Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liam Byrne and Gareth Thomas

Thursday 31st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

On Tuesday, we will hear from Sir Alan Bates and other victims of the Horizon scandal, which continues to deepen. In September, we learned that there will be 100 more convictions quashed than we originally thought, and yesterday the bill for redress went up by half a billion pounds. Have all the victims now come forward, and are there any gaps left in the schemes for redress?

[Gareth Thomas]

I welcome the decision by my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee to take a further look at the issue. It is a priority for the Department to speed up the compensation process. Victims are still coming forward, and we are actively looking at whether all those who come forward are covered by the compensation schemes. We have asked the Post Office to write to all those sub-postmasters who have not yet come forward to see if they are eligible for compensation.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Gareth Thomas

Report stage
Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend is generous in his description of my speech—I am grateful to him—and absolutely right about the importance of Labour’s plan for the creative sector.

Reform of the UK’s copyright framework should not be taken lightly, and it should only follow proper and well-considered consultation. Otherwise, we risk endangering our gold standard of protection for our vital creative sector. I gently suggest to the House that the reforms allowed for under clause 5 should not have been shoehorned into this Bill, and certainly not without a thorough consultation having taken place first. In that regard we are sympathetic to the merits of new clause 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham. We will continue to scrutinise developments in this area, and we hope that Ministers will reach a final decision, after the consultation, that will not have the adverse impact that is feared by some outside the House.

As I have said, I share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown in new clauses 2 and 3, and I therefore hope he will join us with enthusiasm in the Lobby later today. Similarly, I share the desire of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington for much greater adherence to the conventions of the International Labour Organisation. We raised this issue in Committee, and as I said earlier, I share his frustration—and that of other Members—that Ministers have not allowed the House a substantive debate under the CRaG process.

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech, is right to underline the point about ILO obligations. In the 2022 Queen’s Speech we were promised an updating of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 that would have required much stronger action and transparency on supply chains in order to eliminate forced labour. That measure seems to have disappeared, so we must insist on more robust action in our trade agreements if we are to wipe out the scandal of modern slavery.

[Gareth Thomas]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ministers will have heard his point; whether they will act on it remains to be seen, but I certainly hope they do. If we are lucky enough to be elected at the next general election, we will certainly work with the ILO to try to drive better adherence to its conventions.

Last but not least, I share the ambition of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, who made a powerful speech, for a much more open dialogue on trade and the axing of more of the red tape, bureaucracy and barriers to trade with European markets thrown up by the poor negotiating skills of the last Prime Minister but two.

There remain, in particular, serious concerns about scrutiny of trade agreements and about the damage that ISDS provisions could do, so we will, with the leave of the House, press new clauses 4 and 5 to a vote.

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

I thank colleagues for their contributions to the debates on this important Bill. Let me begin with the new clauses relating to new accessions to the CPTPP: new clause 1, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith)—who always demonstrates his passion on this important matter—new clause 4, tabled by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), and new clause 11, tabled by the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green).

As the House may know, there is no rule within the CPTPP that requires new applicants to be dealt with on a “first come, first served” basis. Rather, it has been agreed within the group that applicant economies must meet three important criteria—called the Auckland principles—and it is on those key principles that applications will be assessed. Applicants must: first, be willing and able to meet the high standards of the agreement; secondly, have a demonstrated pattern of complying with their trade commitments; and thirdly, be able to command consensus of the CPTPP parties. Those strong criteria will be applied to each accession application. It is right that we in the United Kingdom, as a new member of the CPTPP group, work within the principles of the group to achieve a consensus decision.

I remind the House that while the UK rightly participates in discussions on this topic with CPTPP parties, we will only have a formal say over an application post-ratification and entry into force of the agreement. It is therefore crucial that we ratify the agreement and become a party, so that we can work with CPTPP members decisively on each current and future application. With that in mind, it would not be appropriate for the Government to give a running commentary on individual applicants, not least because to be drawn on individual applicants now, ahead of the UK becoming a party to the agreement, could have an impact on our ability to achieve that important goal of ensuring that the CPTPP enters into force. I should also make it clear that our own accession process has set a strong precedent. The robust experience that the UK has undergone has reinforced the high standards and proved that the bar is not easy to meet for any aspirant.

Regarding the scrutiny of any hypothetical future accession, I can assure the House that any accession of a new party to the CPTPP would require an amendment to the terms of the CPTPP. Therefore, as with the UK’s accession protocol, our firm intention is that such a future accession would be subject to the terms of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—the CRaG process. I assure the House that CRaG is applicable to plurilateral agreements such as the CPTPP. The Act makes no distinction between bilateral, plurilateral or multilateral treaties as outlined in section 25 of CRaG.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Gareth Thomas

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

One set of figures the Secretary of State’s Department definitely did not put together were those that the Office for Budget Responsibility produced. It now expects only a 0.04% increase in our economic growth, after a decade, from joining CPTPP. As we already have free trade agreements in place with nine of the other 11 CPTPP members, formally joining CPTPP feels rather thin compensation for Ministers’ many other failures on trade.

[Liam Byrne]

In the light of the news that the figures that have been tabled by the Department are not accurate—I can barely believe it—would my hon. Friend, like me, have expected there to be a new impact assessment alongside the Bill, with the latest departmental assessments set out clearly therein?

[Gareth Thomas]

It would have been an excellent idea if the Secretary of State had published those. Perhaps she might be willing to publish them at the same time as giving us a statement about what exactly is going on in the negotiations with Canada. We will have to use the review of CPTPP in 2026 to try to increase more markedly the benefits of membership for British jobs, British consumers and growth.

Batteries for Electric Vehicle Manufacturing

Debate between Liam Byrne and Gareth Thomas

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. Although it has been thrilling for all of us to hear it, I would not want him to be under the impression that he can make these statements only in Westminster Hall. He can apply for time in the main Chamber, and that may be something he wants to consider for the future.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend the Select Committee for its work, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) for the way in which he introduced the Committee’s report.

One issue, I want to touch on, which the report rightly highlights, is the looming cliff edge in the trade and co-operation agreement, with much tighter rules of origin for electric vehicles from 1 January. As I understand it, Ministers have still not set up a key working group on automotive parts, which was agreed in the TCA. That group could have helped industry to get heard a lot earlier and in its understandable call, backed by the Committee, for a three-year extension to the current rules of origin. Ministers seem to have gone quiet on whether agreement will be reached on a three-year extension. Indeed, the Prime Minister appears to have taken little interest in what could be a significant drag on UK exports of electric vehicles in the coming months. Will the Chair of the Select Committee update the House on what he knows about the current state of negotiations and Ministers’ current efforts to win a three-year extension to the rules of origin?

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As ever, he is on the money. The rules of origin framework was put in place with the best intentions, to try to incentivise people in Europe and the United Kingdom to get gigafactory investments in place, but that has not yet happened. We have a looming gigafactory gap in this country, and if we do not negotiate an extension to the rules of origin, we will have tariffs of up to 10% on some of our exports, which will have a really serious impact on hundreds of thousands of jobs. Given how much is at stake and how many jobs are in peril, we were surprised to see almost no news about where the renegotiation of the rules of origin had got to. That was one reason why we stated it so clearly as a requirement in our conclusions—so that the Government now have to go on the record to explain to the House, and indeed the country, precisely what they are doing.