Trade Bill (Third sitting)

Faisal Rashid Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Anna McMorrin]

Q Are you concerned that there could be a compromise on the definition of whisky, for example, in future trade agreements?

Sarah Dickson: Looking at future trade agreements, I would hope not, because I would assume that the UK Government would give the same priority to protecting its geographical indications, like Scotch whisky.

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

Q May I ask Ms Dickson a question about the process for engagement on trade policy through the EU’s market access strategy, and the market access advisory committee? How do those compare with the frameworks in place for engagement with the UK Government?

Sarah Dickson: I think the engagement with the UK Government is the missing piece of the puzzle, but we assume that it will happen at some point, and that we will have more detail on it. The market access advisory committee is a great way for us, the industry, to feed in our views formally to all the member states. We regularly attend it. It has a spirit-specific working group that we are able to contribute to. It feels very much like a partnership. We explain the problems we face in markets around the world and the EU then works out how it can respond to that. It has to prioritise, but because you have all the sectors contributing in that way and it is quite an open, transparent process, you know that you are at least being listened to and included in its strategies.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q That is very useful; thank you very much. In your experience, do ad hoc mechanisms for stakeholder engagement work or do they need to be structured by statute?

Sarah Dickson: We would feel more confident at the moment to have that laid out formally by the Government, in terms of what they are planning to do and how it will work. Ad hoc can work where you have developed personal relationships. We used to know everybody who did trade policy in the British Government, but that is not true anymore. Now there are 500, 600 or 700 people across Government doing it. When there used to be 40, it was much easier. As that grows and changes, having a very clear structure, so we know how to feed in and when and how, would be very helpful for us.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q Excellent. That is very useful. To Ms Macdonald, in your opinion will it be possible, as the Government claim, to simply copy and paste the existing agreements without any substantial changes and without the need for consultation and scrutiny? Surely that has not been possible in the case of Switzerland, Norway and Turkey.

Elspeth Macdonald: I do not think I am equipped to answer that question. It is almost more of a legal question, in terms of how the Bill would apply.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q The question is, do you think that it is possible to copy and paste existing agreements without any scrutiny, if changes are being made?

Elspeth Macdonald: Certainly, in terms of being able to provide the public with assurances that the trading relationships that the UK will have in future when it leaves the EU will provide the same degree of public confidence and public health protection, scrutiny is critically important.

[Faisal Rashid]

Mr Stephenson, can you comment on that?

Gary Stephenson: I was going to jump in there anyway. It is an optimistic view that it is just a lift and shift. If you go for trilateralism, you are more likely to get there; if you go for bilateral agreements, you are more likely to get some differences.

[Faisal Rashid]

Thank you. That is very useful.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Q This is a question for Ms Dickson. The Scotch Whisky Association has set out a framework for consultation set in statute through a UK trade policy advisory network. Could you explain what that proposal is?

Sarah Dickson: It would be very similar to what the US does. It has cleared advisers. When you are into a negotiation, I know one thing that this House has talked about before is how you talk about a negotiation while it is ongoing and how you consult on those provisions without revealing what is a moving target. What the US does is to have cleared advisors in statute; they are people it is able to talk to to work out how to make a success of a provision within a negotiation. We can see that there might be a role for legislation in this area, where you want to be able to talk to people on a formal basis about what is essentially a Government-to-Government discussion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Faisal Rashid]

Q As you are probably aware, the Bill does not make provision for the involvement of Parliament or others in the scoping negotiations or any ratification of new trade agreements. What provisions do you think it should make on future free trade agreements?

Jonathan Hindle: A very quick answer from the furniture industry point of view is that we would want to see as much scrutiny as possible. You referred to parliamentary scrutiny; whether that is the most effective form of scrutiny is another matter. We would certainly want the TRA to be made up of appropriate individuals to provide good-quality scrutiny.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q The Government always said that they would set out a major consultation mechanism for new free trade agreements. Do you not think that that should be provided for in the Bill?

David Scott: As I said at the start, consultation is absolutely essential. You have to start with the industries and then bring it to yourselves from that point of view. If it being in the Bill would force that to happen, I would certainly say that that is a good thing from my perspective. I guess that what we do not want is one or two people making a decision for the populous.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: Very quickly, that was my point in response to Mr Esterson’s question. Yes, it should be in the Bill.

[Faisal Rashid]

Q Are you aware of any consultation system in any other country that we can adopt as a starting point?

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: I am not an expert on other nations. For almost all my life, we have been in the EU. We did not need to study what other people did. We are just making it hard for ourselves now.

[Mike Wood]

Q Mr MacIntyre-Kemp, you spoke about your concern that the Bill is not clear on the Government’s powers to conclude trade deals, and you talked about chlorinated chicken from the United States. I just want to check that you understand that the Bill is perfectly clear that it would not give any powers to the Government to conclude any trade deal with the United States, regardless of whether it included any type of chicken.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp: You are talking specifically about it not allowing anyone to do a deal to do with chicken, but I was using that as an example to point out that the actual wording of the Bill seems to allow a significant amount of power in one particular place and to not have sufficient levels of consultation. Basically, afterwards, it would indeed be applicable across many different sectors, food being one of them.