Trade Deals and Fair Trade

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered trade deals and fair trade.

It is a great pleasure to move the motion during Fairtrade fortnight. The debate is about how to hardwire the ethics of fair trade into future trade deals as we break out of Europe. I stand here as a Labour and Co-operative MP. The Co-op has a proud tradition of fair trade, solidarity and social justice, and, on the retail side, promoting Fairtrade coffee, bananas, wine, chocolate, and so on.

I represent Swansea West, and I am pleased to say that Swansea has been a Fairtrade city since 2004. In fact, Wales became the first fair trade nation in 2008, and a lot of that work was done by the Swansea fair trade forum. I am also a supporter of the Fairtrade Foundation, which has tended to focus on cocoa producers in the Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where there are issues surrounding living incomes, gender inequality and environmental standards.

Coming to the crux of the matter, we are all aware that we face opportunities and risks in striking trade deals. Naturally, a lot of focus has been on the removal of subsidies and tariffs, and some of the focus has moved on to standards of products and services. However, I wish to talk about standards in relation to the environment, labour, and crop diseases and the like, which can be used to undermine free and fair trade by providing unlevel playing fields.

In a nutshell, fair trade is the principle that market actors should not gain a competitive advantage by adopting practices in other states that would be unlawful or unethical in their home states. The fair trade principle is that we should not outsource abuse—whether in terms of human rights or environmental standards—and then import products made under such conditions, creating unfair competition for domestic producers, who have to live up to high environmental and ethical standards. It is important that we do not import products that are produced below our standards and by virtual slave labour. Such imports naturally lead to people complaining locally that trade is uncompetitive, and to rhetoric about stopping trade and how everything is unfair to domestic producers, who miss out.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate in Fairtrade fortnight. Does he agree that Britain needs to be a real example around the world in standards, and would it not be a good idea if the Government set out clearly that they intend to remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights?

Unduly Lenient Sentences

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I refer Members to my relevant entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, indicating that I am a non-practising door tenant at Civitas Law in Cardiff.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing the debate, and on the considered way in which he introduced it. I know he has carried out a number of ministerial roles; I remember in particular his role that combined both justice and policing. While I might not always have agreed with him, I always thought he carried out the job in extremely good faith, and it is good to see him making this contribution from the Back Benches today. He described well how the system works, with the right of appeal for defendants and the unduly lenient sentence scheme as it stands. I wholly agree with him on the question of public understanding of, and confidence in, the working of the scheme and of how victims are communicated with throughout the process, whether by the courts system, the Crown Prosecution Service or their lawyers. The need for clarity is vital, and I am sure the Solicitor General will be able to touch on it in his closing remarks.

There was also a good contribution from the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I know the job he does on the Justice Committee, on which I served briefly in 2015, and he identified well the role of the Committee as a statutory consultee as we set the sentencing framework. That is important, and it is crucial that the Justice Committee makes its views known at that stage, as it can only assist with consistency in sentencing.

I thought there was a thread running through all the other contributions to the debate, whether from the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) or the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald). The real sense was about clarity, consistency and public understanding, which are vital to our criminal justice system. If I may say so, it was also a pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke powerfully about his 30 years of public service and the thousands of cases with various sentencing decisions that he has dealt with in Northern Ireland.

Coming to the issue of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, the Solicitor General will be aware of the 19 terror- related offences added to the scheme on 8 August this year. The statistics are instructive, and I looked them up prior to the debate. There is no doubt that the number of requests is increasing, although that is partly due to sentences being added to the scheme. In 2010 there were 342, in 2015 there were 713 and last year—the most recent set of statistics available—the figure was up to about 837. In 2015, of those 713 requests, 136 were referred to the Court of Appeal—[Interruption.]

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes for the Division. If there is a second vote, it will be suspended for a further 10 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right, but that applies the other way as well. If the defendant appeals something, as long as it is within a reasonable band, it will not be appealable the other way either. The reasonable band exists to bring certainty and consistency to sentencing, which all of us in this House who believe in the rule of law should want.

I take the point entirely that the unduly lenient sentencing scheme does not cover 80,000 cases. None the less, there are thousands of cases where the judiciary, within the sentencing framework it has, does a good job, and we should not lose sight of the fact that we should be backing our judiciary.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

Before inviting the Solicitor General to respond, I point out that the debate will end at 5.42 pm.

Leaving the EU: Wales

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

State Pension Age Equalisation

Debate between Geraint Davies and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing the debate. The degree of interest in it and the number of contributions are testament to its importance.

My hon. Friend spoke well both about the transitional arrangements and the importance of notice, highlighting the fact that some people had to wait 14 years for notice under the Pensions Act 1995. The human stories that she put forward are extremely important. She also pointed out one of the supreme ironies that we face in this debate: the Pensions Minister in the other place, Baroness Altmann, campaigned on this issue in 2011 and showed some ability to bring about concessions. Now she is actually in a position of power, however, she claims that she does not have the power to do anything about it. I will return to her in due course.

There were a number of other contributions to the debate. The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke about the issue of communication, and I hope that the Department and the Minister will be able to answer in detail about what steps have been taken in that regard.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) spoke passionately about her constituent and highlighted what I am afraid is the growing problem of the gap in life expectancy between the wealthiest areas of our country and the less wealthy areas. She pointed, too, to the issue of those born in the 1950s, the very generation that should have been able to benefit from the cradle-to-grave welfare state introduced by Clement Attlee’s Labour Government of 1945 to 1951.

The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) set out precisely the categories of people who are affected by the changes. He spoke well about the unfair manner of the notice that was given and about the issue of transitional provisions. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) also spoke well about notification and fairness.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) highlighted well the issue of the generation born in the 1950s and the importance—which I will come back to—of people being given the time to plan their lives when changes in provision are made.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) brought out the point about emotional distress extremely well. I echo his compliments to WASPI and other campaign groups that are trying to do so much for women born in the 1950s and about the unfairnesses that they face.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) highlighted well the hardship for certain groups. She also made an important point about levels of awareness, which vary up and down the income scale.

We need look at the central issues of this debate: first, transitional provisions, and secondly, notice. The hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) made the point about transitional provisions, but let us be absolutely precise about what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said on Second Reading of the Pensions Bill on 20 June 2011:

“Let me simply repeat what I said earlier—it is a bit like a recording, but I shall do it none the less: we have no plans to change equalisation in 2018, or the age of 66 for both men and women in 2020, but we will consider transitional arrangements.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 52.]

I repeated that direct quotation to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury in a debate here in Westminster Hall on 17 November 2015. She promised that the noble Lady Baroness Altmann would write to me about it. The next day I tabled a written parliamentary question, and I received an answer from an Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). He said:

“Ministers discussed and considered transitional arrangements during the passage of the Pensions Bill 2011.”

Sadly, at the end of his reply he added:

“The Government will not be revisiting the State Pension age arrangements for women affected by the 2011 Act.”

I had that answer on 23 November.

In a letter dated 25 November, I received my answer from the Pensions Minister:

“To clarify, the Secretary of State made this comment when Parliament was considering the Pensions Act 2011. You will wish to note that, later on in that process, the Government made a concession to reduce the delay that anyone would experience in claiming their State Pension as a result of state pension age changes to 18 months.”

Sadly, she also added:

“The policy was debated and passed into law, and there are no new arguments to consider.”

Can the Minister understand the intense disappointment that there will be about that response? The concession mentioned will come as little comfort to those affected by the changes. I urge the Minister not to give up, but to look at what can be done on transitional provisions. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made the point well in his intervention—do not slam the door shut on the women affected, who were born in the 1950s, as the Pensions Minister appears to have been doing in her letter.

Deeper matters are at stake in this debate. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) said that there is an issue about the ability of the affected generation of women to contribute to pension pots throughout their lives. Women born between 6 April 1951 and 5 April 1953 are not eligible for a single-tier state pension; a man born on exactly the same day will be. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South brought out the dual impact of the increase introduced in the 1995 Act and the subsequent ineligibility for a single-tier pension—women have been affected not once but twice.

I put it to the Government that the issue of notice is fundamentally important. We talk about notice periods of 10 or 15 years because once people retire, their ability to top up their income is extraordinarily limited. Therefore, when we make changes to the pension age, it is vital that people are told about such changes in good time, so that they may change their lives to adjust to the new reality. That is the fundamental issue at stake. There is incredibly deep anger about the fact that appropriate notice was not given. I urge the Government not to turn their back on transitional provisions.

We have talked about the availability of money. I am one of the first people to say that there has to be an appropriate publicity campaign on auto-enrolment, but I raised my eyebrows slightly when I learned that in recent months the Department for Work and Pensions has spent £8.45 million on a multi-coloured teddy bear called Workie, which will apparently deal with the auto-enrolment awareness problem. It must be one of the most expensive teddy bears in British history.

The spending on the teddy bear is an indication of something deeper—the choices that the Government face. They can still make a choice to consider transitional provisions for those affected by the changes. I urge the Government to look again at transitional provisions, and not to slam the door on the 1950s women.

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

If you wish, Minister, you may allow Barbara Keeley a minute at the end to respond, as a courtesy. It is your choice.