Trade Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

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

The UK Government have worked hard to ensure that the devolved Administrations’ views are reflected in this Bill—I hope that I have put that strong argument to this Committee today—and we have made a number of amendments and commitments to address their concerns. I hope that this provides more than enough reassurance to noble Lords, and I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all speakers, both today and on Tuesday, for a very good debate. I think that everyone who has participated will agree that there has been a huge degree of agreement around the issues and, in some cases, on the way in which they might be resolved. I agree absolutely with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who said that it was interesting that these issues seem to come back time and time again and do not go away. That gives rise to the suggestion that this issue is relevant not just in relation to this legislation but on a wider scale, and we should be aware of that.

One of the two strands around which this debate has been constructed is the Sewel convention—or, as we might want to call it, in the words of my noble and learned kinsman Lord Hope, the Sewel principle, since part of it is already in statute—and whether we need to think harder about the process under which consent is obtained, both through consultation and through direct negotiation, with whom it is obtained, since there is a suggestion that the focus should perhaps be on Ministers rather than on institutions, and how that plays back into the eventual organisation that we hope to see around trade in this country. That leads into questions about structure, about the JMC and the special agreements that need to be made in that and about how we resolve disagreements, should there be any. There is no debate, I think, on whether the UK Parliament has the final say on questions of international agreements. But, as several speakers, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, these agreements will live only if they are implemented properly, and implementation is clearly a shared obligation between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations.

Four points came through very strongly on this, and I hope that we will carry these forward. First, there is a genuine need to protect the union and to respect and strengthen the devolution settlement. Several noble Lords stressed that, and I shall come back to that. Irrespective of how we go about things and how successful we are in the day-to-day work, we will need to have a fall-back disputes mechanism that is based on the process of consultation and getting consent but has a structure in place for the resolution of disputes that is not, as people have pointed out, heavily weighted towards the largest member in the room, which is the UK Government—acting both for the UK and as an agent for England, which is of course the most numerous part of the country. So we need trust and we need dispute resolution that commands proper confidence. We also need to work together to ensure that all parts of this work together, not just on the creation of conditions under which agreements can be struck but on the way in which they can be implemented satisfactorily to ensure that there are no disagreements on that.

As I have said already, and as others have said before me, this issue will not go away. We need to test what the issues raised today have got to say against what the Minister, who spoke before me, said. I thought that he was slightly complacent—I hope that he will not mind me saying that—as I think that there are issues here that will not be resolved simply by assertion from a ministerial position. We may well need to pick up and identify further legislation that is required. This is a very fragile situation that we are in at the moment. I urge the Minister to take careful note of what has been said today and to make sure that what has been said today is circulated widely so that the sensibilities raised in this debate are not lost. I am sure that we will return to this at later stages, but in the meantime I would like to withdraw Amendment 26.

Amendment 26 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I was delighted to hear from the Minister that a new trade agreement has entered the books. Could he confirm that the same arrangements that apply to the Japan agreement will apply to that agreement in respect of the ability of the International Trade Committee and the EU International Agreements Sub-Committee to have view of the documentation and to make a response to Parliament, should they wish to do so?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. The arrangements that we have put in place in discussion with the committees for the Japan free trade agreement relate to the fact that we described it as an enhanced continuity agreement, which is why we have been putting it through enhanced scrutiny compared to other free trade agreements. This latest agreement, the Ukraine free trade agreement, will be scrutinised in the same way as other continuity agreements were previously scrutinised.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 35 on parliamentary scrutiny. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for tabling it. Listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I felt she was a little bit nostalgic for the European Parliament. That was not surprising. I have felt it too. It is not nostalgia we need but the procedure and ideas that came from the European Parliament when we are discussing CRaG. I will leave it at that.

However, I was encouraged by the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, earlier on the enhanced scrutiny process, and of course this is only the preamble for Report, which will be very important. I hope and expect that the Minister will be sympathetic to this amendment. He should be, because I believe the Government have been working hard to stretch the CRaG framework above the baseline so that they can then cover a range of issues. For example, the new FCDO is looking at improving the EMs on human rights, and in Committee we have already covered matters such as food safety, health and the environment, which are all to be covered by a sustainability EM, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate. All these issues, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, so sensitively mentioned, and as the Minister knows, are of huge importance and concern to the public, and they will loom large in the US deal. I know we are dealing with Parliament now, but we are also aware of the public.

Amendments 36 to 38 are also needed because they set out the terms of the reporting arrangements required by Parliament for every relevant free trade agreement so that it can be examined and debated properly within the narrow timeframe of 21 days. I was fascinated by the conversation of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about Amendment 63, which we will come back to.

NGO and trade union interest in trade deals and fair trade these days is at a much higher technical level and, although stakeholders and civil society are consulted in advance, they also need to be properly informed after negotiations are over and as every deal passes through Parliament. That is part of the process described in these amendments. We owe a lot to Jonathan Djanogly, as has been mentioned, and while I am not sure why reporting comes up in later amendments, I support those too.

The Bill is restricted to rollover agreements, but I understand from previous ministerial replies and statements that the Government are generally and genuinely ready to listen to suggestions and, as has been said, open to improving if not amending the CRaG process. We all look forward to the Minister’s confirmation of this.

Reporting on an agreement is also important for the scrutiny committees themselves, because it is part of their mandate to follow its progress in the months following ratification. I think we were grateful for the intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. The recently concluded Japan agreement, which we will shortly all be examining, will provide the first test of these arrangements.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all concerned for contributing to this debate, which has been of a very high standard. We should all acknowledge and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, for deciding to use this opportunity to speak to the Committee about her experiences on the 2018-19 Bill. I was sorry to hear about the blood and sweat, although I can confirm that there was just as much on our side of the table as I am sure she was correct in describing was on hers. If there were any tears, I do apologise for that; we did not have those, and I am sorry if we were guilty of inflicting them.

Because we have a range of amendments here around this topic, we have a variety of suggestions for the Government to consider on how they might engage formally with Parliament. The common thread for all of them is that they build on steps already taken and, as others have said—I support this—many of these are very welcome indeed. Amendment 35 in particular sets a very high standard at the top end of the scale, where all approvals and all considerations of final remit have to be done by both Houses of Parliament, with full engagement with the devolved Administrations. There are some very good points in this amendment, which, broadly speaking, goes with the grain of where we are coming from. However, as other noble Lords have said, this may well not be the time to repeat this amendment back to the Commons, because it was considered and defeated at that stage. I take very strongly what the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, said: namely, that there are elements in what is in front of us today that would allow for some progress to be made. I hope very much that the Minister will be able to signal his willingness to engage further with us when he comes to respond.