Trade Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

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

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, good afternoon. The hybrid Grand Committee will now begin. Some Members are here in person, respecting social distancing, and others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. I must ask Members in the Room to wear a face covering except when seated at their desk, to speak sitting down, and to wipe down their desk, chair and any other touch points before and after use. If the capacity of the Committee Room is exceeded, or other safety requirements are breached, I will immediately adjourn the Committee. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.

A participants list for today’s proceedings has been published by the Government Whips’ Office, as have lists of Members who have put their names to amendments or expressed an interest in speaking on each group. I will call Members to speak in the order listed. Members are not permitted to intervene spontaneously; the Chair calls each speaker. Interventions during speeches or “before the noble Lord sits down” are not permitted.

During the debate on each group I will invite Members, including Members in the Grand Committee room, to email the Clerk if they wish to speak after the Minister, using the Grand Committee address. I will call Members to speak in order of request and will call the Minister to reply each time. The groupings are binding and it will not be possible to degroup any amendments for separate debate. A Member intending to move formally an amendment already debated should have given notice during the debate. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments.

When putting the Question, I will collect voices in the Grand Committee Room only. I remind Members that Divisions cannot take place in Grand Committee. It takes unanimity to amend the Bill, so if a single voice says “Not Content” an amendment is negatived, and if a single voice says “Content” a clause stands part. If a Member taking part remotely intends to oppose an amendment expected to be agreed to, they should make this clear when speaking on the group.

We will now begin. In Grand Committee in person you do not need to unmute the microphones: the microphones are working, so when I call you, just start to speak.

Clause 2: Implementation of international trade agreements

Debate on Amendment 17 resumed.

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[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak to Amendment 17 and open the batting on a group of amendments on dispute resolution. Put shortly: Amendment 17 opposes investor-state dispute settlement arrangements —ISDS; Amendments 43, 44 and 52 seek to constrain it; Amendment 91 deals with tax matters; and Amendment 94 deals with disputes between state parties.

Amendment 17 is intended to prevent regulations permitting ISDS in the agreements, envisaged by Clause 2, which the Government are negotiating to replace existing EU agreements. Existing EU agreements are listed in the Library briefing. Some of them include ISDS; others do not.

The new agreements will differ from the existing EU agreements, not least by making the UK a party. There will be other modifications too, as explained in paragraphs 37 and 38 of the Explanatory Notes. The Bill envisages modifications. It does not require replication of the content of EU agreements—contrary to the Minister’s comment last Tuesday. Amendment 17 seeks, in the new UK agreements, modification of the content of existing EU agreements by the exclusion of ISDS where those agreements provided for it and its non-inclusion where EU agreements did not.

ISDS is often found in international trade agreements. Where it exists, it is wholly objectionable. ISDS has the power to override the supremacy of Parliament, to defeat the rule of domestic law, and it discriminates on grounds of nationality. Far from taking back control, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out in our last sitting, ISDS is the surrender of control.

The inclusion of ISDS in the then proposed EU-US trade deal, TTIP, was the principal reason for 3 million signatures—half a million of them in the UK—on the petition against it. The legitimacy of ISDS in EU agreements is now in doubt. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU in Slovak Republic v Achmea on the Netherlands/Slovakia trade agreement, held that ISDS has an adverse effect on the autonomy of EU law and is therefore incompatible with EU law. This is an EU judgment we should follow.

ISDS is a mechanism whereby a corporation of one state party to the FTA can bring a claim for compensation against the other state. That sounds fine, until one appreciates that such claims are not brought in the courts of either state, nor under the laws of either state. ISDS is a system of arbitration usually conducted in secret. The usual basis for claims is that the accused state has failed to ensure “fair and equitable treatment” or has expropriated some asset of the investing corporation. Such claims are not open to any but foreign corporations. The claim is not that the host state has breached the law of the land but usually the converse: that domestic law has caused the foreign corporation loss of hoped-for profits.

Take the Philip Morris case, referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are having some technical difficulties online. A number of our colleagues who are participating remotely cannot hear you as well as we can in the Room. If we cannot resolve it in the next minute or two, I will adjourn the Grand Committee for five minutes, until 2.42 pm. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, but it is more important that people online hear his comments.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Grand Committee is resumed. We now resume debate on Amendment 17. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for having to call on him to start again from the beginning. We have now resolved the technical difficulties so, from the top, the noble Lord, Lord Hendy.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

No apologies are needed. It is a pleasure to speak to Amendment 17 and open the batting on a group of amendments on dispute resolution. Put shortly: Amendment 17 opposes investor-state dispute settlement arrangements—ISDS; Amendments 43, 44 and 52 seek to constrain them; Amendment 91 deals with tax matters; and Amendment 94 deals with disputes between state parties.

Amendment 17 is intended to prevent regulations permitting ISDS in the agreements, envisaged by Clause 2, which the Government are negotiating to replace existing EU agreements. Existing EU agreements are listed in the Library briefing. Some of them include ISDS; others do not. The new agreements will differ from the existing EU agreements, not least by making the UK a party. There will be other modifications too, as explained in paragraphs 37 and 38 of the Explanatory Notes.

The Bill envisages modifications. It does not require replication of the content of EU agreements—contrary to the Minister’s comment last Tuesday. Amendment 17 seeks, in the new UK agreements, modification of the content of existing EU agreements by the exclusion of ISDS where those agreements provided for it and its non-inclusion where EU agreements did not.

ISDS is often found in international trade agreements. Where it exists, it is wholly objectionable. ISDS has the power to override the supremacy of Parliament and to defeat the rule of domestic law, and it discriminates on grounds of nationality. Far from taking back control, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out, ISDS is the surrender of control.

The inclusion of ISDS in the then-proposed EU-US trade deal, TTIP, was the principal reason for 3 million signatures—half a million of them in the UK—on the petition against it. The legitimacy of ISDS in EU agreements is now in doubt. The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Slovak Republic v Achmea on the Netherlands/Slovakia trade agreement held that ISDS has an adverse effect on the autonomy of EU law and is therefore incompatible with EU law. This is an EU judgment that we should follow.

ISDS is a mechanism whereby a corporation of one state party to the international trade agreement can bring a claim for compensation against the other state. That sounds fine until one appreciates that such claims are not brought in the courts of either state, nor under the laws of either state. ISDS is a system of arbitration usually conducted in secret. The usual basis for claims is that the accused state has failed to ensure “fair and equitable treatment” or has expropriated some asset of the investing corporation. Such claims are not open to any but foreign corporations. The claim is not that the host state has breached the law of the land but usually the converse: that domestic law has caused the foreign corporation loss of hoped-for profits.

Let us take the Philip Morris case, referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. The Australian Parliament passed legislation requiring plain-paper packaging for cigarettes. Philip Morris challenged the legislation on constitutional grounds. It failed at every level, including in the High Court of Australia. It then transferred ownership of its Australian companies to a subsidiary it had set up in Hong Kong so as to enable an ISDS claim under the Australia-Hong Kong trade agreement. The claim failed, but only because the transfer of ownership of the companies to Hong Kong post-dated the activity giving rise to the claim.

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If the Minister tells me that he is going to insist on moving towards a genuine multilateral tribunal or court system, I need to warn him that it will anger the United States, which at this moment is doing everything it can to scupper the WTO dispute resolution system by refusing to allow the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appellate body. The WTO settlement system continues only because the EU, along with 16 other countries, has devised a workaround. That is not sustainable in the long term. We really need to hear from the Minister what position this Government are taking, because at present we have a wholly unsatisfactory state of affairs.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, I offer a gentle reminder that all mics in the Grand Committee are live at all times. If everyone’s mobile devices could be on silent and their notifications muted, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in the light of the way we have spent much of the past hour, I begin by recording my thanks to the members of your Lordships’ House’s staff who have been extraordinary in their patience and calm with the technical difficulties that we have all suffered. They have held everyone’s hand and been wonderful under fire.

It is my absolute privilege to follow the speeches we have just heard, particularly those of my noble friends Lord Hendy, Lord Hain and Lady Blower. I have lent my name to Amendment 17, drafted by my noble friend Lord Hendy. But before I speak to it, I will make a preliminary point of law that is relevant not just to Amendment 17 but to many of the amendments that your Lordships have discussed during these many hours of debate in Grand Committee, which I have had the delight of listening to very closely.

In the community and in the country at large, it is understood that it is dangerous to pontificate about the law and give legal advice without a certain level of qualification. That is so well understood that the profession is regulated and there are tight legal limits. That cannot be the case in the business of legislation, of course, because there is politics and policy on the one hand and the law on the other, with the journey—the process of legislation—in between. So, although I think that dinner-table lawyers are almost as dangerous as armchair medics or epidemiologists, I do understand that making claims about the law during legislative debates is sometimes an occupational hazard.

Your Lordships’ House is criticised in many quarters, but one thing that can often be said of it is that it contains a great many experts who contribute expertise from different areas of life and practice to the business of scrutinising legislation. My noble friend Lady Blower mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I do not think that she is alone in having benefited from his contributions, from a medical and public perspective, to your Lordships’ Grand Committee.

Of course, my noble friend Lord Hendy, who drafted Amendment 17, has been a practising barrister for 48 years—he will forgive me for pointing this out—working in particular as a labour lawyer but also on legislation and legal disputes, and he has spent 33 of those years in silk as one of Her Majesty’s Queen’s Counsel. So noble Lords can imagine that he would not have drafted an amendment to the Bill if it were outside the scope of the Bill; or, if he had, or if other noble Lords had drafted amendments that were beyond the scope of the Bill, the amendments would not be entertained in this way. They would not appear on the Order Paper and your Lordships would not have been asked to waste so many hours debating them.

That brings me to my preliminary point of law. In the many hours of Grand Committee that I have listened to in recent days, I have heard claims made, at times by the Minister and at times by some of his noble friends, notably the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and others, suggesting that various amendments trying to restrict the vires of the regulation-making powers in this Bill are somehow beyond the Bill’s scope, or are irrelevant, or would clutter up the statute book—that was one comment I heard—or are otherwise inappropriate because they seek erroneously and improperly to clip the Executive’s wings when they are out trying to make trade agreements. That is one argument to the House that has emerged in your Lordships’ Grand Committee. Another argument that has been made is that the amendments completely miss the point of this draft legislation, because this legislation is purely about so-called continuity or rollover trade agreements; therefore, there is no need to place any additional hindrances or fetters on the regulation-making powers in the Bill to implement these rollover or continuity—other similar phrases have been used—trade agreements.

Well, the politics and the policy can come later, but let us be straight about the law here. That is just not correct. As a matter of law, that is not what is provided in the Bill, which allows for trade agreements, albeit with parties that have already been in an agreement with the European Union. They are trade agreements and there are regulations to be made under those trade agreements to implement them. That is the law. That is not spin. That is not politics. That is the law and the effect of this legislation.

Therefore, it is important to pre-empt the comments that will no doubt come from the Minister in due course and point out that it is completely appropriate for your Lordships and this Grand Committee to use amendments that have clearly been ruled as within the scope of the debate to restrain the vires, or the power, to make these regulations: that is, to say that it is perfectly appropriate that the regulation-making powers to implement these trade agreements—whether you call them continuity agreements or rollover agreements or even Charlie—can be constrained. Many amendments attempt to do that.

Your Lordships are perfectly free to say that some of the constraints should not be there as a matter of politics or policy: indeed, to say that we should not protect the NHS, workers’ rights, environmental standards, et cetera. That is fair for political and legislative debate, but in my view it is not okay—it is not straight talking with Members of your Lordships’ House—to suggest that these amendments are somehow beyond scope or inappropriate for debate in this way. I am afraid that, whatever else we are, some of us are lawyers first and last, just like some of your Lordships are distinguished medics, career politicians and so on. That is quite important.

This brings me to Amendment 17, and ISDS in particular. Obviously, this is dealt with with some care and precision in my noble friend Lord Hendy’s amendment, to which I have added my name, but I noted that, during the many hours of debate, other Members of the Committee have spoken to the evils of this system of secret justice, if such a thing is even possible. It seems to me that, whatever our differences in this Grand Committee and in your Lordships’ House, all Members ought to be concerned about ISDS and should seek to rule it out from being implemented by way of regulation-making powers in this Bill. In other words, if there is to be ISDS in future, it should require a new, separate Act of Parliament that can be consulted on and aired publicly, and debated line by line in both Houses of Parliament. All Members of your Lordships’ House, whether they are socialists, Greens, Liberals or Conservatives, ought to be scandalised by ISDS.

What is more, all people in our nations should be alarmed by the practice of ISDS, whether they voted to leave the European Union or to remain. Why? In a nutshell, because this practice prioritises unelected, unaccountable corporations over democratically elected Governments and the people they serve. That is the first reason. The second reason is that, as other noble Lords pointed out, it prioritises foreign corporations over domestic businesses. That cannot be right either.

Trade Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

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

This has been a long and rigorous debate, and I hope it has been helpful in clarifying the Government’s position. As I said at the beginning, I believe that if one analyses the Government’s position there is less difference between the Government and Parliament than some noble Lords have said. I hope that I have sufficiently addressed your Lordships’ concerns and therefore urge the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, to withdraw his amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received three requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I will take them in order.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 39. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate.

Amendment 39

Moved by

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We can already see some of the reductions, for example, in TradeMark East Africa, an organisation which facilitates higher standards and less bureaucracy, reducing border time processing and trade—all of the areas which the Minister is passionate about, seeing trade agreements as unable to deliver by themselves unless businesses and enterprises can take advantage of them. Our commitment to the least developed around the world should be a priority for our agreements, which is why the amendments in this group are important and I am grateful for the cross-party support for them. I hope the Minister will look on them favourably when he responds, and I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

We are trying to contact the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, but we have not been able to reach him and are checking to see whether that is due to technical failure. I therefore call the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, whose grasp of the particular issues that developing countries face is well grounded through his leading role in the All-Party Group on Trade Out of Poverty, which he mentioned at the start, and which complements his demonstrated knowledge of trade matters in general. I thought I would be following the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, so I will leave out a bit of my speech.

Amendment 39, to which I have added my name, seeks to ensure that trade agreements take full heed of the UN SDGs, or sustainable development goals, which the UK in no small measure helped to craft, along with an impact assessment report back to Parliament on progress towards meeting those SDGs. Embedding the SDGs in our trading ethos, which Amendment 39 seeks to do, will go beyond mere words and take ownership of a much-lauded initiative that we were instrumental in delivering, defining our determination to establish Britain as a force for good in the world, which is after all the stated aim of Dominic Raab, the Secretary of State of the newly created FCDO. I am concerned to hear about the cutting of the ODA specifically to implement trade agreements with developing countries. That is very disappointing, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that.

If we were to embed the SDGs into the new trade agreements, we would be keeping in step with the WTO, which has embraced the ambition of the SDGs and recognises its own central role in delivering them. The WTO’s publication Mainstreaming Trade to Attain the Sustainable Development Goals shows its commitment to delivering and implementing pro-growth and pro-development trade reforms, and which are crucial to prosperity for us here in the UK as well as for the rest of the world. Without a fair trading scheme, we will not realise the ambitions to protect our planet as we make good social injustices, and that is the purpose behind Amendment 97 in the name of my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, with the welcome support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Least developed countries and low and middle-income countries have a few privileges when it comes to trade with more developed countries without which they would never get off the starting block in the cut-throat world of international trade. I urge the Minister to do all he can to expedite the rollover agreements with developing countries we have through the EU which to date have not been the subject of continuity agreements. The sooner that happens, the better. I think my noble friend Lord Purvis pointed to the east African states and Kenya where that has yet to take place.

The existing concessions for market access for developing countries, such as Everything But Arms and preference schemes, must continue and they need to be guaranteed as we carve out new deals post Brexit. I say that advisedly. The Minister repeatedly insists that this Bill has a limited remit to apply only to continuity agreements, but that is not what is written in the Bill. The Long Title starts:

“A BILL TO Make provision about the implementation of international trade agreements”.


There is no mention of continuity agreements. It is therefore little wonder that so many amendments have been tabled to secure in the Bill safeguards for existing standards that our citizens hold dear in so many spheres of their lives. Britain’s reputation for thorough, open and regular scrutiny, something that the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, remarked upon repeatedly, is in no small measure the backbone of our good standing on the international stage and should not be given up.

Amendment 97 would impose a duty on the Government of the day to lay a report before Parliament on a regular basis assessing the economic and developmental impact of each free trade deal between Britain and least developed and lower middle income countries. This is a powerful requirement, the mere knowledge of which will act as a positive incentive to the Government of the day to keep in place existing measures to deliver the “gold standard”, as the Fairtrade Foundation puts it, in the trade for development policy. That is what we are looking for: a gold standard in trade for development policy. It will go a long way toward securing—I again quote the Fairtrade Foundation,

“an overarching trade strategy that works in support of the SDGs, business and human rights and climate change commitments.”

I shall end my contribution with a few words on fossil fuel subsidies and their abundant use in our trading relationships with developing countries. If you believe, as I do, that unless we stop climate change, we will destroy life as we know it on our plant, we must stop burning fossil fuels. It makes little sense to me that we, through UK Export Finance, continue to subsidise investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure in developing countries as if existing infrastructure will not take us over the two degrees of warming that spells disaster. The argument is often put forward that not to help former colonies to harness energy from oil or gas somehow harks back to colonial times when Britain dictated economics abroad. That is pure bunkum. It is far more reminiscent of the colonial era to lock former colonies into soon-to-be defunct stranded assets and pocket the profits at the same time as we in the west equip ourselves with modern, clean and cheaper energy infrastructure. My plea to the Government is that they stop subsiding fossil fuel infrastructure here and abroad and transfer those subsidies to clean renewables, such as solar, wind and hydro, which present plenty of opportunities to do business in developing countries.

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Motion agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

That concludes the work of the Committee this afternoon. The Committee stands adjourned. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.

Committee adjourned at 7.28 pm.

Trade Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

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

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 7. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 7

Moved by

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[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of Amendment 8 and my own Amendments 10 and 45—that is 10 and 45, not 11 and 45. I have been monitoring proceedings—watching them upstairs in my office—and I have popped down to the Chamber for this debate. I shall attempt to be brief because much has been said, in such wonderful ways and in such a powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, whom I regard as my noble friend, and by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury—I think it is the first speech I have ever agreed with him on, although he may not find that helpful.

My Amendment 10 is designed to emulate the excellent Amendment 9 of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, because I seem to recall that, when he moved his amendments in Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, commended the approach of involving the courts, and I thought, “That amendment has got some traction”. As such, my amendment on human rights—not genocide—follows the structure of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. For the human right abuses, I have selected, in the main, the principal ones from the European Convention on Human Rights. I do not intend to push my amendments to a vote because I hope Amendment 8 will succeed, and I will vote for it.

The only little quibble I have with Amendment 8 concerns subsection (5)(d) of the proposed new clause. Subsection (5) talks about “serious violations” and lists “genocide”, “torture”, “inhuman or degrading treatment”, “slavery” and so on—but paragraph (d) then talks about

“other major violations of human rights”

and lists:

“the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

My worry here is that one is getting down to less important human rights, some of which I regard almost as motherhood and apple pie. My concern is: would the Government use this as an excuse not to go down this route?

Yes, of course, they might accept genocide, slavery and torture, but I question reporting to Parliament every time that one of the more minor human rights is contravened. We may consider this terribly important in our western liberal democracy, but I suspect that, if you look at the huge range of UN human rights, the protocols and the additions to them, almost every single country in the world could be accused of breaching one of them. That is my concern, and it is why, in my Amendment 45, to which Amendment 10 refers, I listed the main ones from the European Convention on Human Rights:

“The right to life


Freedom from torture


Freedom from slavery


The right to liberty


The right to a fair trial …


Freedom of expression


Freedom of assembly


The right to marry and start a family”


and so on—because it is important to concentrate on the main ones.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has set out in detail the incredible abuses of the Uighur people in China. I put it this way: would we dream of doing a trade deal with the regime in Burma, considering what it has done? Would we do a trade deal with the late and highly unlamented Mugabe of Zimbabwe, after his extermination of 20,000 of the Matabele people? No—of course not. Yet in China—again, I distinguish between the people of China and the communist regime—the regime is equally as bad as Burma or Mugabe, and, as the noble Lord described, it is doing genocide in slow motion, whereas Mugabe exterminated 20,000 Matabele in a few months.

Of course we would not do a trade deal with those countries or other regimes, but we are trading with China because it has got a grip on us: we are overreliant on trade with it and overdependent on it. This is not the time to get into and debate this with my noble friend the Minister, but I wish all success with Project Defend, which is aimed at trying to make sure that we reshore some of the things that we are dependent on China for or that we source them from other countries. Even something as bog-standard as paracetamol, which costs about a penny a tablet, should not be 99% sourced from chemicals in China and then produced in India; we must source more of these vital products and services from other countries. That is why I support Amendment 8.

To save time, because we are running rather late tonight, I intend to withdraw from speaking on Amendment 9, but I completely support it. I will vote for it, and I hope it passes because it is probably the most important amendment we have dealt with today or tomorrow—or whenever we will address this Bill again; it is the most important amendment, and I think the Government can easily, and should, accept it. If the wording is slightly wrong, they have time to clean it up in the other place for us to get it back here during ping-pong. With those remarks, I will conclude and let others speak.

I would be grateful if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, would make a comment, if he can bear it, on my point about some of the more trivial human rights abuses in case that weakens the argument. I may be totally wrong, but if he has a chance to comment on it, I would greatly welcome that.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who will be followed by the noble Lord, Lord Curry.

Trade Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

What is going on, as we speak, in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong, to which we have a continuing and recognised moral responsibility, disgraces a great nation—one built on a great civilisation. It is appalling that the CCP—the Chinese Communist Party—should extinguish in the most brutal fashion the human and constitutional rights of every free-born man and woman. I beg noble Lords to support this amendment and to send an emphatic message to the other place, and I beg our friends and colleagues in the other place to vote with courage, integrity and determination when this amendment comes before them.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, the following Members in the Chamber have indicated that they wish to speak and I will call them in this order: the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra, Lord Polak and Lord Shinkwin, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Falkner of Margravine. After the final speaker, I will open it up to anyone in the Chamber to speak.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I rise for yet another time to support my noble friend’s amendment on genocide.

As Peers, we know our place, and this noble House asks only that the other place think again about the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Last time, the other place did not get a chance to think again because, in a brilliant and fiendishly clever move, our amendment was not considered. I pay tribute to the Government. It is the sort of clever, dirty, underhanded trick that I would love to have played if only I had thought of it when I was Chief Whip.

I will not spend time on the merits of the amendment and why it is necessary. The case has once again been put with frightening authority by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and my noble friend Lord Cormack. The justification for it is overwhelming and in direct contrast to the increasingly desperate government excuses not to accept it, all of which have been discredited.

The Government say that only a court can decide, so they do not want a committee of former Supreme Court or High Court judges; nor will they tolerate the High Court—the second-highest court in the land—although they say that a court has to decide. They Government want only the International Criminal Court to adjudicate but they know full well that that is a sham. No case of state genocide will get before the International Criminal Court in a million years because it will be blocked by one or more players in the Security Council. No Minister, in either this House or the other place, can stand before a Dispatch Box and say hand on heart that he or she honestly expects a case ever to get before the ICC, so I am afraid that the Government’s case is a sham. I do not blame my noble friend the Minister, who is thoroughly decent and very able, as he has been handed a poisoned chalice. But, while he has been forced to drink from it, the rest of us have not.

Initially, I simply could not understand why the Government, whom I support, are so terrified of passing this amendment—a Government who have had the courage to leave the EU and stand up to its bullying, have threatened to break international law with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol and have had the courage to throw out some of Putin’s spies but are terrified to make one gesture in case they offend the Chinese regime. But I think I can throw some light on the Government’s inexplicable position on this matter, and it is our dear friends in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, who are never short of a tyrant or two whom they can appease. A few weeks ago, I asked the FCDO about our relationship with China and, in a Written Answer last week, they called China an “important strategic partner”. That can be found in the Written Answers produced by Hansard.

Can your Lordships believe that? The UK Government consider China to be a strategic partner. Now, if they had said that China was a very important trading entity and we had to be careful in how we negotiated with it, I could accept that, but “strategic partner”? Surely that is the terminology we use to describe one of our NATO allies, not the despotic regime run by the Chinese Communist Party. But that perhaps explains why we do nothing about China and say nothing—in case we cause offence to our valued, so-called “strategic partner.” So, the Foreign Office calls a country which imposes dictatorship on Hong Kong, threatens Taiwan, and steals islands in the South China Sea to turn them into military bases, a strategic partner.

China caused the Wuhan virus, covered it up and lies about it every day, and economically attacked Australia when it called for a genuine independent inquiry into the virus. It steals every bit of technology it can, has cyberattacked all our vital industries, infiltrated our universities and schools, and the new head of MI5 says that it is a threat to our western way of life and democracy, yet the FCDO calls it a “strategic partner”. Typical FCDO: sue for peace before anyone declares war.

We can do nothing about these things in this Bill, but the western world has to get off its knees and start to stand up to China before it is too late. The genocide of the Uighurs, of which there is now overwhelming evidence, is a sample of how the Chinese communist regime will treat every race and people it subjugates.

In this Bill we can make a small start by tackling the issue of trading with a country which commits genocide. I thought that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that we sent to the Commons last time was superior to this one. I am certain that it would have passed if Members of the other place had not been robbed of a chance to vote on it.

Last week the Canadian Parliament voted to describe the treatment of the Uighurs as genocide. If our Canadian colleagues can make such a judgment, surely the great Parliament of this House and the other place is able to do likewise. This amendment is not going nearly that far, but it wants to start a process of thorough investigation which could eventually determine genocide. It is then left to the UK Government to have a completely free hand to decide what to do about it.

We cannot tackle all the iniquities of the Chinese regime, but this amendment is a start. It will show that the UK Parliament, with our new independence, cares not only about trade and prosperity but about moral issues, human lives and people in a faraway country of whom we know nothing, to paraphrase Chamberlain.

I say to the Government that this will not go away. This House will come back to the issue of genocide time and again in every other Bill where there is the slightest chance of pushing an amendment like this. The Government will face this issue again and again until we get off our knees and stand up to China on genocide. I urge all noble Lords to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton.