Trade Deals and Fair Trade

Debate between Geraint Davies and Graham Stringer

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. Does he agree that the current avenues for public and parliamentary scrutiny of future trade deals are not fit for purpose; that the Government must be transparent about their negotiating priorities to ensure that social and environmental protections are adequate; and that they must provide scope for genuine parliamentary debate and influence in any and all trade deals?

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. Can I just say to the hon. Lady that it is normally good practice to not intervene on a speech when you have not heard the beginning of it? The hon. Gentleman gave way, so I allowed the hon. Lady to speak, but it is not good practice to come in midway through a speech and intervene.

[Geraint Davies]

Thank you very much, Mr Stringer, and I thank my hon. Friend very much for her intervention. I agree with the points that she made, because in a mature and open democracy such as ours we do not want to have trade deals done in secret, and then find out that they contained all sorts of strange things that we did not want. By way of example, we would not want to wake up one day and find GM food scraps on our shelves. Neither would we want chlorinated chicken or hormone-impregnated beef, which provokes premature puberty in children.

We would not want certain things to be negotiated on the grounds of regulatory co-operation. That might include moving away from REACH—a process that the Minister will know about—on the chemical front. Under that process, if he were to produce a chemical, he would have to show that it was safe. If I were to produce a chemical in the United States, however, the Environmental Protection Agency would have to show it was hazardous. That is why asbestos is still for sale in the United States. We would certainly want to debate and scrutinise whether regulatory co-operation would lead to a much higher incidence of hazardous chemicals or poor food, which I would not want to see.

I know that the Government have committed to maintaining our standards of food production. However, the threat now is that while our farmers are delivering good food, the doorway will be left open for American farmers to pump in low-grade, low-price products that are consumed by poorer people who are under the hammer of austerity, and who end up feeding hormone-impregnated beef to their children, with strange medical side effects. I would not want that, and we would certainly want an open debate and discussion about it, so the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) was well made.

In addition, we do not want our NHS to be undermined behind closed doors. The Government have said, “The NHS is safe in our hands,” and all that sort of stuff, but as we already know, the Americans will want to compete in areas of the NHS that are nationalised. They want access to patient data, and in fact a lot of patient data has already been leaked to private companies. They also want to increase medicine prices by protecting patents more effectively, and the World Health Organisation also promotes higher medicine costs. At this tragic time when we face the threat of coronavirus, and when we are talking about public health and equality of availability of drugs to deal with this and any future threats, such protections are essential.

We need democracy to shine a light and blow out the bugs in the system, so that we know what we are doing. Indeed, we want to eliminate any clauses about ratcheting and stand-still that are basically designed to stop the renationalisation of privatised utilities and industries. Clearly, people have different political views, but in a democracy the balance between public and private should be a matter of debate, discussion and public mood. It should be a moving target, rather than being fixed in one place or continuously going towards privatisation.

I will say a couple of words about what we might want to change and retain as we leave the EU. The Minister will know that the EU offers certain developing countries tariff rate preferences through its general system of preferences on everything but arms schemes. There is a risk that our bilateral trade agreements with other countries will lead to a relative erosion of those standards, or that developing countries will lose out as we carve up arrangements with developed countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies]

It has been an interesting debate My response to the Minister is that if we agree on ensuring social justice, ensuring environmental protections, ensuring that human rights are protected and so on—we may do—we need to build those commitments into our trade agreements and not just hope for the best. Investor-state dispute systems are specifically focused on the interests of investors. Let us ensure that those values persist as we look at those relationships with the EU and, in particular, in the interests of the poorest—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No.10(6)).

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Graham Stringer

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend tell me what definition of sovereignty he is using? It is completely confusing me. I have just checked, and the normal definition is

“the authority of a state to govern itself”,

but my hon. Friend is talking about majority voting when we might be in a minority. What is his definition of sovereignty?

[Geraint Davies]

What we are talking about is the freedom of this Parliament to influence the outcomes for our electorate. [Interruption.] What I am saying, as my hon. Friend chunters in his seat, is that we will move from a position in which we can influence rules that will be applied in Britain to one in which we cannot influence those rules, and they will still be applied. We are not suddenly leaving and going to the moon.

I know that there is a move on the other side for us to become semi-detached, or worse, from the EU, and to thrust ourselves into the fond arms of the WTO. However, as I said to the Minister earlier, and I have had some experience of this as a trade rapporteur for the Council of Europe at the WTO, we will end up negotiating with 164 countries with just one vote, not proportionate to our population—and some of those countries will be dictatorships—as opposed to being in a club of 28 mature economies with a strong bargaining position within the WTO. As I said earlier, the WTO is being undermined by the United States, which wants its own massive power to decide everything, rather than rules. Moreover, it has existing rules that are contrary to what we are allowed to do within the EU.

We may talk of sovereignty, but if at some point in the future the Government of Britain wanted to return the railways, for instance, to public ownership—I appreciate that the Minister may not want to do this—the WTO would be able to stop us. It also has rules about patents which will increase the price of drugs. I do not think that “people in the street” voted for that.

Furthermore, the WTO will impose—as will bilateral trading relationships with the United States—new systems of arbitration courts and panels with independent judges who, unlike the European Court of Justice, are not democratically elected, and who will make decisions on whether big companies can either sue us or threaten to sue us for not pursuing various activities, or will block our legislation.

In case there is any ambiguity, let me give an example. Lone Pine, the big fracking company, sued the Canadian Government because Quebec had a moratorium on fracking, saying that it would affect climate change, or was not in the interests of the environment, or whatever it was. We have started fracking in this country, but let us suppose that the Welsh Government said that they did not want fracking in Wales. If there were to be an investor-state dispute settlement tribunal, the frackers could come along and say “Look here, we cannot have this, we are fracking”, and sue the British Government. Is that sovereignty and control in any normal circumstances? Of course it is not. Courts will be available that will fine, or threaten to fine, the British Government for passing legislation to protect the environment and the public health of our citizens, and their intimidation will deter future Governments from doing that.

We have introduced a sugar tax, but when that happened in Mexico there was an attack on it through an investor-state dispute settlement. If we introduce a plastics tax, we will be attacked for that.

Diesel Vehicle Scrappage Scheme

Debate between Geraint Davies and Graham Stringer

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies]

Obviously, we can influence the market. More than 50% of new cars are now diesel. Margaret Thatcher knew about the problems of particulates and there was a judgment call on public health versus carbon. Since then, the problems with NOx have grown. The fact is that the amount of particulates and NOx being produced is much, much greater than people previously thought, partly because of the deception of Volkswagen and others. This is a public health catastrophe.

I will present the case for my Bill this afternoon with support from the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners and UNICEF. People will know that last year’s report by the Royal College of Physicians found that 40,000 premature deaths were due to these emissions, as well as presenting emerging evidence about foetuses suffering long-term damage and about the damage to the neurology, and general physical and mental health, of young children in urban spaces, particularly in poor areas. Those children are being poisoned, which has a disastrous impact on the rest of their lives. I am not prepared, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) appears to be, just to go on with business as normal, backing the poison of the current industry, which seeks to maximise profits.

It is the function of the Government to regulate markets in the interests of the public and it is an outrage that parents are unable to protect their own children, and that—as we speak—hundreds of thousands of children are in playgrounds enjoying themselves but inadvertently inhaling poisonous fumes. We need to take action and I am glad that we are moving forward with this first step; I hope that the Government agree.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with the general thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument, but we should not let off the Government and all the parties in this House who supported the incentives for diesel. The health risks were known more than 25 years ago. A report by the then Environment Department in 1993, a piece in 2001 by the European Respiratory Journal and other sources all pointed out the health problems of NOx and particulates. People got the balance wrong between the perceived threat of carbon dioxide and the real threat of those poisons, but we should not pretend that there was ignorance of this issue in the past; there was not.

[Geraint Davies]

That is a point well made. I mentioned in passing that Margaret Thatcher and subsequent Governments were aware all along of these public health issues. Ironically, it is also the case that, with VW and the like, lorries often produce less NOx than cars. The reason for that is that defeat devices were found in lorries in America, but for some reason the authorities there did not realise that they were being deceived on cars on such a colossal scale.

Of course, ClientEarth has taken the Government to court, as we do not even satisfy minimum EU standards, let alone World Health Organisation standards, and I very much hope that as and when Brexit happens we will ensure that air quality standards are legally enforceable and at least at the level of the minimum EU standard, while moving towards the WHO standards.

These are difficult issues. I appreciate that people have bought cars in good faith. They feel that the current Government, which has been in power for seven years, the previous Labour Government and even the Government before that should have alerted them to these problems, and there is a move, alongside what is being said, perhaps to index fuel duties differentially. In the case of diesel, the real cost of diesel may not go up because of upwards inflation and because the cost of other fuels do not go up. Basically, the signals should be given that people would be wise to move forward.

I will ask the Minister a couple of technical questions. I would like him to comment on displacement issues regarding the targeting of the scrappage scheme; obviously, there are various incentives, which will affect different groups. I think we all share the view that many poorer communities will suffer the worst impacts of air pollution on their children. In addition, many poorer people have the worst cars, which they cannot afford to replace. Therefore, I welcome the progressive thrust of this debate, and to allow others to speak I will conclude my remarks there.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Graham Stringer

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

I would not use the word “coup”, but I would use the word “gerrymandering”. In fact, a double gerrymander lies at the heart of this Bill. I would like the Electoral Commission to look at the issue of registration and report to both Houses, because there are sins of commission and sins of omission involved in why the electoral register is not complete. It has already been said that some electoral registration officers are more effective and efficient than others, and that is true. I represent areas of Manchester and Salford, and the electoral registration and returning officers there are doing a good job. They have done three canvasses and use what data they may legally access to ensure that electoral registration is as complete as possible. But that is not the case in several constituencies.

[Geraint Davies]

My hon. Friend may be interested to note that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is now in his place. In his constituency, the register contains 77,628 people, so it is on target, but the population of those over 18 and eligible to vote is 101,000. In other words, 26,000 people will not be counted, and that is wrong. However, Members on the other side of the House, including the hon. Gentleman, will sleepwalk into this ridiculously unfair system.

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the numbers—