Trade Bill

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st October 2020 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bassam of Brighton]

13: Clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert—
“(4A) Regulations under subsection (1) may make provision for the purpose of implementing an international trade agreement only if the provisions of that international trade agreement do not in any way restrict the ability—(a) to make public services at a national or local level subject to public monopoly;(b) to make public services at a national or local level subject to exclusive rights granted to private operators; and(c) to bring public services at a national or local level back into the public sector for delivery by public sector employees.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that regulations made under the Bill can only be made if the trade agreement which the regulations would implement does not contravene the ability of a UK government to take public services back into public ownership.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to open this important group and move Amendment 13 in my name. I indicate, at this point, that I shall be supporting Amendment 51. Protecting public services must be a priority for any Government, but we must not let bad trade deals limit the ability to provide this protection. In doing this, allowing services to be brought back into public ownership is one of the important tools Governments should not give away lightly or easily in negotiations. Concerns are well documented about how standstill and ratchet clauses in agreements can lock in levels of privatisation and other forms of liberalisation and accelerate them, which will limit the scope of future Governments to take sensible steps, when services are not being properly provided, to bring them back into the public sector.

Most US trade deals also contain forms of investor-state dispute settlement, which could allow foreign investors to sue the UK Government for actions that threaten their profits, including renationalising parts of the former public sector. ISDS does not pose a hypothetical threat, but a very real one. The Portuguese Government were sued using ISDS when the metro in Lisbon was returned to public ownership. ISDS clauses in bilateral investment treaties are being used now to prepare a series of cases against the UK Government for pausing construction contracts during the pandemic.

The TUC is particularly worried that the Bill does not exempt all public services from trade agreements, as this would allow part-privatised services to be included in commitments to reduce barriers to trade. When part-privatised services are included in this way, they cannot be brought back into public ownership as this would be regarded as a barrier to other countries being able to access the UK market. Only last week, the TUC expressed concern about the UK’s intention to join CPTPP, since CPTPP has no general exemption for public services.

Amendment 13 would ensure that regulations made under the Bill to implement agreements can be made only if they do not contravene the ability of a UK Government to take public services back into public ownership. Public services provide an essential public good. Ministers must not forget that as they seek to clinch a trade deal at any cost.

I indicated I will be strongly supporting Amendment 51, in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton, to protect the NHS and publicly funded healthcare services in other parts of the UK from any form of control from outside the UK. If the Covid crisis has taught us anything, it is how reliant we are on the NHS and care services. The idea of them being put out to tender to foreign companies fills most of us with dread.

The Minister will undoubtedly say that the Government have made clear that the NHS will not be on the table in any trade deal, especially with the US. I am sure he will stress that we will not be paying higher prices for drugs, nor moving patient data across the Atlantic, but the US negotiating objectives for a UK FTA, in the section on procedural fairness for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, clearly call for “government regulatory reimbursement regimes” to provide

“full market access for U.S. products.”

The US President has clearly said that foreign Governments extort “unreasonably low prices” from US pharmaceutical firms, and he directed his trade negotiator to make the issue

“a top priority with every trading partner.”

The Prime Minister also made clear in a Telegraph article that he supports an insurance-based healthcare system for non-essential treatments.

I sense we are losing clarity, but we can provide it by supporting the amendment of my noble friend Lady Thornton. I believe that the lack of scrutiny mechanisms for trade agreements and the Government’s desire not to put NHS protections in the Bill are connected, and I am not the only one. The British Medical Association has said that under the Bill

“Parliament does not have adequate powers to guide and scrutinise trade negotiations and the current process provides no legal mechanism to directly influence or permanently block trade agreements. This could mean the UK enters into trade deals that have significant impact on public health and the domestic healthcare sector without Parliament having a meaningful role in scrutiny.”


We should heed that warning.

Global Justice Now has also found that the US wants its companies to have unrestricted access to UK data, including NHS health records. The value of this health data is estimated at £10 billion a year. The Bill in its current form could allow UK data to be moved to servers in America and stop the NHS from analysing its health data without paying royalties. This cannot be right and is not within the spirit of our approach to our healthcare system. Let us commit in statute to protecting our beloved NHS in trade deals, especially during this pandemic when we are relying on it the most.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a very long and wide-ranging debate on amendments which are pretty simple in their effect. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have supported my amendment and the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Thornton in particular. The thing that has impressed me most is that that support has come from right across the political spectrum with the notable exception of the Minister, my good friend the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, took me back to the time in the 1990s when she and I were engaged in fairly ferocious debate on the potential of PFI. As she courteously reminded the Committee, it was a debate that she lost. She then went on to say that I had been scaremongering. I do not think I was scaremongering then, and I do not think I am scaremongering today with this amendment, because it is pretty modest. It seeks to ensure that services can be taken back into the public service. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, in a way it is trying to help to codify the Prime Minister’s words and commitments to keeping the public services public and being able to use the public sector in a particular way. That is the modesty of that amendment, and I am surprised that the Minister has not been able to accept it.

Surely, if he wants to reassure us—he worked very hard to, and I congratulate him on his reply—the most reassuring thing to do would be to accept our amendment to the Bill and put beyond any doubt the Prime Minister’s commitment by ensuring that we could keep services public, protect public services and bring things back into the public service where we needed to. Imagine if we were in a position now, with the Covid epidemic, where for some reason or another we had precluded us having the ability to bring back in-house test, track and trace. That would be disastrous. It is evident to all of us that test, track and trace as it is currently being operated by a number of private sector operators is not performing as well as it should. To say, ludicrously, that we could not use the public service to rectify that and improve it would surely be absurd. In a sense, that is where my argument leads: we should be able use the public service in that way.

It is a tradition, of course, and a matter of practice that in Grand Committee one should not press one’s amendment to a vote and one cannot, but this is an issue that we will have to return to when we get to Report. Although I shall read the Minister’s words of reassurance with great care, I do not think there was sufficient in them to provide the Committee or the House with the sort of reassurance and trust that we seek. This afternoon I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I think your Lordships will want to return to this on Report, and I rather hope that we do.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.