Trade Deals and Fair Trade

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on setting the scene so well. It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch); her contributions are always very helpful to any debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) for his speech. He and I often spar—no, not spar; we are often together in this Chamber, he on the Conservative side and I on this side.

I have spoken on this issue previously, and I am pleased to again lend my support to the calls for ensuring that any trade deals we set up ensure that the first producers receive a decent wage. That is something that I have had in my heart for many years. Constituents contact me regularly about fair trade and some Fairtrade events take place—it is an issue of concern not just for myself but for many in my constituency. I have always said that we should be the example in this place—the example of how we treat each other, the example of how we treat our staff and the example of how we deal with those who are less able to stand up for themselves. That is what fair trade is about. It is about standing up for those who do not have someone to fight their battles, and doing our best for them. We have the opportunity in this debate to do so. Brexit discussions in this place showed that many of us failed in how we treated each other. I want to do my part to ensure that our trade deals reflect how we should treat the little man or the little woman at the start of the production process who has no one to speak for him or her, and demand fair play.

I was recently pleased to attend the Fairtrade event here at Westminster. I am a type 2 diabetic. We were sent away with a bag of Fairtrade products, including coffee, which I am a great drinker of, and there was also some lovely dark chocolate. For a diabetic, dark chocolate is not as bad as milk chocolate—I have convinced myself of that—so I energetically scoffed the dark chocolate by myself; I did not even offer it to anybody else. The event was of course a reminder of how important it is to support others across the world. Hearing the story of how one bar of chocolate comes to sit on our shelves has made sure that not only will I be thinking of my sugar levels when I consider whether to buy the bar of chocolate, but I will now be thinking of the origin and whether the pay has been fair.

The Fairtrade event highlighted that the UK chocolate industry is worth at least £4 billion each year—the girls in my office have told me they believe that to be a conservative estimate, as they think they consume that amount between them! I am not sure that is entirely true. In all seriousness, £4 billion is not a small amount. It is a massive trade and one that must be profitable, but that is not the case for those who farm the cocoa. The Fairtrade Foundation highlighted to me the fact that most cocoa farmers live in abject poverty. We may not know it when we eat a bar of chocolate or purchase it for someone else, but a typical farmer in Ivory Coast or Ghana earns less than 75p a day. Women farmers are worse off, which is disgraceful. They work longer hours and earn less. Pricing is not simply a matter of supply and demand; it is measured in how little they can get away with paying. Unfortunately, in 2020, women are still given the raw end of the deal. At home we talk about glass ceilings; these women farmers barely have a dirt floor.

Just 25% of women cocoa farmers own their land, and they work about a third more than men if we take childcare and domestic chores into account. In countries where housework is considered women’s work, too many women are expected and required to do it all themselves. It is tradition in many societies, which I know from personal contact with many across Africa and elsewhere. At home here, women work hard, and as my parliamentary aide says, “I work and he works, so whoever gets in from work first starts the dinner.” Things have moved on in many homes, and working women are often helped by their partner, although it should be acknowledged that many women do the work alone or rely on their families—but in third-world countries, women carry out back-breaking work, come home and take care of their families and get paid less for it.

I am extremely concerned that farmers, particularly women farmers in many countries, are not properly paid. When I was younger, my mother had a saying that “you earn the money by the sweat of your brow”. If they are earning their money by the sweat of their brow, and they are, they should be getting paid more than 75p a day. We need to take steps to ensure that our British pound is not part of this terrible chain. Brexit has afforded us a unique ability to re-evaluate our trade deals and to ensure that the lowest price is not the sole consideration, although it obviously plays a part.

I am a Brexiteer, which is no secret. The Minister is a Brexiteer. This country has taken the decision to leave the EU, which it did on 31 January. We have moved on. The responsibility now lies with the Government to ensure that we give a fair price for the excellent goods that we receive through fair trade. I gently ask the Minister to outline how he intends to ensure that any and all future trade deals and renewals of existing deals—we have many deals where the price structure is already in place—have at their core a desire for a foundation of fair trade for the worker on the land, and not simply for the shareholder in their office. We have to get the balance back again; we cannot always pay out dividends for shareholders when the person who produces the goods finds it hard just to make ends meet. Gone are the days when we can say, “Well, we shut our poorhouses and workhouses, but we are not responsible for the workhouses in other nations.” We are, and we are obliged to ensure that our deals reflect the basic principle of fair pay for good work.

I ask the Minister, gently but firmly, to do everything in his power to change not simply the market in chocolate, which we all adore—diabetics or not—but our entire foundation of trade deals at this pivotal time in British history. The Minister is nodding his head, which indicates that he wishes to respond in a positive fashion. I very much look forward to hearing from him.