Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Lansley, for bringing this issue to your Lordships’ House. We support greatly the spirit on these Benches. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, used a contemporary example of rice. In another life a long time ago, I worked in the sugar industry for seven years. Of course, sugar is wrapped into this so deep that it is still embedded in there. On his point about the transition from us being part of a European scheme to going into a wholly United Kingdom scheme, I know that the pressure on that commodity alone would be huge, given the past relationships and previous problems that some sugar-producing countries have had within the European regime. That is just one commodity. His point is clear: that this is not a simple issue but one that requires a great deal of thought, but that thought must be had and is worth having. We support this process and will involve ourselves if necessary in how this gets taken forward. Clearly, we want to be part of a future regime that has these objectives, but the means with which to produce that are not necessarily as simple as they might look on first appearance.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

With the GSP, the key thing is who benefits. In the past, some quite surprising people have benefited who perhaps do not benefit any longer, such as Mexico, Chile, South Korea and so on, which are now very rich countries. India was in there for a long time. It is important who is on the list.

I have some sympathy with the points made by my noble friend Lord Lansley. If we leave the EU, I believe that we should have more choice in which countries we help with tariff preferences. We should be able to take a more independent view, with an eye to our own history—for example, of the Commonwealth—and not necessarily just copy out the EU list. Obviously it depends on where we finally end up in our relationship with the EU, and I do not want to go into that, but if we end up having a certain amount of independence, that should apply to GSPs. I am not sure that this amendment should be in the Bill, but it is very good that we are taking this opportunity to talk about this useful vehicle for helpful the poorest developing countries that we all want to see develop.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, underline the desirability of an implementation period in this area as in other Brexit areas. For clarity, I want to ask a question arising from what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said. Are energy officials and Energy Ministers able to get on with this? The assumption that I have been working on is that the timetable is tight in this nuclear area and that discussions therefore need to go ahead with the IAEA, Euratom and the other nuclear states. Is that work in hand? Is there a plan for it? It would be helpful if the Minister were able to respond on that.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I want briefly to speak in support of Amendment 14, which bears my name. While avoiding repeating what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said, I want to pick out subsection (2)(c) of the proposed new clause, which refers to, “relevant research projects”. The noble Lord, Lord Broers, spoke eloquently in a previous debate about the importance of research in this area. As your Lordships and, I am sure, the Minister know, the UK benefits enormously from the long-term research funding and its membership of the Fusion for Energy programme, which flow through the Euratom relationship. I think the supply chain has been awarded some £0.5 billion to date and expects more, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority receives significant sums—around £50 million. On a broader level, as a leading participant in Euratom and the research element of it, the United Kingdom has been able authoritatively to drive research priorities. What does the Minister envisage our authority being following this process? Will it have risen or sunk as a result of our ability to drive and influence research in the nuclear field?

My noble friend Lord Teverson illustrated how hard and tough the Table Office has been on the wording of the amendments. In many cases—certainly, in other conversations—the Minister has ruled out of order a lot of what we have talked about. However, on Amendment 14, which covers some of these areas, the Table Office has been clear that this is in spec with the Bill and our debate today.

Space Industry Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Fox and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 16th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, at this stage, I declare my financial interest in GKN and Smiths Group, both of which probably have some activity in the space industry, although I am not currently aware of it. I associate these Benches with the amendments and the overall thrust, which I am sure that the Minister is beginning to get, that there is considerable concern about the exercise of delegated powers. As the previous speaker mentioned, that will come up in a series of later amendments.

I defer in my knowledge to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who is expert in these matters, but it is clear that we want to get the balance of affirmative and subsequent negative delegation right, and the excuse or otherwise that parliamentary time may not be available for the return of legislation is probably insufficient. Again, I hesitate to say this in front of the noble Lord, but safety is often dealt with by safety cases rather than a line by line, “You should do this, you should do that”, style of legislation. It does not require line-by-line scrutiny by government or Parliament.

With those points in mind, we associate ourselves with the amendments. We ask the Minister to review the Government’s position on delegated powers and are interested to hear how he stands on the amendments.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that I was unable to speak at Second Reading on this important Bill, but I have had a helpful exchange with the Minister on the powers in it and his plans for consultation in future.

Following on from the comments made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I have a question and a comment. First, he argued for parliamentary procedure in relation to guidance. I would find it helpful to have a little more detail as to what sort of guidance is envisaged, so that we can look critically at whether any parliamentary procedure is appropriate. Secondly, I share his concern at the double barrel—having an affirmative resolution for the first regulation and a negative resolution for subsequent provisions—because it could be open to abuse and give too much power to the Executive on important matters. I would welcome further study of this provision, as has been suggested, before Report.

I am worried about the powers in the round—in this Bill and the Data Protection Bill—and I think that delegated legislative provisions will also become an issue when we come to the plethora of Brexit Bills later in the Session. It would be very useful, in this less contentious Bill, to make sure that we have the right provisions.