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.

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[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.

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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.