Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill

Debate between Jim Shannon and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Report stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

We are here to talk about a very small part of a much wider trade Bill. To some extent, we are only talking about it because the Procurement Bill has not been brought to this House from the other place. If it had, we might not even be talking about some of this Bill’s clauses at all. Is that not a disgrace? Almost no other country has such poor scrutiny of its trade arrangements.

Of course, Britain did not have such poor scrutiny of its trade arrangements before we left the European Union. In this place, we were able to use the negative resolution procedure at several stages, including the pre-stage. The European Parliament had the right to vote down the deal at the pre-negotiating stage, as well as the final deal, and our Government could do so through the Council.

Now the Government, in all their ineptitude, are the ones who decide. They forced the CRaG process through, which in itself was unnecessary because ratification cannot be fully implemented until all the legislation has been laid down. There was no need for the CRaG process to happen last year without any substantive debate or vote in this place, because the trade deal cannot be fully brought into force until this Bill has passed.

The Government’s whole about-arse process on trade —we have heard all the criticisms made by the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—shows that they have no real plan and no real idea about how to negotiate. When I ask my Australian colleagues what they may have compromised on and what we may have gained, they say, “It’s a pretty good deal for us—we wrote it.”

Through the amendments on procurement, there are several things we can do to ameliorate the mess that the Government have made of this deal. First, we can ensure that Parliament has scrutiny over how the details will be implemented. If the deal goes through, as we heard in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and in my intervention on him, it might weaken the protections on procurement.

Ensuring that the statutory instruments laid before the House are not written as poorly as the Bill and the trade deal, so there is no wiggle room on procurement, should be our first step. The way to ensure that is by holding Ministers’ feet to the fire. In the Bill Committee, the Minister seemed a bit unsure about how the affirmative procedure and the negative procedure work. It is clear that if statutory instruments are made via the negative procedure, there will almost never be a debate in this House. They will go through without debate, because Members of this House will not be able to pray against them in time; sometimes we have seen Governments deliberately laying statutory instruments when the House is not sitting and cannot pray against them. That is the reality.

The only way to ensure debate and discussion, either on the Floor of the House or in Committee, is to ensure that the affirmative procedure is applied. That must be the bottom line. It is not hard, and it will not delay the process, because the Australians themselves need to go through an affirmative procedure when they implement measures. This is asking for nothing more than our counterparts are getting; to offer anything less would be to devalue and degrade Britain. We know that the Conservative Party is doing quite a lot of that at the moment, but come on; let us, at least on this one, show that Britain counts. Britain should be able to get something as good as what is available to Australia and other countries around the world. Underselling Britain is disgraceful, and we need to reverse that.

Secondly, we need clarity on the legal clauses. It needs to be made clear that they will not undermine the current protections around the world. As I said in my intervention, it is not a question of whether, in a court of law, we might reach a point at which British companies would be successful; that is irrelevant. The question is, would it be necessary to go to a court of law to determine whether British companies would be able to obtain compensation, or would everyone be so clear about the fact that a French company would be able to obtain compensation that a French competitor would be given a marginal competitive advantage? That is the question that arises from the poor wording in the Bill.

If a marginal advantage is given—even a theoretical advantage that in practice does not come about—multinational companies that can channel their trade either through their British company or through their French company for large procurement deals will do it through the French company, and then where will the tax be paid? Where will the revenue return? It will return to France, and Britain will lose out again. It is therefore vital for this clause to be included.

I am also deeply disappointed—and I wish the Government would accept some of the amendments that deal with this—about the fact that for Australia, the procurement requirements do not count at state level because Australia is a federal system. All its procurement, in respect of education, roads and building, universities and community facilities—I could go on—is at state level, so this trade deal does not bind the Australians. Because of the way this Government have negotiated the deal, they want to tie the hands of our devolved authorities and local government in a way in which Australian hands are not tied; again, selling Britain short. What we could see is the proper integration of our devolved authorities and local government, particularly big strategic local government—for instance, London-wide government and Metro Mayors. We could include them in the negotiations, or, even better, ensure that future negotiations do not allow an asymmetrical position in which we are included and others are not.

This is a poor deal, as we know from the other side. This is a poor Bill, which accepts everything from one side and protects Britain not one jot. The Opposition new clauses and amendments go some way towards ameliorating that. Ministers should accept them, thus ensuring that we can truly champion British businesses that are trying to trade around the world. That is what I genuinely believe we all want.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I was not expecting to be called at this point, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was just removing a mint from my mouth.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Did you think I was going to go on for longer?

[Jim Shannon]

Yes, I would expect the hon. Gentleman to do that—but what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Gentleman, who brings knowledge to these debates and, probably, to every debate. Let me also to say how pleased I am to be able to throw some of my thoughts and those of my party into this debate.

As a proud Brexiteer—that is no secret—I am pleased to see the opportunities that can and will come from Brexit, and we in Northern Ireland hope that we too will benefit from them. We await the Government’s endorsement of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which will give us the same opportunities as everyone else, but that is for a future debate rather than this one.

The potential of the Australian and New Zealand trade agreements is exciting for me and many others. The agricultural and fishing sectors are vital for my constituency, so my request to the Minister will be to provide the support to enable our agricultural sector to be protected. We in Northern Ireland are fortunate, in that we export food and drink products worth some £5.4 billion, and we export some 65% of that produce to the EU and across the world. We are already the epitome of what the Government are trying to achieve through this deal, and we are doing that right across the whole world. Lakeland Dairies is a good example. It is already moving to sell its produce in the far east, the middle east, Africa, south America and the USA, so it is very much to the fore. We also have Mash Direct, a buoyant company that is seeking markets overseas, and Willowbrook Foods and Rich Sauces, which likewise have farmers who feed into them. So we have a strong agri-sector in my constituency. The Minister knows that already; I am not telling him anything he does not know. He is always very astute and does his research so he will know what I am referring to, but I seek that wee bit of reassurance that my agri-sector in Strangford will be in a position to have those protections, and that we can be part of that export push that the Government clearly want to bring about.

World AIDS Day

Debate between Jim Shannon and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Thursday 1st December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World AIDS Day.

I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS and honorary patron of the British HIV Association, and of course as someone who is personally affected by these issues.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate to mark World AIDS Day. Every year, on 1 December, the world commemorates World AIDS Day. People from around the world unite to show support for people living with and affected by HIV, and remember those who lost their lives to AIDS. At 5.30 pm, I, among the community in Brighton, will read out the names of all the people who have died of AIDS in Brighton in the 40 years since the first death, as we do every year. Vigils such as that will be happening up and down the country: in London, in Birmingham, in Manchester, in Oxford, and in other places.

This year’s theme is “equalise”. It is a recognition of the health inequalities that still affect far too many children, men that sleep with men, transgender people, drug users, sex workers and people in prison. Those are the populations most affected by HIV and AIDS in their respective countries; different countries might have different, more focused populations, but those are the groups. Fundamentally, however, the groups that are most at risk are people who are marginalised from healthcare, and that is what we need to equalise—that is what we need to sort out.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the former Hansard reporter Terry Higgins, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 4 July 1982, and the creation of the now well-known Terrence Higgins Trust. On behalf of the APPG, I thank the Terrence Higgins Trust, not only for the work it has done over the past 40 years but for the work it keeps doing, pushing for us to have no new transmissions of HIV by 2030. That seems a remarkable target, but it is within our reach; it will help the estimated 106,000 people living with HIV in England that we know of. The work of the Terrence Higgins Trust, along with the National AIDS Trust and others, continues to lead the way, and I am delighted that the two organisations are working closer together. I hope that collaboration continues.

Ahead of World AIDS Day in 2018, four years ago now, I spoke in this Chamber about my own diagnosis. I said then that World AIDS Day was

“deeply personal to me, because next year I will be marking an anniversary of my own”.—[Official Report, 29 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 492.]

Now, of course, it is 14 years since I became HIV-positive. It has been a long journey, from fear to acceptance and to today, where I now play a role of advocacy, knowing that my treatment keeps me healthy and protects any partner that I might have, preventing me from passing on the disease. Since then, further developments have taken place in the fight against HIV/AIDS—many of them positive, but there have been some setbacks, which I wish to talk about in a bit.

We have, of course, a HIV action plan in England, setting clear goals and milestones for achieving our target. Similar plans are set to be launched in Scotland and Wales—we hope they will come quickly. Last year’s HIV action plan for England sets out how we will achieve an 80% reduction in HIV infections by 2025, building to the end of transmissions by 2030. First, that plan will prevent new infections by expanding and improving HIV prevention activities, investing £3.5 million in a national HIV prevention programme up to 2024, and ensure that PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis—is expanded to all key groups. Secondly, it will scale up HIV testing in high-risk populations where uptake is low, and ensure that new infections are identified rapidly, including through the expansion of opt-out testing in A&E departments in areas of very high prevalence of HIV. That testing will be backed by £20 million over the next three years.

Thirdly, the plan will ensure that, once diagnosed, people rapidly receive treatment. When I was first diagnosed, you waited until your CD4 count was below 200, which is when you can start to get infections and AIDS can start to be diagnosed. At that time, we did not know whether the drugs would cause continuing side effects; now, as soon as someone is diagnosed, they go on the drugs, because we know that they have very few side effects. Of course, each person has to get the combination that is right for them, because everyone reacts differently, but we have a good array of drugs with which to do that. That means that very quickly—within a matter of months—new people who are diagnosed can be undetectable, and can effectively go about their life without fear or favour. That is a remarkable change in those 14 years.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, and commend him for his stance and leadership in this House—and, indeed, outside of this House—when it comes to HIV/AIDS and how to live with it, as he does. In Northern Ireland, which he did not refer to, the Public Health Agency has responsibility for this area. Its hope and ambition is to reach the target of eliminating HIV transmission by 2030, and it seems confident that it can do so, because of the PrEP that he has referred to. It is good sometimes to mark and record the things that are going well.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is remarkable. If we achieve that 2030 target in this country, and if we then achieve a roll-out of it globally—that is a lot of ifs—HIV will be the first disease that we have rolled back via treatment and prevention, rather than vaccines. It would be a world leader, and hopefully a pioneer in how we can treat and test other diseases, particularly with mass testing, which I will come on to in a second.

If all that happens, we will meet the 2030 target, but—as we always say—the Government need to do more. To start with, they need to expand opt-out testing. That has been trialled in areas with very high prevalence—that is, Brighton, London, Manchester and Blackpool. Not all of London was originally included in the opt-out testing, but it took the decision to expand that to all hospitals in London, sharing out the money. Remarkably, that has shown that, in non-high prevalence areas, the percentage of people coming back with an HIV-positive test is still significant. The argument, therefore, is to roll that out to all areas.

Over the past 12 months, we have seen real successes in opt-out testing in England. That happens when somebody is already having their blood taken in A&E and the vial is sent off for an additional test. We are testing for HIV and hepatitis B, unless someone opts out. No one is forced to do this, but I understand that very few people opt out.

The pilot’s results have been astonishing. In just three months, 102 people were newly identified, and 70 people were identified as having dropped out of treatment. If someone drops out of treatment, they are a risk not only to themselves, but to the wider community. Those people have been brought back into treatment and that has saved lives. The results are clear: opt-out testing is working.

On a side note, it is also possible to test for syphilis with the same vial. However, it was not possible to expand this to syphilis, because syphilis testing is paid for by local authorities, not by NHS England, and the local authorities were unable to identify where people were from, because hospitals are not coterminous with local authorities and it was too complicated. That seems ridiculous. We need the Government to sit down with local authorities or to provide for that through central funding. If we are taking the vial, we can run it through the same machine. If the only reason stopping us is bureaucratic, I do not see why we cannot do this. We should test people routinely for as many things as we can, if we know that it will help people’s lives. We know that there is a spike in syphilis in certain key populations.

If this vital programme is eventually expanded to all towns and cities with high prevalence, it will be a game- changer. Where London has expanded the programme, it has already been worthwhile financially in areas that do not have very high prevalence. The programme should also be expanded to sexual health clinics to ensure that everyone going to one is tested for HIV. This may be a surprise to many, but that is not always done routinely and it is not an opt-out system. Actually, an HIV test is becoming less, not more common, because more sexual health clinics are moving to online services. Online services have some great advantages, but one downside is that they require people to collect a vial of their blood, which often does not happen, or does not happen effectively, so HIV test rates are lower. We need to ensure that, when people attend a clinic, it is routine and there is an opt-out system. Some clinics do this already, but it is not universal.

I spoke about the HIV prevention drug, PrEP, in 2018. We have a come a long way since the PrEP impact trial. To remind colleagues, PrEP, which is a pill that people take daily, contains two of the three drugs that someone with HIV would have. In fact, I have now been reduced to two because the latest evidence shows that, when someone gets to “undetectable”, the drug load for people who have HIV can be reduced to, effectively, just the PrEP load. The drugs will not be exactly the same as I take for PrEP, but some people can maintain on those as well. So this is also about new interventions that can reduce the costs and the amount of drugs that we are providing.

PrEP prevents HIV and the pill is covered by NHS England, but thousands are still missing out. They are struggling to get PrEP appointments because of under-resourced sexual health services. That is laid bare in the latest report from the National AIDS Trust, the Terrence Higgins Trust, PrEPster, Sophia Forum and One Voice Network. Due to the fragmentation of services in England, the drug PrEP is paid for by NHS England. That is a real milestone for the NHS, and I congratulate the Government on getting that out eventually, after our interventions.

Anyone who is currently sexually active should be tested by sexual health services every three months, and anyone on PrEP should be tested every three months. In theory, therefore, there is no additional resource for sexual health services for someone on PrEP, because the only people on PrEP should be those who are sexually active, or drug-injecting users who should also be tested, and so on—we should not give it to people who do not need it. But our sexual health services in this country rely on balancing the budget through the fact that people do not attend as regularly as they should. Therefore, that limits the places for PrEP appointments and limits the people who can get access to the drug that the NHS is paying for, even though they are entitled to it and should be offered that level of service.

Awareness of PrEP is far too low and it cannot be given out by GPs, pharmacies, community or maternity services. That means that the burden is solely on local government-funded sexual health services. We all know what is happening with local government and probably do not need to go there today—that is a whole other debate.

If we are going to meet our 2030 target, it is vital that everyone who is at risk of acquiring HIV and who wishes to access PrEP can do so as a key tool in completely and effectively preventing new HIV transmissions when it is taken as directed. Over the past two years, the all-party group on HIV and AIDS has published three important reports. We published “Increasing and normalising HIV testing across the UK”—which I just touched on—and “Nothing about us without us”, which addresses the needs of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in the UK. Those communities are some of the hardest-hit by HIV in this country and are the least likely to have HIV testing done routinely. The roll-out and trial of the saliva HIV testing, which the Terrence Higgins Trust did two years ago and last year, was particularly effective in those communities. It was seen as less invasive, more private, easier to get hold of and possible to do through online and postal services. The Government should consider whether that process should be normalised nationally or provided cheaply and accessibly.

Our other report, “HIV and Quality of Life—What do we mean? How do we achieve it?”, was published today, and my colleagues have been launching that in Brussels with our partners in Europe. Those reports have been made possible only through the evidence provided by the strong HIV sector that we have in the UK. Its continued insights and hard work are appreciated.

The latest data, however, is not quite as positive. There were 2,692 people diagnosed across England in 2021. That is up 0.7%, from 2,673 in 2020. Some might say that is a small amount but, in 2022, there was a fall of 0.2% and, in 2019, there was a fall of 33%. We are clearly plateauing and there is a danger that we are starting to get more diagnoses. That might be positive because we are delving down to the hardest-to-reach areas, but we need more evidence on why that has plateaued and why it is creeping up before we can be sure that that is something to celebrate, rather than to be worried about.

To keep on track, it is vital that we use every lever available to end HIV transmission and to ensure that we do not plateau, as the numbers show. As I said, we can end transmission by 2030 and I strongly believe that the UK will be one of the first countries to do so. We are a world leader. At the beginning of the week, I spoke to our London NHS colleagues, who said that it is the first time in their career that people have been phoning up from around the world to say, “How are you doing the opt-out testing? How are you doing the PrEP roll-out? We want to learn from you.” That is remarkable and we should be deeply proud of that. The head of UNAIDS came to London and Brighton and we showed her the HIV testing vending machines that we have in Brighton. She said, “I thought that I would never learn anything for the developing world from a rich country. I was here as a courtesy visit, but I have seen what you are doing and how we can roll that out to parts of Kenya and Uganda, and community settings around the world, with HIV testing vending machines that run using solar panels”.

Environmental Protection

Debate between Jim Shannon and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Proper cutlery! I hear lots of support.

To highlight the problem of single use, in 2018, McDonald’s UK faced a huge public backlash after the images of their distinctive striped plastic straws on picturesque beaches around the world, and it made a move to paper straws—laudable, fantastic, we would all say. But today it uses 1.8 million paper straws a day and that is 675 million a year. The tragedy is that these straws cannot be fully recycled, so they end up being incinerated, adding to landfill or even getting into our seas—the very thing that they were meant to prevent.

Replacing one dangerous product with a slightly less dangerous product or energy-exhausting product defeats the point, when the reality is that most people do not need to use plastic straws. We can move away from the idea of unnecessary consumption. Huge numbers of supermarkets and food outlets have already moved away from plastics to wooden or compostable cutlery, but these too end up in incineration. As we know, incineration in this country has a particularly poor energy generation ratio compared with other European countries.

DEFRA’s own impact assessment on the regulations has assumed that plastics will be replaced on a like-for-like basis, so while we are pleased to see the Government trying to eliminate plastics, it is very disappointing to see this missed opportunity to tackle the problem of single use. The Government are patting themselves on the back because of a ban on three items of plastics, when we need to shift our throwaway culture. We urgently need the extended producer responsibility scheme that is being considered in the European Union, and we should be taking the lead. Such programmes put an obligation on the producer to create more sustainable products. They incentivise companies that are doing the right thing, as well as disincentivising the wrong thing. When will we see the plastic bottle deposit scheme actually introduced in this place, and when will we see it reflecting the material used, rather than just the one-size-fits-all model that, unfortunately, has been adopted in Scotland?

With fast fashion and the inability to repair, we have not just straws and cotton buds being thrown away, but almost everything we can consume being thrown away. We are creating and destroying at alarming rates.

[Jim Shannon]

To take the returnable plastic bottle option a stage further, if we are to make that happen we need to have the co-operation of the giant supermarkets and similar. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that that would be a way forward?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is. Actually, I was on a phone call with the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) earlier today, and many of the producers were saying they welcomed and wanted to move towards that sort of scheme, which I was very pleased to hear.

As I have said, we are creating and destroying at alarming rates, but we must design a more circular economy. Where are the Government on the right to repair? That is another issue now being talked about globally—the right to have items repaired, rather than throw them away, whether they be electrical or composite plastic items. The Government are also a signatory to the sustainable development goals, No. 12 being the implementation of a 10-year framework for programmes for sustainable consumption and production. It says that developed countries must take the lead, so what lead has DEFRA made on changing production patterns, rather than just these particular regulations? I contend that simply banning plastics, although a welcome step, is not enough in creating sustainable production patterns, as agreed under our international obligations.

I would like to ask the Minister some specific questions about the regulations’ implementation. What guidelines will be given to local authorities on the enforcement of these regulations? What resources will be given to local authorities to ensure that they are enforced? Will there be annual reporting on the compliance visits, on the problems found and on the responses to complaints from the public about unlawful retailing of straws and other plastic products? Finally, when will the Government bring forward their plan for extended producer responsibility, rather than piecemeal SIs?

As we face a climate and ecological crisis, we must stop making piecemeal changes. We must have some hard conversations about changing corporate and consumer behaviour. Our short-term convenience must not come at the cost of our planet and future generations.