Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

I very much welcome that intervention. The harsh reality is that this deal is being stitched up behind closed doors by negotiators, with the influence of big corporations and the dark arts of corporate lawyers. They are stitching up rules that would be outside contract law and common law, and outside the shining light of democracy, to give powers to multinationals to sue Governments over laws that were designed to protect their citizens.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he welcome, as I do, the suspension of the investor-state dispute settlement section of the negotiations, and does that hopefully mean that we can be in a better place, without some of the concerns to which he has correctly alluded?

[Geraint Davies]

I will move on to those issues and I do, of course, agree.

There is a current risk that the agreement struck behind closed doors is only subjected to yes or no—take it or leave it—in the European Parliament, and that ratification in this House occurs after the implementation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. That is hardly democracy. Today I am calling—it is not much of a call—simply for parliamentarians here and in Europe to have the right to scrutiny. The mechanics for that would be to empower us to recommend amendments that could be made by other representatives in Europe.