Trade Bill (Sixth sitting)

Faisal Rashid Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

May I start by welcoming you to the Chair, Mr Davies?

The Government have already made it clear that we will not use the necessary and indeed pertinent exercise of continuing the effects of our existing agreements as a back-door way to reduce standards, including food safety standards. As the Prime Minister said in Florence in September, we are

“committed not only to protecting high standards, but strengthening them…we will always be a country whose pitch to the world is high standards at home.”

I am happy to reaffirm the Prime Minister’s commitment to the Committee. We are committed to upholding and strengthening our high standards in public health and safety, product performance and protecting the environment.

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

How does the Minister plan to prevent a race to the bottom on food safety standards in the UK and to protect British consumers if he is not prepared to accept the amendment?

[Greg Hands]

The Government have always been clear that we will maintain our very high standards on food and animal welfare, and for protection in that space. There will be no race to the bottom. Nothing in free trade agreements precludes a Government from regulating in the domestic environment. I hope that that is enough reassurance for the hon. Gentleman. On protecting the environment, high standards and high quality are what our domestic and global consumers demand, and that is what we should provide.

To be clear, nothing in the Bill would allow us to do a free trade agreement with the United States because, as we know, the United States does not have a free trade agreement with the European Union. While the hon. Member for Bradford South gave an interesting speech of some length about what may or may not happen in any future trade agreement with the United States, it is worth mentioning that the Bill does not cover free trade agreements with the United States. Any future free trade agreement with the United States must work for UK farmers, businesses and consumers, and uphold food safety and animal welfare standards. However, that is a matter for a future day; it is not relevant to the Bill before us.

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I am not suggesting that we should rush the negotiation of any of the new trade agreements that will replace those that we have enjoyed with third countries by virtue of our membership of the EU—far from it. We need to get them right. What I am saying is that we should have a proper process of consultation and parliamentary scrutiny by which to debate and vote on what comes out of those negotiations.

[Faisal Rashid]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, without limits on the renewability of the sunset clause and against the backdrop of a Government failure to commit to a second trade Bill, this Bill will certainly be seen by many as a potential Trojan horse for the Government to introduce future deals with minimum levels of scrutiny?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to be sceptical. The Minister has made much of the arguments that, first, there is a need for speed and, secondly, this is only a temporary Bill that puts in place temporary provisions to roll over the existing agreements. In fact, the powers—certainly the ones relating to the agreement on government procurement—are not temporary; they last longer.

Here, in the provisions of the sunset clause, we have not just one sunset period but the possibility of indefinite roll-overs of the sunset clause itself: five years, followed by five years, followed by five years. If the Minister is absolutely confident that the Bill is a temporary necessity, one must wonder why he wants the sunset clause to continue indefinitely into the future at the Government’s will, when it enables the Government to take on a Henry VIII power.

When I say that there should be a proper process of consultation and scrutiny by which to debate the negotiations, I am only replicating what Anastassia Beliakova of the British Chambers of Commerce demanded in her oral evidence during our final witness session last Tuesday, when she said that provision needs to be made not only for “appropriate scrutiny in Parliament” but for a proper process of “stakeholder engagement for business” and “civil society” in order to scrutinise any changes that might arise as a result of the negotiations.

If the Government are adamant that such a process is to be denied us, rejecting the advice of business and the demands of trade unions and other civil society bodies, it should be denied us for an absolute maximum of five years, with no renewal of the sunset clause, as provided for in clause 2(8) and (9). Every day longer that the Government have those powers is another day for which parliamentary democracy is put on hold. The first of our amendments says that five years is enough. We believe that it is five years too many, given the unmerited powers that the Bill grants to the Government and the rights that it strips away from Parliament, but certainly five years should be enough. If the Government still have not managed to roll over their agreements by March 2024, that power should disappear along with the expiry date.

I really wonder whether Government Members themselves believe that an indefinite use of a roll-over to give an unending Henry VIII power to the Government is a sensible power that this Committee should grant.

Let us say that the Government persist in getting rid of amendment 11. Amendment 12 would allow the Government one renewal only. That is, the Government would be allowed to ask Parliament for permission to renew the sunset clause for one extension, but no more. That would allow the Government the unmerited powers in the Bill right up to the end of March 2029. Can the Minister really demand, with any sense of integrity, that this Committee afford him and the Government greater power than that?

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[Faisal Rashid]

It has been widely documented that the use of the negative resolution procedure the Bill proposes affords Members less opportunity for scrutiny in the House than is currently enjoyed by Members of the European Parliament. Indeed, Jude Kirton-Darling MEP told the Committee in no uncertain terms that the Bill is

“an enormous step back in democratic oversight of trade agreements.”—[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2018; c. 43, Q86.]

Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that, for the Government to meet their commitment that the Bill will replicate existing arrangements as closely as possible, they must support the amendment to ensure the opportunity for scrutiny enjoyed by Members is closer to that currently enjoyed by MEPs?

[Barry Gardiner]

Indeed—my hon. Friend is right. Many Members on both sides of the House think it a travesty that we are afforded less opportunity to scrutinise things and less transparency than is afforded to our colleagues in the European Parliament.

On the agreement on government procurement, once we have had our opportunity to debate and vote on the terms under which we will rejoin it, the Government will then lodge our annexes with the WTO. The next stage is to issue the regulations that will implement the terms of our accession to the GPA, and then, in the years thereafter, to make changes to our domestic legislation that reflect the accession of new parties to the GPA or the withdrawal of any countries that decide to leave it.

It is important to note that that is not a temporary power covered by a sunset clause, as with the international trade agreements in clause 2. This is a permanent power for the Government to issue regulations implementing the UK’s obligations under the GPA into the indeterminate future—for as long as the WTO remains and the GPA is one of its constituent agreements. When we look at the fine detail of the Bill, we yet again discover that it is not a temporary little Bill about rolling over existing agreements; it actually has permanent, lasting effect. The roll-over powers could give Ministers the powers in perpetuity, under the Henry VIII provision.

We hear that the Bill is small, necessary, timely and time-limited, but in actual fact it is not. Our amendment 13 seeks to replace the negative resolution procedure, which the Government wish to apply to clause 1(1), with the affirmative procedure. I will remind the Committee of what that means so that we have a proper understanding of what we are talking about in this context, because it will also be essential to several later amendments that we will bring forward to other parts of the Bill.

The scrutiny procedure for delegated legislation in the House of Commons has come in for intense criticism in the context of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. That criticism is well merited. The Hansard Society’s expert report, “Taking Back Control for Brexit and Beyond”, lifted the veil on just how badly the system is failing to deliver the necessary scrutiny of secondary legislation at precisely the moment we need full confidence in it as we rebuild our system of checks and balances for the post-Brexit future. That report does not make pleasant reading.

The negative resolution procedure the Government propose for regulations under clause 1(1) is the least rigorous of all parliamentary procedures available. Secondary legislation subject to the negative resolution becomes law automatically once it has been laid before Parliament and has remained unchallenged for the requisite number of days—no need for a debate, no call for a vote. MPs may pray against any regulation by means of an early-day motion, but there is no obligation for the Government to schedule parliamentary time to debate that prayer.

The convention is that prayers made by Her Majesty’s official Opposition should receive parliamentary time for a debate, yet even then there is no guarantee that the convention will be respected. In the 2015-16 parliamentary Session, the Leader of the Opposition tabled a dozen prayer motions for debate—five were granted. Of the 585 negative instruments laid before Parliament in that session, only 3% were even debated. In the following parliamentary Session, fewer than one in 100 statutory instruments subject to the negative resolution procedure were debated at all.

The main point of the negative resolution procedure is to allow the Government to have their way without any need to bother parliamentary democracy, and it has been spectacularly successful. The last time a negative instrument was successfully annulled in the House of Commons was the Paraffin (Maximum Retail Prices) (Revocation) Order in 1979. I think that tells the story about what is intended by making these provisions subject to the negative resolution procedure.

[Faisal Rashid]

Almost every individual who has appeared before this Committee over the past week, from business leaders to academics, civil activists and lawyers, has told us that more needs to be done by way of parliamentary scrutiny in this Bill. If the Government will not support these amendments, what good reason do they have to ignore the recommendations of these individuals?

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[Greg Hands]

Hence, the clarification, twice over, to be absolutely precise how that vote would work. I know the hon. Gentleman has attacked the negative resolution procedure, but I do not remember any such exhortation when he was a Minister under Tony Blair—I did not listen to every single thing he said in those years, but I do not recall that. I think he would have troubled the scorers if he had attacked such a procedure at the time under CRAG, which as we know is an Act of Parliament introduced by the last Labour Government.

The hon. Member for Brent North confirmed last week that he did indeed vote for CRAG. He said it was important in the days when the treaties in question had already been scrutinised by the EU and scrutiny was also passed down to

“this Parliament, where the European Scrutiny Committee…would examine forensically the contents passed from Europe”.—[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 25 January 2018; c. 149.]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the revised GPA in 2012 went through the very process he described to the Committee and the very process that he voted for in 2010.

The hon. Gentleman asked why the GPA power is not time-limited. The answer is that new accessions to the GPA are covered by the clause to ensure that the UK does not breach its own GPA commitments. It is also essential to have the power to reflect withdrawals to ensure that withdrawing parties do not continue to enjoy guaranteed access to UK procurement markets. I will speak in more detail about withdrawals from the GPA.

The hon. Gentleman asserted that the GPA power continues into perpetuity, including the Henry VIII power. There is no Henry VIII power in clause 1, which allows for the implementation of the GPA. The powers in clause 1 are narrow in scope. They are designed to allow the UK to make legislative changes that reflect its new status as an independent member but, none the less, as a member of an existing and settled agreement.

The UK needs to use the power in clause 1 quickly to prevent UK businesses from losing guaranteed access to valuable procurement markets. The revised GPA has already been scrutinised by the EU and the European Scrutiny Committee, using the powerful microscope the hon. Gentleman described last week and for which he voted not so long ago.

[Faisal Rashid]

Last Thursday my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North spoke of the emails members of this Committee had received from members of the public urging them to amend this Bill to protect our democracy. The number of these emails in my inbox—and, I am sure, in all other Members’ inboxes—has reached just over 5,000. If the Government will not support these amendments to introduce at least some degree of parliamentary scrutiny, what good reason can they give the 5,000 individuals who have taken time to contact us for ignoring their concerns?

[Greg Hands]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it allows me to put on the record something that concerned all members of this Committee when they logged on last Tuesday and discovered, seemingly, a large number of emails—hundreds and, in one case, 1,200—about this Bill. I am sure he, in the course of being a good constituency MP, would seek to check whether those emails were, indeed, from his constituents. I have to report that my colleague who received 1,200 such emails discovered, following further examination by his very diligent parliamentary staff, that precisely four of those 1,200 emails came from his constituents.

I would say to the hon. Gentleman that, in respecting parliamentary rules, I would have a close look at those emails and ask where they are coming from. Is the hon. Gentleman, indeed, answerable to these people? All of them will have a Member of Parliament in this House who will be the right person to direct those emails to. Getting 5,000 emails from across Britain in relation to one issue in this Parliament need not necessarily be representative of a wider move against this Bill, which is a technical Bill all about the continuity of our existing trading arrangements.

[Faisal Rashid]

I thank the Minister for giving me time. This is a national issue; it is not just a constituency-based issue. I understand that there is parliamentary procedure and that we do not have to reply to all those emails if they are not from our constituents. However, surely it tells us, as parliamentarians, that the problems and issues among the general public and in the business environment are quite immense.

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If, on the other hand, the Government vote down amendment 15, we will have failed to introduce a proper process of scrutiny prior to ratification. In that instance, trade agreements will have been ratified with a minimum of parliamentary involvement. We will therefore need to rely on scrutiny of the implementing regulations. We would then press to a vote amendment 19, which provides for the super-affirmative procedure.

[Faisal Rashid]

The super-affirmative procedure closely replicates the powers that MEPs enjoy in the European Union, so does my hon. Friend agree that if the Government are to meet their commitment that the Bill will replicate existing arrangements as closely as possible, they must support the amendment?

[Barry Gardiner]

Again, my hon. Friend makes the point about the discrepancy between the scrutiny available to us here in this sovereign Parliament and the scrutiny available to members of the European Parliament. It would seem entirely at odds with the Government’s stated purpose for the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill if we ended up having fewer scrutiny powers than Members of the European Parliament. That would seem to be a travesty.

I look forward with perhaps slightly more than the usual expectation to the Minister’s response to the amendment, given that this is the issue on which not only the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield spoke on Second Reading, but on which several other hon. Members from across the House registered their profound concern. This is the moment when we discover whether the Government are prepared to heed the calls of right hon. and hon. Members alike and look at the Bill in a much more sensible way.

[Greg Hands]

Let me reassure hon. Members that I listened very carefully to what the hon. Member for Brent North said. First, let me repeat that the majority of free trade agreements within the scope of the Bill have already been ratified, and Parliament had the opportunity to scrutinise them during ratification. Parliament’s European Scrutiny Committee also scrutinised these agreements when they were negotiated, included, signed and provisionally applied. They had, of course, already gone through the European Parliament process as well, to which the hon. Member for Warrington South helpfully drew our attention.

The Government have made clear their intention to ratify by exit date all the EU free trade agreements that currently provisionally apply, including the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement, and the economic partnership agreement with the Southern African Development Community, or SADC.

The hon. Member for Brent North drew attention to the comments of a South African Minister. To be honest, I cannot remember precisely whom he referred to, but for clarity I refer him to the memorandum of understanding signed by the Secretary of State for International Trade in South Africa in either August or September. Both parties specifically agreed to transition the agreement and maintain continuity, without substantive change. Whatever the hon. Gentleman’s South African said, the memorandum of understanding is absolutely clear in that regard. As I said to the International Trade Committee last week, 70-plus countries have agreed in principle to maintain continuity in trading arrangements. For example, we signed a similar memorandum with the CARIFORUM group to do precisely that.

Parliament’s scrutiny of these agreements, which have already been scrutinised, will be guaranteed by the process under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. As we have made clear, this is a technical exercise to secure continuity in our existing trading arrangements, not an opportunity to renegotiate the terms of existing agreements. That means that further scrutiny of those agreements, the benefits of which are already felt by businesses and consumers, is unnecessary. As we have made clear, we want Parliament to play a vital role in the scrutiny of future trade agreements that are not covered by the Bill, but that is for a separate occasion. We made clear in the trade White Paper and in this Committee on Thursday that our future trade policy must be transparent and inclusive.

[Faisal Rashid]

We heard from many witnesses last week that so-called roll-over agreements not only will be legally distinct from our existing EU agreements, but are likely to be substantially different in their terms. Does the Minister agree that those new agreements need to be subjected to adequate scrutiny and parliamentary oversight, and that a super-affirmative procedure is appropriate?

[Greg Hands]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I very much appreciate the way, as a new Member, he is getting stuck into the Bill, but I remind him that, in terms of securing the continuity of agreements, more than 70 countries have now agreed that there will not be substantive change. I mentioned South Africa, with which we have a memorandum of understanding saying that. There is no need to re-scrutinise agreements that are substantively the same and have already been through the proper scrutiny processes of both Houses. That is why we made clear in the trade White Paper and in this Committee on Thursday that our future trade policy must be transparent and inclusive, and that Parliament will be engaged throughout the process. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Brent North to withdraw amendment 16.

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[Hannah Bardell]

rose—

[Faisal Rashid]

rose—

[Bill Esterson]

I am spoiled for choice. I will give way to the hon. Lady.

[Bill Esterson]

It is really important that we take on the challenge set by the hon. Lady and apply it to all public bodies. How we achieve such a gender balance is perhaps a question for wider discussion, but her point is well made. The Minister might achieve the balance she suggests when he creates the authority.

[Faisal Rashid]

The role of Parliament in overseeing the creation of the Trade Remedies Authority was described to the Committee as “critical” by Chris Southworth of the International Chamber of Commerce. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that if the Government do not support the amendment, they are clearly choosing to ignore the voice of the ICC? Does he also share my concerns about the repercussions that that might have for the future of UK trade?

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent intervention, as he has done throughout Committee. That body has to carry the confidence of all sides of industry and all parts of society and of the United Kingdom. It is crucial that it does so, which is why we are attempting to push the amendments through. I imagine, from what the Minister has said, that he is unlikely to support us—why change the habit? Perhaps, however, he will explain how those points will be addressed and how the Government will respond to the witnesses mentioned by my hon. Friend, as well as some of the other witnesses.

The Minister is not letting on that trade remedies are not simply a technical detail of trade policy. They have the potential to be highly political. In essence, trade remedies defend domestic producers from unfair competition from dumped goods from other countries. The remedies are an essential policy tool to correct multilateral distortions, as Mr Stevenson, the specialist adviser to the Manufacturing Trade Remedies Alliance told us last week. Deciding when and how to use such trade defence instruments, however, is a political decision, and a highly political one at that, as is that on the membership of the TRA. It is crucial to get the membership right, to ensure that the TRA makes correct, balanced and evidence-based recommendations—as the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford put it—to Government.

As the system is to operate under this Bill and the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, the Secretary of State has the capacity to use an economic interest test to allow the Government not to take action even when problematic trade behaviour by another country has been identified. In other words, the Government will have the capacity to decide that even when harm is being done to our domestic industries, other interests such as the consumer interest may outweigh those of the producers affected. To quote the words of George Peretz, QC, who we heard from last week:

“That seems to me to be a political position: it is balancing the interests of jobs in a particular area of the country against the interests of consumers across the country”.––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2018; c. 55, Q105.]

The same point was made on Second Reading by a number of hon. Members, including about the Scotch whisky and steel sectors.

The Minister cannot pretend that the Bill and the structures created by it are apolitical and purely technocratic. Trade remedies can make the difference between the survival of an industry and its decimation. They can protect thousands of jobs or let them be exported overseas. They can defend our foundation industries or let them fall by the wayside. I am sure the constituents of the hon. Member for Corby can attest to that.

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[Greg Hands]

May I start by correcting an inadvertent error I made earlier? I mentioned an agreement that was signed by the Secretary of State for International Trade with South Africa and SADC in August or September. It was actually earlier than that. It was signed in July by Lord Price. I know that the hon. Member for Brent North takes an interest in South Africa, so I will quote briefly from what was said:

“The Southern African Customs Union…has welcomed the UK’s intention to prevent disruption of trade relations with other countries as it leaves the European Union”.

I think that clears up where we are with South Africa.

Let me start by stressing that the Government recognise the important role that Parliament, industry stakeholders and the devolved Administrations play in building the UK’s future independent trade policy. We look forward to working with all those groups and organisations on the establishment and operation of the Trade Remedies Authority to ensure that their views and interests are taken into account where appropriate. However, these amendments are not appropriate to the creation of that new function.

Decisions on trade remedies cases can have profound effects on markets, so we need to create an independent and objective investigation process in which businesses and consumers have full confidence. That is why we are setting up the Trade Remedies Authority as an arm’s length body with the appropriate degree of separation from the Department for International Trade. The hon. Member for Sefton Central said that trade remedies are inevitably political. That is precisely why we are ensuring that investigation and evidence-gathering must be done independently.

[Faisal Rashid]

James Ashton-Bell of the CBI told us that the fundamental question it has about the Trade Remedies Authority is

“who makes the ultimate decisions about when to take action and when not to take action.”––[Official Report, Trade Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2018; c. 24, Q52.]

Given the lack of clarity about that, does the Minister agree that it is vital that appointment to and operation of the Trade Remedies Authority is as transparent as possible?

[Greg Hands]

Yes, and the authority is very transparent in its operation. A lot of how the authority operates is outlined in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, which is being debated down the corridor. I strongly feel that there is really good transparency in the arrangements we have made regarding the authority’s independence, arm’s length nature and specialist and independent evidence-gathering. We are also ensuring that it is accountable to the Government and that, at the end of the day, a political decision is still taken about whether to impose trade remedies.