Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer]

The ESS is there to help traders who are struggling with elements of trading with Europe and it will continue to do so. It is available online and by telephone, but if the hon. Lady would like me to meet her constituents, I would be more than happy to do so.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the growing list of companies setting out the real and obvious difficulties they are facing in accessing markets in Europe, and given the many very practical suggestions that business groups have put forward to the Government in recent weeks, from negotiating a veterinary agreement and making progress on mutual recognition, to even just getting agreement on shared customs advice, when are Ministers going to try a bit harder to help businesses make Brexit work?

[Mike Freer]

As far as I know, we have suggested solutions and are waiting for the EU to respond.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. A key challenge facing the UK and other major exporters is shipping container costs, and there is ongoing engagement across Government, including the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Competition and Markets Authority and the Department for Transport, to ensure that we understand the background causes of price rises and their impacts, such as by contacting the shipping lines and engaging with international partners where necessary to address the key issue of supply lines that my hon. Friend raised.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the Government’s underwhelming performance on trade to date, even the small gains from joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership would be welcome, but one issue that the previous Secretary of State always ducked was China’s interest. Given President Xi’s reaffirmation on Monday of China’s desire to join the CPTPP, can the Secretary of State clarify whether Britain would have the right to veto China’s accession?

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. These issues are very complex, but what I will say is that we are first in the queue to join CPTTP, and after that all things are up for review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jayawardena]

My hon. Friend is of course right; the TPP offers a great opportunity to access a fast-growing part of the world as part of our Indo-Pacific tilt, as detailed in our integrated review. The opportunity to engage with this part of the world, where there is a growing middle class and increased demand for our products, goods and services, is one that we should seize.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Free trade negotiations with the US are vital to lifting Donald Trump’s tariffs on British steel and aluminium exports, which in turn are crucial to protecting jobs and businesses in communities across our country. Given that the US has already agreed to lift tariffs on many EU steel products, if we are to get a level playing field for our firms and our workers, might it not be time for Lord Frost to be given a little help to stop bungling discussions with the EU so that this vital US-UK trade deal can be sorted?

[Mr Jayawardena]

We will always stand up for the British national interest, and that includes with the European Union. We will make sure that our United Kingdom remains strong and can trade with the world. The truth is that America’s unjustified tariffs on UK steel, aluminium and derivatives are unfair and unnecessary as those imports do not harm US national security, so we will continue to make representations to back British businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The US is currently reviewing progress on all the free trade agreement negotiations under the previous Administration. We welcome the opportunity to feed into that review. We have always been clear that a good deal is better than a quick deal, and we are here when the US is ready to continue those discussions.

A deal with the US will benefit not just manufacturers like Boneham & Turner in my hon. Friend’s constituency but the other 30,000 small and medium-sized enterprises that also export goods to the US by removing tariffs, simplifying customs procedures and therefore making it easier to export. We already have £200 billion of bilateral trade with the US, and we continue to encourage those businesses that want to do more to come to the export support service, which the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), discussed earlier, to ensure they have all the tools they need to maximise their trade with the USA.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The emergence of the omicron variant surely underlines that, if we are to protect our citizens from covid, we need to help to accelerate vaccination programmes in developing countries. With Norway the latest country to agree that, in these exceptional circumstances, a temporary waiver on patent rules to help boost vaccine production is needed, why is the Secretary of State so intent on blocking any progress on such a deal?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

We have been world leading throughout the pandemic in our negotiations with AstraZeneca on ensuring that vaccines are produced at cost. When I was Secretary of State for International Development, I made sure we invested in COVAX so that we led the way and brought other countries forward to ensure that as much vaccine as can be made gets to those who need it the most. Countries are continuing to work with the smallest and most vulnerable developing countries so they get the vaccines they need. We continue to have discussions on a waiver to the World Trade Organisation agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, although those discussions were postponed this week due to the complexity of omicron and movement. We will pick up those discussions in the new year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last month, the previous Secretary of State said that it had been a mistake to focus

“too much on trade with the EU despite the richest opportunities being in the Asia-Pacific.”

Are the Government now making the reverse mistake by focusing too much on small gains in Asia despite the far bigger losses we are facing in Europe?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The issue is that as part of the EU we had to focus on trade with the EU and we were hampered in setting our own agreements and policies with the rest of the world. Now we can trade with the rest of the world as well as the EU. We have had difficulties with covid and with all sorts of things that global trade has had to cope with, but we will recover, as will the rest of the world. When the numbers start going the right way, as they already are, and exceed previous years, I hope that Opposition Members will start to talk this country up rather than down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I was quite deliberate in the use of those statistics. We do need to take care with monthly statistics. None the less, the first quarter data is already two months out of date. The hon. Gentleman is right that there was a dip in January, but that was due to the closure of the border at that time due to the prevalence of the alpha variant in this country. Since then, there has been a very significant recovery. The latest data from May shows £14 billion of exports, up by 8% on the previous month, and only just lower than the monthly average from before the pandemic. He can quote the ONS, but perhaps he might want to look at the latest data, refresh his briefing, and ask his questions according to the latest available data.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Three weeks ago, Lord Frost rejected the EU’s offer of a veterinary agreement, saying:

“We are very ambitious about CPTPP membership… That is the problem.”

Since we cannot ask Lord Frost himself, can the Minister perhaps tell us why the UK’s accession to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership is incompatible with reaching an agreement with Europe on food standards? From which of our current food standards do the Government wish to diverge?

[Greg Hands]

I think the hon. Gentleman is confusing a number of different things, but let me start by saying that the UK proposed an equivalence agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary rules in negotiations—that was proposed by Lord Frost—but the EU refused. The EU does have agreements with, for example, New Zealand and others that still respect regulatory autonomy. We are very happy to discuss with Brussels an agreement on SPS rules so long as it respects UK regulatory autonomy and we do not sign up to dynamic regulatory autonomy. That is the read-across to other trade agreements; it allows us to have an independent trade policy while maintaining the high-quality trade deal that we have with the European Union.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am very proud that the UK Government funded research into the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is now producing 98% of the 49 million covid vaccines delivered right around the world. We have played a leading role in that. I am interested in practical measures that have real effect, such as voluntary licensing agreements. If there is any evidence that intellectual property waivers could help, I am all ears and interested to hear it, but we cannot have a regime that destroys intellectual property rights and ends up stopping future innovation.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

With all due respect to the Secretary of State, boosting the overall global supply of vaccines is key to get global trade going, secure British jobs and help our allies in the Commonwealth and the developing world. In these exceptional times, why did Britain, as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) said, refuse to support at the World Trade Organisation yesterday—presumably on the Secretary of State’s instruction—allies of ours such as America, India and South Africa, and many other countries, and to back a temporary waiver of patents on covid vaccines?

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I have said, the UK is always willing to listen to pragmatic suggestions about how we make the regime work better. For example, we have supported the abolition of export restrictions—many other countries have not—so that we can see goods flow around the world. The fact is that the real changes are being made by voluntary licensing, as we have enabled at the Serum Institute in India. We are part of the third-way work to roll out practical answers. There is no IP waiver proposal on the table that would actually deliver more vaccines to the poorest people in the world, which is what we want to achieve.

Arms Trade: Yemen

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on securing the debate. She is already known in the House for strong and challenging interventions, and her speech today will only add to that reputation.

My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali), for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) all underlined in their contributions the fact that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is desperate. A decade of fighting has produced the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, and over 230,000 people have already been killed by the war, and the resulting food shortages and disease. Millions of people are still at risk of starvation and disease.

If the situation in Yemen was not bad enough, covid and the failure thus far of ceasefire negotiations is quite clearly exacerbating the terrible crisis still further, particularly in the oil and gas region of Marib, where up to 2 million people are sheltering from the intensifying conflict. At this stage, I echo the call of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West that his 29-year-old constituent be released from prison and allowed to return home. I am sure the whole House supports his call for that to happen.

The failure in the beginning of March of the UN’s annual appeal for emergency funding to match last year’s pledges is deeply worrying. As Members have highlighted, the decisions of UK Ministers to impose an almost 50% cut in our aid to Yemen is striking. Many of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world are in Yemen, and our country has a strong and long history with the people of Yemen.

As the House knows, the Government’s failure to implement their own laws relating to arms exports led eventually to the Court of Appeal ordering, in July two years ago, the Department to stop granting licences for exports of arms to Saudi Arabia. The Court of Appeal’s decision was based on a long catalogue of attacks on the civilian population since 2015. Thousands were killed in air strikes. Weddings, funerals and markets were all targeted. One year after the Court’s judgement against the Department, the Secretary of State published a new internal assessment of the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, it was claimed that despite “isolated incidents” where international humanitarian law may have been broken, there was no pattern of activity that would lead her to question the intent or the capacity of the coalition to comply with international humanitarian law.

It is striking that, despite our requests, the Secretary of State has still not published any of the analysis that she undertook on the Saudi bombing campaign. She has repeatedly refused to publish a list of allegations that her new analysis examined. She has also refused to disclose which incidents she classed as possible violations of international law. I urge the Minister to publish that evidence, even at this late stage.

Arms sales resumed very quickly, reaching their highest total compared with any of the previous 19 quarters put together, before the Court of Appeal’s decision. As other hon. Members have made clear, a series of countries—not least the United States—have taken the decision to suspend arms sales. It continues to be surprising that the UK has not followed suit. I look forward to hearing the Minister attempt to justify that decision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The trade and investment hub will provide support to business across Wales. There are already 2,000 people in Aberconwy working in export-intensive industries. The trade hub will provide support, including for Welsh lamb exports, which have resumed after more than 20 years to countries such as Japan.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Government’s “Global Britain, local jobs” analysis does not take into account Brexit or covid, it ignores Welsh farming and Welsh steel production, and it appears to think that there are still 1,500 people employed in car production in Bridgend, which sadly there are not. Does the Secretary of State therefore think that this outdated, incomplete analysis is a reliable foundation on which to base her trade policy for Wales?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The analysis that we produced as part of “Global Britain, local jobs” is the first time that we have produced data at a constituency level for export industries, and it always takes time for statistics to be processed. The new Trade Bill has enabled us to get access to more up-to-date data that we will of course continue to update our strategy with. I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman would welcome the new trade hub that we are establishing in Cardiff, which will bring more investment to Wales—so let us hear from him.

[Gareth Thomas]

I think what the Secretary of State meant to say was that there is room for improvement, and that is certainly true. The stark reality is that Wales is getting a raw deal from the Trade Department. According to her own figures, the Department delivered 638 new inward investment projects for London but just 62 for Wales—a lower number of new investment projects than in any region in England, and for three years in a row. How can she justify those figures?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are establishing a trade and investment hub in Cardiff this year that will employ up to 100 people precisely to bring more investment into Wales, more jobs into Wales, and more export opportunities into Wales.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jayawardena]

I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s passion for this issue, but where is the passion for jobs, where is the passion for exports, and where is the passion for investment? That is what this Government are getting on with. Perhaps it is because they cannot make up their minds on the Opposition Benches: they are against deals with democracies such as Israel as well, and yet they have cosied up to regimes such as Venezuela. Although this question was about future trade deals, we will get on and deliver jobs and prosperity for the British people.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It has now been two months since Ministers agreed a trade deal with Cameroon. It was shortly before the US Senate voted to suspend theirs because of President Biya’s human rights record. Incredibly, we do not know what the UK’s trade deal with Cameroon says on human rights, because it has still not been published. Can the Minister tell us when Parliament will be finally shown that deal, and can he guarantee a debate on it in Government time?

[Mr Jayawardena]

I welcome the fact that the shadow Minister is interested in our trade agreement with Cameroon, which benefits both countries to the tune of £177 million-worth of bilateral trade, but the British people will have heard today six questions from the Labour Benches and not one of them included anything about jobs. That just shows, sadly, that Labour has no intention of delivering for the British people and capitalising on our independent trade policy, because it is anti-trade, anti-jobs, EU-obsessed and it sneers at those who do not share their world view and are proud to be British.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are looking at supporting industry, including through the BEIS fund that will invest £10 million to help distilleries go green, and no doubt the Treasury is looking at other affected industries as well. If we had accepted the advice from Labour to put additional tariffs on US products such as sweet potatoes and nuts, we would likely be hit by more tariffs as Germany and France were, as announced on 30 December.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has threatened to reimpose tariffs on the United States if the Airbus dispute is not settled, but that threat will only carry any impact if the US believes that we have the legal authority to carry it out. Will she agree to publish the UK’s legal advice or our exchange of letters with the World Trade Organisation to prove that she is not bluffing and that we genuinely have the authority to reimpose those tariffs if we need to do so?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am very clear that we have the authority to impose those tariffs. We have acquired rights as a result of leaving the European Union. But I go back to the point I was making: the hon. Gentleman has advocated putting additional tariffs on products such as sweet potatoes and nuts, so presumably he thinks that we have those acquired rights.

Global Britain

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the chance to wind up this first debate of 2021 for the official Opposition. We have heard powerful speeches from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and from my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). Also notable were the speeches from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). It was difficult to disagree with the right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that cutting our aid and abolishing the Department for International Development is hardly going to build confidence in the global Britain brand.

The International Trade Secretary’s speech was, sadly, not quite so encouraging. She and the rest of the Cabinet spent 2020 putting up barriers to trade. She unsuccessfully chased Donald Trump for a trade deal—indeed, it was striking that not once in her speech did she mention President-elect Biden. Vital markets in Asia and important allies in Africa were neglected or treated poorly last year. The one advantage that Ministers in the Department for International Trade start the year with is that expectations of them are not high.

The deal with the European Union that the Prime Minister negotiated, while better than no deal, is proving already to be very thin gruel. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton noted, 80% of our economic output depends on services. We might reasonably have expected Ministers to fight harder to maintain our access to EU services markets, but there is nothing on, for example, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and the Prime Minister’s claim that his deal means certainty for financial services—one of the industries where Britain leads the world in jobs and skills—will surprise many who work in that industry.

Never has any party embraced with such enthusiasm a trade deal that is set to generate unprecedented levels of red tape and form filling—new red tape for farmers, new plant and animal health checks, new red tape for manufacturers, new rules of origin checks, and new safety and security checks. Businesses will have to get used to an estimated 400 million new forms. Not surprisingly, one of the fastest growing areas of employment in global Britain is in handling all the new red tape.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recall the Prime Minister saying that, if businesses were presented with new forms, they should just rip them up, apparently?

[Gareth Thomas]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, but, sadly, we are seeing lots of new jobs being created in this very area: customs clearance agents, import customs agents, international customs agents, import customs brokerage agents and customs clearance clerks—all these new jobs being created because Ministers appear to want dynamic export-oriented British firms to fill in more forms.

Since the Government’s new trade agreement with the EU came into effect, we have also seen rising numbers of export consignments from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and the EU turned away because they do not have the right customs documentation, we have seen EU businesses stop selling their products to the UK by mail because of new VAT rules, and we have seen thousands of companies grappling with the new rules of origin to determine whether their exports to the EU now face tariffs. So businesses—never mind the House—might have expected to hear a little more from the Secretary of State on what she was going to do about those problems.

As the shadow Secretary of State made clear, on rollover agreements, the truth is that the process has been a bit of a mess. Only 31 of the 63 countries listed on the Department for International Trade’s website have fully ratified agreements with the UK. Twenty-one have provisional agreements pending ratification, eight have bridging mechanisms pending the signing of deals, and in three cases deals have been signed but are not yet in effect. Clearly, not all of it is the Government’s fault, but leaving it so late to secure these agreements has caused completely unnecessary headaches and costs for many businesses trading with those countries. Prime Minister Trudeau’s suggestion that Britain did not have the “bandwidth” for a deal with his country hinted at a rather different reality from the one that the Secretary of State and her cheerleaders have implied today.

Indeed, the total inadequacy of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process as a means to guarantee proper parliamentary scrutiny of new trade deals signed by the Government has been exposed. Look at the eight continuity agreements that took effect on 1 January before they had been formally ratified: not a single one with a word of debate in Parliament. Continuity agreements with Canada and Mexico have not yet taken effect because ratification is taken more seriously in those countries than it is here, and one more agreement, with Cameroon, came into effect on 1 January without even being laid before Parliament. Think about that—it became law before any of us even saw it. If ever a process merited amendments from the other place being accepted to improve scrutiny of trade agreements, it is surely the events of the past month.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West pointed out, the House has received no formal explanation as to why 11 continuity agreements could not be concluded in time. So it certainly would be helpful if the Minister of State took a bit of time in his winding-up speech to go through the reasons why deals could not be done with, for example, Algeria, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. The Government’s dismal treatment of Ghana—a key Commonwealth ally—is particularly surprising. We know that UK negotiators turned up for meetings late and badly briefed and then left early with nothing resolved. What hung over all those negotiations was the threat of very heavy tariffs on cocoa, tuna and bananas if a deal could not be completed in time. That, sadly, is what has happened—twice already now, including today. I hope that a deal with Ghana can be completed soon and, when the Secretary of State finally signs that long overdue and much needed deal, it should come with a much needed apology.

It is also striking that, in the year when the UK will be hosting the world’s climate change summit, not one of the trade agreements that the Secretary of State signed last year saw any progress on the environment and climate change. Also, as other hon. Friends have mentioned, many of the deals that the Secretary of State signed did not include even the most basic provisions on human rights. It was good to hear the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) briefly require the Secretary of State to mention India. The Secretary of State has been astonishingly quiet on trade with the Indian subcontinent. India’s market is set to be the world’s fifth largest within five years, and given that Britain is bottom of the G7 for growth in our trade with India, a little more effort to open those markets would, I say gently, be timely.

Trade deals involve give as well as take, so it would be good to hear a little more openness from the Minister of State tonight and ultimately from the Secretary of State about what we will have to give in the trade deals she wants to sign this year. Australia and New Zealand, for example, are both great allies, but with a considerable interest in our agricultural markets. Japan, too, is a great ally, but we must remember that the Japan trade deal signed with great fanfare appears, according to the Government’s own analysis, set to benefit Japanese exporters five times as much as British exporters.

When it comes to future negotiations, the Secretary of State has once again spoken in this debate as if the UK’s membership of the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—the CPTPP—should be seen as a no-brainer and a done deal. Membership of the CPTPP may indeed be a very welcome and positive step for our country to take, but I think the Government owe it to the House—we certainly owe it to our constituents—at least to ask some basic questions about that membership and what it will really mean. Will it, for example, mean signing up to secretive investor-state dispute settlement processes, with all the risks that that poses for our ability to protect public services, consumers and the environment from corporate profiteers? Will it mean having to accept the CPTPP’s “list it or lose it” approach to private competition in the public sector? Will it mean being obliged to accept palm oil from Malaysia and other producers, regardless of the public pressure in this country for a ban? Will we really be able to renegotiate the provisions of the CPTPP in our own interests before we sign up to it, or will we just have to accept the provisions that are already there? Of course, that might ultimately be the right thing to do. The benefits may well outweigh the costs, but the Government have not yet made that case. They have not yet answered the most basic questions. It is not just the other members of the CPTPP that they need to convince, but Parliament and the British public as well.

After almost 50 years, we have left a trade alliance with our closest geographical and economic partners—a decision that was not taken lightly. It certainly was not taken without debate, so before the Government plunge us into another trade grouping, perhaps a little more discussion might be worthwhile: maybe an impact assessment, and certainly serious and meaningful consultation.