Trade Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Do we have Lord Judd?

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

I am sorry about that; I did not have the unmute signal on my laptop; it came rather belatedly.

I want to say how much I support the speeches of my noble friends Lord Hain, Lord Hendy and Lord Rooker —and, yes, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. When we are looking at legislation of this kind, it is very important to see what the purpose behind it really is. We know that there are strategists at work who are determined to change the British constitution and the British economy into a completely different constitution and economy from that which we have known for most of our lives. They want a free-for-all, with as few inhibitions as possible about what is done. They want to have a free hand. That is why the amendments in this group are so important.

At the age of 13—a long time ago—I had the privilege of being taken by my father to a conference in which he had very much a leading part. It was taking place in the ILO building in Geneva. I remember how impressed I was then by that post-war international consensus, which was determined to ensure that we had not only prosperous economies—which of course we wanted—but standards and work conditions worthy of a civilised society. We must not let that become eroded. It is essential to be vigilant, and we therefore need these safeguards in the Bill. How glad I am that we have this grouping before us.

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[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

I will speak in support of Amendment 33 and thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his commitment to the question of who we will become as a nation when we Brexit, and not just what we can get. This is an important moment for us, and the choices we make now will define the character of Britain for generations to come. We look back at our history with moments of extraordinary pride, and the stories we tell ourselves and our children are often rooted in the choices made by many in this House to build a nation on the principles that drive prosperity, not only economic prosperity but the prosperity that comes from an ethical vitality driven by people of character.

However, when we look back, there are also moments in our history when we might have wished to have chosen to do things differently had there been a moment to pause and check the path we were choosing. This amendment ensures that such a moment is created. We are being asked to consider what checks and balances will improve the wisdom of our choices, ensure our blind spots are challenged, and that we have a moment to consider the character of the nation we are, the one we are seeking to business with, their motivation for a deal and whether we have considered its impact on us and on their people.

The purpose of this amendment is to require the Government to bring trade deals to Parliament for ratification where they involve critical infrastructure and are being made with countries that are undemocratic. As someone who believes in free trade, why am I speaking to this amendment? Without adequate scrutiny, our sovereignty, safety and security are at risk. When a nation is undemocratic, its priorities are not the same as ours, which are the creation of prosperity through freedom of speech, respect for property rights—including intellectual property rights—the rule of law, equitable market access and a strong social contract between the public, government and business. If our trading partner’s objective is not the above but rather the strength of their state—and if their stated long-term ambition is the expansion and influence of their regime—our very sovereignty and the principles and values that define us as a nation could be undermined.

There are also issues of safety to be considered. The critical infrastructure named in this amendment—for communications, health, transport, food and water among others—is essential to the British people, and even more so in moments of crisis as we have just seen. Should provision in those sectors be withheld or slowed down, real harm would be created. As we move into an increasingly interconnected, networked world, our systems have become more productive but also more exposed.

There are also security challenges that we need to face up to and consider. Chinks in our security armour do not necessarily lead to hot war escalation, but we have seen recently in the Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Russia the subtlety and insidiousness of foreign interference. It is not just our security that we need to be wary of but that of our Five Eyes partners as well.

Britain is a global leader, so we should not underestimate our international influence. We demonstrate a standard not just for our neighbours but for emergent nations around the world. We do not want to set the standard that profit trumps national responsibility. At a time when soft power is bought and traded across Africa and the developing world, we need to demonstrate that true prosperity comes from upholding the principles and values of a democratic nation.

The amendment does not set out to block, cancel or modify existing trade agreements or to threaten or coerce our allies, neighbours and trading partners. It merely recognises that we need an effective mechanism whereby the wisdom of choices can be evaluated. The amendment is entirely reasonable. It does not argue that a trade agreement should not be reached, just that the Government should bring trade deals to Parliament for ratification where they involve critical infrastructure and are being made with countries which are undemocratic.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has just said. It resonated with me as I am sure it did with others, and we must take her arguments seriously.

We in this Committee are spending a great deal of time dealing with what in the end are second-order questions, because the first-order question is: what is the driving and determining force behind the proposed legislation? I am convinced that the omissions with which we are concerned are not oversights; they are part of a deliberate policy in driving towards an unregulated and, as some would see it, free society untrammelled by the responsibilities which we have grown to take so seriously over the decades.

That is why—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, was right about this—it is essential to have these important amendments in the Bill, so that the muscle of Parliament is backed up by what is said in the legislation. I believe that most of us right across the party divides understand that the rule of law is not just a matter of law which we must in a disciplined way follow; it is a matter of rational conclusion about how we can order our affairs, best protecting and enhancing the well-being of our people.

The conventions to which the amendments refer are vital, including the conventions covering collective bargaining. Most important are the conventions governing the rights of children, who are very vulnerable and at risk in the world as it is at the moment. The amendments talk of parliamentary sovereignty, and that is right too, but that does not mean sovereignty for Number 10 or for the backroom boys there with their ideological commitments: it means real, effective parliamentary scrutiny, which is the essential essence of sovereignty. I know that many of those on the government Benches would not dissent from the analysis that I have given, but the trouble is that we are faced with driving forces that rely on populism and that are determined at all costs to fundamentally change the nature of our society.

The problem is not just the Bill that we are considering now: noble Lords should think of what is going on at the BBC at the moment. What are we about? We are at a real moment of destiny in our country; we really have to take the gravity of the situation extremely seriously. I therefore commend the amendments in this group; the sooner we have them in the Bill, the better.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to be able to take part in this debate. I am speaking in support of Amendment 33, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I have listened carefully to what the noble Baronesses, Lady Falkner and Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, had to say, particularly the detailed criticism voiced by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, was clear in his opening remarks that he was prepared to rewrite and scale back the amendment, but as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, is it not the purpose of Committee stage to test out ideas, see what noble Lords think, consider the Government’s response and then refine amendments for Report? I hope that the noble Lord, Lorde Alton, will stick to his guns on this and do just that.

My noble friend referred to the Henry Jackson Society report, Breaking the China Supply Chain, which, as he said, found that 229 separate categories of goods that the UK is strategically dependent on China for our supplies. As he said, it is surely right that we must consider moving the UK away from a position in which its economic dependency can be weaponised to discourage the UK from championing human rights or a rules-based order. As he said, my particular interest is in relation to the abhorrent practice of forced organ harvesting taking place in China and the importance of ensuring that the UK is in no way complicit in supporting it.

I raised this both in the telecommunications Bill and in the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill. So far, the Government have been disappointingly slow to respond, relying on the World Health Organization’s view that China is implementing an ethical voluntary organ transplant system. That is simply not credible; it is based solely on a self-assessment by China itself.

A much more objective assessment comes from the China tribunal chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. The judgment released in March 2020 came to the conclusion that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and Falun Gong practitioners have been one—probably the main—source of organ supply. In regard to the Uighurs, the tribunal had evidence of medical testing on a scale that could allow them, among other uses, to become an organ bank. Adidas, Nike, Zara and Amazon are among the western brands currently benefiting, according to a coalition of civil society groups, from the forced labour of the Uighurs in Xinjiang. A shipment recently seized by US Customs and Border Protection in July included wigs made from human hair, which is hugely concerning, considering many reports and personal testimonies of female Uighur Muslims having their hair forcibly shaved in the camps.