Trade Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Judith Cummins and Tom Pursglove

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Pursglove]

Q Would you say that you are supportive of free trade?

Nick Dearden: I would say we are supportive of trade, but it depends on how it is done. Absolutely. For example, I would say that an awful lot of trade that has happened in the European Union over the last 40 years —not all of it, because some of it we would be concerned about—has raised standards. It has raised standards for producers and for consumers, and that is positive. In the European Union, there is at least a balancing of trade and economic interests with social interests and environmental interests and with democratic scrutiny and accountability, so it is possible to do that.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

Q This question is for Nick Ashton-Hart. Given the sheer number and the complexity of the deals that you are describing, do you believe that it is possible to have all the agreements ready to go on day one after Brexit?

Nick Ashton-Hart: There are so many moving parts. Assuming that there is a date, that we know it, and that all counterparties have a few years’ advance warning of it—the date that matters is a date on which existing agreements will no longer be available to us—we would have to look at their approval process and count backwards to find the date by which we would have to conclude our negotiations with them. That is the only way that you would know what your actual hard finishing date was for any of those agreements. I do not know if that analysis has been done by the Department for International Trade—I am hoping that it has done some of it, and I am guessing that it probably has. Say it takes two years, and we have two years. We are not going to finish an agreement tomorrow, so that means that that deal will not be done in time. What percentage of our GDP, and of our exports and imports, is that deal, which will not be available?

That is the first thing that you would have to do is know how much negotiating time you have, and with which parties. You would then have to prioritise deals based on their economic importance to us. I am not sure what the decision tree is within the Ministry—I am sure that there must be one—for what it prioritises. The only way that you all will have a clear picture of the deadlines is to work backwards. I have seen no discussion at all of how long it takes our counterparties to conclude approving an agreement, but it can be a considerable time, depending on the country. I imagine it would be very difficult. The short answer is that it is hard for me to imagine that there are even enough people to negotiate that many deals simultaneously with that many parties, unless you had several years to do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

Q So they were pretty surprised that the Bill did not receive a unanimous Second Reading, with a view to amendments being tabled if hon. Members had individual concerns about things.

Tony Burke: We have not got to that situation directly in talking to our shop stewards and reps. We have been talking with our parliamentary colleagues who have steel in their constituencies, and our union reps are talking to them, so there would be concern.

[Judith Cummins]

Q We have heard a lot today about representation being vital to get the best deal and about gaining support from across society in terms of the Trade Bill and the trade deals. Tony Burke, in your view, is enough engagement in the formulation of trade policy with trade unions established by the Bill?

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.