Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Debate between Matt Western and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am actually going to come on to that point. The first offence was in summer 2020, and by then in Warwickshire alone we had already had 436 excess deaths in Warwickshire care homes, 347 due to covid. Thousands of people were unable to visit their relatives. Of those many cases, perhaps I could just cite one—that of Jill. Her dad, who had been a naval commander in world war two, was a very proud serviceman, and she was unable to visit him between March and his death in July.

The Government claim that the Prime Minister was under exceptional pressure. I think we can say that about all the frontline services—all the people working in healthcare, our teachers; it was across the piece—working to keep us safe. I am sure many people here would not have celebrated their birthdays, did not have parties and did not have office parties. I certainly did not, and I do not believe the Prime Minister should have at all.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The Prime Minister was certainly not under pressure in December on those matters when he did mislead the House. As the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) highlighted earlier, this is not the only time. The entirety of Northern Ireland was misled on paper, or a lack of paper, on the borders and the protocol, so there is a pattern going on here. The House has to take this one seriously: it was in here it happened.

[Matt Western]

I think the hon. Member may be deviating from the subject and I do want to keep to the motion itself, but I understand the point he is making.

The defences being used to defend the Prime Minister are not really worthy of this place or those who espouse them—ambushed by cake; a work event, not a party; or the comparison with a speeding ticket. This is really all indefensible stuff, and then they talk about Ukraine. Of course, we are all concerned by the situation in Ukraine, but I do not believe that should be used as a smokescreen for the failings of this Prime Minister.

In referring this to the Committee of Privileges, it is vital—and I really hope—that there will be great support on the far side, because it is essential for every one of us that we restore public confidence in this place. That is why, of course, I will be voting for the motion.

Future Free Trade Agreements

Debate between Matt Western and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 21st February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is very disappointing to see how few Members are present in the Chamber today—that applies to the Benches on both sides of the House, but certainly to the Government Benches. I have a lot of respect for the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), and I am sure that he, too, is disappointed that a topic of such importance should actually have attracted so few people to the Chamber today.

Today’s debate honours the Government’s commitment that was made back in the summer to hold a debate on these future trade agreements, but it does not provide for the much-needed debate on the Government’s outline approach on an amendable, substantive motion, as proposed by the International Trade Committee in our report on trade policy transparency and scrutiny, which is disappointing. It seems that the Government’s conduct of marginalising Parliament in the process of Brexit is evident once more—so much for taking back control. As the Committee stated, handling trade negotiations is the prerogative of the Executive, but there must be a meaningful role for Parliament in the trade policy process.

The Committee has been absolutely clear that trade policy needs to be open and inclusive, maximising the benefits across and throughout the UK; that Government must operate from a presumption of transparency; and that consultative processes must be formalised. Specifically, the Committee was interested in the role that Parliament, the devolved Administrations, local government, businesses and civil society should have in the process—all elements that are included in Labour’s policy on trade deals. However, it would seem that the Select Committee report is being ignored.

Since his appointment, the Secretary of State for International Trade has asserted a great many things: in July 2017, we were told that a deal with the EU would be the easiest in human history, and in December 2017 he stated that the 40 free trade agreements covering 55 countries could be rolled over a second after the UK left the EU. A couple of months earlier, Lord Price, the then Trade Minister, told us that there were 36 FTAs with 60 countries, and he said that they could simply be cut and pasted and that that had almost been done. It was not until the Select Committee was told by Professor Andreas Dür that there were in fact 41 free trade agreements covering around 70 countries—a figure confirmed by the Financial Times—that we absolutely knew where we were. As suspected, the notion that free trade agreements could be rolled over has not proved quite as easy as the Secretary of State originally claimed. Although not central to this debate, that does illustrate the huge challenges that we will face.

Just two weeks ago, the Secretary of State came before the Select Committee to face questions, and it was quite clear that rolling over these agreements was not really going that well. Despite his considerable obfuscation, the reality of the state of the deals was evident from the Secretary of State’s own briefing note. Anyone in the Committee Room could see that on the piece of paper in front of him there was a huge amount of red, a little bit of orange and very little green. Under that green, amber and red traffic light system, the status of these free trade agreements was quite clear. When the Secretary of State was challenged on that point, he claimed colour blindness, yet hours later in the afternoon he was more forthright with business leaders—sadly not with us. It was yet another example of keeping Parliament in the dark.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

On that idea of keeping Parliament in the dark, if the UK and the EU were to enter into a trade negotiation, European parliamentarians would know more than Members of the House of Commons, and our best way of finding out what was happening would be to ask our friends from Ireland. Far from us taking back control, the European Parliament would actually have more control in that particular trade negotiation, which is a supreme irony of the whole Brexit carry-on.

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his chairmanship of the International Trade Committee, which he does so well, and for the important point that he has just made. One senses that we are being kept in the dark, that there is there is far greater transparency on the EU side, and that we will probably end up learning more from the EU and other countries about how our deals are progressing. The Select Committee has actually found that to be the case when we have visited Geneva, Brussels or elsewhere; we are discovering the reality from trade ambassadors in those other countries.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I was going to come to later in my speech. He is quite right that the Government are kind of fudging the situation along, and no one is absolutely clear how these things will be managed. Our rural and farming communities will be extremely concerned because, having been so dismissive of the common agricultural policy, it is absolutely not clear how we are going to manage our all-important farming and agricultural sector post Brexit.

I was talking about the free trade agreements and the discussions of the Select Committee last week. It has subsequently become clear that the situation is a real mess. The status of the deals has been leaked and we now know that just five have been agreed, nine are off track, 19 are significantly off track, four are not possible to complete by March 2019 and two are not even being negotiated. So much for colour blindness—perhaps it is more of a blind spot.

In the case of the five deals that have been rolled over, their lack of priority and importance is perhaps self-evident. The Faroe Islands, which were mentioned earlier, are the UK’s 114th largest trading partner—critical, then—and account for 0.1% of total UK trade. Clearly we buy a lot of fish from them. Then there is Chile, our 65th largest trading partner, which also accounts for 0.1% of total UK trade. The eastern and southern African region accounts for £1.5 billion and another 0.1%. Switzerland and Israel are the only countries that are bringing deals of the scale that we would have expected earlier in the process. Perhaps most concerning are the agreements with South Korea and Japan, which are way off track, and the lack of diplomacy is only hampering them.

It is clear that the Secretary of State and his Department favour securing deals with Anglosphere countries—the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada being prime among them. The US is a major market, but so is the EU. Perhaps it is the appeal of another strong and stable leader that is driving the Prime Minister and her Secretary of State to prioritise a deal with the US. Elsewhere, of course it would be good to have better deals with Australia and New Zealand, but is it not more sensible to prioritise the customers on our doorstep? When I did a paper round, I always thought that it was better to do the paper round on my own street, rather than on the other side of the village; maybe I am wrong.

The public should not be fooled into thinking that this will be over by 2020 or 2021. As we have heard, these deals will take six to 10 years to negotiate. This will not be easy. The EU-CETA deal took six years. That is typical, and we have heard from trade negotiators, trade lawyers and those involved in other countries just how difficult this will be. The public need to know, as do those in our industrial and business sectors. The US is a great country, but it is an even better trade negotiator. In trade deals, as in any business deal, size matters, and since the election of President Trump we have seen a new approach that favours the bilateral agreements that he prefers. That puts the US at an immediate advantage. Hence, NAFTA was redone. The Select Committee happened to be over there back in the spring of 2018, and the anxiety was palpable among the Canadian negotiators about what that would mean—but not just among them. It was palpable among US exporters and the car industry, as we heard earlier.

Perhaps naively, or perhaps because it is the outcome that the Secretary of State favours, we will face the mother of negotiations when our people sit down in Washington, and we should be under no illusion as to what the US will want to trade on. It will be services and cars, traded for agriculture and healthcare. We should remember the issues from the negotiations on the now-abandoned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, otherwise known as TTIP. Foremost among the public’s concern was the threat posed to our precious health service from a possible corporate takeover in any form. That deal, lest we forget, was being negotiated between the EU and the US, virtually equal-sized economies.

I have nothing against the US. In fact, I love the US, but I love the NHS more, and I am suspicious of the strategy of the Government and the Secretary of State. I have nothing against him personally, but let us be honest, he was the founder of the Atlantic Bridge, and his motivations and intentions have always been clear.

Like so many of my constituents, I fear not just for our health service but for our excellent, world-leading car manufacturers, local farmers and all those involved in our agri-food industry. None of those working in that sector should be under any illusion that they will be safe in a trade deal that the Secretary of State will seek urgently and desperately to secure in order to preserve the Government’s position. Without doubt, financial services will be his priority.

Our farmers should also be concerned by what concessions are likely to be made in the trade deals elsewhere, especially in the trade of livestock. Likewise our fisheries. Just last week, there was disagreement between the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and that was echoed this morning, as we have just heard, in the comments about who would subsidise our farmers in those circumstances should we leave the EU. While both Australia and New Zealand have much to offer, their markets are still a small fraction of that of the EU, and the Secretary of State should be clear about that. By my estimation, trade with the EU is 30 times the combined trade that we do with New Zealand and Australia.

By contrast, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership has considerable scale. Naturally, its members comprise the nations around the perimeter of the Pacific, which will benefit from free trade in that sphere. I struggle to see how it will benefit or be appropriate to the UK. Call me old-fashioned, but doing business locally was always easiest and remained the priority. That seems no longer to be the case. Of the countries involved, our trading negotiations with Japan and South Korea are the most critical—far more so than those with Australia or New Zealand. In conversations with Japanese and Korean investors, it is clear how concerned they are by Brexit.

At an event in October last year held by the Japanese Chamber of Trade here in Parliament, its chief executive made it clear to those present, including the Secretaries of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for Transport, that Brexit would seriously affect its businesses and investments in the UK. Spring forward three months, and Nissan has cancelled its investment in Sunderland, Honda has announced the closure of its plant in Swindon with the direct loss of 3,500 jobs, and Hitachi has cancelled its investment plans for a nuclear station in Anglesey. A clear pattern is emerging.

Let me return to the question of priorities—let us call them business priorities. Surely our priority must be to secure our existing trade in inward investment. I do not understand why the Government seem so relaxed about walking away from their biggest customer and in the process damaging existing relations and undermining both domestic and foreign direct investment.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned Japan. Does he think that the lack of concern that has been shown for Japanese interests in this whole Brexit farrago will not serve the UK very well when it comes to negotiating a trade deal with Japan? The list of companies he gave and the concerns that the Japanese have raised have not registered or led to any deviation in UK policy, and it is understandable that the Japanese feel quite slighted, given their interests and that 40% of their EU investments were on island UK.

[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, whose constituency name I always get wrong—the Outer Hebrides—for his important point. It is not until we actually talk to investors and their representatives, and to major corporations that have given so much prosperity to these islands over the last 30 or 40 years, and consider how they feel—he used the word “slighted”—that we realise that respect is such a critical part of the culture in Asia. It is absolutely clear that they feel disrespected in this process and that we have not approached them and engaged with them sufficiently well. The Government may well have done that to an extent, but the fact that we are now seeing this haemorrhaging of investment from the UK underlines how seriously that is felt. At that reception held by the Japanese embassy in October last year, attended by the Secretaries of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for Transport, the words of the chamber’s chief executive were chilling. He said, in summary, about Brexit, “We will be watching you.” Never have so few words concerned me so much.

I cannot help but conclude that this country is being seduced by a prospect of some sort of brave new world—empire 2.0, perhaps—when, in reality, the existing world in which we trade is both stable and prosperous, no matter the present headwinds. Actually, I agree with the Secretary of State for International Trade that we could be performing better in Asia Pacific markets, but I disagree with him on his solution. How can it be that, as I have said previously in this place, German exports to China are 10 times those of the UK? Germany is part of the EU, is it not?

Sometimes, we—the UK public—have bought the lie that being a member of the EU has held us back in international trade. It has absolutely not. To be fair to someone I did not necessarily agree with, Margaret Thatcher recognised that and recognised the importance of the EU. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is no longer in his seat, it is perhaps the greatest irony that she would have sought to protect our membership of the EU single market, of which she was the architect, recognising its importance to businesses based here, and particularly the Japanese companies she persuaded to invest here, such as Honda and Nissan. She will be turning in her grave.

I remain convinced about and committed to protecting our market and our businesses, and our jobs that they provide. Likewise, I am concerned for our farmers and those in the south of my constituency around the villages of Barford, Bishop’s Tachbrook, Hampton Magna and Norton Lindsey, who I believe will be seriously damaged by the industrial-scale farming they will be forced to compete against in future.

I also remain convinced about and committed to the EU market. Surely it provides greater certainty than the prospect of being caught up in the crossfire of the US-China trade wars. The truth is that, whether it be the uncertainty of negotiating with the current President of the United States or the significantly smaller markets presented by Australia and New Zealand, the priorities claimed by the Secretary of State are far removed from the certainty of the EU market. We should be wary of where we are going.