Trade Deals: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Debate between Julie Elliott and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) for securing the debate. Members will know that I have a very specific interest in ensuring there is ample scrutiny of these trade deals—notably, any one with India. My constituent Jagtar Singh Johal has been arbitrarily detained in an Indian prison for almost five years, and the authorities of the Republic of India seem unable or unwilling to address the allegations of torture, abuse of process and arbitrary detention that have dogged the case and my constituent.

Quite simply, as the Minister may or may not agree, this is a case that really gets to the root of both this debate and the UK Government’s ongoing attitude to pursuing these trade deals. This is a case where we see the power of the unstoppable force—namely that one of the largest supposed benefits of Brexit was the ability of the UK Government to gain unfettered access to the world’s fastest-growing economies—meet the immovable object, namely the UK Government’s clearly stated aim, articulated so well by the sadly departed Minister at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), that

“We will not pursue trade to the exclusion of human rights”—[Official Report, 7 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 258WH.]

It is a matter of some considerable record, because I speak about it quite a lot in both the Chamber and Westminster Hall, as hon. and right hon. Members will know.

The human rights failings in the case of Jagtar Singh Johal are manifest and egregious. Despite this, we continue with a policy where a UK-India FTA has now become probably the greatest prize in the view of the Government, as long as the US-UK FTA remains unachievable. What can the Minister say to us to demonstrate consequences for the Republic of India for its continued mistreatment of my constituent or, alternatively, what it would have to do for the UK to threaten to pull the plug on these talks? Either way, it appears unarguable that in continuing to pursue this trade agreement, the Government are setting a precedent for future deals that human rights, and the rights of individual UK citizens, are placed below the pursuit of growth. In that sense, those who seek to defend human rights can probably join that distinguished list of those that the Prime Minister has labelled “the anti-growth coalition”. We see plenty of evidence in other areas that the UK Government’s pick-and-choose attitude to human rights and free trade agreements is making any claims to democratic accountability and oversight seem quite ridiculous.

Take the glee with which the Prime Minister trumpets the UK’s determination to sign a free trade agreement with a host of Gulf states, while speaking about preventing authoritarian regimes—such as Russia and, rightfully, China—from having any leverage in the UK economy. It is a truly bizarre situation. While I and other members of the Scottish National party have long called for the UK to wean itself off Russian and Chinese investments that have made so many people in this city and this Parliament enormously wealthy, the Government seem to be seeking to replace those investments with ones from regimes whose human rights and democratic records are essentially the same, and that—as demonstrated by recent OPEC decisions—do not share our broader geopolitical agenda. While we can correctly cite Russia’s assassination of dissidents by regime-loyal criminals as a reason to sanction it, we do not apply the same rationale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when it invites dissidents into one of its embassies and chops them up with a bone saw. While China is rightly criticised for its debt-trap diplomacy in places such as Sri Lanka, we rarely use the same rationale when we allow Emirati sovereign wealth funds to buy critical pieces of UK economic infrastructure, only for them to sack thousands of staff and threaten the Government with the closure of that infrastructure.

Quite simply, parliamentary scrutiny of these trade deals starts and ends with hard and fast rules, which this Government can use to build confidence in the House. Otherwise, I have to say: what is the point?

I would hope that my colleagues in the SNP and I—and, I am happy to wager, the vast majority of Scottish voters—would never stand for swapping the largest democratic free trade agreement and single market in human history for a series of piecemeal agreements that are, from my perspective, of dubious value. We will never stop shouting about the absurdity of leaving that single market, composed as it is of democracies with whom we share so much, in exchange for a sugar rush of cheap money and dealings with authoritarian regimes that share so few of the values that we here in Europe hold very dear.

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

I am introducing an informal time limit of less than four minutes to try and get everyone in.