Trade Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 3—the genocide amendment. It is the only vote on genocide on the table today. I regret that the compromise amendment that we tabled has been rejected.

Let us remember that we are talking about genocide: the systematic destruction of an entire people. It is a threshold that is so hard to reach because it is the most heinous of all crimes—the forced sterilisation of women, forced labour and re-education camps for hundreds of thousands of children. The Board of Deputies of British Jews stated that it is reminded of the holocaust when it thinks of the plight of the Uyghurs; it cannot get any worse than that.

Members across the House have a very simple choice to make today. We can, by voting in favour of Lord Alton’s amendment 3, empower the UK to fulfil its UN obligations under the genocide convention and ensure that we do not offer advantageous trade deals to genocidal states. It really is that simple. The UN continues to fail to recognise that genocides are happening until it is too late. The UN and the Security Council are in a state of frozen paralysis, held hostage by Russia and China and incapable of holding genocidal states to account.

Against the amendment, the Minister and some of my hon. Friends argue that we should not outsource trade policy to the UK courts, and that the proper place to make decisions about genocide is in international courts. In practice, that means that we have to accept that foreign states will always hold a veto over our determination of genocide. I do not accept that that is taking back control. I do not accept that our courts are not skilled enough to determine breaches of international law. I do not accept that the Bill as drafted gives Parliament sufficient say over whether states that we wish to strike trade deals with are committing genocide.

I understand the concerns about Executive power, and the role of Parliament versus the courts, which is why I tabled an amendment with colleagues in lieu of Lords amendment 3 to address those concerns. Courts will judge, Parliament will opine and Ministers will decide. Yet that amendment was rejected. If the Government believe that this is still an unacceptable derogation of power, what is the alternative and what are the Government’s objections? If we do not pass the amendment today, we will be outsourcing all future decisions on genocide to Russia and China. We now have an independent trade policy after leaving the EU, and Brexit was a vote of hope and optimism and for Britain to play its part in leading the world, so why would we want to use our new-found freedom to trade with states that commit and profit from genocide? Britain is surely better than that.

Tomorrow, Joe Biden becomes the President of the United States, our closest allies. Today is Britain’s moment to blaze a trail and showcase global leadership on trade and international law. We can all talk about our noblest values, but we cannot do so while allowing the vilest of crimes to continue. We have an amendment. We can make a stand against genocide. We can uphold our United Nations obligations and ensure that we do not trade with genocidal states, or we can do nothing, and to do nothing is a counsel of despair.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind) [V]]

It is a pleasure to speak briefly in this debate in support of the amendments made in the other place. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) who made a very passionate and convincing case for supporting Lords amendment 3, to which I will refer later.

Lords amendment 1 would introduce vital democratic safeguards into international trade policy by ensuring that the Executive cannot operate unilaterally. It would strengthen the hand of Parliament without undermining the ability of the UK Government to conduct negotiations as they see fit. In reality, the negotiations with the European Union have clearly shown that trade agreements can have far-reaching consequences for people’s everyday lives, from food standards to workers’ rights, from environmental legislation to the impact on our public services. It is to be welcomed then that Lords amendment 1 would require the UK Government to outline their negotiating objectives to Parliament prior to the commencement of any trade negotiations and to secure the agreement of both Houses before a deal is ratified, giving Members of Parliament a meaningful role in setting trade policy.

There was much debate during earlier proceedings of the Bill about how domestic democratic empowerment would strengthen the hand of the UK Government when it comes to trade negotiations. That was certainly my experience during a brief visit to the United States many years ago to scrutinise the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US, where we were reminded that there were certain matters, such as access to food markets, which were non-negotiable for Congress.

Although I support Lords amendment 1, I would have liked to see it go even further in respect of strengthening the role of the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Governments and respective Parliaments. That would not be without precedence. In the EU, every single member state has a veto over its international trade deals as well as sub-national Governments such as Wallonia in Belgium. Although I accept that the UK Government have a direct responsibility for trade policy, I believe that a world of constitutional trouble awaits us unless there are statutory safeguards for the respective countries of the British state. I therefore urge the British Government not only to retain Lords amendment 1, but to go a step further by giving the devolved Parliaments a veto on trade agreements.

I wish briefly to pledge my support for Lords amendment 3—the so-called genocide amendment—which several right hon. and hon. Members have supported this afternoon. Effectively, it couples international trade policy with the promotion of human rights.

Lords amendment 4 would place protections for the NHS on a legislative basis. I also support Lords amendment 6, which sets out to protect a range of regulatory standards such as for food, animal welfare and workers’ rights. Given the increasing noises coming from the Government Benches about a bonfire of standards, acceptance of this amendment would go a long way to allaying fears that our trade policy would be used as a regressive Trojan horse.

I am disappointed to see that the Government are seeking to remove provisions from Lords amendment 9 that strengthen the Trade and Agriculture Commission. Again, I ask Ministers to include representatives from the devolved Governments on the commission and introduce scrutiny protocols for the commission with the Welsh Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) [V]]

A lot in this Trade Bill is to be welcomed, including its reinforced commitments to an agricultural commission, which has been welcomed by the farming sector and the NFU, as well as more scrutiny by the International Trade Committee. In my 10th year as trade envoy for three Prime Ministers, I believe that the Bill is further evidence of our commitment to take forward UK trade and investment across the world as a key part of global Britain, and that is not just an idle slogan, for international trade and investment secures jobs across our country, funds our welfare and social justice, and requires engagement globally.

Today we face the so-called genocide amendment, which would propose to replicate the role of the UN and the International Criminal Court because of issues with how that process is currently functioning. The amendment would—as the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) clearly illustrated when she spoke about both Cameroon and Egypt—be used by many Members who wish to expand the creation of such a court to have a much wider role on human rights issues and their implications for our trade arrangements, including those already signed, as well as those proposed.

Earlier we heard another Opposition Member, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), refer to human rights abuses in Indonesia—a country that has moved further and faster in the development of an open democratic society over the last decade than almost anywhere else I can think of—so let us be in no doubt as to where some would take this amendment. We would find, in an imperfect world, that such a court would be used to limit and constrain our free trade severely, which neither the Labour party nor the SNP was ever in favour of anyway. These are issues that should be decided by our Government and, above all, this Parliament.

Let me briefly address the Uyghur question, for Lords amendment 3 in the first place is aimed squarely at the People’s Republic of China. Many years ago, I almost died in Xinjiang, crossing its great Taklamakan desert. What has happened there for many decades, but with greatly increased severity since 2009, cannot conceivably be supported by anyone in the United Kingdom, but I do not believe that this amendment, if implemented, would achieve anything at all for the Uyghurs or Xinjiang. We should not be asking judges to make political judgments. It is for this place to decide what our relationship with China should be. Over the last decade, we have veered from golden era to worst era in a short period of time. We have to find that balance, and the Trade Bill is not the place for it. It should be part of the integrated review on foreign policy and defence that we await shortly. Meanwhile, I support the Government strongly in opposing an amendment that would subcontract our scrutiny of human rights and of our trade relationships to a new court.