, which I hope all supporters of the genocide amendment will consider very seriously. During this debate on trade and human rights, and the surrounding media coverage, it would be very easy to tell ourselves that this is a discussion entirely about China, and therefore entirely about deals that might or might not take place in the future. The reality is that it should, and it must, also be a debate about the deals that the Government have done this month, and the deals that they are openly planning to do in the next two years, because anyone who cares deeply about the human rights of China must also have deep concerns about the records of Egypt, Turkey and Cameroon or Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Brazil. That is why Lords amendment 3 demands that before the Government negotiate and sign such trade deals in future, they should present Parliament with a report on the human rights record in each country in question and allow Parliament to take that into account during the process of scrutiny and approval.

Let me give the House one example of why Lords amendment 3 is required. Just five days before the US Senate was attacked, it came together to approve a resolution co-sponsored by 20 senators from both parties, from Marco Rubio to Cory Brooker. It was about the brutal campaign of subjugation by the French-speaking Government in Cameroon against the country’s English-speaking minority. The Senate resolution condemned with great force the atrocities committed by the Anglophone separatist militias, and it speaks with equal power about the actions of the Cameroon Government, including “torture, sexual abuse,”

massacres and

“burning of villages, the use of live ammunition against protestors, arbitrary arrest and”

unlawful

“detention…enforced disappearances, deaths in custody,”

attacks on journalists and the regular killing of

“civilians, including women, children and the elderly”.

The Senate resolution noted approvingly that, exactly one year before, the Office of the United States Trade Representative—remember, this was Donald Trump’s trade representative, the direct counterpart of the Secretary of State for International Trade—had terminated Cameroon’s access to preferential trade rights due to

“persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

Finally, in that same spirit, the Senate resolution urged members of the international community to join the United States in a strategic collective effort to put pressure on the Government of Cameroon, including through “the use of” all

“available diplomatic and punitive tools”.

I have quoted that Senate resolution at length because I believe that we must ask ourselves what on earth those senators would think if they knew that on that very same day, when they were unanimously passing those strong words of condemnation towards the Government of Cameroon and urging the international community to join them, here in the United Kingdom we were bringing into effect a brand-new continuity trade agreement with Cameroon—a trade deal that was agreed by Ministers apparently with no consideration, and clearly no concern, for the persistent gross violations of international human rights that are taking place inside Cameron; a trade deal that none of us in this House bar Ministers have even been allowed to read, let alone debate or approve; and a trade deal that may or may not contain provisions on human rights, but until the Government finally decide to publish it, we the elected Members of this Parliament simply cannot know. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will keep the example of Cameroon in mind, and consider the words of the US Senate and the actions of the US trade representative, when judging how to vote later.

We all know that on occasions such as this when amendments are up for debate, Ministers will try to persuade us that they do not disagree with the good intentions behind them, but they just do not think that they are really required. However, if that is what Ministers say today in relation to Lords amendments 2 and 3 on human rights, or Lords amendments 1 and 5 on parliamentary scrutiny, I only ask Members to remember Cameroon: a trade deal done with a regime that is slaughtering women and children just because they live in English-speaking towns; a trade deal done in the face of the US Senate on the same day that it called for international support; and a trade deal that, incredibly, has still not been laid before Parliament, almost three weeks after it came into force.

I urge all Members to think about the Cameroon deal and how little consideration Ministers gave either to human rights or to the rights of this Parliament when they decided to sign it. Finally, I urge Members to ask themselves and their conscience whether they accept what those same Ministers are saying when they go through the amendments before us today and tell us, “They’re not really required.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I had hoped that we might manage at least the first part of this consideration without a formal time limit, but I will have to impose a time limit initially of six minutes, at the absolute outside—in the hope that Members will take less time than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank the Minister for his comment, which I would echo in terms of the scrutiny that the International Trade Committee, through the reports we publish, can give each and every one of the trade deals that comes before us.

What is the intent here? We are trying to address the injustices that people face around the world, from the Uyghurs to the Yazidis to the Rohingyas.

[Emily Thornberry]

Does the hon. Gentleman remember giving any scrutiny to the rollover deal with Egypt, given that Egypt is one of the worst human rights abusers?

[Anthony Mangnall]

The right hon. Lady is very quick to criticise the fact that many of the deals that we now have are continuity arrangements from the EU. She complained last week that the deals took too long to do and did not include enough detail. The purpose of these deals is not to be the end point but the start point for the future relationship that we wish to have with those countries.

I go back to the point about the intent of amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 3. The intent for every single one of us should be to eradicate genocide and to do everything we can to prevent human rights injustices. Instead, we have an amendment that will do grave injustice not only to the trade deals, but will still essentially see countries trade with one another. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green suggested that this non-advisory trade amendment was advisory. He makes the point that we will be able to take the advice of the High Court but potentially ignore it. That is not what is written in the wording.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

With the leave of the House, I will respond to what has been a wide-ranging debate, covering many domestic and international matters.

Let me first say that the Government recognise that this House enjoys significant expertise and experience on questions of human rights. We are committed to ensuring that that knowledge is utilised, and to exploring how we can ensure that the views of colleagues are heard and considered on these issues in relation to our free trade agreements.

Let me turn to the points raised during the debate, although I do not have so long to respond. The shadow Secretary of State made a number of points. She said that the Government were stubbornly holding on to CRaG and the Ponsonby rule, despite entry into the 21st century. I was intrigued by that, because, of course, CRaG was introduced by the last Labour Government, in the 21st century—and the right hon. Lady supported it. I would add that, through CRaG, there is an ability to prevent ratification.

Through the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, we have added to the process the publication of negotiation objectives and economic impact assessments, and parliamentary statements after each round of negotiations. We have created the Trade and Agriculture Commission to inform Parliament; section 42 of the Agriculture Act reports; and the International Trade Committee and the International Agreements Sub-Committee having access to the texts to provide their own reports to Parliament.

The right hon. Lady mentioned China. She has come a long way in a short time on China. In her very first appearance at the Dispatch Box in this role on 12 May, she asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to make it clear to the USA that she would not agree to

“any version of article 32.10 of the USMCA that would constrain the UK’s ability to negotiate our own trade agreement with China”.—[Official Report, 12 May 2020; Vol. 676, c. 111.]

She did not want anything that would conflict with the UK’s ability to negotiate a trade agreement with China. I have been absolutely clear that the Government—

[Emily Thornberry]

Will the Minister give way?

Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that digital trade is vital, and the UK is a world leader in technology. Our Japan deal goes well beyond the EU-Japan deal in areas such as the free flow of data, the commitment to uphold the principles of net neutrality and the ban on data localisation. We are negotiating similar provisions with Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, and we are looking to accede to the CPTPP, which has a very strong digital and data chapter. We also have a trade advisory group involving leading figures from the tech industry so we can make sure we have the most up-to-date information when we are negotiating these deals.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

It has now been 14 days since the provisional trade agreement between the UK and Cameroon entered into force, yet Parliament has still not even seen that agreement, let alone had the chance to examine, debate or approve it. While I fully understand the reasons for that, does the Secretary of State understand why Members of all parties believe that this episode just illustrates why—in fact, it is the latest illustration of why—scrutiny procedures need to be improved, which is the reason many will be voting for changes to them next Tuesday?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I like to say that scrutiny starts at home, so I suggest the right hon. Lady starts with her colleague, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), who presided over the EU’s signing of the CARIFORUM deal 13 years ago, which is still being provisionally applied. I am not quite sure why the right hon. Lady does not ask for a debate on that. [Laughter.]

[Emily Thornberry]

These are serious matters. Cameroon has become, in the last three years, one of the most abusive, repressive and murderous regimes in the world today. We all know that that did not stop the Secretary of State reaching a trade agreement with it, but we do not even know what, if anything, the trade agreement says on this issue. Again, does the Secretary of State understand why Members on all sides of this House believe that there is a need for new laws, next Tuesday, obliging the Government to take proper account of human rights when negotiating and ratifying new trade agreements?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I had hoped that the right hon. Lady would have welcomed our announcement earlier this week on the action we are taking on forced labour in Xinjiang and making sure that Britain upholds its values when trading internationally. I would ask her to consider some of her previous actions, such as sharing a platform with Hamas and refusing to criticise Fidel Castro’s abhorrent human rights abuses. It is a bit much being lectured by a Labour Member on human rights, given her past record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s political advice there. I note that he did not vote for a deal with the EU, even though he previously said that no deal was unacceptable. The figures that he is quoting on Japan from the EU are crude figures that are completely out of date and were created from data before the financial crisis in 2008. The fact is that the Japan deal that we have struck goes further and faster in areas such as data and digital, the creative industries, and food and drink—all areas where the UK has a comparative advantage. There are huge opportunities ahead, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to embrace them.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Over the last two years, the Government have placed, as the Secretary of State tells us frequently, more than 30 new trade agreements before the House. Every single one of them, of course, has been accompanied by an economic impact assessment.

The Secretary of State’s October agreement with Japan set a new standard for these documents, with over 100 pages analysing the impact of the deal on UK exports, jobs, business and growth. May I simply ask the Secretary of State, when are the Government going to publish the economic impact assessment for the UK’s trade agreement with the European Union?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The right hon. Lady will be well aware that the Department for International Trade is not responsible for negotiating the agreement with the European Union. That is a matter for Taskforce Europe, which has provided full data to this House. The House voted for the deal—including, I am delighted to see, the right hon. Lady.

[Emily Thornberry]

I was not asking whether the Secretary of State was responsible; I was just thinking that, since she was in the Cabinet, she might know when the impact assessment was going to be published.

The reality is that we only need to watch the news to see the devastating economic damage being done to businesses across our country—especially the Scottish fishing industry—as a result of the new rules facing our exporters and the shocking way in which they are being implemented. Can the Secretary of State explain the logic? Why have the Government published full economic impact assessments for the trade agreements signed last month with Moldova and North Macedonia, but not for our trade agreement with the European Union?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The trade agreement with the European Union is something that the House has already voted on and supported, and which has happened. It is one of the largest agreements ever struck, duty free and quota free on products covering huge amounts of the British economy.

I encourage the right hon. Lady to move forward and focus on the areas for which the Department for International Trade has responsibility—namely, the 63 countries that we have covered with new trade deals, and our aspirations to strike trade deals with the US, New Zealand and Australia.

Global Britain

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Let me thank the Secretary of State for holding this debate, albeit in the very strange circumstances we find ourselves in today. I said many months ago, when I came into this role, how important it was that we should have an open debate in Parliament and with the public about the challenges and opportunities that we will face after Brexit as an independent trading nation. Now, as 2020 is finally skulking away, those challenges and opportunities are upon us, and today’s debate is, if anything, long overdue, but no less welcome for that.

However, I think it would be remiss of me, as I think it was remiss of the Secretary of State, not to start by acknowledging the severe and rising problems affecting businesses engaged in trade across the channel and the Irish sea today. Trade that flowed freely just a few weeks ago is now grinding to a halt because of the barriers and bureaucracy that the realities of Brexit require. Let me be clear: those problems are always to some extent inevitable—they could only have been mitigated, not avoided entirely, by the adoption of a different approach to our deal with the EU—but three things that were not inevitable, and indeed were totally avoidable, are the lack of time that businesses had to prepare, the lack of support that they have been given to prepare and the lack of help available to them now. I recognise that not all of that is down to the Department for International Trade, but I do have three questions that I hope the Minister of State will be able to address later.

First, I asked the Secretary of State seven weeks ago if she would establish a dedicated helpline for companies facing problems with their exports after 1 January, and I was told in response that the Department already had a dedicated helpline for trade-related queries, which is the one it shares with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. That is all very welcome, except that if any businesses had called that number this weekend to ask for help with their problems at Dover or Holyhead, the automated response would have told them that the office was closed and that they should ring back at 9 o’clock on Monday. I hate to break this to DIT Ministers, but the import-export trade does not operate on office hours. That is why round-the-clock support was needed, especially during the period of transition, adaptation and confusion. I could see the clear need for that seven weeks ago; it is extraordinary that the Government still cannot see it now.

That lack of foresight could be related to my second question, which falls squarely on the shoulders of the Secretary of State. Given all the problems that were inevitable on 1 January and the consultation and preparation that were required to mitigate those problems, does she regret her decision last July, which I warned her against at the time, to scrap the advisory groups her predecessor set up to deal with customs issues and continuity of trade post Brexit? Does she also regret her inexplicable decision to remove from the advisory group on transport issues the representatives of the Freight Transport Association, the Road Haulage Association and the British Ports Association? At exactly the time she should have been listening to the experts, she was shutting them out of the room.

Thirdly, and finally, on the current issues affecting EU trade, will the Minister of State tell us at the end of the debate who in the Government is now in charge of that brief? Is it still the Minister for the Cabinet Office, his colleague the Secretary of State, the new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or the Chancellor, given his responsibility for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? Looking at the chaos our exporters are facing today. I think we can all agree that someone in government has to get a grip and it would help if we all knew who is supposed to be doing the gripping.

Speaking of getting a grip, I come to the flurry of continuity agreements secured by the Secretary of State in December. Welcome though they were, there is something strange about the process followed for those agreements in the past year. Whenever I asked why no progress was being made, why the agreements were taking so long and why no deals were signed in the first nine months of the year, I was repeatedly told that they were very difficult and detailed negotiations which we could not expect to be done quickly. But when we look at the final text that emerged in December of one agreement after another, we see that they are clause for clause, word for word, identical to the EU treaties that went before them, apart from the words “European Union” being replaced with “United Kingdom”. The question is, therefore, exactly what were they discussing all that time?

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady will remember from our discussions about this that they were continuity agreements, and although, understandably, many of the partners with which we were seeking agreements had the ambition to do more at that time, we were seeking continuity. We explained to them that we would do more in due course, but we needed continuity to protect the terms of trade as we left the European Union. As for why it took so long, many of our partners did not think that we were actually going to leave and realised only late in the day that they needed to sign the agreements with us to protect our mutual trading arrangements.

[Emily Thornberry]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but it looks to me a bit like two people meeting to play chess and the two of them sitting there looking at the board, not moving the pieces, and eventually deciding to shake hands and declare a draw. The Secretary of State might say that that is what continuity agreements are and the Government just kept things as they were, but if that is her argument I do not understand why the deals were left until the last minute and why a number were not done at all. Most fundamentally, what is the point of being an independent trading nation, what is the point of choosing to negotiate our own trade agreements, if we are happy to just replicate every deal that was done years ago by the European Commission, rather than include any new provisions of our own?

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

Let me make a little progress, then I will.

In many areas, the failure to make these deals is particularly stark, including the total lack of progress on any of the aspects of future job growth the Secretary of State highlighted in her speech, on just two of which I shall focus now. First, it is amazing and deeply disappointing that in the 30-plus continuity agreements secured by the Government over the past two years there is not one single new provision that strengthens the global fight against climate change—not even in the enhanced agreement with Japan. Secondly, it is not just a missed opportunity but a failed responsibility that there is no sign in any of the 30-plus agreements of the Government giving even the slightest consideration to human rights.

Egypt and Cameroon are by any standards among the most brutal regimes in the world today, yet the Government signed deals with both countries in December, with no apparent hesitation over their human rights records at all, and no apparent effort to strengthen human rights provisions in those agreements to gain some leverage over their behaviour. With Singapore, Vietnam and Turkey, the Government went one step further, signing new trade agreements which contain no substantive clauses on human rights at all, and not as much as a side-letter to address the issue. Is it any wonder that Members in the other place, with an increasing number in all parts of this House, believe that the only way to get Ministers to take human rights seriously when it comes to future trade deals is by obliging them to do so by law?

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

rose—

[Daniel Kawczynski]

rose—

[Emily Thornberry]

I will take one more intervention and then I need to make some more progress.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. What is her view of the recent agreement struck between the EU and China when it comes to human rights?

[Emily Thornberry]

Given the time that I have available, although I would be happy to sit and—[Interruption.] No, no, I would seriously be very happy to sit and talk to the hon. Gentleman about this issue and about the issue of China, because it is a challenge for all of us to work out exactly what the right way of proceeding is, and we need to ensure that we listen carefully to the variety of views, and we need to ensure that we make progress together on this.

On the subject of amendments to the Trade Bill, we will also soon be considering proposals to ensure that Parliament is properly able to scrutinise, debate and approve new trade agreements before they become law, and if it was not already clear why those agreements are required then the absolute farce of the last few weeks surely makes that case. We saw 11 new trade agreements or memorandums of understanding take effect on 1 January: none of them have been debated or approved by this House; none of them have completed the ratification process; four of them were not even published until new year’s eve; and one of them, that with Cameroon, is still to be published. The whole process makes an absolute mockery of the current procedures for the scrutiny of trade deals, and when the Trade Bill comes back to this House, Ministers surely cannot tell their Back Benchers with a straight face that those procedures should stay as they are.

As I said earlier, if any of this was a case of incredibly detailed treaty negotiations coming down to the wire in an effort to get the final text right, we might all accept it. But then we might have come back with something more than this—the agreement with Mexico, just five pages long with an eight-page annexe; then they really would have no excuse. But then there is the unfortunate reality of the 30-plus continuity agreements signed by the Government these last two years: no ambition, no improvements, no action on the environment, no progress on workers’ rights, no consideration of human rights, no time for parliamentary scrutiny, and not a single benefit in terms of trade that we did not already have. So I am grateful to hear all the talk from the Secretary of State regarding the new trade deals which she aims to sign this year and next, and I am sure that this is the first of many debates that we will have on those prospective deals.

[Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)]

Yet again the right hon. Lady is raising the issue of continuity agreements, but may I just gently say to her, echoing the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, that many countries were not willing to go beyond the continuity agreement until we had actually left the European Union? What was important for business was that word “continuity”—signing those agreements, so that at the point at which we left they could carry on trading on the basis on which they had been. Excellent work was done, not just in the past year but in the year or two beforehand by the previous Secretary of State for International Trade as well.

[Emily Thornberry]

I understand entirely what the right hon. Lady is saying. It is interesting, is it not, that half of the agreements were done in six months by the previous Secretary of State for International Trade, and the other half have been done over an extended period of time under the current Secretary of State? Indeed, many of these agreements, as the right hon. Lady has said, were done on the basis that the European Union deal was likely to be quite different from the one that we actually have now. That is one reason that we had this condition, yet we end up with cut-and-paste agreements coming down to the absolute wire at the end of last year, without our being able to do any scrutiny. As the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) has said, there are many issues that Members would want to raise and would want to have considered before we make any trade agreements, but as things stand, there is very little time for us to debate these matters.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

In the limited amount of time that I have left, I will not be taking any more interventions; let me just get to the end of my speech, because we already have only three minutes for each Back Bencher to make a speech in any event.

I would like to talk about the Secretary of State’s plan—as she has called it—on CPTPP, and to make a plea to her with regard to it. She has spoken many times about this matter. She talks as if the only issue to consider is whether we can persuade Japan, Australia and Canada to get on board, but I respectfully say to her that before she can win the argument for accession with them, she needs to start by making the case in Britain first. We have been through five years of division and debate in this country over leaving a trade bloc with our closest neighbours. Are we going to do that just in order to go and join another trade bloc on the other side of the world, simply because Tony Abbott thinks that it is a good idea? He might well be right—it may offer tremendous benefits for our country—but we cannot even start to judge until we know the terms on which we would join, and whether those terms are right for us.

There is a danger that the Government might even persuade themselves that this debate has already been had, thanks to the 14-week public consultation that was carried out back in 2018, but let me remind the Secretary of State of three things. First, only 81 business groups, non-governmental organisations and members of the public sat down and wrote formal responses to that consultation; in my book, that does not amount to proper engagement with stakeholders. Secondly, according to her Department’s own national survey conducted after that consultation, only 10% of the people of this country said that they knew what CPTPP was and supported joining it. That does not amount to a proper mandate in my book either. Thirdly, if she goes back to the consultation process responses, she will see that it is clear that many were based on very different assumptions about the outcome of our EU trade negotiations from the outcome that we have actually got. What is this about? In my view, it does not amount to a proper and reliable base of opinions.

For all those reasons, my plea to the Secretary of State today is for her to open up the consultation process again and to give business, unions, civil society and the public a chance to voice their opinions about whether joining CPTPP is the right next step based on where we are now and what we want to achieve as a country. The reason why that is crucial brings me back to what I said at the outset, about the chaos that is building at our ports and the crisis that is growing for our exporters. This is not a partisan statement; it is a simple statement of fact. We are going through all this pain because of a fervent belief on the Government Benches that the gains to be had from doing our own free trade deals with the rest of the world will eventually outweigh the losses from damaging our trading relationship with our nearest neighbours in Europe. That is the Government’s leap of faith. Even if I and many of my colleagues have fervently disagreed with that argument in recent years, we are now in a position where, for the good of our country and the communities we serve, we have to hope that we are proved wrong and that the Government are proved right—but, as things stand, that is not the case.

With every hour of delay that passes at Dover, every consignment that is turned away, and every product that is, after all, having to face tariffs because of rules of origin, British businesses are losing money. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, we have not gained one single penny in extra trade from the Government’s leap of faith: not one single agreement that we did not have before, and not one single export facing lower tariffs than it did in December. Indeed, as we heard the last time we were here, according to the Government’s own figures, our country is forecast to be worse off and to make lower exports thanks to the Secretary of State’s enhanced deal with Japan compared with the deal that we had before. So it is understandable—perhaps inevitable —that when the Government resume their talks with Australia, New Zealand and America; when they start their talks with India, Brazil and the Gulf states; when they try to turn 14 pages of cut and paste into proper treaties with Mexico, Turkey or Canada; and most of all, when they make their formal bid for accession to CPTPP, they will be desperate to do these new trade deals at any price, to make up for our losses with Europe.

But no matter how desperate the Government get, they should not be allowed to do these deals at any price. These deals must not come at the cost of domestic British jobs and business. They must not come at the cost of our farmers and our food standards. They must not come at the cost of our ability to protect the NHS from marketisation or put environmental protection before corporate profits. They must not come at the cost of our principles when it comes to human rights, democratic freedoms and the future of the planet. To guard against all those things, every one of us should make clear that they will not be allowed to come at the cost of proper scrutiny and debate by this House.

UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Before I begin my response, I feel obliged to say two things. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson)—Nissan is based in her constituency—wanted to be involved in this debate, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and another of my hon. Friends, who has extensive experience in this area and an important constituency interest, but who understandably does not want his name to be mentioned. He says this is an affront to democracy. All of them wanted me to put on record that they were keen to take part in this important debate, but unfortunately were excluded from doing so by the Leader of the House and his current rules for virtual participation.

Secondly, I feel that I should inform the House of an important development overnight on the issue of international trade deals, which somehow the Secretary of State did not see fit to announce. I can tell colleagues that the news was slipped on to her Department’s website this morning that no continuity agreements are expected to be agreed with Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, which means that our current EU trade deals with them will expire on 31 December and not be replaced. Our trade deals with those three countries were worth £3.5 billion last year. To put that into perspective for those on the Government Back Benches, the growth in UK exports achieved by the deal with Japan is forecast to be £2.6 billion in 15 years’ time.

Nevertheless, turning back to the subject of today’s debate, let me make clear at the outset, as I did 10 weeks ago, that I congratulate the Secretary of State on securing this enhanced continuity agreement with Japan. During a time of great economic turmoil, it provides an important measure of certainty for all those British and Japanese companies that would otherwise have lost their current terms of trade on 31 December. I congratulate the Secretary of State, and I also thank her for holding today’s debate and vote in Government time.

Let me pause for a moment on an important issue of parliamentary scrutiny and approval. As colleagues will know, under the current Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 rules, a new trade agreement must be laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days before it can be ratified in law. The only way that Parliament can block that agreement is through an Opposition day motion, but only if an Opposition day is granted during the 21-day period. We are now on day 15 of ratification for the Japan agreement, and no Opposition day has been granted in that period, nor is one scheduled. If it had not been for the Government’s act of great generosity today, Parliament would have no right and no power to debate and approve this important agreement. It is not an isolated case: of the 20 continuity agreements signed by the Government since 2019, 15 of them have completed their 21 days of ratification with no Opposition day debates granted during those periods, including all 11 agreements signed by the current Secretary of State.

[Catherine West]

Will my right hon. Friend accept an intervention?

[Emily Thornberry]

I will rattle through a bit of my speech, because I have the beady eyes of Madam Deputy Speaker on me. Once I know I am definitely halfway, I will take interventions.

The same situation with Opposition day debates is set to be true of the continuity agreements recently reached with Ukraine, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Canada and, of course, the 11 other continuity agreements that the Government still need to secure in the next five weeks—or 14, if we are still counting Algeria, Bosnia and Serbia.

In other words, the process for parliamentary scrutiny and approval that the Government are relying on for our future deals as an independent trading nation is failing repeatedly at the very first hurdle, through the denial of Opposition day debates. I therefore greatly welcome the Secretary of State’s decision to grant this debate and vote in Government time, and hope that she will amend the Trade Bill, because she will now have realised that this simply will not do; the right to debate and approve future trade agreements should be a matter of law, not just a matter of discretion. That brings me to the main theme of my remarks: the importance of the Japan agreement as a precedent for other trade deals to come, in terms of both substance and the way in which they are presented to the world.

Let me start with some of the positives. I welcome the Secretary of State’s dedicated chapter on the role of women in our economy. That is definitely an important precedent. I hope that her friend Tony Abbott will study it closely to appreciate that female empowerment means more than just plugging in the iron. I welcome the new ground broken in this agreement on trade in digital services and data—a vital area of future growth for exports and investment—and hope that the Government’s stated principles, particularly on net neutrality, will be precedents for our future trade deals with Australia and the United States. But I am afraid that there are many other areas in which I hope that the Japan deal does not set a precedent.

Beyond digital, there is a disappointing absence of any new measures to support the vital role of Japanese companies as investors in our economy and creators of British jobs—something that is especially important in the current climate, as we look to safeguard the jobs provided by companies such as Nissan. There is also a lack of any new, enforceable commitments on climate change and the environment. That is another wasted opportunity and one that does not bode well for the ongoing negotiations with Australia. There is the absence of any progress on workers’ rights, coupled with the failure to consult trade unions on the deal, as well as the rolling back of commitments on civil society dialogue. I am afraid that this is all consistent with a Secretary of State whose official trade union advisory group contains just four members, one of which is the British Medical Association.

When it comes to deeply unfortunate precedents, there is also the sheer extent to which the Secretary of State has exaggerated, oversold and misrepresented the benefits of a UK-Japan deal compared with the EU-Japan deal that it replaces. Let us take a single example: agriculture and food. She tells us that 70 new British products will be protected by GI status thanks to her deal, but that will only be true if they are approved by Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture—a process that takes at least five months and which resulted in the rejection of 85% of applications last year. She tells us that our farmers and food producers will benefit from lower Japanese tariffs, but that will only be true if they are exporting to Japan ostrich feathers, dried eggs or 180 proof alcohol, which none of them currently does.

The Secretary of State tells us that we will benefit from continued access to the EU tariff rate quotas for exports to Japan of products such as soft cheese and cake mix, but that will only be true if the EU does not use up those quotas itself. She tells us that British farmers will have access to Japan’s quota for imports of malt, which, I am delighted to tell colleagues, is true. It is true! But she did not mention that it is actually a global quota to which every farmer in the world has access—so I do not know why she is looking so pleased with herself—and which can be withdrawn by Japan at any time. Finally, her Department’s Twitter feed tells us—during an episode of “The Great British Bake Off”, no less—that imports of Japanese soy sauce will be cheaper, which, as thousands of people pointed out, is not true in the slightest.

In one area after another, the spin from the Secretary of State and her Department does not match the substance, and her concern for how the deal will be presented appears to be more of a priority than the deal that she will actually deliver. That is a hugely damaging precedent, and one that I hope will not be followed—for example, in the Canada deal signed last weekend—particularly when it comes to our cheese exporters. After all, if it is the case that, like the Japan deal, we will only get access to the EU’s quota on exports of cheese to Canada if the EU has not used up the quota itself, that is deeply worrying for our dairy industry.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I assure the right hon. Lady that we have access to the EU reserve on equal terms with the EU.

[Emily Thornberry]

So there is a cake of a certain size—the tariff quota—and the EU and Britain will have access to that cake. Who gets what bit first? What happens if the EU gets the cake first—what does Britain do then? Is it first come, first served? Or is the cake already cut up in pieces? I wonder whether the right hon. Lady could help us with that.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am happy to furnish the right hon. Lady with a letter about the details of the licensing procedures, but it is important to understand that, in a situation different from that for the tariff rate quota with Japan, the UK reserve is applied for on an equal basis with the EU.

[Emily Thornberry]

Given the time, I will with your leave, Madam Deputy Speaker, take some other interventions at this moment, as I am halfway through my speech.

[Catherine West]

My right hon. Friend mentioned workers’ rights; does she agree with the now sadly deceased Senator John Lewis that, had workers’ rights been more at the heart of a proper consultative process, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations may have ended better than they did?

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I have to say that trade deals generally are better when we consult properly and extensively and put trust in Parliament, which unfortunately the Conservative party does not seem to have at this time.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Also missing from the Secretary of State’s comments were the Government’s own figures, which indicate that Japanese imports to the UK will benefit at a level four times greater than that for UK exports to Japan. Does that not indicate that it is actually a very good deal for Japan?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; I am coming to that.

When it comes to the exaggeration of benefits and the misrepresentation of the Japanese trade deal, one crucial issue is left unresolved, and it is a vital precedent to get right. By my count, I have now asked the Secretary of State a very simple question three times on the Floor of the House, twice in letters and once in a written parliamentary question and—she knows what is coming— I ask it again now: in pounds and pence, what is the forecast increase in UK exports and growth resulting from the UK-Japan deal compared with the EU-Japan deal that it replaces?

I fail to see why the Secretary of State gets so indignant about this question; after all, she is the one who has repeatedly claimed over the past 75 days that the deal she has negotiated with Japan goes “beyond and above” the EU-Japan deal, goes “further and faster” than the EU-Japan deal and delivers “additional economic benefits” compared with the EU-Japan deal. Indeed, when I pressed her last week simply to confirm that the forecast for exports and growth was higher under her deal than under the EU-Japan deal, the Secretary of State told the House, “Yes, it is higher”, so why has she continually refused to quantify that difference? Why will she not provide the figures, in pounds and pence, to back her claims?

All is not lost, though: we might be able to make some progress on this point today. I went back to the Department’s original impact assessment, published in May 2018, of the effects of the EU-Japan deal. It is a detailed 51-page document, signed and authorised on the front cover by the Minister for Trade Policy, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands). I have to say that I do not think it is the right hon. Gentleman’s best piece of work—the assumptions and baselines are pretty sketchy, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) was pretty scathing about it during the debate in 2018—but, nevertheless, it is what we have to go on; we do not have anything else.

On page 2, after the Minister’s signature, it says in black and white:

“The analysis assumes that the UK continues to trade…after EU exit…with Japan on an equivalent preferential basis to the EPA.”

In other words, this is what we have been asking for and what the Secretary of State has repeatedly refused to provide—an analysis by her Department, authorised by her closest ministerial colleague, of what would happen if we had just stuck to the terms of the EU-Japan deal.

I remind colleagues—I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) wants to write this down, because it might be worth coming back to—that in the final assessment produced last month by the Department of the long-term impact of the UK-Japan deal, the forecast increase in UK exports to Japan was £2.6 billion, and the forecast increase in UK GDP was £1.5 billion. Let us compare those figures with the Department’s assessment of the long-term impact of the EU-Japan deal. Under that assessment, the forecast increase in UK exports to Japan was not £2.6 billion but £4.3 billion, and the forecast increase in UK GDP was not £1.5 billion but £2.6 billion. I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but that does not sound like further and faster, above and beyond, additional or higher to me. It sounds like smaller, slower, lower and lamer.

I have no doubt that the Secretary of State will tell me that the 2018 forecasts were inaccurate, the methodology was flawed and the Minister for Trade Policy was having a bad hair day, although he did put his name on it. All those things may be true, but here is the problem: unless and until she can produce an assessment of how the UK-Japan deal compares with the EU-Japan deal in terms of the forecast for UK exports and growth, that is all we have to go on. The two assessments produced by her Department in 2018 and 2020 show that her historic, groundbreaking, British-shaped deal has left our country worse off than if we had simply rolled over the provisions in the EU-Japan agreement. My suggestion to the Secretary of State is that, until she can provide her own assessment of the difference between the two deals, she should stop making exaggerated claims about the “additional economic benefits” of her deal, because quite frankly, she does not have the figures to back them up.

That is why this issue really matters, and that is why it is important that we get this precedent right before the Secretary of State goes off to negotiate any more trade deals on our country’s behalf. It does not matter whether it is an issue as small as soy sauce imports from Japan or as big as car exports to Europe. We gain nothing in international credibility if we overstate what our trade deals have achieved. Indeed, we risk misleading the British people and undermining their confidence in the importance of trade if we claim benefits from the agreements we negotiate that are simply not borne out by the facts.

I welcome the trade agreement with Japan—all of us on the Opposition Benches do—but the Secretary of State has done herself no favours and done our country no service in the way in which she has presented this agreement and oversold its benefits. I hope she will learn the right lessons from this when it comes to negotiating our new trade deals with the US, Australia, New Zealand, the rest of CPTPP and the Mercosur countries in the coming years. More importantly, I hope that a renewed focus on substance over presentation and the chastening loss of our trade deals with Algeria, Bosnia and Serbia will encourage her to get her head down over the next five weeks and do the hard, unglamorous work of sorting out the other 11 continuity agreements worth £55 billion in trade with Mexico, Singapore, Ghana and others before the clock runs out and before any more of the free trade agreements we already have are carelessly and needlessly thrown away.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the aerospace and automotive industry is incredibly important for Burnley. That is why it was important that we saw all the tariff benefits that were previously negotiated retained in the new deal, as well as additional benefits, such as a new data and digital chapter that goes far beyond what the EU has agreed and really helps to support our advanced manufacturing sector.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has repeatedly claimed that the deal that she signed with Japan goes far beyond the original EU-Japan deal, so I return to the question that I asked her two months ago: will she tell us, in billions of pounds and percentages of growth, what the forecast benefits are for UK exports in GDP from her deal, compared with the forecast benefits of retaining the existing EU-Japan deal?

[Elizabeth Truss]

It is interesting that the right hon. Lady is interested in the difference, because the Labour party did not support the original deal with Japan. If it was down to Labour, we would not even have this deal in the first place. We have been very clear about the additional benefits that we have secured: better provisions on digital and data, better provisions on business mobility, a better position on intellectual property, better protection of British geographical indicators—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) is shouting, “How much is it worth?” from a sedentary position? Why, when we have left the EU, do Labour Members constantly seek to compare us with the existing EU provisions? It is almost like the Labour party never wanted us to leave in the first place.

[Emily Thornberry]

What is going on? The Secretary of State claims that the UK-Japan deal goes far beyond the EU-Japan deal but will not quantify the difference. Why not? If she will not publish the exact figures at this point, will she at least do one basic thing and simply state on the parliamentary record whether the growth in our exports and GDP is forecast to be higher as a result of the UK-Japan deal than it was under the EU-Japan deal?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I think it is extraordinary that the right hon. Lady is asking me to carry out economic analysis on behalf of the EU. She has not asked me about the Australia-Japan deal and whether that is better or about the deal that China has with Japan or any other deals. Why is she me asking me about the EU? We have left the EU, and it is no longer our responsibility to do economic calculations for it. I have been clear, however, that this deal goes further and faster and brings in additional economic benefits.

[Emily Thornberry]

Is it higher?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Yes, it is higher.

[Emily Thornberry]

It is higher—at last!

[Mr Speaker]

There we are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

Our assessment suggests that a £15 billion increase in trade will result from a US deal and also that we will see tariffs of half a billion pounds taken off fantastic British companies, be they in ceramics or the car industry, which will help to boost that growth. But the EU deal and the US deal are not in contradiction to each other; we should be aiming to do both. The problem is that the Labour party seems willing to agree any deal with the EU and willing to agree no deal with the US. What Conservative Members want is a good deal for Britain.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

President-elect Biden has spoken powerfully about the need to end support for the war in Yemen and to stop selling arms that Saudi uses, in his words, for “murdering children”. Will the Secretary of State revisit her policy on arms sales in the light of the new President’s statement or will she choose to remain in lockstep with the blood prince bin Salman instead?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am proud that we have one of the most rigorous defence export regimes in the world, and those are decisions we make on the basis of our values in this country.

Continuity Trade Agreements: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade to make a statement on the proposed parliamentary scrutiny of future Continuity Trade Agreements.

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

In under two years, the UK Government have signed or agreed in principle trade agreements with 52 countries that account for £142 billion of UK bilateral trade. That accounts for 74% of the value of trade with non-European Union countries that we set out to secure agreements with at the start of the trade continuity programme. Since the transition period began, we have expanded the ambition of our programme above and beyond that original scope. In November we signed an enhanced deal with Japan, accounting for £30 billion of UK trade in 2019, and we expect to make significant progress in securing further deals before the end of the transition period. We believe that this is the largest set of parallel trade negotiations ever conducted by any country.

Parliamentary scrutiny is central to our continuity negotiations. All signed agreements would be subject to the statutory scrutiny process as set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, providing a guaranteed period for Parliament to scrutinise and debate these agreements. Indeed, Parliament has held debates on six of our signed continuity agreements, and not one of those debates has carried a negative resolution. Further, we have voluntarily published parliamentary reports alongside all continuity agreements, explaining any differences from the predecessor EU agreements. I am pleased to see that our approach to scrutiny was praised in a recent report by the House of Lords EU International Agreements Sub-Committee, “Treaty scrutiny: working practices”.

As we approach the end of the transition period, it is possible that the scrutiny window for remaining agreements will extend beyond 1 January into the new year. That means that we may need to use provisional application for a short period, in order to guarantee continuity of trade relationships and avoid any cliff edges. I thank the right hon. Lady for her two letters on the subject to the Secretary of State last week. Provisional application is a well-established and widely used mechanism to give effect to treaties while domestic ratification procedures continue in parallel. Many EU trade agreements were or are being provisionally applied, including the comprehensive economic and trade agreement with Canada and the agreements with Ukraine and with the Caribbean Forum. I remind the right hon. Lady that those EU agreements have already been comprehensively scrutinised at EU level and by this Parliament. In fact, the Government published a technical note in Parliament last year setting out our assessment of provisional application and the circumstances in which it might be used.

We will always take the time necessary to negotiate the right deals. Any agreement we sign must benefit British consumers and businesses, preserve our high food standards and protect the NHS, and they must share wealth across all our nations and regions as part of our levelling-up agenda. We look forward to submitting further continuity FTAs to Parliament for scrutiny once signed, and we welcome further debates on our independent trade policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question on an issue that should never have become urgent. The Government have literally had years to protect our free trade with countries such as Canada, Singapore and Mexico, but with just six weeks to go until the end of the transition period, 15 of those continuity agreements have still not been secured, leaving £80 billion of UK trade at risk—two and a half times our trade with Japan. Those 15 agreements have been left so late that the Government will now have to ride roughshod over the rules of parliamentary scrutiny to implement them in time.

Why do we find ourselves in this sorry mess? Why were 20 agreements signed in 2019, but only four so far in 2020? Why have we heard Governments such as Montenegro and Cameroon saying that formal talks were held in September 2019, but then nothing for a full year afterwards? Why, in just the past week, have we heard the Prime Minister of Canada say that Britain has lacked the “bandwidth” to do a deal and the Government of Ghana express dismay that their UK counterparts would turn up late and badly briefed to meetings and then leave early with nothing resolved?

Those are all the hallmarks of Ministers who are simply not doing their job. How else do we explain why the agreement reached two weeks ago with Kenya has still not been laid before Parliament and cannot now receive the full 21 days of scrutiny? It is sheer bumbling incompetence, and instead of taking responsibility today, the Secretary of State has sent her Minister in her stead —a fitting symbol of a total failure to grasp this issue during her 16 months in office. It therefore falls to the Minister of State to answer my three final questions. First, what new steps is his Department taking to get these 15 agreements over the line before Christmas? Secondly, when will UK businesses be told if any of those agreements, including with Mexico, are definitely not going to be reached? Thirdly, how can Ministers continue to defend the adequacy of the rules for parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals after the absolute mockery that they have made of them today?

[Greg Hands]

It is genuinely a pleasure to answer this question. Let me try to take in turn the different points made by the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). First, may I say in general that we are working very hard on the remaining agreements? We have around 700 dedicated officials in the trade policy group who are working on the agreements, and the Secretary of State, the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), and I are also working carefully on them.

Are we riding roughshod? No, we are not. CRaG would still be fully operating—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury scoffs, Mr Speaker, but she voted the same way that I did for CRaG in 2010. She should have belief in what she voted for under the previous Labour Government.

As for provisional application, it is absolutely an accepted part of international procedure. It is under the—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can confirm that we will have a world-leading scrutiny process, comparable with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. That will mean the International Trade Committee scrutinising a signed version of the deal and producing a report to Parliament, a debate taking place and then, through the CRaG—the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—process, Parliament can block any trade deal if it is not happy with it.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

We have spent countless hours in this House and in the other place debating the impact of imports on food standards—a debate that has captured the attention of millions of people across the country—but I would like to boil it down to asking the Secretary of State one simple question today. If it is her argument that we do not need Labour’s amendments because bans on the relevant imports are already enshrined in law, can she please tell us which law prevents the importing of pork that has been produced on American farms that continue to use sow stalls?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The right hon. Lady is talking about an animal welfare issue and, as I made very clear earlier, we will not allow the high animal welfare standards of our pig producers to be undermined.

[Emily Thornberry]

I listened very carefully to that response, but I do not really think that it was an answer further than rhetoric. The point is that there is no import ban against pork produced on farms using sow stalls because, as the Secretary of State says, it is an issue of animal welfare, not of food safety. That means that, if the Government drop tariffs on US pork, British pork farmers will be undercut by cheap imports from American agricultural companies using practices that have been banned in our country for the past 21 years. Will she please listen to reason and write into law the protection of all UK farming standards against imports that do not meet them?

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I have said, of course in any trade deal that we strike we will take into account our high standards, to ensure that our farmers are not undermined, but if the right hon. Lady is suggesting a blanket ban on any foodstuffs that do not comply exactly with British farm regulations, she is talking about preventing developing countries from sending their foodstuffs to the United Kingdom. Is she saying—[Interruption.] She will understand that under most favoured nation rules we have to apply the same standards to every country that we deal with, so is she saying that she wants to ban Kenyans from exporting their products to us if they do not follow exactly the same farm standards as here in Britain? I want to ensure that our farmers are able to continue with their high standards, but I do not want to stop developing countries exporting their goods to us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

We are absolutely clear that more trade does not have to come at the expense of human rights. Indeed, there is a very strong positive correlation between free trade and human rights through the world. On Xinjiang, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has been absolutely robust in our criticism, our condemnation, of what has been happening to the Uyghurs in the province. I reiterate that today, while reminding the hon. Gentleman that we are not negotiating a trade deal with China.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I am sure that the whole House has been encouraged by the Minister’s warm words on human rights, but let us test them with a specific example. I understand from the high commissioner of Cameroon that virtual negotiations on UK’s roll-over agreement are taking place as we speak, the first such negotiations in more than a year. Perhaps the Minister will update us on those talks and on any side discussions on the attendee development. For the purposes of this question, can he tell us whether his intention going into those negotiations is to assert a full essential elements human rights clause into the roll-over agreement with Cameroon rather than the current obsolete cross-reference to Cotonou? If so, how does he plan to enforce that clause effectively? Is it by penalising the Biya Government for their continued human rights abuses or, preferably, to persuade them to stop those abuses in future?

[Greg Hands]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that question. She is referring, of course, to the Cotonou agreement, which is shortly to expire. There are two things to take away from this. The first is the importance of keeping the continuity of our trading relations with Cameroon. That is very important for the Cameroon economy overall. Secondly, we continue to raise at every level with Cameroon our concern about human rights, both across the country in general and those affecting the anglophone community in the south-west of the country. On the deal itself, there will be no diminution in the human rights clauses of the existing EU deal, which I think is what she is seeking to criticise.