Geraint Davies
Main Page: Geraint Davies (Independent - Swansea West)Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
Geraint Davies Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement, the Trade in Services Agreement and any associated investor-state dispute settlement provisions should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in the UK and European parliaments.
I am amazed that the Leader of the House, who is just leaving the Chamber, has described opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—TTIP—as a political campaign by left-wing pressure groups. I do not think that the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), or the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), fall into that category. They, along with members of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and many other Committees, are interested in this matter for a variety of reasons. I am pleased that Members from all parties across the House have taken an active interest in this vital issue. I note that the Leader of the House has now left in ignorance, but that is as we would expect.
When I spoke on this subject a year ago, I talked about arbitration problems and big companies focusing on suing democratically elected Governments over laws that might undermine their future profits. Today, in the context of the COP 21 talks in Paris, I want to make the key point to the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise that unless the environmental imperatives coming out of Paris are integrated, in a binding and legally enforceable way, into the EU free trade agreements with Canada and the United States, we will be in danger of sleepwalking into environmental oblivion, irrespective of what comes out of the talks.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
It is right that this motion should come before the House today. Going back to my hon. Friend’s comment about the Leader of the House, how can we trust the Government with industrial relations when we have their anti-trade union Bill going through the House? This should be scrutinised on the Floor of the House, as should the effects on public services, given the presence of American predators who could take advantage of the new arrangements.
Geraint Davies
Yes, that is a key point. I have here a copy of the draft trade and sustainable development chapter of TTIP, and I hope that the Minister has read it. I know that a number of her fellow Ministers have not. It contains references to rights under labour laws, but they would not be legally enforceable. I would like them to be enforceable, because workers’ rights are at risk of erosion as a result of these deals.
I want to make it clear that I am in favour of trade, of growing trade and of the European Union. I do not want any confusion about that. The trade between the EU and the United States is already worth in excess of $700 billion, as the Minister will know. The forecasts of the amount by which the economies will grow vary from nothing to about 4%. Let us remember that the forecast for the expansion of economic activity as a result of the single market varied between 4% and 6.5%, but it ended up being 2%. Companies such as Moody’s are saying that it will amount to the equivalent of a cup of coffee per person per day. If you like coffee, perhaps that is worth having, but we need to think about the benefits of trade versus the costs and risks involved.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour MEPs have sought a common position in the EU Parliament on TTIP, and are calling for a full carve-out of all public services, the inclusion of all binding and enforceable workers’ rights, and strong safeguards on food, health and safety measures? That specifically excludes the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, which is not democratic, not open to scrutiny, and not independent or fair to states that are being sued by corporations whose members sit on the board.
Geraint Davies
My hon. Friend makes her point well, and I will come on to some of those issues, especially the ISDS.
Geraint Davies
I do not want to give way too many times, but I will do so briefly and then make progress.
Guto Bebb
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I apologise if my voice is not very strong today. On employee rights, I met representatives of the American trade union movement, which sees TTIP as a great opportunity to ensure that the rights we have in Europe are replicated in the US. As an internationalist, I would expect the hon. Gentleman to support such a change.
Geraint Davies
I share that aspiration, but the issue is whether those rights are legally bound and enforceable within TTIP, and they are not. My point is not that we should burn, shoot and get rid of TTIP; we should pull the ISDS teeth out of the wolf, and genetically edit TTIP so that it includes environmental imperatives, enforceable rights at work, and human rights. It should be a blueprint for future global trade, rather than a blueprint for the destruction of environmental and human rights.
Geraint Davies
I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), and then to my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar), who I know is pro-TTIP, so I will be glad to hear from him.
Margaret Greenwood
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Government and European Commission should heed the call from the British Medical Association to exclude the NHS from TTIP, just as the audio-visual sector and healthcare services are excluded from the EU services directive?
Geraint Davies
At a minimum, we should have a copper-bottomed arrangement such as Finland’s, which protects all health—public and private—as well as social care, from any intervention. At the moment those guarantees are not provided, and things are done on a case law basis. If there is private provision somewhere, that would allow an avenue for American contractors to move in.
Mr Spellar
My hon. Friend lays great weight on the ISDS. Can he say how many agreements Britain currently has that have ISDS provisions, how many cases have been brought against the UK, and how many have been successful?
Geraint Davies
My right hon. Friend knows that a large number of ISDS bilaterals are in play, and that no cases have been taken against us. He also knows that exposure to ISDS will increase by about 300%. If his pet dog goes around biting the neighbours, that does not guarantee that it will not bite him. Just because other people die from cigarettes and he has not, that does not mean he will not. We should protect ourselves against the provisions in ISDS, rather than hear those spurious arguments that are normally regurgitated by Government Members.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
On the specific point raised by our hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar)—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We need short interventions because there is a lot of interest in this debate. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) is 10 to 15 minutes into his opening speech, and I would not like him to give it all away through interventions.
Geraint Davies
I will resist responding to the comment about barking.
On the ISDS, we know that big companies use the powers available to them to sue democratically elected Governments. For example, the Lone Pine fracking company is suing the Canadian Government for hundreds of millions of dollars because Quebec brought out a moratorium on fracking. In a well-known case, Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia over tobacco packaging. The Dutch insurance company, Achmea, is suing the Slovakians for trying to reverse health privatisation. If those powers are available, corporations will use them to maximise profit. Why should they not? That is what they are there to do. I am not saying that they are immoral, because that is what they do and that is what we expect. Our job is to regulate to ensure that the public interest is put first.
There is also an issue of sovereignty. The comprehensive economic and trade agreement will last for 20 years; some people are worried about the EU, but future Governments would be bound by these rules for 20 years. I think that is wrong, and a lot of Conservative Members have raised that point with me.
Albert Owen
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I realise that he is getting a little frustrated with the amount of interventions, but mine is brief and specific to the motion. He talks about the scrutiny of this House. Will he explain what method of scrutiny would be used? Would scrutiny be done by a Committee, or would a Minister come to the Dispatch Box, so that the whole House could provide scrutiny?
Geraint Davies
The issue is already being scrutinised by the European Scrutiny Committee, and the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee is also interested in it, and the provision will clearly have a widespread impact, so it should be brought before the House. I would like recommendations to be made by this House in an advisory way to the European Parliament, so that it can table amendments. At the moment, everything is being decided by negotiators behind closed doors. That is completely unacceptable, and it will just be a yes/no decision with ratification. CETA was agreed in September 2014, and it sounds as if it is having some sort of legal washing. It will be brought before Members of the European Parliament next spring.
I want to mention regulatory chill because of the pressure and threat of that sort of action. Already, the EU has withdrawn its demands for transparency and clinical data in trials. That means that if a big drugs company does 10 trials and three go wrong—thalidomide, for example—and seven go right, it only has to publish details of the seven that go right. That is worrying, as are the bits and pieces about trade secrets, which clearly undermine and inhibit democracy. There are issues of rights at work, and the problem of CETA being agreed, because that is a Trojan horse that allows all the powers created in the investor-state dispute settlement to come in through the back door and bite our democracy, public services and public finances.
Geraint Davies
No, I will not. I want to dwell on the fact that as we sit here, 20 million people in Beijing are crying because of the environmental damage of trade and the unregulated economic activity that supports it. Meanwhile, in Cumbria, people are flooded because of the impact of climate change, and no one seems to be asking why. We should ensure that future trade agreements for the EU, Canada and the US have enforceable environmental imperatives that constrain corporations from making the situation worse, and that that spreads to China and elsewhere. However, nobody seems to be speaking about elsewhere.
We need trade laws to be trumped by what comes out of Paris in a legally binding and enforceable way, but that is not happening at the moment. I spoke with the Secretary General of the OECD, who was making a speech in Paris when I was there at the conference. He said that a £200 billion subsidy is currently given to fossil fuels and that he was not happy about that. I said, “What about getting the environmental imperatives from Paris as minimum standards into TTIP?” He scratched his head and said, “We haven’t thought about that, but it might be a good idea.” That is where we are, but the EU is asking for an oil and gas pipeline from the US to get shale gas and all sorts of oil over here. What will that do for our carbon footprint?
This is a case of trade on the one hand and the environment on the other, and we need an integrated approach to global sustainable development. I think that the ISDS should be stripped out of TTIP. People say, “What about the investors? They should be protected,” but investors have judicial review and breach of contract, and they already use those rights in public courts. The only difference is that in public courts the public interest is weighed against the commercial interest; on an arbitration panel, it is all about private interest, and public interest and public health issues are not really weighted.
Let me give an example. Tecmed is a waste disposal plant in Mexico that breached new regulations. The Mexican Government decided not to renew the contract because of that breach. Tecmed went to an arbitration panel and Mexico lost the case and had to pay £5 million, plus £8 million court costs. My point is that if the UK requires stronger emissions standards to live up to our promises regarding a 1.5° or 2° increase in temperature, the ISDS could come along and sue us for obliging companies to move forward with those requirements from Paris. Tribunals, as opposed to public law, are more heavily in favour of investor protection than public protection. That is the wrong way around.
Lord Maude said to me, in response to questioning by the European Scrutiny Committee, that companies deserve a bit of compensation if Governments intervene, and that there was nothing wrong with that. The point I am trying to make, however, is not that there should not be compensation. The Minister will be aware of the case in which the Costa Rican Government took back land with natural value—endangered species and habitats—and provided compensation of $1.9 million. The owners of the land took them to an arbitration tribunal, which did not factor in public interest or public value—that had nothing to do with it. It was all about commercial issues and it was decided to fine the Government $16 million. The ISDS favours the private sector, not public interest or natural habitat, so we need to strip it out of TTIP.
Another issue with ISDS is that it can trump national law and previous national law. In the case of Deutsche Bank v. Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court in Sri Lanka brought forward existing laws to stop payment to Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank went off to an arbitration panel, an international court, and, even though its arrangements had been made after the national law had been passed, it won the case. This implies for Britain that, if TTIP goes through in its current state, the Climate Change Act 2008 will be trumped by ISDS. That is unbelievable in terms of sovereignty and democracy.
A lot of Conservative Back Benchers are up to speed, but there are a lot of turkeys voting for Christmas on the Government Front Bench. We will not have protection for our famous products, such as pasties, Welsh lamb, Cumbrian sausages and so on. The headline in The Sun was lyrical: “Pasties get a pasting.” We could have Welsh lamb produced in Nebraska.
The TTIP environmental chapter makes reference to Rio and Copenhagen, but it contains nothing that would not allow investors to trump enforcement. There is no binding enforceability. None of the pledges in the environment chapter are carved in stone, and they could be overturned by arbitration panels. Those pledges need to be legally binding, with an enforcement mechanism that goes through national courts.
In a nutshell, I am suggesting that ISDS be removed from TTIP. Article 1 of CETA should say that the provisions in TTIP will be, without reservation, subject to the 2015 Paris conference and subsequent treaty agreements, that TTIP should be consistent and contribute to the targets agreed in Paris and subsequent COP meetings, and that we do not go down the route of harmonising by means of the proposed regulatory co-operative body. Harmonisation of standards is a good thing in principle, but it would all be decided behind closed doors by civil servants subject to lobbying from industry. That is not something we want.
Finally, there are a lot of things wrong with TTIP that we need to change, but the motion relates simply to scrutiny. I am not for abandoning TTIP. We need a blueprint for future global trade. We need to integrate environmental imperatives. We need to make sure legal rights and human rights are enforceable, and show leadership on global trade that provides a sustainable, fair and equitable world.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Spellar
I would strongly hold to that. I am just saying that ISDS is not the great problem that people are claiming. The hon. Gentleman mentions the NHS. The European Commissioner wrote to the former Trade and Investment Minister about the impact of TTIP on the NHS, saying:
“Member States do not have to open public services to competition from private providers, nor do they have to outsource to private providers.”
It is a decision for this Government, and nothing to do with any trade deal. She continued:
“Member States are free to change their policies and bring back outsourced services back into the public sector whenever they choose to do so, in a manner respecting property rights (which in any event are protected under UK law)”.
Geraint Davies
Does my right hon. Friend agree, though, that the essential difference is that ISDS tribunals are held in private, the primary focus being the investor and commercial and trading law, whereas a public court involves the public interest and transparency, which is intrinsically better? There are lots of cases where these big companies have claimed enormous damages, but I will not go into that. This is about the intrinsic shape of the system.
Mr Spellar
My hon. Friend and I will have to discuss this matter later. The problem is that such a process would require the creation of a supranational court, unless there was an agreement on reciprocity between the Supreme Court and the European Court, which might cause problems with Conservative colleagues.
There was very little controversy over CETA and the discussions with the Canadians, or those with the Koreans and all the other countries with which the EU has conducted trade talks, until we began discussions with the United States, which touched many people’s nerve endings and neurons.
Andrew Percy
No, I will not give way. I have changed my mind.
I just want to talk about CETA for a moment. What the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said about it being a Trojan horse is slightly offensive to the Canadian Government.
Andrew Percy
The hon. Gentleman did not give way to me, so I will not give way to him.
Andrew Percy
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman wants to say that it was not an insult. To use the term “Trojan horse” suggests that the Canadians are in some way being used as a battering ram for the Americans, which is quite offensive. CETA in Canada has the support of the new Government, just as it did of the previous Government.
Much has been said about transparency. The theories on that have been well and truly demolished by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) who quite rightly pointed out that the text of what is being debated is available, and that, at the end of this process, there will be a mechanism for approval in all 28 national Parliaments. One could argue that few things that affect us are subjected to quite so much scrutiny. I am not sure that I can subscribe to the argument of the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), which seems to be that the process of agreeing TTIP could be some sort of conspiracy with regard to leaving the European Union. I did not follow that argument, as it made little sense to me.
Helen Goodman
There is nothing in our arrangements with the EU that is similar in any way to the private court system under the ISDS. That was the point that the former Secretary of State was making.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) said earlier that not many cases have been taken under ISDS or won under ISDS, but it inhibits ministerial action because Ministers are worried about court cases. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester made the point that in developing countries the costs of running these court cases are a further inhibition on ministerial and democratic action.
Geraint Davies
Does my hon. Friend not agree that in most ISDS cases, we are the investor in developing countries, and we would be the ones to take action? In the American cases, they would be taking action against us. We have all the fire to come.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend makes a fair point, but I just want to say that I think that Ministers are inhibited from taking policy action by fear of court and legal proceedings. When I was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, albeit a very junior one, I was interested in considering the entitlements to benefits of migrants from eastern Europe. My officials not only would not make the changes I was asking them to make, but would not even give me advice on the matter. They said, “Minister, to advise you on that would be to advise you on an illegal action.” That is exactly the kind of conversation Ministers will get into with the ISDS.
Geraint Davies
I thank all Members from all corners and all nations of the United Kingdom who have contributed to this excellent debate. The problem that people have with TTIP is ISDS. Nobody has made a compelling case for the inclusion of ISDS. The wolf’s teeth should be drawn so that we can move forward to get the benefits of trade. In addition, we need to introduce enforceable and binding measures to protect our environment, our democracy, our labour standards, and our human rights.
The simple fact is that we want trade. Yes, we will have trade, but let us not trade our democracy, our liberty, our sovereignty, our public services and our environment into the pockets of multinational companies. Let us have trade, let us move forward, let us keep all that we have in Europe that we value, and let us have a global trading situation where everybody can benefit fairly and our environment is sustained.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House believes that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement, the Trade in Services Agreement and any associated investor-state dispute settlement provisions should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny in the UK and European parliaments.