Trade Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and thank him for having introduced this debate and moving his amendment. I also congratulate those who tabled the other amendments in this group. I will make only a couple of observations.

After a long life in politics I get very disturbed about self-deluding sentimentalism and effective legislation. We have all sorts of aspirations about food safety and hygiene. We also have aspirations about our commitments to the third world and the rest. But the test of effectiveness is whether the muscle is there in the legislation to turn these aspirations into reality. This is where we have to face the truth: a market will of itself not look to all these interests. The one firm principle operating in the market is of course price and profit; after a long life, let alone in politics, I am totally convinced that you have to have some other absolutes within that. The absolutes concern turning these aspirations into reality.

I am so glad that my noble friend Lady Henig spoke to her amendment with so much feeling and conviction. If we are serious about food hygiene, why can Ministers not put it into the Bill? What is behind their real, underlying position? Is it going to interfere in some way with the liberty of people in future to undercut these aspirations—indeed, these principles and policies which we have established in the past?

I have been deeply involved for much of my life in the third world, which is tired of sentimentalism. The third world wants to see policies that are really going to be effective. It is when we come to trade that this is tested. Are we going to enable third-world countries to build up their economies and look to the interests and well-being of their people, or are we going to turn them into playgrounds for people who are trying to make money? It involves having some discipline in the process and saying that the aspirations which we have held high are actually effective in our trade policy.

I really do not want, in the context of the Bill, to go down as just another sentimentalist who is a completely hapless victim of the open-market, liberal economics principles which are not accountable in effective legislation to the interests of real people in real situations—not least, the well-being of us all in what we eat and our ability to enjoy good health. The people who have moved and spoken to these amendments have done a very good job on our behalf and I hope that they will pursue the issues on Report.

[Baroness Byford (Con)]

My Lords, I have not put my name to any of these amendments, but I am very sympathetic to them and, had they not been tabled, I think I would have tabled some. My difficulty, having sat and listened to our earlier debates, is that this is just a Bill to allow us to transpose existing laws into our UK law; it is not really looking forward to trading after that has happened. So I ask my noble friend, before I go into the particular detail I wish to raise: if it is not appropriate at this stage, when is it appropriate during the passage of the Bill? Because somewhere, it must be, and I am not quite sure as to where.

I shall take the amendments as they are and follow the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Perhaps I should declare, as others may, that we are in the farming industry, and while livestock is not our particular area, we produce grain that obviously feeds livestock, and therefore we do have a family interest.

On the question of the rollover and how long this will last, which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, raised very clearly, I ask my noble friend how long she sees this period carrying on for before we look to new deals.

The standards we set in this country are very high, and I believe it is quite right that they are so, but it is not surprising that many of my producer colleagues, particularly those who produce livestock meat and all that side, are very concerned about the long-term interests of their industry. They are quite fearful about imports perhaps coming in at a lower standard. One has to appreciate that, if that did happen in a big way, there would be many farmers who are producing food for us in this country who would not be there in the future. I think that the House has to get that under its belt. It is very easy to think that we can get food anywhere: we go into the supermarket and the shelves are filled. Yes, that is true, but we are dependent on so much of that coming in from abroad, so we need not to protect our industry but to understand the challenges it faces. I do not think producers are looking for special treatment, but they are looking to have that equal trading that many of us wish to see.

When I look at the CLA briefing—I declare that I am a member of the CLA and I was with the NFU earlier today—it says it wants to see exports of UK food outside the EU grow, and we would all support that. It thinks that free and fair trade between the UK and other markets outside the EU is a positive government ambition, and it supports any new free trade deals which meet that ambition. However, in seeking these trade deals it is imperative that equivalence of standards is met—that is what this debate is about—in order to prevent the undercutting of UK markets by the introduction of products that meet lower environmental or animal welfare standards. It believes that that would be very detrimental. Today I met NFU colleagues from East Anglia who were highlighting that.

Amendment 9, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, concerns environmental protections. This question is for her rather than for the Minister. Are we looking to protect the environmental standards that we have in this country, as opposed to the standards that they do not have in their countries at the moment? For example, is it acceptable to pull down rainforests to grow soya or other products, or should that be something which we have in mind ourselves as a detrimental step? So many aspects of the debate we are having tonight are hugely important, but I am not quite sure whether the noble Baroness’s amendment is seeking to protect UK standards as they are at the moment or whether she is thinking about international trading standards as well. There is a great difference between the two.

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[Baroness Byford]

I thank the noble Baroness; I assumed that she would mean exactly that. However, it poses some questions to me on her amendment, which I slightly struggle with. On food safety and food health, we have clearly set out standards in this country as to what is and is not applicable, and I cannot see that changing.

I agree with my noble friend Lady McIntosh entirely. The Bill as it currently is deals with the trade as we know it today, and refers to trade being able to carry on tomorrow, after Brexit. It does not—unless I have not read it through carefully enough—look further into the future. It would be a great shame if at some stage we do not have a discussion about that. There needs to be something in the Bill, somewhere—I cannot decide whether this is the right moment and the right time, or whether we should come back to it. The very nature of agriculture and farming is that it is a very long-term project; you do not come in and out of it quickly. You invest a lot of money in the future, we now have much more technology and things have changed enormously. There needs to be a certain degree of certainty, which I have not read in the Bill as it is.

Is there any chance that the Minister in her response could reflect the strong commitment that Michael Gove has certainly given to our sector and to the country in general to maintaining those standards? We look forward to having the Agriculture Bill, which, as we know, is still stuck in the Commons. It has achieved its Second Reading and Committee, and is parked there—it has gone no further forward. We look forward to seeing that. We do not have a chance to debate that, but trade is hugely important in this Bill. We need something in the Bill which gives a certain degree of confidence to people involved in the food industry; I do not think that I need to tell any noble Lords that the food industry is worth over £112 billion and employs over 3 million people. You are not talking about peanuts. This is a huge industry, and many people in it—I refer to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe—are in small and medium-sized businesses. You are not talking about big businesses, although there are some, but about a lot of people who have a small interest in trying to produce food and supply the needs of our country and, more importantly—

[Lord Judd]

The noble Baroness is putting forward a powerful argument about the interests and well-being of the people in the industries, and of course that matters. But would she agree that what really matters is the health of the British people?

[Baroness Byford]

I hope that I relayed that in what I said earlier. It is hugely important. We are very lucky in this country to have food of an extremely high quality. I say “Best of British” over and over again; as a producer I would, but I believe in it.

However, I also look to the future, when we can export more of our high-quality food as well. Clearly, I am looking to the Minister to give some sort of directional steer to us, because at the moment we are slightly in unknown circumstances. We know what the Bill is trying to do, but we do not know what will happen in the future, nor do we know when we will be able to look at the Agriculture Bill, in which the two overlap. However, I am grateful for all the amendments that have been put down, because they have given us a chance to look at where we are, to look ahead and to raise quite a few important international questions on the whole question of welfare, the way we produce and the environment.

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[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I am grateful to the Minister. She may have got the author of Amendment 53 slightly mixed up in her thorough summing up, but at this time in the evening, and speaking as one who is looking forward to sampling a wee dram of one of our country’s best exports at the highest standards, the Minister may be forgiven.

There is a paradox at the heart of this issue. I mentioned the complexity of some of the trade deals that the Government seek to take forward with Mexico, Singapore and Japan. They are either in force or agreed but components of them require further discussion. That means that it is relevant, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, and others have said, to bear in mind that they will be considering the future when we have asked for them to be rolled over.

To prove the point, we need to look at the only example that the Government have so far published: Switzerland. The Swiss themselves, although the Government have not said so, said explicitly that this agreement could serve as the basis for future economic trade relations. Interestingly—perhaps unhelpfully for the Government—they frame it as part of their “mind the gap” strategy on the basis of what they term the disorderly manner in which the UK may leave the European Union. We can rely on the Swiss to be frank and honest.

The paradox also exists that the rolled-over agreements will be on the basis of the existing EU regulations that the Government have committed to putting into law, which we could follow in three-year tranches under the Bill, again and again, but the Government have said that the justification for leaving the European Union is to change the way that we operate our trade policy. There is no surprise that when we are asking countries to roll over the trade agreement, but telling them at the same time that we are likely to want this agreement in place for us to have the flexibility to negotiate trade agreements based on separate regulations, they have been slightly resistant.

My amendment, and others in the group—I appreciate all the contributions from all the Members who have spoken—is an attempt to establish some basic principles and ethics. This is exactly the right moment to do that. Since 2010, the European Union has insisted on having sustainable development chapters in trade agreements. That has been positive for the world. It has been consistent in the contributions of colleagues who have tabled amendments that our argument is not just about concern that the UK would reduce its standards. One reason why we want to operate to the best standards is that if we are opening our markets to other countries, we do so to countries who are increasing their standards across the piece in environmental and labour law, and so on. It is an overt ambition of the Vietnam agreement that we use that clout as an economic market. That addresses the point of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that we should move standards up.

Finally, I am still scratching my head about all the Minister’s comments about how unnecessary it is to have something in the Bill because the Government have given their assurances. When it comes to workers’ rights and the environment, the Government have said time and again that we need not worry, so why did the Prime Minister say just today that she would provide Parliament with a guarantee that we would not erode protections for workers’ rights and the environment? That is our concern: that the Government can give an assurance but when it comes to putting something in legislation they pull back until they have to.

[Lord Judd]

There is one other argument: whatever the good will, whatever the intention and whatever the commitment of current Ministers, unless it is in the Bill, it does not bind their successors.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord. He has been a leader in this regard. He will remember when I had the privilege of supporting other Members in taking through the 0.7% development Act. It is only when commitments given at a political level are enshrined in law that we can be reassured. That is our ambition with these amendments. However, I accept what the Minister has said at this stage. I shall not press the amendments. We will come later in the Bill to disputes and the other aspects of trade referred to by the Minister. For the moment, and on the basis of what the Minister has said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.