Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, so many speeches, so much good material—I have often wanted to hear more. I am sure that during the passage of the Bill we will indeed hear more from our Second Reading speakers on the issues raised today. In particular, I look forward to hearing more from our two maiden speakers. I hope that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn will follow up on what he had to say about human rights when we initiate a discussion on the unilateral scheme of preferences. This is not in the Bill. It was in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, which we did not have the opportunity to debate since it was a money Bill, as noble Lords will recall. I hope that we will get an opportunity to debate it during the passage of this Bill; it raises issues of human rights.

I was delighted to hear the maiden speech of my noble friend on the Front Bench. He bowled his maiden over excellently, took wickets, and now joins the little club of former private secretaries who have themselves become Ministers. I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.

I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, her support for free trade. However, unconstrained global trade is as dangerous as unconstrained competition in a domestic economy. We need the WTO; we need it to work. We need plurilateral agreements such as the government procurement agreement that we have been talking about, but we need more; we need agreements on services, digital trade, intellectual property and beyond. We need the WTO to make that happen. We should not think about trade simply in terms of bilateral agreements. We are looking to be in the regional agreement for the Pacific. Frankly, I hope we will get an agreement with the EU that helps us to create a regional European market, operating together in support of free trade. I hope we will talk much more about trade during the passage of this Bill.

On the issue of scrutiny, and thinking back to the last Bill, many noble Lords in this debate have not quite understood. We got the commitments we were looking for from the Government on how they would go about the process of scrutinising free trade agreements. They published them in February 2019. I hope my noble friend will reiterate that that is the Government’s intention. He and I know that that is not the end of the story; we will be looking for further commitments. There is some limited statutory underpinning.

A number of noble Lords have referred to my honourable friend and parliamentary neighbour when I was in the other place, Jonathan Djanogly. His new Clause 4 on Report in the other place was not wholly right, in my view, but I hope we pick up elements of it relating to the process of scrutiny, leading to ratification. Taking the point from my noble friend, there are amendments we can make here that they may look kindly on in the other place.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

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

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall address Amendments 9 and 10. I do not have anything as profound to say as my noble friend Lord Stevenson about Walter Bagehot, but I have something to say about the importance of our parliamentary democracy. There has been considerable recent debate, both publicly and in the House, about the role of Parliament, its input as well as its scrutiny, consideration and decision-making processes, and the importance that is attached to what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, was saying on the previous group of amendments. In fact, I thought what the noble Lord said about taking back control was so obviously on point that I can make my observations extremely brief.

If Parliament is to work at all, it is not simply to give carte blanche to the Executive. My noble friend Lord Stevenson quite rightly made the point that, were amendments to be agreed and changes made that secured the framework on which trade agreements in future are ratified, Parliament would in part have done that job. If the amendments are not agreed, of course Parliament’s ultimate sanction is to consider and vote on the agreements themselves. Given the profound nature of our withdrawal from the European Union, the change in trade policy and the terms on which other subsequent trade agreements will be reached, it is absolutely critical that that is secured.

The reason that I intended to intervene this afternoon is purely on the basis that our Executive exist within Parliament. There is no presidency appointing an Executive, nor an assembly bringing forward its own separate policy requirements. Governments are embedded in Parliament, and as such Parliament has an obligation as well as a democratic duty to ensure that it does not give away those powers unless it has secured the requirements in the framework that avoid having to do it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for my first opportunity to speak in Committee. Since Second Reading, an all-party parliamentary group has been established on the subject of trade and export promotion, of which I am vice-chair. I raise that in order to signal that I have that additional interest which has not yet been entered in the register.

On this group, I thoroughly agree with what I took to be the import of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—that is, that he intends to have a substantive debate about the process for agreeing future trade agreements at a later stage. I agree with him about that; the group led by Amendment 35 seems to be more appropriate for that purpose, bringing, as it does, an amendment similar to that raised on Report in the other place by my former parliamentary neighbour, Jonathan Djanogly. So I will not go on at length about that.

At this stage we need to understand to what extent the Bill is purely for the purposes of securing continuity agreements following our exit from the European Union. Those who were with us on the debates on this subject on the Trade Bill in 2019 will recall that many amendments, just as they are this time, were put forward on the proposition that we are trying to establish what the future structure of trade agreements should look like, rather than seeking to establish what the continuity agreements after we leave the EU, carried forward, should look like.

Later amendments will look at how we might modify the constitutional reform and governance process. I think that is a better way of proceeding. I have my own amendment later for this purpose, and I think that CRaG is the basis for how we will look at future trade agreements. We can amend CRaG, and we will debate later how we might do that. I have my own proposal, but I will not go on about it now. I think it is important for us to distinguish between, on the one hand, the process of parliamentary approval of trade agreements and, on the other, separately from that, the implementation into domestic legislation of the obligations we enter into through international trade agreements and treaties.

A treaty entered into by the Government cannot itself change domestic law. Therefore, legislation is required to implement it, so will the Minister tell us two things in response to this early debate? First, will he repeat at this stage what our noble friend Lady Fairhead said on 21 January 2019 in the first day in Committee on the then Trade Bill? She said:

“We have already been clear that we will introduce bespoke legislation as necessary to implement those future free trade agreements. The Secretary of State for International Trade has already launched four consultations on prospective future trade agreements and announced that the Government will introduce bespoke primary legislation as necessary to implement these.”—[Official Report, 21/1/19; col. 613.]


I am hoping that my noble friend the Minister will say that, whether the number is four or more, the same process will apply in future. Of course, from my point of view that means that we do not need to specify what should be in future trade agreements and, by extension, change the law in this country, because, when the time comes, if the Government seek such a thing they would have to secure the consent of Parliament in primary legislation to do whatever they wish to do under those trade agreements. We do not need to have all those debates now.

The second thing is that I am hoping, as my noble friend the Minister knows, that he will reiterate the Government’s commitments, given early in the passage of the previous Trade Bill, to the processes for the future scrutiny and parliamentary approval of free trade agreements, published in the early part of 2019. If he can do that, it would help a great deal from the point of view of simplifying scrutiny of these and future amendments.

As for this group, Amendment 7 is a matter, strictly speaking, of semantics. To Ministers, if certain regulations are necessary to implement an agreement, then, in their view, they would be appropriate. If Ministers think something is appropriate, they always think it is also necessary. That is why, although the dictionary may not regard these two terms as meaning the same, in the mind of a Minister, they are the same.

Amendment 9 deals with the question of ratification. It says that the agreements that have to be implemented should not simply have been signed but should be ratified. It relates this, of course, to exit day for these agreements. I remind the Committee that we have passed exit day. After exit day it was the case, for example—I do not know how many examples there are, but it is a rather compelling one—that all member states of the European Union that were required to ratify the comprehensive agreement with Canada, CETA, had not so ratified. So, for example, the Dutch parliament ratified that agreement in July of this year: it was after exit day. The example I would draw, which I think is a compelling reason not to accept Amendment 9, is that it would have the consequence that the Canada-EU agreement would not satisfy the requirements of the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received two requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, first.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the assurances, although I note his powder is as yet dry in relation to some of the subjects we will discuss later.

If I may make a point about what I am looking for from my noble friend, it is very clear that if future trade agreements—not continuity agreements—give rise to a requirement for changes in domestic legislation that are of significance, that must be achieved by bespoke primary legislation. I am sure that is what he intended by what he said. That is why, I am afraid, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, said about Amendments 10 and 103 is wrong, because they would, in effect, create a super-affirmative procedure for the implementation into domestic legislation of future trade agreements. We do not want that. We want it to be done by primary legislation because then it is capable of being amended.

We have to keep in mind, as we go through this, that there is a clear difference: ratification of a trade agreement is not the same as changing our domestic law, as my noble friend just said. Therefore, the CRaG process does not change UK law; what it does is enable the Government to ratify, or not to ratify, a trade agreement or an agreement into which it has entered. That is the distinction that we have to continuously keep in mind: the CRaG process is not changing UK law; it is determining on what basis we have agreed with another country. If we then need to change our law, we must do it ourselves, and Parliament will have the ability to decide in what terms we do so.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for giving me the chance to clarify my comments. We have already said, and I am happy to say again, that we will bring forward primary legislation as necessary for future FTAs with new trade partners. As my noble friend quite appropriately spotted, we could not implement those free trade agreements without bringing forward primary legislation. The CRaG process does not do that—it ratifies the treaty but cannot, in itself, alter domestic legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I intend, unusually, to part company with my noble friend Lord Alton of Liverpool and shall speak against Amendment 33. Before that, I shall spell out why I think that amendment has come about, although some of what I shall say has been covered by him.

The motivation for Amendment 33 lies in the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill, which we last debated on 29 June. We were given an assurance then that the Government would return at Third Reading with an amendment to give legislative teeth to human rights safeguards in the use of infrastructure. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, assured the House that, when the Bill returned for Third Reading, the Government would have drafted a suitable amendment. On that basis, we were willing not to test the opinion of the House. We are still waiting for that Bill to return, and the Government have spurned an opportunity to have a limited, reasonable amendment. As a consequence, we have this sweeping proposal before us, which I was surprised was found to be in scope of this Bill.

My first point relates to paragraph 44 of the Explanatory Notes, which has been touched on previously by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone. Clause 2(1) refers principally to EU continuity agreements, but I cannot see how Amendment 33 is in scope. The agreements concerned would already have been scrutinised by the European Parliament, which I do not consider normally to be lax in its duty to recall human rights implications.

I also note, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, that attempts are under way for UK courts to determine whether genocide is taking place in other countries. While I know that trade with China is the object of concern of many of these amendments, they could be used much more widely. I shall turn to the unintended consequences of such amendments in a moment.

However, I oppose Amendment 33 for three principal reasons: the impossible burden of scrutiny on Parliament for such large categories of goods; the breadth of critical infrastructure included in an overly comprehensive list; and the exclusiveness of the definition of “democratic”, or “non-democratic”, thereby taking in more than half the countries of the world.

Amendment 33 is overly comprehensive, in that it seeks an interventionist role for Parliament in agreeing regulations that cover so many facets of infrastructure that it would render Parliament as an inspectorate of all commerce. If we are truly to be charged with each resolution laid before us concerned with the 11 broad areas of commercial transactions in the five years envisaged—perhaps five years more, if the proposal is rolled over—we may do little else.

Let me take the first category, which is “critical infrastructure”. Incidentally, critical infrastructure is not defined here, so I looked it up. Critical infrastructure,

“is a term used by governments to describe assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy”.

That is incredibly broad, and very little is not covered by it. In the UK, the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure is the relevant representative body. I therefore ask the proposers of these amendments to say, when they conclude, if they have consulted that body in drawing up their sweeping list of categories, given that little would not be caught by the amendment.

My more significant concern is to do with how the movers have defined what they see as non-democratic countries. The four pre-requisites are perfectly clear, and most of us would agree with them as essential to what we might perhaps define as western-style liberal democracies. Therein lies my concern. If Parliament has to approve trade measures with all those countries we consider non-democratic, we would be in danger of becoming an autarky. For example, if we apply the definition of the noble Lord to BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—they would all come into that category, bar South Africa. Take, for example, China, which is the cause of much concern around the House. So much of what China exports to us could be caught by the definition of critical infrastructure. I am sure no noble Lord is proposing that we suspend almost all trade with China—even the Trump Administration have balked at doing that.

While China is a well-known example, what of India? This Government are ambitious to do a great deal with India. They already have partnerships on critical infrastructure with Indian companies—take OneWeb as an example, which is critical infrastructure by any category. If new opportunities for trade were to arise, India would be on the so-called watch-list as a non-democratic country for its treatment of Kashmiri Muslims—in fact, for its treatment of large swathes of its Muslim minority; some 200 million people—and its treatment of women overall, or for the caste system and the treatment of Dalits, and thus would clearly come under categories (c) and (d) on the list.

Take Brazil under President Bolsonaro. It would definitely be caught by paragraphs (c) and (d), not least for its treatment of indigenous people in the Amazon, and not to speak of the rule of law. What of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, or even Israel? I do not want to labour the point, but by no step of the imagination could most countries in the Middle East be seen as democratic.

I also remind those concerned with such broad definitions of human rights to recall Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which defines the right to economic well-being, broadly spelled out, and which might be denied to our citizens were we to agree such blanket measures against trade with other countries, or parliamentary scrutiny of trade with other countries. It is slightly disingenuous of noble Lords to claim that all they are asking for is parliamentary scrutiny. Once we open the can of worms as to what is democratic and not democratic, and once we start asking UK courts alone to rule on what is genocide or not, we are straying into an area where we are doing economic self-harm.

I know that human rights are increasingly accounted for in international trade agreements—as I said earlier, the EU is not impervious to that. However, Amendment 33 serves no useful purpose and we should rightly return to these measures in a very limited form in Amendment 68, which I will support when the time comes.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, because I think I can follow up precisely the point she made. I think that the debate we have had is an important and interesting one, but the amendments before us do not have the effect that they are intended to by those who are proposing them.

The amendments are in scope of the Bill because they relate to the regulations being made under Clause 2(1), but the regulations made under Clause 2(1), by virtue of the rest of that clause, relate to continuity trade agreements and not to future trade agreements. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, everything he said about China is, to that extent, not relevant. It is relevant to future trade issues, but it is not relevant to the Bill as it stands.

Amendments 11, 18 and 33 are in scope because they relate to continuity agreements, but I am afraid that we have to assess their impact in relation to the existing agreements with the European Union which we are rolling over. That is the hard graft which the movers of the amendments need to do. If they want to do this thing and impact on those regulations, they have to look at those agreements.

My personal view, which was reflected earlier in the debate, is that the European Union has to a large extent done that work, as will have the European Parliament. We do not necessarily need to do it. However, the breadth of the issues—for example, in Amendment 33 —is such as to beg the question: is this really what the movers of the amendment are asking for? For example, the non-democratic provisions would imply that the agreement with Egypt would not be rolled over. That job has not been done and these amendments have not been exposed to that kind of scrutiny. I do not think that the movers of the amendments, or those who spoke in support of them, realise that they do not relate to future trade agreements but only to continuity agreements and so most of the arguments presented in their support have not been justified.

However, Amendment 45 is included in this group. Whether or not it is the right way of doing it, it raises a perfectly reasonable question that we should consider. When we come to exercise the scrutiny of trade agreements under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, should we have a specific statutory requirement to assess the human rights and equalities impacts? There is a good argument for that. This may not be the way to do it at this stage, but we may need to return to that. Otherwise, I am afraid that, sympathetic as I am with all the arguments put for the other amendments, they do not do the job that is claimed for them.

[Baroness Northover (LD) [V]]

My Lords, in this group of amendments we are once more addressing standards. Amendment 11, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and other noble Lords, rightly states that international trade agreements must not conflict with the provisions of international treaties ratified by the United Kingdom. One wonders quite how the Government will steer through any agreement with the EU if our Government are threatening at the same time to break international law in the treaty they have just agreed in relation to Northern Ireland. This amendment should not be needed but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said, it seems that it is.

The amendment also states that such agreements must be consistent with the SDGs, which aim to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030, leaving no one behind. They are wide ranging, covering women’s rights, health, education, the environment and much else. The UK has signed up to deliver them, not only internationally but domestically. In a later group, we will come back to amendments specifically on the environment, but that is central to the SDGs. Given that we have signed up to the SDGs, the Minister should simply be able to accept this provision.

The amendment also references international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The Minister will have noted the very powerful cross-party support for such an approach, and strong support in the Lords for the defence of human rights globally. I am sure that his Bill team will have correctly written “human rights” in the column that means that this issue will need to be addressed.

In Amendment 45, my noble friends Lord Purvis and Lady Kramer seek to make it a duty to bring human rights and equalities impact assessments of all trade deals before and after implementation. As my noble friend Lady Kramer pointed out, this is now routine within trade agreements. Clearly, this is a sine qua non and the Government should simply accept this amendment. I note the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for this.

Amendment 33, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others, protects against, for example, making a damaging trade deal with China. Parliamentary approval would be required if a trade deal were to be made with a signatory that was non-democratic and the trade deal affected critical infrastructure, as outlined here.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

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

The UK has historically taken international law and its international obligations seriously. However, what many thought was our unshakeable observance of international commitments has in recent weeks been undermined, as has been shown by the EU starting legal action against the UK over the Brexit deal in the past few hours. Amendment 12 not only ensures that we remain committed to the path of a more sustainable future, but would re-signal to the wider international community that the UK Parliament remains an institution that takes seriously the obligations of agreements we as a sovereign nation have signed.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

[Inaudible.]—the view of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans that the Government are genuinely committed to achieving our environmental and climate change objectives. In so far as I depart from him and others, it is not in relation to that but in relation to the effect of the amendments.

The amendments in this group have a number of different effects. Amendments 12 and 40 essentially bear upon the agreements to be implemented using regulations made under Clause 2, which, as the Bill is presently constructed, are the roll-over agreements that we started with from the European Union. I have no reason to understand—unless somebody tells me otherwise—that any are inconsistent with our environmental obligations, so I do not understand why it is necessary to put amendments in the Bill to tell us that we should not implement them if they are contrary to those obligations since I do not think that is the case. That is step one.

Step two is that a number of these amendments go further. They want to construct what is essentially a structure for mandating the Government to enter into future international trade agreements only in ways consistent with our international obligations on the environment and a series of other specific requirements. We will encounter this argument again and again during scrutiny of the Bill. My view is that while the Bill is an appropriate mechanism for us to improve the process of scrutiny of future trade agreements, it is not right in this legislation to attempt to construct a list of what the Government are intending to achieve in future trade negotiations. It would be a very long list. Having constructed such a long list, the Government would be unable to conduct any of those trade negotiations with any negotiating flexibility whatever. People could just look at the legislation and say, “We know what the British Government can do, and it is not very much”.

Mandating international trade negotiators in advance also means that we would trespass into the territory of removing from Governments the executive power of the prerogative and executive prerogative. We could do it, but if we are going to do it, we should do it in the context of a major piece of legislation which sets up a statutory framework for doing so. We have no such statutory framework, and I do not think we can conceive that it should be added to piecemeal in this way. I therefore cannot agree with most of Amendments 40, 69 and 73.

Amendment 21 appears to have been constructed simply to prevent the Government implementing any trade agreement with the United States. I do not know of any country outwith the criteria other than the United States, it having issued notice of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. If I understand the amendment, it would come into effect on 20 November 2020 at the earliest. Expressing a purely personal view, I hope that will not happen and that it will not be necessary.

I want to mention one or two other small things. I do not understand Amendment 14 at all since it seems to replicate what is already in the Bill. We are intending to implement agreements similar to, or the same as, those we entered into as a member of the European Union. If it is saying something other than that, it would introduce a degree of ambiguity which I do not think is desirable.

Amendment 22 does something completely different. It removes the power to modify retained direct principal European Union legislation. We went over this in some detail the previous time this Bill was before us, two years ago. I still do not understand why this is necessary in so far as the power is already in the Government’s hands under Schedule 8 to the EU withdrawal Act 2018. Perhaps the Minister will explain why it is additionally necessary to legislate in this way now.

Finally, although the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, is not with us, his spirit moves with us none the less. If one looks at Clause 2(6) one will see that line 26 states:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may, among other things, make provision”


and then there is a list. On 20 March 2019, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, asked what “among other things” meant and why that phrase was there. The subsection is there to say that the regulations may make provision in a number of specific respects, but the drafters have given Ministers additional freedom to do what exactly? Since these are roll-over agreements, it seems to me that the words “among other things” are not necessary. At the time, my noble friend Lady Fairhead said that it was an interesting point and she would take it away and think about it. Therefore, if they have thought about it, they have put it back in the Bill having thought about it, or else they did not think about it and have simply reproduced the Bill and it is as pointless now as it was then. Perhaps the Minister will kindly tell us what “among other things” in that line means.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the other noble Lords who have signed his Amendment 12. As the Committee should be aware, the United Kingdom has been a leader in standing up internationally for high environmental standards around the world. As the Minister made clear at Second Reading, all the continuity agreements that we have been and are negotiating are fully compliant with our international obligations, including the Paris Agreement on climate change. It is unnecessary to constrain the Government’s freedom in negotiating trade agreements with countries, including developing countries which may not have adopted the same environmental standards as we have, because that might have unintended consequences. Furthermore, the Paris Agreement targets only carbon reduction, but does not fully address the equally great national security challenge of providing clean energy for the whole planet, particularly in a world that needs more energy, not less.

As for Amendment 14 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, I am not quite sure what its purpose is. As I understand it, it would prohibit the application of the powers created in this clause for the purposes of an enhanced continuity trade agreement such as that which we have agreed with Japan. Why would the noble Lord and my noble friend wish unduly to restrict the freedom of our negotiators to take any available opportunity to include enhancements to any continuity agreement?

As for Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I oppose it for the reason suggested by my noble friend Lord Lansley. It seems to me that it is designed to prevent a trade agreement with the United States, and that would have a negative effect on the economy and deny opportunities to British exporters and food producers.

Amendment 40, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oates, is similarly unnecessary. In any case, your Lordships have received repeated assurances that none of our continuity agreements will deviate from the high standards that we apply to environmental issues, similar to human rights, as debated in a previous group. The Minister has already reassured the Committee that the Government will continue to publish parliamentary reports with each continuity agreement.

It will not surprise my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering to hear that I do not support her Amendment 69. It is clear that the Food Standards Agency has the powers to permit, or not, the sale of any foods which might be imported under FTAs. The amendment also seeks to require alignment of our agricultural marketing standards with those of the EU, which we have left. I agree with my noble friend that high animal welfare standards are a laudable objective, and we have done relatively well in this country in this area. However, I think she is incorrect to argue that animal welfare is exactly the same as animal health and hygiene. We will be free to set our own regulations after the end of the transition period. I earnestly trust that we will move quickly to adopt standards that are WTO compliant, unlike those of the EU, which in certain respects conflict with the WTO’s SPS agreement.

As my noble friend the Minister said at Second Reading, it is not within the gift of the UK Parliament to legislate on animal welfare standards for overseas countries. The Government have been clear that we have no intention of lowering standards, and we have fulfilled this commitment through our deeds. None of the 20 agreements already signed has reduced standards in any area. As the Minister said at Second Reading, it will be the job of the food standards agencies to ensure that all food imports comply with the UK’s high safety standards and that consumers are protected from unsafe food that does not meet those standards. Decisions on those standards are a matter solely for the UK and are made separately from any trade agreements. I ask the Minister to confirm that that remains the Government’s position.

For similar reasons, I am also opposed to Amendments 73 and 74 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. In any case, does my noble friend the Minister not agree that the Government would obviously not seek to enter into an international trade agreement without any merit with any nation? Neither should we expect only to enter into agreements which share precisely our positions on all multilateral environmental agreements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I want to take up one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, about today’s drugs not always necessarily being the cheapest. I accept that, but on the other hand, I am sure he would agree that in the overwhelming range of medicines, today’s drugs are highly valuable and economic.

I remember that during my time as director of VSO, I attended a training course for medical personnel of all kinds, doctors, nurses and so on, who would be going off to take up exacting assignments in the poorest parts of the world. The lecturer was absolutely brilliant. He was an eminent physician who has gone on to even more eminent positions. At a certain point he dished out two pieces of paper each to everyone in the room. He said, “Please write down on one piece of paper the last drug that you prescribed for a patient. On the second piece of paper, please write down the name of the last drug that you took.”

The lecturer collected these in and then went into a state of outrage—he was a very effective performer—saying, “You are going to do vital medical work in various parts of the world”. As he went through the bits of paper, he said, “Look at this! You know that, for this patented drug, there is a generic drug available at a cheaper rate. You know that—why have you done it?” People were just flummoxed; they did not know why they had done it. They had got into a culture where too much of the sale of medicines was in the hands of PR and advertising companies that were, on the back of drugs, making a lot of money by finding more attractive ways of presenting things that were available generically.

I also remember at that time that, in Bangladesh, there was a great deal of concern because we were trying to support a factory—an enterprise—that was making generic drugs available in Bangladesh. My goodness, the moves that were afoot to try to undermine the viability of that company.

I thank my noble friend Lady Thornton for having introduced her amendment because, if there is one thing that we must hold dear, it is that we cannot allow any further privatisation of the health service by the back door. It is inadvertent sometimes, but sometimes it is quite deliberate by those who try to manipulate trade deals in the interests of their own countries and industries.

I also commend very warmly my noble friend Lord Bassam. He is absolutely right that it is vital that Governments of all persuasions have available without inhibition the opportunity to introduce public ownership where it becomes essential. We again know that there have been too many dangers that these rights may be curbed. We have had a peculiar situation in Britain where, because of the curbs that already exist, we have had nationalised companies in other European countries running British rail systems. That is just absurd. We must not open the door to the possibility that more of that could occur. My noble friend is absolutely right to have brought his amendment into the context of the Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I say first that I very much agree with everything that my noble friend Lady Noakes had to say, which means that I can save myself saying some of those things by thoroughly agreeing with her, in particular on the point she made about the disinformation about private ownership in the NHS.

When the noble Lord, Lord Patel, whom I regard as a friend, makes his points, he has to answer the following question. Is it his proposition that when the Priory Group, which was a UK company for many years, was bought by an American company, that should have been prevented by the UK Government? That is the question that he has to answer. In fact, it was not prevented by the UK Government, and indeed for decades Governments in this country have allowed foreign ownership of UK companies. If we were to stop that, it would of course have very big implications for the investor relationship that we have with other countries. However, that is not what we are proposing, and I do not think that it is what either the Official Opposition or the Liberal Democrats are proposing, so it does not really have any force as an argument.

More to the point is whether anything in our trade relationships and trade agreements that we enter into prejudices our ability to have a National Health Service free at the point of use, paid for out of general taxation and controlled by us as a public service? There is nothing in those trade agreements that allows that. In response to my noble friend Lady McIntosh, the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee—she might care to look at the evidence that has been given—is examining in detail the Government’s proposals for negotiations with the United States on a prospective free trade agreement. That expressly excludes any measures that would have any impact on the NHS or on our ability to control our pharmaceutical pricing and supply system. That is very clear; she can look at it.

All three amendments relate to rollover agreements; they do not talk about future trade agreements. Therefore, the debate about the American free trade agreement is irrelevant to these amendments. I looked at one example —the Canada-EU agreement, which is able to be rolled over with the benefit of implementation through this legislation. A description on the EU legal database of Chapter Nine of the agreement on cross-border trade in services says that

“this chapter fully upholds governments’ ability to regulate and supply services in the public interest.”

On Chapter Eighteen, which relates to state enterprises, monopolies, and enterprises granted special rights or privileges, it says, in terms:

“The rules ensure that both parties have the full freedom of choice in the way they provide public services to their citizens.”


There is a general exception which says that provision can be made

“to protect human, animal or plant life or health”.

I think that the proposers of amendments of this character have to look at what they are proposing and ask whether it changes anything. The rollover agreements comply with those requirements, and therefore the legislation is entirely robust.

I rather deprecate the idea that one proposes amendments and, before listening to the debate, says, “Well, I might bring it back on Report”. I suggest to noble Lords that they listen to the debate and, if they propose to bring back an amendment back on Report, they redesign it so that it bites on future trade agreements. At least we could then have a debate that was relevant. There is nothing in what is proposed here in relation to health or public services, in particular, that bites in any sensible way on the existing trade agreement.

We should remember that these trade agreements do not change domestic law. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for example, that the law of the land says that you cannot introduce charges for NHS services other than by new primary legislation. That is the only way in which it can happen. Therefore, we do not need to trust the Prime Minister; it is in the law. Of course, one can change anything through primary legislation, but the Prime Minister has not done so, and I can confidently say to noble Lords that I know that he will not do so to introduce charging for NHS services. He would not get it through even if he tried.

Therefore, I do not quite get any of this. Frankly, Amendment 13 feels a bit as though the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, wants to ignore the result of the last general election. If the election had gone another way and Jeremy Corbyn had become Prime Minister, he could have done these things and trade agreements would not have stopped him. It is the election that stopped him, and not trying to legislate to stop trade agreements being irrelevant.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Grand Committee

This amendment should therefore have universal support. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to it. If my noble—and actually very learned—friend Lord Hendy chooses not to divide the Grand Committee today, I will urge him to seek the Minister’s assurance that this amendment will be incorporated into the Government’s own plans on Report and, if that does not happen, I will urge him to divide your Lordships’ House at a later date.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am rather pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, since it gives me an immediate right of reply. If she looks carefully at the debates last week, which she was listening to, she will find that at no point did I assert that any of the amendments were out of scope—not least because I have put down further amendments myself that are intended to have an impact on the processes for making regulations for trade future trade agreements, and indeed which impact on schemes outwith the text of the Bill. I will come on precisely to that in Amendment 91 in this group.

I say gently to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that the making of law is not solely the province of lawyers. There is a very valued tradition in this House that we bring expertise from a range of different disciplines. As it happens, my discipline—my original training—is that of a civil servant. Some 39 years ago I wrote the instructions to counsel for a major piece of legislation, and just under 10 years ago, as Leader of the House of Commons, I was responsible for Parliamentary Counsel and the scrutiny of legislation brought before the two Houses, and for the structure of the legislative programme. For 40 years I have engaged in the process of legislation. The fact that I am not qualified lawyer in no sense excludes me from making the points that I made.

As it happens, I did not say that anything was out of scope. The point I gently made last week was that quite a number of the amendments we were looking at were intended to influence—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to stop the noble Lord, but I understand that there are still some problems with hearing. Is that true of other Members of the Committee? No? Perhaps we can resume and see how we get on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I was making the point that in amendments last week, I was trying to help the Committee. The objective of quite a number of the amendments was to influence the content of future trade agreements, but the effect of the amendments would have applied only to the continuity agreements. We will need to understand that in particular on Report, and to seek in some cases to amend the Bill, and to do so with the effect that people are looking for.

To come back to this group, I spoke on Thursday, I think, about Philip Morris. I will not repeat any of that but will simply say that it gives rise to considerable sympathy on my part about the actions of some companies. However, the absence of investor-state dispute settlement—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again, but there has been a request that he starts his speech again, because quite a lot of it was lost. May I trouble him to start again?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Since I have no text, it will not be the same speech, so if you will forgive me, I will not do that. It will appear in Hansard, and I encourage Members to read it there. In any case, I am now talking about the amendments in this group, as opposed to responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, which noble Lords can read in Hansard.

On these amendments, I have great sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, was saying. When Philip Morris was frustrated on an investor-state dispute settlement, it effectively used Honduras and the Dominican Republic to use WTO procedures. So the absence of ISDS is not enough in itself—we have to ensure that we are proof against that. In fact, where Australia was concerned, as it happens, the public health exemptions in the WTO were sufficient in the last decision of the appellate body that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, regrets the absence of: the last decision it made in June was to uphold Australia’s position. We have to be very mindful of that.

Before I get to my own amendment, I will speak to the others. There is a very legitimate question. Are the Government planning simply to roll over existing EU agreements as they are, including where there are ISDS provisions and including with CETA in due course, where there is an investment court system? I am very interested to know what the Government’s intentions are. Certainly, my expectation is that it will be very difficult to have a continuity agreement while departing substantially from continuity.

As regards Japan, I do not have the text of the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, but while the EU-Japan agreement encourages mutual investment, Article 8.9.4 of it makes clear that, while market access, national treatment without discrimination and most-favoured-nation status are offered, it says that for “greater certainty”, most-favoured-nation treatment

“does not include investor-to-state dispute settlement procedures provided for in other international agreements.”

I will be very interested to know in due course whether the UK-Japan agreement says the same thing. I know that my friends in Japan take the view that we will not be able to accede to the CPTPP without accepting an investor-state dispute settlement. So this is a very interesting moment in understanding whether we are joining with the European Union in moving away from investor-state dispute settlement, or whether we subscribe to the Japanese view that it remains a legitimate vehicle in international trade agreements.

Amendment 43 proposes a multilateral investment tribunal. I wish that we could use such a process. The Doha round did not accept a multilateral investment provision—the proposal failed. We have bilateral agreements, but while they might be desirable they are not sufficiently widespread to allow us to get to a multilateral tribunal. Putting in legislation a requirement for such a tribunal when people have not yet signed up to one seems heroic.

Amendment 91 is not about investor-state dispute settlement; it is about disputes between states. The best example to have in mind is the dispute between the European Union and the United States. As a result of US action, the dispute reached the point where it was lawful under WTO rules for the EU to apply specific import duties against US exports into the European Union.

The Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 relates to this, but why I am talking about a different piece of legislation? The original Trade Bill and the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill were introduced at the same time, at the end of 2017. They were intended to be considered side by side and they cross-refer considerably. In this instance, it is entirely right for us to look at the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act and ask whether the parliamentary scrutiny arrangements relating to it are correct. Section 15 of the Act gives the Secretary of State the power to impose through regulations additional import duties as a result of an international dispute—for example, regulations to impose import duties on US exports. That power is exercisable through the negative resolution procedure, but in my view it should be an affirmative resolution procedure—this should be added to the list of affirmative resolution procedures in Section 32 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act.

The argument in the Government’s Explanatory Notes for using the negative procedure in the great majority of cases where customs duties are imposed is that there are so many such regulations that they have to be made in that way, otherwise they become impractical. That is patently not the case here. In this instance, I encourage my noble friend the Minister to agree that there will be relatively few international disputes that give rise to the imposition of such duties and that, when that happens, it will by its nature be of considerable significance and therefore should be in the form of regulations subject to the affirmative procedure.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, we are indeed fortunate to have had someone with the huge experience, not least internationally, of my noble friend Lord Hendy introducing the amendment, as reflected in the authoritative way in which he did so. I always applaud my noble friend Lord Hain, who said that he could not understand why the Government did not accept amendments. I am sorry to bring controversy to this discussion, but we must face the truth. I suggest to my noble friend that the explanation is quite clear. A bunch of ideologues in Number 10, such as we have never been exposed to in my time in politics, are determined to drive their strategy through. Their strategy is for a free-for-all and a totally unregulated society. They are fundamentally opposed to regulation and, with that, accountability. Unless we face that reality, we are just tackling everything down river without going to the source of the problem.

My noble friend was right to underline the importance of the protection of labour and employment standards. I was glad to hear my noble friend Lady Blower speaking. She was absolutely right to emphasise the importance of the UN and UNCTAD in particular. UNCTAD has played an important role in bringing the nations together to find a workable and just system across the world. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti also has considerable experience. She emphasised the fact that we are talking about the law and our need to be vigilant in protecting the environment and the NHS.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Grand Committee

So I support the principle behind this amendment, and the whole group of amendments, to make it clear that the Bill must be amended to reflect the legitimate role of Parliament and the devolved authorities in determining the shape of our trade policy which, in turn, can determine our freedom to act in so many areas of domestic policy. I feel we will need to return to this on Report.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. On the points she made about the relationship with the devolved Administrations, when we were debating the Fisheries Bill before the summer, I was struck by how constructive the relationship with the devolved Administrations was in deciding what the fisheries regime should look like and how it should be administered. There is a good precedent there for how we should look at trade agreements, where they bear on the industry of particular parts of the United Kingdom. We will look at that more as we go through some of the other issues, but it was a very positive illustration of the Government’s willingness and ability to work with the other Administrations.

In this group, I will speak in particular on Amendment 63, which is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The purpose of the amendment is to strengthen the statutory provision in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. Noble Lords will recall the much-referred-to 21-day period. I am a member of the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee, and nothing I say today is any criticism of the way in which Ministers have been dealing with this new committee. On the contrary, they are giving us the kind of access and information that we are looking for.

But the point is that, in addition to the 21 days, there is a period before the laying of such a treaty during which it can be looked at by the relevant committees of this House and the other place. It is a matter for Ministers how long that is. Once the document is laid, the 21-day limit applies. Amendment 63 relates to the part of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act that makes it clear that Ministers can create further periods beyond the 21 days. They can renew that period to allow for such a debate to take place in either House.

Ministers have said that, as a matter of convention, they will seek to allow such a debate wherever practical and where the parliamentary timetable allows. My point is that this should not be, in any sense, at the discretion of Ministers. Where either of the committees in the two Houses has resolved that the agreement or treaty raises issues of sufficient significance that it requires a debate in that House—in the case of either House, it might be critical of the agreement, and in the case of the other place, it could even go so far as to seek to reject its ratification—Ministers must allow such a debate to take place before ratification itself occurs. That is what this amendment does, and I hope it is effective in that regard. It requires Ministers to continue to extend the 21-day period until such time as a debate has taken place in either House where that has been sought by the relevant committee. I hope that is reasonably straightforward.

Turning to other amendments in this group, it is rather important for us just to recall that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—I mean no criticism of him—has retabled amendments that took the form of new clauses at Report in the House of Commons. Amendments 36, 37 and 38 bear upon the issue of a report from Ministers to highlight where there is any divergence between the continuity agreement and the originating agreement between the European Union and the relevant third country. As a former member of the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee of our EU Committee here, I know that we looked at quite a number of these continuity agreements, and the idea that they were cut and pasted is actually rather limited. Even if they were intended to be a cut-and-paste job, as with the Switzerland agreement, for example, we were reminded that they were a bit like Swiss cheese: more notable for what was left out than for what was included.

The divergence is really very important. Where the Japan agreement is concerned—and, of course, I have not seen it, but we hope to see it soon, as the Minister said on Tuesday—it is not just an enhanced agreement; we also want to see how it relates specifically to the EU-Japan agreement. For example, the EU has a most favoured nation clause built in, so is it the case that that is triggered? Will we have a most favoured nation clause as well in our agreement with Japan, so that if the European Union starts to say, “Well, if you’ve given the United Kingdom this in this regard, then we want a compensating benefit”, would that benefit also accrue to us under a most favoured nation provision?

We previously discussed the question of tariff-rate quotas, and there are significant tariff-rate quotas applicable to agricultural goods exported to Japan from the European Union. The question of how they are to be distributed is quite a significant issue. Is the Japan-UK agreement wholly additional to the EU’s existing quota, or is the EU quota being reallocated in ways that will be beneficial to the UK, or is the UK reliant, as we have probably discovered, on the rest of the European Union not using its quota in respect of some goods, in which case the UK is actually dependent on whether that quota is used by the EU? These are rather significant issues, so the point of Amendments 36 to 38 is to require Ministers to tell us about that.

Ministers can quite legitimately say, “Well, that is the job of the International Agreements Sub-Committee to go away and check.” We will do that job, but it should not be a requirement to initiate such an examination. It should be taken as read by Ministers that they should present such a report as part of the scrutiny process. I note that those new clauses at Report stage in another place were actually tabled by six Conservative Members of Parliament.

That brings me to Amendment 35 which, of course, is the same as new Clause 4, which was considered at Report stage in the Commons. I have the greatest respect and sympathy for my former parliamentary neighbour, Jonathan Djanogly from Huntingdon, who was the mover of those amendments, but I will say two things. This particular amendment was divided upon at Report stage in the other place, and negatived with a majority of 63. That must make us consider whether, in due course, we actually want the House of Commons to think again. Are they likely to think again and why would they think again? They could change their minds because this goes to a central issue, which is the Government’s use of the prerogative power and the extent to which they are mandated and their prerogative power is circumscribed by a mandate from either House. It also means some significant constraint on their negotiating flexibility. This is different from the question of parliamentary scrutiny and the approval/ratification process. It can actually support negotiators in that they can say, as American negotiators quite often do, “That wouldn’t pass on the Hill.” They should be able to say, “That would not pass through Westminster.” It is something that we can use.

When we come to look at this again at Report, we should only send amendments back to the Commons which are asking them, in the other place, to strengthen the ratification process and the parliamentary scrutiny leading to ratification, rather than suggesting that we should create a whole new assumption that the prerogative power of the Executive must be overridden by a mandate from Parliament for all of these treaty negotiations. I hope that Ministers will say, in relation to Amendment 63, that they are prepared to see the conventional approach given statutory backing.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on clearly laying out the issues in this group. I largely agree with almost everything that has been said. In fact, I put my name to Amendment 63 not only because I thought it was a good amendment but because the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, looked a little bit lonely there, so I thought I would support him even though we are not natural allies on almost anything.

I am not really one for rules and regulations—I tend to kick against that sort of regimentation—but I am essentially rather law-abiding, so I have quite honestly been absolutely horrified by this Government. They are breaking the law: they are actually sending two Bills to your Lordships’ House in which they ask us specifically to break the law. I just think that that is dreadful. Parliament is actually recognised as the unwritten British constitution; it is the will and the voice of the people. We could make Parliament more democratic, but the Government are actually saying that they do not want to. They are almost saying: “Well, the discretion of Ministers is as good as anything.” No, it is not; that is absolutely laughable. It sidesteps parliamentary scrutiny in the most horrendous way. We cannot let the government majority in the Commons absolve the Government of any meaningful scrutiny. We have to scrutinise and we have to be tough.

I very much hope that, when it comes to Report, we can pull a lot of these ideas together and ensure that we send them back to the Commons and make it clear that we are actually scrutinising in a way that MPs really ought to be but are not. From my point of view, we have to embed binding scrutiny into the Bill and we have to make the MPs feel, I hope, a little bit shamed if they do not support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister but I would like to add one point that arises from what my noble friend Lady Noakes said. It is important that we recognise precisely how the CRaG process works. The Government do not require a positive Motion from the House of Commons to ratify a treaty. However, if the House of Commons has voted that a treaty not be ratified, the Government cannot then proceed to ratify it. The Government can ask the question again as many times as they like, but they cannot ratify it if the Commons has said that they should not. That is why it is such an important issue that, if the House of Commons has received a report from a relevant committee saying that it should consider such a treaty, in my view that debate has to take place before ratification can happen. Legally, however, the Government can use their power to control the timetable and avoid a debate, the period of 21 days can expire, and the Government can ratify. That is the legal position. If the Government have a requirement of urgency, under Section 22 of the CRaG the Government can lay a Statement saying, “This treaty must be ratified”, but that must be apparent right at the outset and not become something to which the Government resort because they wish to avoid a critical Motion in the House of Commons.

We will have to come back to this on Report—we will have to—because there is a risk. It is a small risk, and not something that the Government have been guilty of, but as Angus MacNeil, the Chair of the International Trade Committee in the other place, said a couple of years ago, one has to look at this legislation on the basis, perhaps, that—he said it a couple of years ago—Jeremy Corbyn were Prime Minister. Would we want him to have this power? Therefore, let us just make sure that we think about this, and I invite the Minister also to think about it in the intervening period.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend and I will certainly think about it. The comments he makes are perfectly rational. It is not for me to impinge on the prerogative of the Leader of the House and the usual channels to debate on whether time should be found. Of course, in a rational world, one would expect time to be found to debate a matter as important as that. I will consider his comments carefully.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I have been leader of the House.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I realise that I should have declared at the outset that I am on the committee advising the Welsh Government, at their request, as we proceed through Brexit. I asked to come in after the Minister to correct the assertion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I want to point out that supporting this group—and particularly Amendment 57—is not a last-ditch anti-Brexit move: it is because we have devolved competencies that are deeply affected. Sadly, the Government have not seemed to be adequately discussing with, consulting or bringing into confidence the Welsh Government. Wales voted for Brexit and is unionist. It feels as if the Government have been short-sighted to see the Government in Wales as somehow a cloaked enemy who cannot be trusted to keep confidentiality. The Welsh Government know only too well that the future of Wales depends on these trade agreements and that compromises will need to be made for the future welfare overall, and they respect the vote cast by the people of Wales.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, highlighted many strong points within the amendments, and we must find a way forward. There is a need to bring the devolved Administrations into the inner circle in negotiating if the good of the whole UK is to be achieved. I ask the Minister to please consider that.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

I do not believe that having less scrutiny than existed when we were members of the EU is an acceptable position. I am clear in my unequivocal support for both these amendments, for the establishment of an international trade commission that builds on the work of the existing trade commission—which is temporary in nature—and for it to be put into statute in the Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have this opportunity to say a few words about these two amendments. I can be a bit simpler than I had intended to be because my noble friend and the movers of the amendments say that these are probing amendments. To that extent, I want to add one or two questions of my own; I look to my noble friend the Minister for his response.

I have a feeling that, once again, these are amendments that fall into the category of trying to put into statute that Ministers should not do things that they do not wish to do. I am not quite sure why that is necessary. In this particular instance, the amendment proposes—in a number of areas relating to the environment, animal welfare and SPS—to take out of the hands of Ministers the business of negotiating the nature of the trade agreements that we are to enter into, largely tying the hands of Ministers. Ministers have been immensely clear, repeatedly, about their intention not to enter into trade agreements the effect of which would be to dilute the standards applicable by us in this country in all these respects.

What we have here says, in effect, that when we seek to enter into any agreement with other countries, we have an extraterritorial application of own standards to them. I fear that, in practice, that would mean an inability on the part of the United Kingdom Government to enter into trade negotiations with countries that apply different standards to our own. I am not sure that the signatories to the amendments have addressed the issue. They talk simply in terms of the impact in this country of the import of goods that are subject to different standards. That is a matter of domestic legislation; that is something we can stop. There is absolutely nothing that requires us to import goods that are produced to animal welfare standards that are different to and lower than our own, or that have environmental consequences that we would not accept. We are perfectly free to say no to that. The implication of these amendments, however, goes beyond that to the idea that we should not enter into trade agreements with countries that supply standards that are not our own.

I am not sure that noble Lords necessarily need to answer this, but I am not sure where the words “or higher than” have come from. What is this international trade commission supposed to do? Should it look at our standards and say, “They’re not good enough. We are going to apply higher standards to other countries than we apply to ourselves”, and seek to enforce them through the terms of an international trade agreement that we enter into with them? That seems inherently and deeply unlikely.

Finally, it was asserted by the noble Lords who put their names to the amendments that this amendment would put in the Bill something that is primary legislation and is therefore wholly applicable. What they are talking about are standards. They are not talking about regulations. In truth, what really matters is the implementation of international trade agreements in the form of regulations. For example, in a later debate, we will talk, I hope, about the implementation of our unilateral scheme of preferences with developing and least-developed countries, many of whom would find it intensely difficult to maintain standards—for example, of animal welfare or food safety and traceability—comparable to our own.

Is it noble Lords’ intention that the international trade commission should require that such regulations should have the same standards built into them, and that we would not accept goods from those countries if they were incompatible with the standards set by the ITC? That is not what these amendments say because they talk about international trade agreements. There is no international trade agreement required for us to offer unilateral preferences to these countries; therefore, perhaps it is their intention simply to exclude developing and least-developed countries from the issues they talk about. I do not think that that is their intention, but that is not the effect of their amendments.

I suggest that, in so far as these are probing amendments, let us recognise that there are some glaring deficiencies. If we come back, as I know we will on Report, to the question of how we maintain our standards in this country, let us think carefully about how we do it and recognise, with a degree of humility, that international trade agreements should not be a mechanism by which we seek to apply extraterritorial jurisdiction for UK standards to other countries throughout the world.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in a moment. In the meantime, I would like to say what a pleasure it has been to work with the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Henig and Lady Ritchie. I am delighted to support these two amendments.

I really congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. It is almost like having a third member of the Green group sometimes. I am sure that she hates that thought and that the Minister might as well. It has been quite a slog for us during this Bill. We have repetitively talked about these issues and it is getting a tad boring.

This amendment is a mechanism to maintain trade standards that are as high or higher than domestic UK standards. For the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that means that it is okay to trade with countries that have higher standards, even though they are not the same as our standards; that is the point of this part of the amendment. He asked why this is necessary. It is necessary because we simply do not trust the Government. If he can put his hand on his heart and say that he trusts the Government—go on; no?—I will be astonished. We have fantastic Ministers here—we even have a fantastic government team—but we do not trust the Government.

This amendment addresses the criticisms raised in previous iterations of the Bill, when noble Lords suggested that defining UK standards and equivalent standards would be a difficult legislative exercise. The amendment would create a specific body to undertake that exercise, and would grant it the necessary resources to do so. That might be a bit of a sticking point but, quite honestly, it is possible to move resources around, so I do not see that as an essential problem.

My colleagues, the three noble Baronesses, have covered almost every aspect on which I should have liked to speak, so all I will say is: will the Minister commit to working with us, perhaps to find a compromise amendment ahead of Report? Otherwise, there will the inevitable Division and government defeat, which will obviously be quite exciting for many of us but probably less so for the Minister and his team. So it would be wonderful if we could see a positive way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

My Lords, I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Lords, Lord Lansley, and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his response to the debate. I want to make one point. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, may not have understood my point about the unilateral scheme of preferences in developing countries. It was simply that, since Amendment 54 bites only on those international trade agreements that are subject to the CRaG process, it would not bite on the unilateral scheme of preferences at all. So, it does not do what the mover of the amendment is looking for it to do; when they look again on Report, noble Lords should—as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, suggested —take it away and think about how they can support the Government to maintain and deliver our standards, rather than seek to go around them.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I have nothing to add to those perceptive comments from my noble friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain, as a co-signatory of these amendments. Coming from Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland, where I was born, grew up, was educated and served as a Member in the other place, a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a Minister, I am only too well aware of the impact that the European Union had in Northern Ireland. Clearly, we do not want to see borders in the Irish Sea or on the island of Ireland.

I cast my mind back to the early 1990s and the Maastricht treaty, which allowed the border to be evaporated in many ways and opened up the whole island to trade with each other and with the island of Great Britain. The Good Friday agreement established the infrastructure that facilitated north-south co-operation, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly and those important east-west considerations through the British-Irish Council.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, has elaborated quite considerably the impact of these amendments, which I fully support and concur with. They deal with the need to protect the Northern Ireland protocol, which ensures that there will not be a hard border on the island of Ireland and protects the intrinsic quality and content of the Good Friday agreement as characterised in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to prevent the return of a hard border on the island and the protection of Northern Ireland free trade agreements in the GB context.

Amendment 58 means that, in any trade agreement with the EU, there must be compliance with the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland to prevent that hard border. Being part of the EU ensured the eradication of that border; there was seamless trade which bolstered the economy of both parts of the island, particularly the counties which straddled the border, which is some 300 miles long, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, referred to. It would be impossible to have tariffs, as there are so many crossing points and the costs of such infrastructure would be highly prohibitive and a disincentive to our economy and society. We have grown so much together; the very fact that we have the restoration of those political institutions is characteristic of that ongoing work.

The bottom line is the UK’s commitment to north-south co-operation, the guarantee of avoiding a hard border, including any physical infrastructure, and the checks and controls that must be compatible with the overall withdrawal agreement. That is how we understand the Northern Ireland protocol. It is important that it not be undermined by the internal market Bill which comes to your Lordships’ House next week for Second Reading.

Amendment 59 addresses the need for the continuation of north-south trade and the prevention of customs arrangements at borders. It means honouring the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland Act, and the withdrawal Act—both of those are international treaties, and the internal market Bill should not be allowed to override them.

Amendment 60 is Northern Ireland-GB specific. All trade agreements must benefit every part of the UK equally, with no exclusions. This is needed to avoid the risk that Northern Ireland is excluded from future UK free trade agreements due to the complexity of its differential arrangements. There is a condition that no free trade agreement can be concluded by the UK if it does not apply equally to all regions and nations of the UK. This is to prevent Northern Ireland being excluded, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, from free trade agreements. This was raised last Thursday in the fourth session of Committee.

Amendment 65 intersects with the Northern Ireland protocol. As Northern Ireland goods will be produced in accordance with EU rules under the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol, this amendment will ensure that Northern Ireland goods will not be discriminated against as a consequence of any new UK free trade agreements.

The trader support service, which supports businesses moving goods from Britain into Northern Ireland, will simply be temporary. Amendment 82 would ensure long-term commitment to it. At the moment, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, it will be for only two years. However, putting it into legislation as a long-standing commitment from Britain to Northern Ireland would be essential to security and long-term planning for the Northern Ireland economy. It would also be of assistance to free trade agreements, because the trader support service is for goods that enter Northern Ireland from Britain that are coming from any third country. It would also involve no extra costs and would cover the cost of export health certificates. We also have to take note of the changed circumstances because of the rising levels of poverty, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, referred to, and the growing reliance on food banks at the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.

I urge the Minister to give very positive consideration to these amendments and to support them. If we do not get support today, we will come back on Report. It is important that the intricate sets of relationships that have already been created on the island of Ireland and between Ireland and Britain, which have allowed free movement of people and trade and have bolstered the economies on both islands, are allowed to persist and continue. Those intricate sets of relationships need to be developed because they break down barriers in the minds of people and on the islands, and the last thing we need is the establishment of new borders and new islands.

I can remember travelling to the Republic of Ireland as a child. You were stopped at the border, and customs clearance guys on either side asked your parents very deep and pressing questions about what might have sounded like trivial matters. Thankfully, that day has long gone. We do not want to see a restoration of that or the imposition of any such barriers because it simply injures trade, stops important business, and prevents local communities, which have so many connections with each other, growing.

I am very happy to support these amendments, and I recommend them to your Lordships’ House for positive consideration. I hope that the Minister will consider approving them.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with Amendment 58 and I hope all noble Lords agree with it, because it is our shared intention. I am pretty sure that it is the intention of those negotiating on the part of the European Union that they will enter into an agreement that is thoroughly and completely compatible with the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

However, the main point I want to make, apart from a subsidiary one on Amendment 82, is that this is neither necessary or, in truth, effective. Noble Lords will recall a number of occasions in Committee when we discussed carefully the distinction between on the one hand the ratification of treaties and on the other their implementation into domestic legislation. In this instance, we already have in domestic legislation the enforcement of this principle. It is in Sections 21 to 24 and Schedule 3 to the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, which says, not least in Section 24, that Ministers of the Crown can make no alteration to the Belfast agreement. Therefore our domestic legislation already provides for our compliance with the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The point is that the purpose of this is to say that we will not ratify an agreement with the EU if it does not say that. I hope it will say that, but if it were not compatible, in any case it would have no effect in domestic law because domestic legislation already says that.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

64: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Trade promotion
The Secretary of State must lay a report before Parliament in relation to each year from 1 January 2021, prepared as soon as practicable after the end of that year, including—(a) the measures adopted by the Secretary of State to secure the benefits of the international trade agreements entered into by the United Kingdom, and which are in force during the course of that year; and (b) the trade and export promotion strategies which the Secretary of State proposes in order to realise the economic benefits of those international trade agreements to enterprises in the United Kingdom.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would require Ministers to report to Parliament on how the benefits of new Free Trade Agreements are to be realised, including the trade and export promotion strategies they intend to adopt.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have this opportunity to move Amendment 64, the purpose of which is to seek from Ministers an annual report, starting after the end of 2021, showing what measures they have taken to exploit the benefits of the trade agreements into which the UK has entered and setting out how they propose to maximise the realisation of those benefits in future.

I should say that I was recently appointed the vice-chair of an all-party parliamentary group for trade and export promotion. Happily, it has gathered support from all sides of this House and the other place, led by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and Gary Sambrook in the Commons. It is timely that we should come together in this new all-party parliamentary group since it is important that we support businesses as part of the global Britain exercise to realise the benefits of trade and exports across the world. In many respects, globalisation has stopped. The expansion of global trade had stopped even at the end of 2019 and has gone backwards in 2020, for obvious reasons. The difficulties of achieving export activity and entry into markets in the midst of a Covid crisis are palpable. Businesses need our support and help; I hope that one thing we can do is ensure that the voice of business and those organisations that speak for and represent it will be heard here in this House.

My noble friend the Minister and I probably hark back to the days when we were responsible for trade policy in the British Government. I remember that, when I was a civil servant in the Department of Trade and Industry, I was responsible for the chemicals and petrochemicals aspect of the generalised system of preferences. We had shared competence with the European Commission in those days before we lost it altogether. The point is that those of us who have experience of managing trade policy in the British Government have to be, almost by definition, in our 60s or older. So we are learning afresh; happily, the Department for International Trade is learning fast and operating on a broad canvas.

However, the bandwidth inside the DIT for this task is taken up with the business of putting trade agreements in place. That is a vital job but we cannot afford to lose sight of the job that is also an essential part of the DIT: leading our trade and export promotion activity. The DIT does not do that alone—it does it with other departments across Whitehall, not least the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—but it is not down to all of us, not just government, to achieve this. It is down to businesses, chambers of commerce—including the International Chamber of Commerce and bilateral chambers of commerce around the world—and trade associations to make this happen, but they need to know what the government strategy is to do so.

I want to say in passing that there is a tendency—President Trump is particularly guilty of this sin—to take a mercantilist approach to trade deals. When we make a trade deal, he seems to think that he can directly manipulate the volumes of trade between countries as a result of that deal. In fact, he is beginning to find that that does not happen; in truth, we should not expect it to. We are, I hope, facilitating, liberalising and expediting trade, but that requires the activities of businesses and traders to make it happen. The volume of trade is a direct result of their activities, so we need to enable them to exploit trade deals.

Also, it is far from the case that what is written into a trade deal necessarily results in exploitation by businesses. Preferential rates are often not used by many businesses. Tariff rate quotas are often not used by businesses in one country even though they are available for trade in another. The use of these trade deals is instrumental; we need to make it happen.

Unlike the amendment that we were talking about earlier, I hope that this one asks Ministers to do something that they want to do: set out the strategy for realising and exploiting the benefits of the trade agreements that we will, I hope, increasingly enter into—not just the continuity agreements that are the subject of this Bill, but the many international free trade agreements that are to follow. As we do that, I hope that a flexible strategy will come forward from Ministers soon.

I reiterate those two points. First, I hope that it is soon because we should have such a strategy in place before the end of the implementation period at the point at which we are operating once again as an independent trading nation. It is necessary for business to be able to see what “global Britain” looks like when we have not only left the European Union but exited the customs union.

Secondly, the strategy must be flexible. None of us knows how we will be able to access global markets easily in the course of the next year, possibly even the year after. These are intensely difficult times for traders. Some of the conventional ways of doing things—you do your market research, go into a market, participate in a trade mission, attend a trade fair, meet people, create relationships and build your business—will not be able to be done as easily as they have been done in the past. That is why it is all the more important, as we are hoping to do through the all-party group, for the Government to work with and through organisations such as chambers of commerce, bilateral chambers, trade associations and those who are able to work in-market alongside our embassies—in particular, to work in-market and in a commercial sense to create market opportunities for businesses.

For example, when I was at the British Chambers of Commerce 30 years ago, we took on responsibility from the department for the export market research scheme. It is important that we have a strong export market research programme in the years ahead and in the strategy to come. I hope that Ministers will publish a strategy in the weeks, rather than months, ahead to show how they will exploit markets and how “global Britain” is going to work. I hope that that will be clear about the sectors that can look to the Government for support and the nature of the support that they will receive. I hope that it will be equally clear about how we are going to operate in markets where priority markets exist and how the Government are going to do that.

I declare my interest in the register as the UK chair of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group. A good example is the UK-Japan economic partnership agreement. It goes further than the existing EU agreement in respect of digital trade; I understand that our embassy in Tokyo has for the first time appointed a digital attaché. I hope that we will see a build-up of activity in markets by the Government, but also by the business communities, to make these trade agreements not only real, in the sense that we spent a lot of time discussing them, and not just signed, ratified, authenticated and implemented. Implementation is not a legal process; it has to become a market-orientated process.

I hope that my noble friend will be able to say that these amendments are not necessary because the Government are firmly fixed on renewing their trade and export promotion strategy—the last time they did so was in 2018, I think, but so much has happened since then—and setting it out soon in a way that really engages business organisations and the business community in making real the ambitions of global Britain, to which I think we all subscribe. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for his amendment and his wise words in his introduction, honed by his years of experience.

As discussed when I met my noble friend to speak about this amendment, international trade agreements are not worth the paper they are written on if businesses and consumers are not educated and enabled to take advantage of their contents. I also fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, about the need to operationalise those agreements. He and I were in complete agreement when we discussed this. I therefore agree that it is right that the Government should regularly review the benefits realised through the measures adopted for the international trade agreements they negotiate and the trade and export promotion strategies that they deploy. The strategies are vital, and I and all my ministerial colleagues in the department are well-seized of this.

The new all-party parliamentary group for trade and export promotion is an important development, and I am pleased to thoroughly endorse it. The energy of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, as co-chair, and its eminent sponsors will surely lead to its success.

Coming to the substance of the amendment, I hope that my noble friend will be pleased to hear that my department already has plans to publish such a report every two years. I hope that noble Lords will appreciate that the two-year period is appropriate because to do so more regularly would be overly burdensome for the department to pull together and would provide insufficient time to monitor the benefits realised. I assure noble Lords that the fact that the period is two years rather than one year in no way means that we do not agree on the importance of this topic.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, referred to the trade access programme. I am well aware from my contacts with SMEs how valuable many of them find it, and I will write to give him an update on its present stature.

I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that we are fully seized of the points he makes and that my domestic and international colleagues work closely together on this. If at any time a conversation with me or my ministerial colleagues would help him, we would be happy to have one.

I hope that my noble friend Lord Lansley is reassured that the Government share the objective behind his amendment and that our proposal for a biannual report meets it in a proportionate way. Consequently, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am most grateful to the Minister for his response and to all those who took part in the debate. Everyone expressed their views in a positive way, and there was widespread support for the amendment’s objectives. I particularly thank my noble friend for his support for the objectives of the all-party parliamentary group. We look forward to working with him, his ministerial colleagues and officials in trying to ensure that we engage fully, not only here in Parliament but with the business community, in making that happen.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, not least for referring to the Federation of Small Businesses. In the report it published earlier in the year relating to SMEs and more recently when Make UK published its report on exports, it was abundantly clear how important it will be for us as a country to bring small and medium-sized businesses into export markets, not only in Europe, to which many have been accustomed, but beyond it. Thirty years ago, I set up an active exporting scheme through the British Chambers of Commerce that mentored small businesses to help them get into exporting activity. I hope that we can look at schemes of that kind because it is important to make that happen.

It was a very interesting debate about the nature of reports. I gently say to my noble friend Lady Noakes that the amendment refers to “the Secretary of State” because “the Secretary of State” is every Secretary of State, not just the Secretary of State for International Trade—so it can within the amendment be a cross-governmental report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendments 70 and 95. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, had very much hoped to speak this evening, as he has very kindly co-signed the amendments, for which I thank him. One of the idiosyncrasies of our procedures meant that he was not able to get on to the right Marshalled List. I know that he will be following proceedings very closely and I thank him warmly for his support. I look forward to hearing my noble friend Lord Lansley speak to his amendment on free zones. Free ports are something that I support, and anything that we can do to increase people’s understanding of free ports and the fact that we could join and create as many free ports as we liked while we were members of the European Union is all to the good.

The purposes of Amendments 70 and 95 are straight- forward. They look to introduce a short period of adjustment following the end of the formal transition period at the end of this year, particularly in relation to any free trade agreements with the EU, but also with our economic partnership agreements and rollover agreements under the Bill. This would allow industries in the farming sector to make business-critical changes following the outcome of these negotiations. Also, for business viability, it refers to the introduction of measures to facilitate trade with our partners, both in the EU in a future trading agreement and our current economic partners, with the EEA, EFTA and others, in the rollover and continuity categories of agreements. Also, again, it looks to the minimisation of compliance costs for the farming sector, including minimising veterinary checks and physical inspections on large volumes of food products moving between the UK and our partners, particularly the EU.

I know that many of these issues were touched on in the earlier amendments moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, so I take this opportunity to stress that we are dealing here with perishable goods, particularly fresh meat and produce. This is a particular source of concern to the British poultry business, which hopes that we will continue to have tariff-free access to the EU market to ensure quality, affordable British food. We should realise how important poultry is as an industry: more than half the meat we eat in the UK is poultry and 1 billion birds are reared for meat every year. The UK is the fourth largest producer of poultry meat in the EU and is about 60% self-sufficient.

We are very heavily dependent on trade. It is generally understood that, for trading purposes, your closest market is your best market, because obviously the cost of transport will be lower, and with this being fresh produce and, as I said, perishable, it is extremely important that we remove as many barriers as possible.

These are intended to be probing amendments, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie, when he comes to sum up, will be able to put my mind at rest that it will be part of an objective in negotiating trade and continuity agreements as well as any eventual agreement with the EU to secure such an implementation period, allowing industries with just-in-time supply chains, including the farming sector, to make these business-critical changes.

I am acutely aware of the impact of this particularly on the Northern Irish border with the Republic of Ireland, so any light that my noble friend can shed on this would be extremely helpful. Equally, when I ask, in Amendment 95, to look at

“the minimisation of veterinary checks and physical inspections on large volumes of food products”,

I am aware of the shortage of veterinary scientists in this country. Has my noble friend and his department addressed this in this regard?

I therefore seek to achieve a commitment that the trade will be as frictionless and seamless as possible, as we were promised when we decided to leave the European Union. This will continue to be the case with the EEA, EFTA and the EU. With those few remarks, I beg to move Amendment 70.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity, in this group, to follow my noble friend Lady McIntosh. She will forgive me if I do not speak to her two amendments but instead confine myself to Amendment 93 in my name, which relates to free zones and free ports. These are essentially the same thing; they are called free zones in the legislation that establishes the procedure for making them.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the debate on 4 February 2019 on the previous Bill that was brought forward. I had a debate whose purpose was to propose a consultation on the future designation of free zones; of course, there were and are no free zones. The Minister at the time, my noble friend Lord Bates, replied to me on that subject then. I was asking for a consultation, and he said that he was not able to offer one but that

“The idea has been advocated”—[Official Report, 4/2/19; col. 1349.]


by himself and a number of others in the north-east, including the local MP Rishi Sunak. I see that time has moved on.

I am raising the same subject but do not need to ask for a consultation on the part of the Government, because they have now had one and are readying themselves, I hope, to respond to the product of that consultation. Back in February 2019, my noble friend said at the end:

“I am not able to be more helpful than that to my noble friend at this point, much as I may wish to be”.—[Official Report, 4/2/19; col. 1349.]


So I am looking to my noble friend on the Front Bench again today to be as helpful as he wishes to be.

--- Later in debate ---

In many ways, this is a constitutional issue and, in such issues, I am on the side of Parliament, as you might imagine. However, there is a practical side as well: no chair who could not command the respect of the committee is going to run this authority successfully or have any credibility in the international community. A pre-appointment hearing would be a meaningful forum to establish those principles of operational independence and impartiality to which I referred earlier. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, at this late hour, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the debate on the predecessor Bill on 4 February 2019, in which I made similar points to those that are reflected in the three amendments in my name in this group. Regarding what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, I do not think Amendments 104A and 108A are tidying up. They are there to delete the possibility that the chief executive of the Trade Remedies Authority might be appointed by the Secretary of State in the first instance where the chair of the Trade Remedies Authority has not been appointed.

We are in a situation where, if the Bill were to pass into law before the end of the year and if it were to be commenced rapidly, we already have a chair designate of the Trade Remedies Authority. We happen not to have a chief executive designate. We are in the unhappy position where the Trade Remedies Authority has been legislated for for a couple of years but has not actually existed because this Bill was supposed to have become law alongside the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act. In that time, it has had a chair designate, who then stood down to be replaced in February this year, and a chief executive designate, who stood down in April this year and has not been replaced, so it is not a happy story so far. We cannot have a situation where the first chief executive of the body proper is not appointed by the chair designate who is in place, and I see no reason why that provision of Schedule 4(2) should not now be taken out and, as a consequence of that, paragraphs 17 to 23 of Schedule 4 can be removed since they all relate to that possibility.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, what is more important is the issue of the appointment of the chair and that, in order to reflect the importance of the role and the impact it can have in the public domain —including, obviously, from a business point of view, the economic domain in particular—and because of the requirement for independence, this should be an appointment where, before it is made, the Secretary of State should seek the views of the International Trade Select Committee in the other place.

Interestingly, I have asked the chair of the International Trade Select Committee in the Commons whether it has seen the chair designate of the Trade Remedies Authority and, as of last week, it had not. It seems to me that the department has been somewhat remiss not to put the chair designate in front of the Select Committee and to seek its views, and, not least because we had this debate back in 2019, it could easily have done it when it came to appoint a new chair designate in 2020. However, it has chosen not to do so. I think that the time has now come for Ministers to agree that this role should be one where the Secretary of State takes the views of the Select Committee before making the appointment.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of Amendments 78, 79, 104 and 114, in the name of my noble friend Lady Kramer and in my name.

Amendments 78 and 114 would amend similar wording in Clause 6 and Schedule 4, where in both places the Bill has the provision that the Secretary of State must

“have regard to the expertise of the TRA and to the need to protect … its operational independence, and … its ability to make impartial assessments when performing its functions.”

We have heard several times in this House, including from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that “have regard” has no force, so these amendments are intended to get the operational independence and impartial assessments out from governance by the weak words “have regard”. I will not labour the point any further save to say that the independence of the TRA is very important for international credibility, and indeed not only with regard to the Secretary of State.

Amendment 104 also goes to the matter of independence, as my noble friend Lady Kramer has already explained. It would explicitly put into legislation things that have been said, understood or only indirectly recited. I believe that in the other place the Minister, Greg Hands, said that if there was no recommendation, that was the end of the matter. However, it would be good to see it in the Bill. Likewise, I am curious about whether there could be an order for an instant reopening in the event of no recommendation. It seems a good idea to clarify that the end means the end unless circumstances change.

Amendment 79 is a little different in that it relates to funding and inserts into Clause 6 that when the Secretary of State seeks advice, there must also be regard to the capacity and funding of the TRA. Although I regret the omnipresent “regard”, that is important, because TRA funding is determined by the Secretary of State, as is stated in paragraph 29 of Schedule 4. We wanted to probe a little to make sure that the TRA will have sufficient funding.

With trade matters coming under UK control, success and funding are linked. It will be no good if the TRA finds itself in the situation that it cannot do things for fear of cost or the cost of litigation, which has hampered other regulators and authorities. That might please some if they think they come under less scrutiny from a supervisor, but this is not a supervisor but batting for the UK. Will there be a formula that relates to workload, and is it appreciated that workload is not under the control of the TRA? Workload happens because of actions in other countries, and what the TRA does or does not do can be hauled up before the Upper Tribunal as well as the WTO.

I understand that the Secretary of State has shied away from having the arrangements of the CMA, which are seen as much more costly, and I have to say the salaries on offer in the advertisements for TRA posts are low by international standards. Will that be reflected in lack of experience and possibly in staff retention once staff are trained up and the private sector beckons? Will these matters be seriously kept under review or will the TRA just be told to suffer the squeeze? Would the TRA be allowed to raise funds of its own? I have some concerns there around the issue of independence, but I think we ought to know. I appreciate that these probing questions go further than the amendment, but the last thing we want is the TRA explaining to Select Committees or the Upper Tribunal how it has funding for only half the job.

I also agree with the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and although he does not seek a committee approval of a nominee for chair, I have personal experience of holding the power of approval over appointments and reappointments of chairs and chief executives for all the European financial services authorities, and pre and post-appointment hearings for potential candidates for the board of the European Central Bank. Although those powers were resisted in the first instance and my committee had to wring them out of the Commission, the European Council and Eurogroup, almost immediately those bodies decided that these were rather constructive things to have. They were always phoning me up to ask more about what the Parliament thought, and the UK should be brave enough to follow suit.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I apologise. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would like to speak after the Minister. I got that message late.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful. Just for the avoidance of doubt, will my noble friend the Minister agree that it is not without precedent for pre-appointment hearings to take place for appointments made by Ministers? I think that under the Cabinet Office guidance there are about 50 of such. I was not proposing that the chair of the Trade Remedies Authority be included, although, frankly, the fact of it having public impact, being important and being required to be independent would justify including it in that list. Will my noble friend go away and consider whether this appointment should be subject to pre-appointment hearing?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for that question. I have some skin in this game, because I was the author of the public appointments code in which these requirements appear. I shall certainly consider the point that he has raised and write to him about it, but, frankly, with no great confidence that I will agree with him when I do so.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I fell foul of the procedures myself today—I think I am still a new girl, navigating my way through these extraordinary times, but I pay tribute to the facilities we have and we are grateful to have the hybrid system that is working so well.

I shall speak to Amendments 81 and 83 and later amendments. For the record, I perhaps misled my noble friend the Minister in my question at Question Time, but I have the highest possible regard for members of the Trade and Agriculture Commission—they have proven their independence and their value to date. My noble friend said that they take no money for their role, so we are particularly grateful for their public service contribution. My noble friend will be under no illusion, however: I would like the commission to be independent and to have its own resources, its own staff and its own offices, and I shall continue my little campaign in that regard.

On appointments made under Amendment 81, can my noble friend put my mind at rest? What does the Governance Code for Public Appointments say about non-disclosure agreements? I am sure they do not sit comfortably within the present arrangements.

On Amendment 83 and the trade advisory groups, I noticed in the previous group that we had 17 expert trade advisory groups in July with, I think, 250 representatives. In August, we had fewer representatives and only 11 trade advisory groups. I would like to clarify, if I may, what the current composition is. Do they include, for example, anybody—a British national, ideally—who has first-hand experience of negotiating trade through the EU Commission, which would obviously be hugely beneficial at this time, as we set out negotiations on our own? To what extent is industry involved, either through the CBI or otherwise? I understand that the CBI was represented in the earlier trade advisory groups and it is extremely important, if the CBI is not represented, that we have some kind of business representation.

Can my noble friend also put my mind rest that services, both professional—such as legal services—and financial, have bodies that are represented through the trade advisory groups? If that is the case, could he please explain which they are?

I was delighted to sign Amendments 106, 107 and 108. I support the sentiments behind them and I consider them, at this stage, probing amendments, but it is extremely important that the Trade Remedies Authority also represents those categories. In Amendment 106, under proposed new sub-paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) I would add (e) and (f) to include representatives of business, professional and financial services as well, because services are so important to our future trading potential.

On Amendment 108, I repeat my earlier remarks and endorse the provision that a person should hold office

“for a fixed period of five years”,

which would, I think, increase the potential for independence. A fixed term would give Trade Remedies Authority members greater security of tenure and therefore reinforce their independence and impartiality. A commitment was given by my right honourable friend the Minister, Greg Hands, in Committee in the House of Commons, that people are appointed on merit following fair and open competition, in keeping with the Governance Code on Public Appointments. The code itself states that there is a strong presumption that no individual should serve more than two terms or serve in any post for more than 10 years, other than in exceptional circumstances. I therefore hope that my noble friend will see fit to put this in the Bill through this amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow my noble friend. My amendment in this group is Amendment 113, which I shall come to at the end, where it is listed. However, there are two other areas that I shall briefly touch on.

First, Amendment 81, and those linked to it, cover appointments to the Board of Trade, or indeed to the trade advisory groups. I have a disinclination, I have to say, for statute or, indeed, the Select Committees of either House to be reaching into government departments and telling Secretaries of State who they should have to advise them. Amendment 81 probably misses the point, in that there are, as I understand it, very few appointments to the Board of Trade as such; most of the appointments being discussed are appointments of advisers to the board rather than members of the board itself. However, that is neither here nor there from my point of view. If Ministers are able to give the Committee assurances about the balance they will bring, I would be perfectly happy that they are getting balanced advice—that is terribly important.

Secondly, on Amendment 107, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh are venturing back into the territory I ventured into on Tuesday. I said that there should be a pre-appointment hearing of the International Trade Select Committee of the other place for the appointment of the chair. I await a letter from my noble friend the Minister explaining why I am wrong. I may well be wrong, but the point was well made by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker: we are dealing here not with the appointment of those who advise the Secretary of State in his own department but an independent body. That independent body is accountable to Parliament, and Parliament should have a say, although not a determining say, in who is appointed to chair it.

I am not proposing, as Amendment 107 does, that these appointments of non-executive members of the Trade Remedies Authority should be subject to consent—that goes further than I would—but the appointment of the TRA chair is important. It has impact and, if not wide public importance, very wide business importance. It is something that should be clearly commented on by Parliament. That does not mean that Ministers cannot go ahead and appoint whom they wish. Indeed, even where there is a pre-appointment confirmatory hearing in other cases, Ministers, when I last looked, on nine occasions made recommendations to which Select Committees objected, and on six of those occasions, Ministers went ahead anyway. It would not prevent Ministers doing what they want to do, but it would give them Parliament’s view, so I am rather sympathetic to that amendment.

Amendment 113 is not about appointments or the membership of the TRA; it refers to Clause 6, which gives the Trade Remedies Authority the power—indeed, the obligation—to give advice to the Secretary of State in a number of respects, and the Secretary of State can request such advice. The Trade Remedies Authority is an independent body; there is a statutory relationship with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State may ask for advice. For example, and I make no apology for coming back to this, let us say that we are talking about the Airbus and Boeing dispute, and the Secretary of State has asked the Trade Remedies Authority for advice on the “trade remedy measures” adopted by the United States in relation to that dispute, as both sides have secured World Trade Organization consent to the imposition of additional duties. When the Secretary of State asks for that, it is something on which the Trade Remedies Authority should expose for accountability purposes that it has given advice when it comes to the annual report.

It is important, and the fact that its advice has been sought is also important. I do not expect the annual report to go into obsessive or spurious detail, but, when one makes an annual report for an independent body accountable to Parliament, it should tell us how and when this statutory provision has been deployed during the year.

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

I call the noble Lord, Lord Judd. No? Let us go to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

92: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Preferential rates given unilaterally
(1) In section 32 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, subsection (3), at end insert—“(d) the first regulations under section 10 (preferential rates given unilaterally).”(2) In Schedule 3 to the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, Part 4, paragraph 2(1), at end insert—“(c) in the case of the list in Part 2 or 3, the government of that country has committed abuses of human rights of such a character and scale that, in the view of the Secretary of State, unilateral trade preferences should be withdrawn.””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause relates to the Scheme of Preferences as provided for in Section 10 and Schedule 3 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018. The first sub-clause requires that the first regulations made to establish the scheme (to apply from IP Completion day) must be made by an affirmative process. The second sub-clause confers a specific power to remove a country from the list of those benefiting from unilateral trade preferences where the government of that country has committed human rights abuses.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, we come to the last group of amendments in Committee. It is my privilege to move Amendment 92. It may be last, but it is not least: it is of considerable importance to our future trade relationships. It concerns the provisions of the unilateral scheme of preferences, as it is referred to. It might be referred to as the generalised scheme of preferences to bring it into line with the naming of the scheme under the European Union. Noble Lords will recall that the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 made statutory provision for the granting of unilateral preferences to eligible developing countries and least developed countries.

The structure of the provision in that Act is such that it would enable us to replicate what has been until now, and will be until the end of this year, the European Union’s generalised scheme of preferences. We have been reminded during the debates that the European Union scheme consists essentially of a generalised scheme of preferences, which grants for a wide range of products the absence of tariffs or a reduction in tariffs; and a generalised scheme of preferences-plus, which, by virtue of adherence of these least developed countries, and sometimes, I think, low-income countries, to 27 international conventions, including those on labour rights, environmental protections, human rights and good governance provision, gives them access to essentially a zero-tariff arrangement. In addition to that, for the least developed countries, there is what is known as Everything But Arms, which is in fact everything but arms and ammunition—a zero-tariff commitment for all their products apart from arms and ammunition.

The European Union scheme that we are presently part of was reviewed in 2018. In the early part of this year, the European Commission undertook a consultation to which responses were received and it closed in June. I do not know that more has been said about the further revision of the European Union’s regulations, which I suspect would not come into effect until the end of 2023, when the current scheme expires. So, to an extent, although we might replicate the European Union’s generalised scheme of preferences to begin with, from the outset we will have our own scheme and diverge from that scheme. I have no problem with that; my point is about how we go about this process.

The Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act says that Ministers may make regulations. Section 10 of that Act gives Ministers the power to make regulations for the purposes of the unilateral preferences. Section 32 determines which of those regulation-making powers is to be exercised by reference to the negative or affirmative procedure. In this instance, it is all by the negative procedure. The first part of Amendment 92 is to change that, but not to make all regulations relating to the unilateral scheme of preferences affirmative—there will be a lot of such potential regulations. It is one of those areas where, rightly, Ministers do not want to burden the House with a constant stream of regulations.

However, as is the case for the global tariff, where Ministers put into that Act provisions whereby the first regulations made in relation to Section 32 would be subject to the affirmative procedure, this amendment would provide that the first regulations made for the unilateral scheme of preferences, our GSP, would also be subject to an affirmative procedure. I hope that those regulations will be made by the end of this year because we need them to be in place by then. If that is not the case, it would be immensely disappointing and could lead to considerable dislocation.

The second part of the amendment relates to the question of whether, when the Government make the regulations, Ministers have the power to disapply, suspend or withdraw the unilateral preferences when a country or territory is responsible for significant human rights abuses. This is not an idle point. On 12 August this year, the European Commission suspended GSP access for Cambodia, which will affect some 20% of its exports to the European Union, on the grounds of significant human rights abuses in that country. About three weeks ago, the European Parliament passed a resolution—not obligatory but a substantial expression of European opinion—suggesting that there should likewise be a withdrawal or suspension of preferences in relation to the Philippines by virtue of that country’s human rights abuses and lack of good governance. That was not responded to well by that country’s regime.

These are not idle points and potentially are issues on which we would have to make our own decisions. This Parliament has for decades not been used to taking decisions about such trade preferences and their relationship with developing countries. I am pleased that we will have that opportunity; it is one of the few effects of Brexit that would be positive, whereby we can positively influence developing countries through our trade preferences.

Interestingly, only today, the UK Trade Policy Observatory from the University of Sussex posted a blog stating that it was worried that the unilateral scheme of preferences will not compensate many developing countries for loss of their competitiveness in the United Kingdom market because our global tariff reduces tariffs on a most-favoured nation basis. That is part of a liberalising process and I do not object to our overall reduction in tariffs, which is not large in scale. However, it reduces the preferential margin for the unilateral scheme of preferences. Therefore, countries that benefit from our preferential scheme will see less competitive advantage as compared to many other countries that will be able to access our global tariff.

The TPO also said that difficulties are being experienced by low and low-to-middle income countries in relation to rules of origin, access to origination from those countries giving them access to the preferential scheme, certification and the like. This is one of those technical areas in which it will be important for us to make sure that the regulations are right in that respect, not least because there is a complex interrelationship between the free trade agreements that we are entering into and the origination of product from countries with unilateral preferences because they can use cumulation in relation to other countries and those countries with which we have a free trade agreement. Of course, we do not have free trade agreements with all the countries with which the European Union has such agreements. They might lose some of that potential for cumulation at the end of the year if we do not put all these provisions in place. Instanced in the TPO’s blog are Ghana and Kenya, which might thereby lose out. I shall not go down that path because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, who was kind enough to co-sign the amendment, might want to talk about some of those effects in Africa, given his expertise. I am grateful to my co-signatories on the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for his interest in the UK trade preference scheme. The Government share his interest in using trade preferences to support trade and development, and I am happy to discuss the Government’s commitments in this area.

I reassure the Committee that the Government have made long-standing commitments, including to Parliament, to replicate the EU trade preference scheme. The UK trade preference scheme—UK GSP—will provide the same level of access as the current EU trade preference scheme by granting duty-free, quota-free access to the UK market to least developed countries and by granting tariff reductions to other developing countries. It will replicate the three levels of market access provided by the EU, including an enhanced level of market access for economically vulnerable countries that ratify and implement 27 international conventions.

As noble Lords will be aware, coronavirus has had a severe impact on trade for many developing countries. Providing certainty that we will continue their GSP access is an important way of supporting their economic recovery.

I can confirm that the first set of GSP regulations will be laid before the end of the year and that they will maintain continuity of market access. I listened carefully to the points made by my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, but, as these regulations do not effect any significant changes compared with the EU’s generalised scheme of preferences, the Government consider it more appropriate, when parliamentary time is stretched, to keep these as negative procedures.

However, I say to noble Lords that, after we have ensured continuity of the EU trade preference scheme in the transition period, we are committed to improving the UK’s trade preference scheme further in due course. I can confirm that we want the UK’s unilateral preferences to be as effective and simple to access as possible, to best support economic development in poor countries and to support UK businesses and consumers to access competitively priced goods. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that we will make available the information in the autumn that we said we would make available.

I turn to the second part of amendment on human rights, and reassure noble Lords that the power in Section 10 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act allows for preferences to be varied, suspended or withdrawn and, by extension, allows the Government to address human rights violations of the type that this amendment seeks to address. I can assure the House that regulations to create the UK preference scheme will include provisions for the variation, suspension, or withdrawal of trade preferences where the beneficiary country engages in serious and systematic violations of human and labour rights. The noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, gave us some very powerful and chilling reasons why it is very important that we have these options. The Government will look at range of options in the event of human rights violations, and we shall balance the need to act decisively, where required, with the need to follow due process.

My noble friend Lord Lansley raised the question of Cambodia. The UK shares the EU’s concerns over the human rights situation in Cambodia, and continues to raise them with the Cambodian Government. However, the UK, rightly and properly, will take into account all the available evidence before taking a decision on whether to partially suspend Cambodia’s preferences at the end of the transition period.

The UK has a strong history of protecting these principles and promoting our values globally, and we will continue to do so. The Government do not shy away from issues of human rights, including during our discussions on trade. Moreover, the introduction of political considerations related to human rights does not fit with the purpose of the list of countries in Schedule 3 to the Act. This was intended to determine eligibility based on objective classifications by international bodies. The proper place to include these provisions is in the regulations that we will be introducing before the end of the year.

I undertake to write to noble Lords who raised detailed questions in the debate that I have not covered in this winding-up.

As this is the last amendment we are debating, I ask for the Committee’s indulgence to put on record my gratitude and appreciation to noble Lords, who have spoken with great passion, knowledge and experience during all the debates. I have personally found the expertise and constructive engagement I have had extremely valuable, and I thank noble Lords for their patience as I have begun to learn my trade as a Bill Minister. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson, Lord Grantchester, Lord Purvis and Lord Fox, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and my noble friends Lord Lansley, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Noakes. I think that noble Lords will also want to join me in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Younger, whose support, guidance and good humour has been invaluable to me. On a personal level, I also thank the Bill team in my department for some tremendous work, and my private secretary, Donald Selmani, for spending long hours sitting in the Box.

The debates that we have had in Committee have allowed a detailed assessment of this Bill, as well as of wider trade issues. We now have some time in which to reflect on the views that we have heard—and, of course, I undertake to do that. I will use this time carefully and I look forward to engaging with Peers and debating the Bill further on Report.

On the amendments that we have been discussing, that just leaves me to say that I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lansley for raising these important issues. I hope that I have been able to reassure him and other noble Lords, and that he will agree to withdraw his amendments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response to this debate. I am pleased that we have finished with an illustration, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, in that regard, and to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, for giving powerful, relevant examples of how the trade preferences and the way we manage our trade in future can have substantial impacts in some of the poorest countries of the world.

It is rather important that we finish by recognising that, while we do our dry legal work here, there will be powerful, real-world consequences of the decisions that we take. It is precisely for that reason that I tabled this amendment—to illustrate that, as a Parliament, we want to get involved in the debate about how we can make our UK trade preference scheme more generous, more accessible and able to support sustainable development around the world more effectively. We may well start by replicating the EU scheme, and I think the EU would legitimately argue that its generalised scheme of preferences is a world leader, but that does not mean it is perfect. It is important for us to recognise that there may be ways we can further develop it, given our ability to deploy our development expertise around the world.

I also understand the Minister’s argument about the first regulations being essentially to replicate the EU scheme, so why should we take up our valuable time debating them? The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, shared the point that our global tariff is not the same as the EU’s tariff. In so far as there are differences, it will have consequences for the least developed countries. Some of those consequences—for some products for some countries—might be really significant, and the noble Lord gave us examples of that. That is especially true if we do not have rollover agreements. It is bound to be true in that the EU has, for example, regional trade agreements that give rise to accumulation opportunities that we will not necessarily have in place early next year. So, easy as it is to say that we will simply replicate the EU scheme, I am afraid that there will be differences from the outset. I want to make sure that those differences are not negative and we find ways to deal with the potentially negative consequences for the neediest countries, but also go on, perhaps, to find new opportunities in the future.

I hope this is a debate that the Minister wants to have and that we will continue to have but, in view of everything he said, I do not want to press it now. As someone who has participated in all these Committee days—as my noble friend Lord Bates will recall, we did the same back in the early part of 2019—I think the Minister can rest assured that he has had an effective, capable and impressive first outing as a Minister working on a Bill. In response to his kind words to noble Lords, we have all very much appreciated the way that he, my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie and officials have gone about the process of working with us. We look forward to that being continued on Report. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 92.

Amendment 92 withdrawn.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

During this process, I have got to know the Minister as an honourable man, but I suspect that he may not have a damascene conversion at the Dispatch Box over this matter. I give notice that, if that does not happen, I intend to seek the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, who set out the arguments for Amendment 6 with his customary clarity and precision, for which the House will be most grateful. In large measure, I agree that we have managed to secure quite a degree of consensus on many of these issues, and it is useful now, on Report, to see to what extent we want to put statutory backing behind that consensus. We have come to the right place at the right time.

I will in due course refer to Amendment 12, which is in my name, but I shall start with Amendment 6. Both amendments are concerned with the processes by which international trade agreements are scrutinised and approved by Parliament. I emphasise to those worried about the wider aspects of treaty making that this is about international trade agreements; we are not seeking to go beyond the scope of this Bill and impact on the Government’s treaty-making powers in general.

Amendments 6 and 12 seek to achieve different purposes. Amendment 6 would require prior approval, by each House of Parliament, of the draft negotiating objectives before the Government could proceed with negotiations. It also places a number of statutory obligations on the Government to report developments to Parliament, and it would require Parliament to approve a draft agreement before it is signed. I emphasise signed—not, in this case, ratified. In each of those three respects, Amendment 6 marks a significant change in the extent to which Parliament is not only engaged in, but to some extent potentially able to control, the process of making a free trade agreement. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, that despite the assertion in the first subsection of his amendment that it would not restrict the prerogative power, it would in reality do so—by placing statutory limitations on the exercise of the prerogative power to proceed with negotiations.

Secondly, I share the view of the Constitution Committee of this House, which said in April 2019:

“We do not believe that Parliament should be required to endorse the Government’s mandate prior to commencing treaty negotiations.”


In that regard, I cannot support Amendment 6, because subsection (3) makes it very clear that parliamentary approval for such negotiating objectives is required.

However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, that there is a degree of consensus, and I subscribe to much of what is implied in Amendment 6: that the Government should seek the views of Parliament, as well as conduct a public and stakeholder consultation, when setting negotiating objectives. Parliament should be directly involved in that process, and the Government should provide updates to Parliament when significant developments occur during negotiations. Speaking as a member of the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee, I should say that our experience over recent months has been that the Minister and colleagues in his department have engaged with us substantively and constructively in the way that we would wish.

Secondly, the text of the Written Ministerial Statement, which the Minister was kind enough to send me last night, gives some reassurance as to the way in which Ministers intend to engage in future. It does not extend the nature of that engagement or change its statutory force, but to some extent it helps to answer the question that we asked repeatedly, at Second Reading and in Committee, about the extent to which the Government reiterate what was in the Command Paper back in February 2019. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend the Minister, in not only laying the WMS but responding to this debate, will continue to reiterate the Government’s full intentions in those respects.

That brings me to Amendment 12, which is in my name. This does not seek to restrict the Government’s right to initiate and conduct international trade agreements. It is focused only on the procedures by which Parliament is able, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—CRaG—to approve an agreement before ratification. Amendment 12 would strengthen the CRaG processes in relation to international trade agreements in three respects.

First, it would require Ministers to publish, with their agreement or before it, an analysis of how an agreement would need to be implemented into domestic legislation. As we have learnt repeatedly during debates on this Bill, Parliament’s principal constraint over the Government’s treaty-making power occurs when it requires changes to domestic legislation. Parliament has control over that. For example, there is no merit in a Government agreeing a treaty offering access to the UK market for a product that it would be unlawful to sell in this country, when they know that Parliament would not agree to change the law. We need to know if an agreement would require changes to domestic legislation, and that should be a key issue in deciding whether Parliament will approve ratification. Ministers should not ratify an agreement that Parliament would not implement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my position as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, which may have some relevance to this. I join with many other noble Lords in thanking those noble Lords who have tabled and supported these amendments. I should warn the House that, in about the next minute of my contribution, I am going to be very concrete and graphic—this needs a trigger warning for anyone who has been a victim of torture or abuse.

This is an account provided by Ömir Bekali, a Uighur Muslim from Xinjiang in the far south-west of China, the former owner of a small tourism business, who spoke to the “Varsity” magazine in Cambridge in October. The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, talked about the big picture of what is happening in Xinjiang, but this is one man’s story. Ömir said:

“They shackled my hands and put black fabric [over] my eyes … I feel my body tremble whenever I remember that moment … My feet and my hands were tied up with iron shackles and they beat my hands, they beat my feet … they beat my back and my stomach … They put needles in between my nails and my fingers”.


After I have spoken, I will tweet a link to the report, which contains much more and worse than what I have just put on the record.

The world has, sadly, been hearing reports of human rights abuses for decades, centuries and millennia. I have to respectfully disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who suggested that these amendments would not help the Uighurs. What we are doing is making sure that we do not go backwards from the inadequate but still existing controls that we have with regard to human rights and trade under our former EU membership. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who said that the calling out of human rights abuse and putting it on to the international agenda is crucially important in terms of influencing the behaviour of peoples and nations.

In the UK, we have often had the cover of saying, “Perhaps little can be done in far-away places with few connections with over here, and there is little that we can do to help.” It was often the excuse—a very thin and inadequate excuse—that that was only the word of one individual; it was not hard evidence of what was happening. But that is not the case anymore, because we now have satellite pictures of massive so-called re-education camps, concentration camps or straight-out prisons in Xinjiang. We have even, due to the globalisation of the economy, the occasional desperate note pleading for rescue from abusive forced labour falling from a holiday present into the living-room of a shocked British household. That is a practical demonstration of the fact that we know well: our trade, companies and society, and our prosperity, are inextricably linked in a crucial way to the economic structures that are fed by these abuses. Our economic structures and political arrangements all too regularly, either tacitly or even explicitly, condone or accept such behaviour.

I note that Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, has been criticised as being too weak, but it is a start and a step in the right direction of acknowledging the link between trade and human rights. Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, steps up to and links with Amendment 9 that we will consider in the next group. The Green group will support them all. The amendment provides a strong and clear focus on genocide, even if it is limited in scope.

Let us start here and see how far we can get. I would say to Members of your Lordships’ House that if you will not be joining the many Lords who have said that they will back at least some of these steps, my question is this: what will you say to Ömir, who has spoken out bravely in the hope of action to protect people still in Xinjiang and people around the world who are suffering human rights abuses? Choosing not to do something is not a neutral act, but an active choice, a choice of morality, a choice about the kind of world we all live in, now and in the future.

I am sure that many noble Lords will be familiar with the short story by the late and brilliant Ursula K Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. For those who are not, it is about a wonderful, prosperous and flourishing city that relies for its prosperity entirely on the permanent misery and the deliberate abuse of the human rights of a single child. Those who walk away are those who reject this bargain. We have today a trade system built on the misery not of one but of millions. Will noble Lords reject that bargain?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have an opportunity to contribute to this important debate. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Alton of Liverpool, my noble friend Lord Blencathra and other noble Lords for bringing forward amendments. They give us an opportunity to consider some important issues. I will talk about Amendments 8, 10 and 45, and refer to Amendment 9. Having done so, I will not speak on the next group.

With Amendment 8, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has set out an encompassing process for an examination of the human rights situation in countries with which we might enter into international agreements. The list of agreements to be included at the end of his amendment is very wide ranging indeed. Many of these agreements would extend far beyond trade, but it is not criticised on that account; it is intended to be encompassing. This is a very wide-ranging process on the route into trade agreements, on the point at which they are laid before and, if necessary, reported to this House and subsequently in annual reports.

The question that immediately comes to mind is what happens as a consequence. What happens is that one of the two Houses of Parliament has to do something about it. From listening to the debate, noble Lords have specific and sometimes compelling examples of the human rights abuses, violations and even—as Amendment 9 refers to—genocide that may be the responsibility of states with which we enter into agreements. The first point to make is that we should be responsible for thinking in precise terms about whether to enter into those kinds of agreement with those states and under those circumstances. We should not set up a wide-ranging, encompassing, endless process of bureaucratic scrutiny but take responsibility for determining with whom we have relationships, the character of the relationships we enter into and whether to sustain them.

That brings me to my second point, where I agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes: how can we abdicate that responsibility to the High Court? We have spent a lot of our time debating whether Parliament should intervene in the Executive’s prerogative power to initiate, conduct and enter into trade agreements and treaties. Here we are discussing an amendment in which people seem to think that Parliament should not do that but hand responsibility to the High Court to determine whether we remain in an agreement or should revoke an agreement that we have entered into. I cannot, for the life of me, see that it is right for Parliament to abdicate its responsibility to the High Court.

In practice, I come back to how we have to take that responsibility ourselves. Everybody has talked about China, but the noble Lord, Lord Collins, made an interesting speech illustrating this by reference to Egypt. I am not going to take a view on that today, because I do not have the knowledge to argue that it is right or wrong to roll over the agreement with Egypt in the way in which we intend, but the noble Lord asks the right question, in my view, at the right time. We have all the powers available to us to decide whether to enter into such an agreement. We do not need to change the Bill to change that fact; it is a matter only of looking at the circumstances of an individual agreement with an individual counterparty, and asking whether we should do it or not.

Another thing to mention is the timing of this. There is always, “If not now, when?” This is difficult because, yesterday, the Government initiated a review of our own human rights legislation. Our Human Rights Act requires that, if a court were to determine that we are acting in a way that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, it can make a declaration of incompatibility. Then Ministers can make an order—they do not have to—to remediate that incompatibility.

--- Later in debate ---

Thirdly, we have heard many very strong arguments tonight about the moral case for this amendment and the previous group of amendments. That is enough on its own; it really should not need any more. However, there is a crucial point to be made: defending, speaking up for and creating a world in which there is more respect for human rights—as this amendment, which simply attempts to stop genocide, would do—makes the world safer and more stable and secure for everybody. Making this amendment is not just morally the right thing to do; it is also in our self-interest.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Contrary to my intention, I must intervene to correct what I regard as a mischaracterisation of my views. It was not my view, and not the view I expressed, that courts have no role: I entirely accept the proposition at the heart of this that courts will make a determination relating to whether a state has committed genocide. My point was that that being the case does not lead to the executive action that follows from it.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, said that the authority of the court would lead to the revocation of an international trade agreement. That is not what the amendment says. I am constantly being told in this debate that the amendment is precise—it is not precise. It does not say that; it says:

“International bilateral trade agreements are revoked”


by the action of the High Court. I object to the fact that a High Court determination leads directly to the revocation of the agreement entered into by the Government and endorsed by Parliament. If that determination takes place and we want to pass legislation, it should say that Ministers should act to revoke that international trade agreement in these circumstances, not that it is revoked automatically by the determination of the High Court itself.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

12: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Ratification of international trade agreements and treaties
(1) The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 is amended as follows.(2) In section 20 (treaties to be laid before Parliament before ratification), after subsection (1)(b) insert—“(ba) where the treaty is an international trade agreement as defined in the Trade Act 2020— (i) a Minister of the Crown has published an analysis of the requirement for the treaty to be implemented through changes to domestic legislation, and(ii) where changes to domestic legislation would be required as described in the analysis under sub-paragraph (i), the necessary legislation has been laid in the form of a statutory instrument or the necessary primary legislation has been enacted,”.(3) In section 21 (extension of 21 sitting day period), after subsection (2) insert—“(2A) Where a relevant Committee of either House of Parliament has recommended that a treaty constituting an international trade agreement as defined by the Trade Act 2020 should be debated in that House, the Minister of the Crown must ensure that the period does not expire before that debate has taken place.””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause amends the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 to require analysis of the domestic legislation needed to implement a trade agreement to be laid with the Treaty; that the legislation should be enacted or laid before ratification; and that the Minister must allow a debate on the Agreement if sought by a Committee in either House.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 12, in my name and that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, was debated along with Amendment 6 on day one. It relates to the parliamentary scrutiny process for international treaty agreements under CRaG. In view of the support it received in the course of that debate, I wish to test the opinion of the House and beg to move Amendment 12.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 15 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed. It is in essence very similar to Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. Great minds, as it were, think alike. I should give notice that, given the breadth of the agreement, I am minded to press the matter to a Division, unless the Minister concedes.

If anyone thinks for a moment that dispute resolution in a trade deal is a minor issue, I would point them to the impasse in the UK-EU trade negotiations. A trade dispute resolution goes to the very heart of any trading relationship, and that sits behind these two amendments. Traditionally, disputes under a trade agreement have been adjudicated through arbitration schemes—which are generally labelled investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS—rather than a court system. To say that this has become problematic is an understatement. Decisions have a history of being inconsistent, they award compensation that can undermine domestic law, they typically act in secret, and they cannot be appealed.

ISDS arrangements are no longer fit for purpose. They have led to public suspicion and, frankly, hindered the drive to increase global trade; they were a major reason for the collapse of the TTIP negotiations. For this reason, during its time in the EU, the UK was instrumental in pushing for the replacement of ISDS with a multilateral investment tribunal and appellate mechanism—the appellate part being very important—thereby removing any suspicion of bias and providing for appeal. The EU has been clear, even with the UK’s departure, that it intends to pursue this change, and it has been introduced in a number of its revised and latest trade agreements, notably, but not exclusively, with Canada.

I would argue, and I think many others were arguing, that the UK needs to remain at the forefront of this change. I am afraid that I am unclear whether the terms that the EU has agreed with Canada over dispute resolution have been replicated in our trade deal with Canada. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten me. The EU-Canada deal gives us a template. It will appoint 15 judges to hear cases on a rotational basis: five from the EU, five from Canada and five from among third-country nationals—in other words, neutrals. The rules ensure transparency of proceedings and clear standards of investor protection. But they also limit the grounds on which an investor can challenge a decision made by a state. For example, a challenge cannot be made simply on the grounds that profits are affected.

Amendment 15 would ensure that in all future trade agreements, the UK agrees with its trading partners at least on the principle of moving to such a mechanism for dispute resolution—it would be even better if it actually achieved it, but at least the principle is agreed. Amendment 15 also ensures that in the interim, until the new system is in place, the UK does not depend on arbitration systems to resolve trade disputes but is heard in the courts and tribunals of the UK. Amendment 19 follows a similar path of logic.

Effectively, these amendments stop the abuses associated with ISDS. I suspect that future speeches will provide some significant illustrations of the problems that have occurred. These amendments provide an incentive and create an opportunity to achieve the goal of a multilateral tribunal system. For that reason, I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am very pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. We are grateful to her and to the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, for raising this important issue. Since we touched on these issues in Committee, events have moved on a bit, which allows us to further explore the Government’s approach. I do not support the amendments, but they create a very good opportunity for the Government to tell us more about their approach to investor-state dispute settlement in the negotiation of international trade agreements.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, just to put Canada in context, that the Government did lay the Canada-UK agreement last Thursday, which I have had a chance to look at. What it effectively does, across a wide range of chapters, is incorporate the EU-Canada partnership agreement. But in this respect, on investor protection, it says that this is not to come into force. It says there will be a period of time during which the United Kingdom and Canada will review what their investor protection arrangement should look like, and, if they agree within something like a three-year period, they will replace what is in the current EU-Canada agreement.

Although the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that the EU-Canada agreement is a model, it is not the model she is looking for in her amendment. The tribunal is a bilateral investor protection arrangement, with judicial members from the two parties plus independent members, but it is not multilateral. What it does say, in Article 8.29, is that both parties agree—and here the words are reflected in her amendment—

“to pursue with other trading partners the establishment of a multilateral investment tribunal and appellate mechanism for the resolution of investment disputes.”

Clearly, Canada has done that; it has put into the United Kingdom-Canada rollover agreement the opportunity to consider a multilateral investment court system. But we are not signed up to one, and we will have to see what the Government’s approach will be. The EU and Canada have not actually brought this into force—it has not been ratified—so we have not seen anything final.

Having a multilateral investment court system depends on the consent of parties around the world, and they have not signed up to it. The New Zealand and Australia Governments resisted ISDS in the context of the CPTPP, or TPP 11 as they call it. That makes it difficult for us, in New Zealand and Australia agreements, to invite them to do more than they have already done. On the other hand, Japan has remained consistently supportive of ISDS provisions, and that, I suspect, is probably a simple reason why the EU-Japan comprehensive economic partnership agreement does not have an investment chapter.

I am afraid that the conditions for an amendment to the Bill that sets such a prescriptive approach to international trade agreements on investor protection do not exist. With too many of our leading partners—including, for example, Japan—we would have no agreement that would allow us to sign an agreement if this provision had been in statute. That is especially true where the United States is concerned. Japan does not have a difficulty with ISDS, not least because it has not been a respondent country to a claim. As it happens, only on five occasions have Japanese companies pursued ISDS claims against other countries. When we come to discuss this with the United States, the difficulties are legion because, when I last looked, the United States had 190 claims against other countries and ISDS procedures reported to UNCTAD and was the respondent to 17 claims. It not only adheres to ISDS provisions but uses them a lot. Therefore, it may be difficult to persuade the United States to adopt a multilateral investment court system. The other difficulty is that it would prevent us from pursuing our bilateral investment treaties in the way we have. We may want to continue with that, and assuredly we will. We have over 100 of them, and I do not think we want to let them go, until and unless there is a multilateral investment court system in place.

It would be interesting to know from my noble friend the Minister if the Government have a plan to pursue a multilateral investment court system, as has been the EU’s approach in its negotiations. If so, I would agree, but that does not mean we should have a prescriptive measure in statute that means we cannot agree an international trade agreement with another country, except in the circumstances in which this is incorporated, not only for us but for the other parties. It is an interesting opportunity, but I fear I cannot support Amendment 15.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in favour of Amendment 16 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and Amendment 25, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.

I want to reflect on the context in which we are having this debate: a double blow has come forward in terms of our international aid budget. Someone came to me on Twitter and said, “I’m really confused, because it seems like our GDP is going down, so our aid is going down anyway, so why are we also cutting the percentage of aid?” I had to say, “No, you’re absolutely right, this is a double blow.” We have often given very effective help to some of the poorest people in the world, so it is important that we do whatever we can to make sure that aid is directed in the right kind of way.

The second, contextual, point I want to reflect on is why these countries are in the least developed and lower middle-income categorisations. If you go down the road to the Foreign Office, up to Liverpool or across to Bristol, you will see the colonial legacy of lots of the wealth of these countries, which was sucked out in the past. That legacy continues to have extremely deleterious effects. There is also the impact of multi- national companies—very often corrupt—today, which hold down the essential development of many least developed and lower middle-income countries. I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said too about the history of how DfID came to be split from the Foreign Office, and the concerns that have to be expressed about that reunion.

In those contexts, it is really important to do whatever we can in your Lordships’ House to defend, to hold the line and to keep whatever we have now. We will have the fight about the aid budget percentage when it comes along, but let us do what we can now in the Trade Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and to speak to these two amendments.

May I first say a word about Amendment 25? As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, said in introducing it, we had an interesting debate in Committee on the trade preference scheme—our unilateral preference scheme —and, indeed, I might say to my noble friend the Minister, an even more useful subsequent round table, although we were virtual, about the structure of the trade preference scheme when it comes.

As far as I can see, Amendment 25’s objectives should be able to be encompassed within the trade preference scheme using the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, and the regulations under its Section 10. I just want to see those regulations and have an opportunity for us to talk about them to check that they achieve that objective.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I shall speak to Amendments 28, 29 and 30, which are intended as probing amendments. I refer in passing to the report on the Trade Bill from the Select Committee on the Constitution, published in September of last year. The committee says at paragraph 11:

“We remain of the view that the Bill’s skeletal approach to empowering the Trade Remedies Authority is inappropriate.”


It goes on to say at paragraph 12:

“We recognise that there continue to be significant uncertainties regarding the UK’s trading relationships at the end of the Brexit transition period”,


which of course has now passed, and it concludes:

“However, it is not clear why, more than two years after the previous version of the Bill was introduced, the functions and powers of the Trade Remedies Authority cannot be set out in more detail in this Bill.”


Therefore, I gently nudge my noble friend the Minister to say, when he responds to Amendments 28, 29 and 30, what the intention behind the original Clause 6 was.

With Amendments 28 and 29, I seek in particular to focus on understanding better what limits might be appropriate to a request to the Trade Remedies Authority to provide advice on matters of international trade, and, with Amendment 30, to clarify the purpose of the initial consultation before proceeding to a request. At this stage, I should say that I am most grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for its assistance in briefing me and preparing these amendments.

With regard to Amendment 30, it is not immediately clear from the legislation why the Secretary of State would consult the Trade Remedies Authority under Clause 6(3) and how this is different from issuing the original request under subsection (1). I might be missing something but, if you are issuing a request, that seems a little odd. I am grateful to the Law Society of Scotland for raising this with me and, in turn, for the House this afternoon. Surely, if you make a request to the Trade Remedies Authority, you do not need to consult the authority beforehand on the nature of that request.

Can my noble friend clarify whether there is any distinction between the two actions, making it clear that the duty to consult in Clause 6(3) relates to framing or scoping a request to the Trade Remedies Authority, just so we can understand why it is appropriate to shape that request when, in fact, the Trade Remedies Authority is meant to be independent and impartial? By going through this process of consultation, I am slightly concerned that that impartiality and independence may be impugned or compromised.

Amendments 28 and 29 point to the fact that the Trade Remedies Authority has already existed, and exists in abstract, having been incorporated by reference in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, although we are formally constituting it in the Trade Bill before us today. If it is the case that the Trade Remedies Authority is responsible for carrying out investigations and advising on remedies as set up under the cross-border trade Act, while it is an essential aspect of international trade, it is only one part of that. The proposed amendment therefore would ensure that requests for advice are limited to matters on which the Trade Remedies Authority is competent to advise, having regard to its remit and functions.

The purpose of this group of three amendments is simply to explore a better understanding from my noble friend and the Government through the department as to what the remit of the TRA should be and to ensure that the independence and impartiality of that body will not be infringed through the present drafting of Clause 6(3).

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. The amendments in this group all relate to the composition, functions and approach taken by the Trade Remedies Authority. I am very glad to follow my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. She rightly referred to the powers and approach set out in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018. I have to say equally gently that that is the answer to the points made by the Constitution Committee of this House—that they do not need to be set out in this legislation, because, way back when we first started considering the previous Trade Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and I fondly remember, it was introduced at almost exactly the same time as the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill. They were intended to proceed in parallel and are now entirely separate.

To some extent, that also gives a further reason why we should briefly consider at this stage the Trade Remedies Authority’s understanding that it has, in the form of the trade remedies investigation directorate of the Department for International Trade, been up and running, working on the transition review from the European Union and making recommendations relating to the imposition of countervailing, anti-dumping or safeguarding duties inherited from the European Commission. To that extent, we seek to influence not something new but something that has an ongoing role.

In this debate, I want to raise several issues. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will not regard it as necessary to elaborate on all these issues now. If he wishes to write later, that is absolutely fine, but I do want to make one or two points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, said, this short debate follows on from the debate that we had in this House on the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Bill on 17 December. Like the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, I am most grateful to the Minister for his letter of 4 January.

There are just two things that I want to say following on from that. The first is that I am grateful, but not surprised, that in his letter the Minister said that, although the wording in the amendments that we are now making to the Trade Bill varies slightly from the wording of the clauses in the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act, the legal effect is exactly the same. I do not think we ever thought that the legal effect would be different. What we find somewhat surprising is that, to achieve the same effect at virtually the same time in two pieces of legislation, the wording is not the same. That was a slightly surprising aspect of the drafting that we were presented with when we saw the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Bill last month.

Secondly, I raised the question of what is meant by, and what is the purpose of, the amendments that put into the Bill the saving provision in Clauses 8 and 9 —that

“nothing in this section authorises the making of a disclosure which … contravenes the data protection legislation”

or aspects of the Investigatory Powers Act. The purpose of the government amendments is to ensure that, when these pieces of legislation and their constraints on disclosure are considered, Ministers can also take into account the powers conferred in this clause.

The Minister’s letter refers to the Supreme Court case of the Christian Institute and others v the Lord Advocate in 2016. I have had the chance to read the judgment and it does indeed refer to the situation where there is in effect, under legislative provisions such as the data protection legislation, a statutory gateway that allows those provisions to be escaped from in circumstances where there are powers for disclosure in other enactments. In the absence of these provisions, the data protection legislation and the Investigatory Powers Act might well make it very difficult for the necessary disclosures to be made in certain specific circumstances. Therefore, it allows for them to be seen together.

Paraphrasing, I think, the language of the Supreme Court, it is necessary for anyone wanting to understand the effect of this clause to have this legislation in one hand and the data protection law—indeed, I would add the Investigatory Powers Act—in the other. It does not tell you how any particular instance would be resolved but it does tell you that both must be considered together, and that is entirely reasonable.

The only issue that one is left with when one reads both the legislation and the Supreme Court judgment is that the clauses we are looking at do not say that the disclosures made by public authorities must be necessary and proportionate. Therefore, I think that it would finally close the gap and make matters very clear if the Minister would confirm that, where these disclosures are made, or indeed where further public authorities have information disclosed to them for their trade functions, the disclosures must be necessary and proportionate to meet those functions.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments, which are technical in nature but allow proper co-operation between HMRC and the devolved authorities. As I was not able to be in the House in person during debates on the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act, I have probably not understood the purpose of Amendment 36A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara—but I have a question that perhaps he or my noble friend the Minister could kindly respond to.

I always worry about the wisdom of giving a power to amend primary legislation by order, particularly on the collection or disclosure of information by HMRC, which seems to be the issue in Clause 7(4). As a former international retailer, I know how commercially sensitive such information is and how onerous ill-thought-out form-filling requirements can be. I want to make sure that the power could not be misused by the Executive—we have seen a certain amount of evasion of scrutiny during Covid. I want an assurance from the Minister, assuming that the power to amend primary legislation is retained in what is now being proposed, that the power would be used sensibly. If it disappears, then that would also meet my concern.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

41: After Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“International disputes
In section 32 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 (regulations etc), subsection (3), at the end insert—“(d) regulations under section 15 (international disputes etc).””Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would amend the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 to require that, where the Secretary of State proposes tariff increases in pursuance of an international dispute (not as a trade remedy), such a regulation must be made subject to an affirmative procedure.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 41 in my name relates to the powers in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, under which Ministers can impose import duties. Section 15 of that Act gives the power to impose tariffs in furtherance of an international dispute. Amendment 41 would require that a statutory instrument made under Section 15 of that Act be subject to the “made affirmative” procedure.

We had a debate on this in Committee. When the original Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act went through, Section 15 was wrapped together with a number of others in the argument made by the Government—and, indeed, set out in the Explanatory Memorandum—that there would be frequent changes of detailed tariffs. While that is generally true in other sections of that Act, it carries no weight in relation to tariffs applied in international disputes, which are and should be few in number.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. The Government will of course reflect on this debate. I perfectly understand the requirement for the annulment power, but I believe that both Houses of Parliament would wish to use that annulment power sensibly and sensitively, in light of the circumstances which might underlie it.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all those who contributed to this short debate. It demonstrated the value, even at this late hour, of some of the additional issues brought out in the context of the scenarios and specific instances that my noble friend put in his response to the debate.

I think I have been inadvertently responsible for misleading the House. I intended to talk about parliamentary approval, but in doing so got carried away and talked about this House. Of course, this House would have no role. The regulations made under the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act, if “made affirmative”, would be subject to the approval only of the House of Commons.

Therefore, in response to my noble friend Lady Noakes, I make two points. First, we are accustomed, from time to time, to making amendments to Bills that run the risk of being declined by the other place on grounds of financial privilege. However, that does not mean that we never make such amendments and invite the Commons to think again. The second point that I should make to her is that, in this instance, the effect of the amendment would be to give the House of Commons—but not our House—the right to consider regulations made under this power.

That said, I do not resile from the view that sensitive matters can, none the less, be debated in Parliament, and it is not beyond the wit of Ministers and civil servants to ensure that, in explaining the choices that have been made in the regulation, they do not disclose information of value to those who would do us harm. That happens on many occasions and, in fact—even in the scenarios to which my noble friend refers—the choices we have made and why we have made them would very often not have been lost upon other parties in trade disputes. I do not resile from the view that because something is sensitive and important it should be debated in Parliament—in this instance, because it relates to what are effectively attacks, only in the other place.

None the less, the helpful response from my noble friend —who genuinely tried to explain why the Government took the approach they did, rather than what was set out originally in the Explanatory Memorandum—took us some way towards thinking about this matter in a way described by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. We may yet come back to this matter, but not during the passage of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 41 withdrawn.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 18th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Grantchester, who has unfortunately been delayed on his way to the House, I beg to move Amendment 1. This is a technical amendment to correct an error that was made in the original drafting, and I understand that the Minister and the Government will not be opposing it.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to say just a few words about this amendment. Although it is technical, the intention is to provide clarity to that part of Clause 8 which sets out the procedure whereby the Government propose to implement an international trade agreement which has an impact on standards in domestic legislation relating to, for example, social, environmental or animal welfare standards. I completely understand that the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in tabling this amendment is to make it clear that the legislation relating to standards should complete its parliamentary processes, as the clause says, prior to the trade agreement being laid.

I am not really speaking about that aspect of it. Indeed, I draw attention to the fact that, notwithstanding Clause 8, Clause 7 has what I would regard—not least because I moved the relevant amendment at Report—as a better formulation, which requires the subordinate legislation, secondary instruments, to have been laid before the ratification of the trade agreement and for the primary legislation required for its implementation to have been passed before ratification. However, Clause 8, as clarified by this amendment, has the effect of meaning that the parliamentary procedure in relation to domestic legislation has to be completed before those texts are laid before Parliament. I think that is unnecessary and rather burdensome, and it would be better to rest on the text in Clause 7, which requires the legislation to have been passed prior to ratification.

The point I want to make is actually about impact assessments. If, in response to this short debate, the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—who I see is, happily, now in his place—can explain why impact assessments should not be laid before Parliament prior to the completion of parliamentary processes relating to the implementation of domestic legislation, I would welcome that. That seems unnecessary—indeed, undesirable. It would be better were impact assessments formulated and laid before Parliament relating to domestic legislation which implements any change in standards in this country consequent to an agreement in an international trade context. For them not to be required by legislation to be laid before Parliament until the text of the trade agreement itself is laid seems unnecessary and undesirable.

I do not oppose the amendment, as it has the effect of making clear that subsection. However, what the subsection suggests, particularly for impact assessments, is undesirable. As it happens, as we dispatch the Bill to the other place, this clause rather duplicates what is set out in Clause 7. It would be better to retain Clause 7, rather than the formulation in this part of Clause 8.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome Amendment 1, as it brings greater clarity, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—who I am delighted to see in his place—for bringing it forward.

I take this opportunity to put a question to my noble friend the Minister, and to thank him for the openness he has shown throughout proceedings on the Bill. Does he have a timeframe in mind as to when the code of practice, as envisaged under Clause 8, is to be brought forward? I imagine that is also subject to Amendment 1 before us this afternoon. Will the code of practice envisaged be general, or does he envisage that a separate code of practice for each future international trade agreement may need to come before the House?

As my noble friend is aware, I care passionately about maintaining the standards in paragraphs (a) to (f): in particular, food, animal welfare and the environment. Does he share my concern at the noises off, which are saying that, now we have left the European Union, we do not have to maintain those high standards? Can he, from the Government’s perspective, quash any such move, paying tribute to British farmers and to the high standards to which they produce our food, to which consumers have become accustomed and wish to continue to purchase? With that, I give Amendment 1 a warm welcome.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for International Trade (Lord Grimstone of Boscobel) (Con) [V]]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will also speak to Motion A1. For those noble Lords present in the Chamber, I apologise for my discourtesy in not being at the Dispatch Box. I was travelling overseas on ministerial business last week, but while I was away my exemption was withdrawn so I am presently in quarantine. I apologise for my absence from the Chamber today.

The Bill has been returned to our House from the other place, and we are moving ever closer to getting this crucial piece of legislation on to the statute book. As my ministerial colleague the Minister of State for Trade Policy so eloquently put it during the last debate on the Bill in the other place, the Bill is this Parliament’s first opportunity to define the UK’s approach towards international trade as an independent trading nation, no longer a member of the EU and out of the transition period. The passage of the Bill will be a boon to the UK economy, giving certainty to business with regard to our continuity trade agreements, which we have now signed with no fewer than 63 partner countries, confirming the UK’s access to the £1.3 trillion global procurement markets, providing protection for businesses and consumers from unfair trading practices, and ensuring that we have the appropriate data to support traders at the borders.

The other place has resolved against non-government amendments to the Bill. It is my hope that this House concurs with the opinion of the other place and chooses not to further amend the Bill. I say with the greatest respect that we must be mindful of the role of this House within Parliament. We are not the democratically elected House and we do not express the will of the people in the same way as the other place does. Our primary role is to scrutinise and, where appropriate, ask the other place to reconsider an issue. The other place has done this, so we must think long and hard before disregarding its clear pronouncements.

I turn to the revised amendment, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, on parliamentary scrutiny. It is of course only right and proper, now that we have left the EU, that Parliament should have the powers to effectively scrutinise the Government’s ambitious free trade agreement programme. However, the amendment has significant deficiencies that we believe are inappropriate for our Westminster style of government and would limit the Government’s ability to negotiate the best deals for the UK.

That is not to say that the Government have ignored the concerns of noble Lords and the other place. Quite the contrary: the Government have significantly enhanced their transparency and scrutiny arrangements because of the scrutiny that your Lordships’ House has given to the Bill. I point noble Lords to my Written Ministerial Statement of 7 December last year and the progress that we have made, for example, in putting the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory footing as evidence of that.

The enhanced arrangements that we have set out are as strong as and, in several areas, stronger than those of comparable Westminster-style advanced democracies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Several of the areas covered in the amendment duplicate things that the Government are already doing or are established precedent of the UK as a dualist state. This includes the statutory requirement to produce an Explanatory Memorandum when a treaty is laid in Parliament; it is through that Explanatory Memorandum that we outline the legislation needed to implement the agreement, as illustrated through the Explanatory Memorandum for the Japan agreement. Consequently, the Government already undertake what my noble friend is seeking in his amendment. As I said on Report, and I am happy to repeat it again, I remain open to discussing with noble Lords how we could improve the presentation of this information.

In addition, if the domestic implementing legislation were not passed before the FTA entered into force, the UK would be in breach of its treaty obligations. For that reason, implementing legislation is normally put in place before ratification of a treaty. I believe that there is no sense in changing that process. The Government have continued to stand by their commitments to accommodate debates on their trade agenda, subject to available time, and I am happy to confirm that that will not change.

Last week I met my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Purvis, to discuss the scrutiny amendment. At that meeting I said I would provide some additional information on the ministerial forum for trade, which I know has been of interest to your Lordships. The forum has been warmly welcomed by the devolved Administrations and has now met four times, most recently in December. As part of the Government’s commitment to improved transparency of intergovernmental relationships, I am pleased to say that there will be a new dedicated page on the GOV.UK website for the ministerial forum for trade. It will be used to publish communiques following future meetings, as well as other relevant documents such as the forum’s terms of reference.

To enable discussions on FTAs between the UK and devolved Ministers, we have shared negotiating objectives with the devolved Administrations for all our rest-of-world FTAs. We have also shared text concerning devolved matters during negotiations and stable text once we reach agreement in principle. I confirm that we intend to continue that approach in future.

In summing up on this amendment, it is already the case that if Parliament is not satisfied with an FTA that we have negotiated, the powers in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—CRaG—give Parliament the power to make its views clear by resolving against ratification. In the other place this process can of course be repeated indefinitely, effectively acting as a veto. Your Lordships will also know that we do not have the powers in this Bill to implement any FTA with the United States or any other country which we had no agreement with through our EU membership. The House will therefore have the opportunity to scrutinise any future legislation needed to implement these agreements.

I am sure that noble Lords will scrutinise these future agreements just as forensically as they did the continuity agreements which are the subject of the Bill. As I mentioned earlier, failure to pass any necessary implementing legislation for these future FTAs would prevent ratification of the agreement taking place.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

[Lord Lansley]

Moved by

At end insert “and do propose Amendment 1B in lieu—

1B: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—“Parliamentary approval of international trade agreements and treaties(1) If a decision has been made by the Secretary of State to commence negotiations towards a free trade agreement, a statement must be made to both Houses of Parliament.(2) Negotiations for that trade agreement may not proceed until the Secretary of State has laid draft negotiating objectives in respect of that agreement before Parliament, and an amendable motion endorsing the draft negotiating objectives has been approved by a resolution of the House of Commons.(3) Prior to the draft negotiating objectives being laid, the Secretary of State must consult each devolved authority on the content of the draft negotiating objectives, and seek their consent.(4) The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 is amended as follows.(5) In section 20 (treaties to be laid before Parliament before ratification), after subsection (1)(b) insert—“(ba) where the treaty is an international trade agreement as defined in the Trade Act 2021, a Minister of the Crown has published an analysis of the requirement for the treaty to be implemented through changes to domestic legislation, and(bb) where the treaty is an international trade agreement as defined in the Trade Act 2021, the House of Commons has resolved, within period A, that the treaty should be ratified, and”(6) In section 21 (extension of 21 sitting day period), after subsection (2) insert—“(2A) Where a relevant Committee of either House of Parliament has recommended that a treaty constituting an international trade agreement as defined by the Trade Act 2021 should be debated in that House, the Minister of the Crown must ensure that the period does not expire before that debate has taken place.”””

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is Groundhog Day and we are debating the Trade Bill. We have nearly concluded it, I hope, but it is in fact more than four years since we first debated the original trade Bill. I earnestly share my noble friend the Minister’s hope that we will bring it on to the statute book soon.

Your Lordships sent two amendments to the other place concerning the parliamentary scrutiny of international trade agreements, and the other place disagreed to them both. I am therefore grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, who have enabled us to combine and somewhat simplify those two amendments, and to focus their provisions in one amendment in lieu. Noble Lords will find it as Amendment 1B on the Marshalled List. It shows clearly that we wish to find common ground with the Government on the issue. As my noble friend the Minister has said on a number of occasions, we are not far apart, as demonstrated in our positive discussions last week, for which I am grateful to him.

Amendment 1B would provide that prior to entering the negotiations on a trade agreement, Ministers would be required to lay the negotiating objectives and that those would need to be approved by a resolution in the House of Commons. In preparing those objectives, Ministers would have to consult the devolved Administrations and seek their consent. Also, when the Government have signed a trade agreement and it is to be scrutinised under the CRaG process, Ministers would have to publish an analysis of the changes required to domestic legislation; and if a committee in either House called a debate on the treaty, Ministers would not be able to ratify it until that debate had taken place.

The House will be aware that the Government are now moving ahead with negotiations on new trade deals, not just continuity agreements. That is very welcome but it means that now is the time, and this is the legislative opportunity, to strengthen Parliament’s role. The amendment does not impinge on the prerogative power. The Executive can still determine whether to enter a trade negotiation and the Government can propose the objectives. They conduct the negotiations and sign the agreement; only then does the Commons—not this House—have the power under the existing CRaG statute to stop ratification, or, technically speaking, to delay it.

The amendment would ensure that the Government consult the devolved Administrations. Given the breadth of trade issues, who could seriously argue that they should not, and that they take the Commons with them on their objectives? Many trade experts argue that this explicit support from Parliament, and occasionally Parliament’s explicit red lines, give force to the trade negotiators’ position.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, I see that there have been no requests to ask a question of the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, which illustrated the issues well. I am grateful in particular to my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for their support.

The noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Purvis, and I have worked together. We are not insisting on the previous amendment sent. I want to be clear that we are looking for a reasonable compromise, but one which gives Parliament its say.

I make no criticism of the way in which the Government have gone about the processes of scrutiny and partnership with both Houses in relation to the continuity agreements, but we are about to enter the process of negotiating wholly new deals. That brings one forcibly to the question: should the Government enter negotiations with the confidence that at least the House of Commons has approved the negotiating objectives? On that, the quoted remarks of the former Secretary of State, who launched the previous Trade Bill four years ago, are relevant—he did not vote for Amendment 1 in the other place because there were other parts of it he did not agree with—so I think we can find a compromise that recognises that there is a democratic deficit which is best met by giving the two Houses a debate but, certainly, by giving a role in approving negotiating objectives to the elected House. That would strengthen the negotiating hand of government rather than bind it.

My noble friend Lord Grimstone was clear about all the ways in which the Government will work with the House, but by at one point saying “personally” I think he recognised the loophole that exists; namely, that if Ministers want to ratify a treaty without scrutiny and debate in the House, they can do it by laying a Statement under Section 22 of CRaG. If, however, they do not want to do that explicitly, they can allow 21 days to pass without a debate and ratify anyway. There is nothing in CRaG to stop them doing so. The purpose of this amendment is simply to close that loophole. If the International Agreements Committee in this House, of which I am privileged to be a member, or the International Trade Committee in the other place were to seek a debate, this amendment would provide that Ministers could not ratify the treaty prior to such a debate. If Ministers agree that there is such a loophole, I am afraid to say that they should agree with the amendment. Disagreeing with the amendment and leaving the loophole open simply affords the possibility for mischief at some point in the future—maybe not by this Government but by another Government at another time.

The need for the other place to have an opportunity to look at this issue on the basis of a new, more restricted amendment on which we can reach a reasonable compromise gives us a basis for asking the other place to think again. I therefore seek to test the opinion of the House on Motion A1.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

At end insert “, and do propose Amendment 1D in lieu—

1D: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Parliamentary approval of international trade agreements and treaties
(1) If a decision has been made by the Secretary of State to commence negotiations towards a free trade agreement, a statement must be made to both Houses of Parliament.
(2) Negotiations for that trade agreement may not proceed until the Secretary of State has laid draft negotiating objectives in respect of that agreement before Parliament, and a motion endorsing the draft negotiating objectives has been approved by a resolution of the House of Commons.
(3) The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 is amended as follows.
(4) In section 21 (extension of 21-day sitting day period), after subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) Where a relevant Committee of either House of Parliament has recommended that a treaty constituting an international trade agreement as defined by the Trade Act 2021 should be debated in that House, the Minister of the Crown must ensure that the period does not expire before that debate has taken place.”””

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Motion A1 would insert Amendment 1D in lieu—it is on page 4 of the Marshalled List—which would do two things. It would require a debate on draft negotiating objectives in relation to future international trade negotiations where such a debate has been requested, and that Ministers would not be able to proceed with negotiations until such a debate had taken place. It would also require that where a relevant committee of either House seeks a debate under CRaG within the 21-day period, that period should be extended until the debate has taken place.

Noble Lords will recall that on two previous occasions this House sent amendments requiring additional parliamentary scrutiny to the other place. On each occasion, they were supported on a cross-party basis. I am very grateful for the support that I have received from all sides of this House for this purpose. In the other place, 11 Conservatives supported the amendment on the first occasion, while 13 supported it on the second occasion, and although they did not vote for it, both Liam Fox, the former Secretary of State for International Trade, and Jeremy Wright, the former Attorney-General, expressed support in particular for the proposition that there should be a debate on the negotiating objectives at the commencement of plans for an international trade agreement.

In preparing the amendment in lieu, we intended to narrow down simply to those two points, leaving out—not because they are not important but because we believe that the Government have already given assurances on this—first, that the Government would publish in their Explanatory Memoranda under CRaG details of the legislative implementation of any agreement and, secondly, that in the negotiating objectives they would consult with the devolved Administrations. Given those two issues, let me say how much I appreciate the support that I have received in this House and the constructive and helpful conversations that I have had with the Minister and the Bill team. I appreciate the positive way in which they responded.

Noble Lords will have heard the Minister say two things that are, from my point of view, of great importance: first, that where the International Agreements Committee, of which I have the privilege to be a member, makes a report on the Government’s draft negotiating objective for an agreement, the Government will facilitate such a debate; and secondly, that where a debate has been requested under CRaG within the 21-day period, Ministers will not ratify such an agreement until such time as the debate has taken place. In both respects—speaking as a former leader of the House of Commons, I should say that the Minister has, quite properly, reserved the position of the business managers—these things would happen only when parliamentary time allowed.

These assurances go a long way to meeting what we have been asking for. They are not technically everything that we are asking for. There remains a significant loop- hole: if a debate under CRaG takes place after the 21-day period has expired and Ministers have not sought an extension to that period, which they can do, then, strictly speaking, even if the other place passed a Motion that ratification should be delayed, there would be nothing legally to stop Ministers proceeding to ratification or, indeed, ratifying it before the debate took place.

Given what the Minister has said, I think we have moved to a happy position where, if I can put it in the context of this House, we have moved from what has been up to now, particularly where CRaG is concerned, conventional—that is that Ministers should not ratify until a debate has taken place and should legislate for implementation before ratification—to what I might think of as a rule. It is not in statute but, in the same way that the Ponsonby rule existed for quite a long time before the CRaG legislation was passed, we have now acquired—if he will forgive me—the Grimstone rule for debate on negotiating objectives and for ratification not to take place before a debate has taken place under CRaG where requested. So I am most grateful to my noble friend. I am especially grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, particularly because a debate on the negotiating objectives was in his original Amendment 1, which was sent to the other place with the Bill when it left this House in the first place. I hope that he and other noble Lords will join me in expressing satisfaction at the outcome that has been achieved.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has indicated that she wishes to speak in the gap prior to the rest of the listed speakers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I first unreservedly apologise if noble Lords thought that I was, in any way, disparaging the role of this House and the valuable work that it has done on scrutiny, by referring to the votes in the other place. Nothing could have been further from my thoughts, and I hope that noble Lords will accept that.

This has been a good debate and reflects the calibre of discussions that we have repeatedly had on the important issue of scrutiny. The Government have listened to the concerns expressed on this issue and we have moved significantly to set out enhanced transparency and scrutiny arrangements for free trade agreements. This has come almost entirely because of the quality of the debates and the points that have been put by Members of our House.

What have we done? It includes committing to allow time for the relevant Select Committees to report on a concluded FTA before the start of the CRaG process; strengthening the commitments, as I said earlier, which were set out before this debate in a Written Ministerial Statement; and placing the Trade and Agriculture Commission on a statutory footing and ensuring that it is required to transparently provide independent advice to the Government on whether new FTAs maintain statutory protections in key areas, such as animal welfare and the environment. In addition, the Government have moved on other linked areas such as standards, which we will come to later.

While this is the last time, I hope, that we debate this issue in this Bill, scrutiny is an issue that we will return to when we debate the implementing legislation for future FTAs. The EU model of trade agreement scrutiny evolved over our 50-year membership. I assure noble Lords that we have no intention of taking that long but now, in only month two after the transition period, I urge your Lordships’ House to see the current arrangements as an evolution of our trade treaty scrutiny practices—no doubt an evolution that has further to go. As we find our feet as an independent trading nation, working with parliamentarians in both Houses, I am sure that we will continue to build upon our scrutiny processes, in ensuring that they remain fit for purpose.

As a concluding comment, I would be covered in embarrassment to think that my small contribution to this debate has led to a rule being named after me.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and to other colleagues who have spoken in this short debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, said, good will has characterised these debates, and it can be sustained—even in the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. It was never with ill will; it was controversial sometimes, but always well meant.

From my point of view, with good will, and the application of the Grimstone rule—he cannot get away from it now—I welcome the specific additions today that the Government will facilitate a debate where requested on draft negotiating objectives, subject to parliamentary time, and that the Government cannot envisage the circumstances in which they would ratify an international trade agreement when a debate requested by the relevant committee in either House had not yet taken place.

Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

Although we are a subordinate House in political power, we are a unique House among the second Chambers of the world. There is no other Chamber as large—and, of course, many of us believe that we are too large. The Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which I have chaired, assisted by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, for almost 20 years now, has campaigned on that—but that is another issue for another day. But we are unique in the extraordinary accumulation of legal wisdom. I talk not just of those who have held high judicial office, important as they are and respect them as we do. We have such Members as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who brings extraordinary wisdom to this subject. I hope that the Alton suggestion, made towards the end of the noble Lord’s admirable speech, will be acted on, the Liaison Committee will look at it, and we will have a committee composed largely or wholly of judicial Members. I would like to see a Joint Committee of both Houses, because I believe in the two Houses working together. We are embarking on a journey, which must not end in the victory of those who perpetrate evil.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow my noble friend. I want to focus on the point that he rightly makes about the Government’s accountability to Parliament and, in particular, the question of how they are going to be accountable to Parliament. I join the tributes to the noble Lord and others, including in the other place, who have put the arguments extraordinarily well, which will be sustained into the future. I also pay tribute to my noble friend on the Front Bench, not least for the constructive way he has approached all our debates throughout the consideration of this Bill.

First, before I get on to Parliament’s accountability, the Foreign Secretary, in exchanges on the Statement yesterday in the other place, said:

“the arguments around genocide and the importance of its being determined by a court are well rehearsed.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/21; col. 625.]

They may have been rehearsed, but they have not been resolved, and that is important. I cannot compare with the descriptions in our previous debates by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws, who will speak in a moment, but the questions that she set out of which court, under what circumstances and by what processes genocide will be determined are absolutely instrumental. It will not be in this Bill or the Act, but we need to keep pressing on that issue.

In this Bill, not least by virtue of Sir Bob Neill’s amendment, which we now see as Amendment 3C, we have a process. We have set up that process, it is important and we need to get it right, but I want to illustrate to your Lordships that it is not sufficient. Let me give two examples. First, it relates to free trade agreements; it does not relate to our treaty-making processes in general. We will come back to this regularly, but I think we are beginning to realise, not least after leaving the European Union, that we are making treaties to a greater extent and with greater importance than previously. Parliament should play a central role in those processes, which brings me to the point that my noble friend was making about how the Government are accountable. They should be accountable, but in some respects they are not, because the exercise of the prerogative means that we are not, in Parliament, involved; we simply receive. Where free trade agreements are concerned, we are going to be involved.

Secondly, Amendment 3C refers to a “prospective FTA counter-party.” What is that? It is a state with which the Government are in negotiations relating to a bilateral free trade agreement. We have all been hearing the debate about China. The Government are not in the process of negotiating a bilateral free trade agreement with China, so the question does not arise. If the Government were to enter into a bilateral investment agreement with China, would that qualify under this amendment? I think the Government would say not. If China were to seek accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—of which, in due course, we hope to be members—would that qualify under this amendment? I think the answer is that it would not. So we could enter into a substantive, wide-ranging free trade agreement with China without this amendment ever being invoked.

The proposition I generally make, as a member of the International Agreements Committee, is that we have an instrument in this House that I hope we will use actively to examine not only bilateral free trade agreements but the whole structure of free trade agreements and international treaties and agreements. Not neglecting the Grimstone rule, which relates to free trade agreements, we should bring forward reports on the negotiating objectives and give at least this House—and, probably by extension the other place, by remarking on what we say—the opportunity to do what my noble friend said, which is say what Parliament will not put up with. That is really important. It may not be written into law at this stage—although I suspect that it ought to be one day—but it will be a further important step in moving the public debate. Although it is not in this Bill, which will be an Act, we should be active in considering by what means we exercise scrutiny of international treaties, trade agreements and agreements generally.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Lansley. I, too, pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Alton for the way he has brought noble Lords together in support of the Muslim Uighur people and the crucial principle of our common humanity.

I have only two points to make. First, I am saddened by the Government’s position, because the genocide of the Muslim Uighur people cannot be swept under the carpet as the Government’s rejection of the amendment passed by your Lordships’ House implies. The reason is simple: to be able to sweep an issue under the carpet, one has first to be able to lift the carpet. The carpet is too heavy to lift, because it is saturated with the blood of the Muslim Uighur people, who, as we have heard, are being subjected to genocide by the Chinese Communist Party regime for the supposed crime of being Muslim.

Secondly, in a few weeks’ time, on 6 May, Muslims will vote in the local elections. I trust they, and all who care about human rights, will ask their candidates what their party is doing to stop the genocide of the Muslim Uighur people.