(6 years, 11 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Tony Burke: No. We have been working with the Manufacturing Trade Remedies Alliance, which includes a number of trade associations—as I have said, steel, chemicals, fertilisers and so on—and I think there has been a coming together. We would have preferred a longer period, obviously, to go through this in detail—a longer period to argue for the things that we put forward in our document, which were generally accepted by everybody. To answer your question, the only way we are going to be able to make sure that the voice of working people is heard is to have representation on that body directly from the trade unions.
Chris Southworth: I would make an additional point. I completely support that point, but if there is one thing we have learned over the last year and a half, it is that we have to accept that there is generally a low understanding of trade, and trade itself has moved on significantly in the last 40 years; the world we live in today is not the same as it was 40 years ago, either. I think that extra diligence in relation to consultation and informing the public, and business for that matter—businesses are in the same position, surprising as that may sound—is a good idea.
Q
James Ashton-Bell: Specifically when it comes to trade remedies, I think the most important place to start is: where have mistakes been made and where have processes not delivered outcomes, either in a timely way or in terms of the right kind of outcomes for the wider economy? I know there is a lot that officials have been looking at to learn what not to do from the EU, because everyone agrees that that system is not perfect. Much of that thinking has coloured some of what has gone into this Bill. There are aspects of the US system that do not work. No one has a system that we have found you can hold up as an absolutely perfect system. There are always going to be different balances that have to be made, but the fact that officials working on this have looked at the US, Canadian, EU, Japanese and Swiss systems means that they have certainly made a good effort to try to learn from others’ mistakes, and that is an excellent place to start.