Trade Deals: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), whom I have the pleasure of serving alongside on the International Trade Committee, on securing this important and timely debate. I declare an interest as a member of Unite the union. The hon. Member and I undoubtably have major points of disagreement when it comes to not only the Australia free trade agreement, but trade policy more broadly. He has, however, raised a number of important issues and speaks for the entire Committee in expressing his frustration about Government conduct on this issue.

The UK has embarked on the most dramatic overhaul of its trading policy since its accession to the European Economic Community in 1973. The implications of the decisions that the Government make in the coming months and years for our labour rights, environmental standards and businesses the length and breadth of the country could not be more significant. It is essential that any new trade deal is subject to rigorous and comprehensive scrutiny both by the Select Committee and by Members of the House more widely. That is the model employed by our Commonwealth partners, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That is exactly what the Prime Minister committed to when she promised a “world-leading scrutiny process” when she was International Trade Secretary.

I am afraid that Ministers are failing to listen to the concerns of Members, businesses and civil society in their frantic dash to conclude new trade deals. In March, our Committee Chairman warned that the Government are failing to do enough to enable timely and appropriate scrutiny of trade agreements and accused Ministers of ignoring legitimate concerns and riding roughshod over Parliament. Yet the 21-day CRaG process for the Australia free trade deal had begun before our Committee had the opportunity to publish our report and even before the International Trade Secretary had bothered to come before the Committee to defend the agreement. When we requested that the CRaG process be extended to allow time for adequate scrutiny, our request was flatly denied. That was an unacceptable assault on the rights of Parliament and the people we are here to represent. I urge the new Secretary of State not to allow that deeply flawed process to set a dangerous precedent for future trade negotiations.

Finally, I want to raise an issue that I have spoken about a number of times in the Committee. Meaningful engagement with civil society and the inclusion of key stakeholders in the negotiation process is essential to achieving a trade policy that works in the interests of British workers, industry and our environment. However, the Trades Union Congress has also accused the Government of a lack of continued stakeholder engagement during trade negotiations and says that a failure to meaningfully engage with trade unions has resulted in the Government agreeing trade deals that lack adequate protections for workers’ rights. Yet again, Ministers are hiding from robust scrutiny because they know that the deals they are agreeing are simply not delivering for the British people. This is simply not good enough.

Geothermal Energy

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I thank the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for securing this important debate.

As we are now only 43 days away from the COP26 conference in Glasgow, this is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the vital work that British companies are doing to pioneer green technologies, including the use of geothermal energy. In particular, let me tell the House about the incredible work that Titan Electricity, based in my constituency of Birkenhead, is doing with the support of the University of Liverpool and the Manufacturing Technology Centre. It has developed an artificially enhanced geothermal process that uses abandoned oil infrastructure to provide deep wells, in a process called thermogenesis. The oil in abandoned wells is converted into geothermal heat. These very hot fluids are then used to power a geo-engine, which has been designed by Titan and developed with the help of Lloyd’s Register, using a UK Energy Catalyst award.

The process is net zero, with no emissions, and the by-product is large volumes of cheap and clean hydrogen. While oil reservoirs on the UK’s continental shelf are commonly considered to have little future on the road to our 2050 net zero targets, the technology could have the potential to convert those fields into a net zero energy resource for generations to come. I urge the Minister to look seriously at the role that this technology could play in delivering green energy and highly skilled jobs, and in helping to meet the Government’s pledge to achieve 5 GW of hydrogen capacity by 2030. The large quantities of hydrogen created by this process can also be used to power the dismantling of legacy oil infrastructure, with as few emissions being released as possible.

Titan’s invention, made in the north-west, has immense possibilities to create green energy and reduce carbon emissions, not just here in the UK but across the world. Domestically, its manufacture would also create thousands of skilled jobs and apprenticeships in my town of Birkenhead and in the many left-behind communities like it that the Government have promised to level up.

Today I ask the Minister whether the Government will prove they are committed to making the UK a world leader in the innovation of green technology by helping to roll out the geo-engine and get it to market. Far too often, the Government’s record on green energy has failed to live up to their rhetoric. A commitment today to support this invention would provide an example for our presidency of COP26, by showing the world that the UK’s words are matched by our actions.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the debate.

Free Trade Agreement Negotiations: Australia

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are expecting trade with those 11 countries to grow by 65% by 2030. The deal is a huge opportunity for the United Kingdom. The country has very high standards in areas such as digital and services where we are the second largest exporter in the world. What we have agreed with Australia also covers the market access negotiations for CPTPP, so this is very important stepping stone for those broader opportunities that are in the trans-Pacific partnership .

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

Investor-state dispute settlement clauses allow multinational corporations to take sovereign Governments to court simply for acting in the best interests of their citizens. They have been used to sue Governments for taking parts of their health services back into public control, and by fossil fuel companies to undermine vital environmental regulations. They make a mockery of the idea that we are taking back control. Will the Minister reassure the House that investor-state dispute settlement clauses will be excluded from the UK-Australia negotiations, and will she guarantee the House that there will be a full debate and meaningful vote for MPs on this and all future agreements?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of ISDS. The fact is that those clauses are in trade agreements, and we already have more than 60 ISDS clauses in various investment agreements to protect British businesses from unfair actions by overseas countries, such as the appropriation of property. Furthermore, the UK has never ever lost an ISDS case, because we are a country that follows the rules and implements our laws and regulations in a fair way. In any case, there is not an ISDS clause in the Australia trade deal.

Arms Trade: Yemen

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

Thank you, Ms McVey. As hon. Members have said, six long years of war have pushed Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands have died, including nearly 10,000 killed by Saudi-led air strikes. Infrastructure has been crippled, and 50,000 people are living in near famine-like conditions while millions of others stand on the brink of starvation.

Since the Saudi bombardment began, the UK has approved £6.8 billion-worth of arms export licences to Saudi Arabia. Planes built in Britain have delivered death from the skies above Marib and Aden. Typhoon fighters, Paveway bombs and Brimstone missiles built here in the UK have all been brought into the service of Saudi Arabia’s brutal assault on Yemen, and all while private shareholders grow rich from the suffering of millions and the deaths of thousands.

I have spoken many times about the vital role that defence spending has to play in supporting domestic industries and improving defence capabilities, but this does not blind me to the importance of ensuring that the arms we manufacture should not be handed to the tyrants who have no regard for human life. British trade policy must have respect for human rights at its heart. Ministers can claim to champion international law and promote democracy abroad, but that does not seem to match their deeds. They seem desperate to abandon the UK’s long-standing humanitarian commitments. In the past year alone, the Department for International Development has been thrown on the scrapheap, the foreign aid budget slashed to a measly 0.5% of national income, and human rights concerns pushed aside, so that the UK can strike trade agreements with regimes that are responsible for brutal abuses. Of course, the greatest stain on our international reputation is our continued complicity in the war in Yemen while we are slashing financial aid to the war-torn hell on Earth.

I hope that the United States’s recent change in strategy regarding arms exports to Saudi Arabia will have caused our Government to rethink their callous policy on arms sales. Sadly, however, British firms are still allowed to export billions of pounds-worth of weapons for use in Yemen, so I join my hon. Friends in urging the Government to change course now. It is time for Britain to stop reaping profit from this human catastrophe, and to start bringing pressure on all parties involved to broker a just and lasting peace.

Trade Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

I understand that we are pressed for time as many Members wish to speak on this important matter, so I will endeavour to be brief.

In the coming months and years, the Government will seek a range of free trade agreements which will profoundly change our country and the lives of our constituents. That is obviously a matter of great interest to my constituents, and I have been inundated in recent weeks with messages urging me to speak in this debate. The view of the people of Birkenhead is clear: they do not want these trade deals to be agreed behind closed doors and signed in secret. They understand that the only way to safeguard our health service, maintain our world-leading food standards and protect our environment is to ensure robust parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals by elected representatives. This is one of the opportunities that this House has to discuss the 10 continuity agreements that the Government have signed since the new year.

The experience of the past few weeks has shown that we simply cannot depend on the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 to guarantee parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals. I am therefore glad that this Bill has returned from the other place amended by Lords Purvis and Stevenson. Their amendments are badly needed and would go a long way to addressing the democratic deficit at the heart of the UK’s trade policy, so I hope that when this debate concludes, Members from across the House will join me in voting for the amendment to guarantee Parliament’s right to debate and approve trade deals.

[Ms Ghani]

I rise to speak in support of Lords amendment 3—the genocide amendment. It is the only vote on genocide on the table today. I regret that the compromise amendment that we tabled has been rejected.

Let us remember that we are talking about genocide: the systematic destruction of an entire people. It is a threshold that is so hard to reach because it is the most heinous of all crimes—the forced sterilisation of women, forced labour and re-education camps for hundreds of thousands of children. The Board of Deputies of British Jews stated that it is reminded of the holocaust when it thinks of the plight of the Uyghurs; it cannot get any worse than that.

Members across the House have a very simple choice to make today. We can, by voting in favour of Lord Alton’s amendment 3, empower the UK to fulfil its UN obligations under the genocide convention and ensure that we do not offer advantageous trade deals to genocidal states. It really is that simple. The UN continues to fail to recognise that genocides are happening until it is too late. The UN and the Security Council are in a state of frozen paralysis, held hostage by Russia and China and incapable of holding genocidal states to account.

Against the amendment, the Minister and some of my hon. Friends argue that we should not outsource trade policy to the UK courts, and that the proper place to make decisions about genocide is in international courts. In practice, that means that we have to accept that foreign states will always hold a veto over our determination of genocide. I do not accept that that is taking back control. I do not accept that our courts are not skilled enough to determine breaches of international law. I do not accept that the Bill as drafted gives Parliament sufficient say over whether states that we wish to strike trade deals with are committing genocide.

I understand the concerns about Executive power, and the role of Parliament versus the courts, which is why I tabled an amendment with colleagues in lieu of Lords amendment 3 to address those concerns. Courts will judge, Parliament will opine and Ministers will decide. Yet that amendment was rejected. If the Government believe that this is still an unacceptable derogation of power, what is the alternative and what are the Government’s objections? If we do not pass the amendment today, we will be outsourcing all future decisions on genocide to Russia and China. We now have an independent trade policy after leaving the EU, and Brexit was a vote of hope and optimism and for Britain to play its part in leading the world, so why would we want to use our new-found freedom to trade with states that commit and profit from genocide? Britain is surely better than that.

Tomorrow, Joe Biden becomes the President of the United States, our closest allies. Today is Britain’s moment to blaze a trail and showcase global leadership on trade and international law. We can all talk about our noblest values, but we cannot do so while allowing the vilest of crimes to continue. We have an amendment. We can make a stand against genocide. We can uphold our United Nations obligations and ensure that we do not trade with genocidal states, or we can do nothing, and to do nothing is a counsel of despair.

Trade Deals and the NHS

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for his hard work in securing the debate.

I am sure that I am not the only Member to have been inundated with messages from constituents in recent months, urging me to do whatever I can to protect the NHS in any future trade deal with the United States. Those messages were full of gratitude and admiration for the nurses, doctors and support workers who have worked tirelessly through the pandemic to save lives and stop the spread of this terrible disease. I am sure that all hon. Members would echo those sentiments. However, they were also full of fear about the fact that, in just a few short months, our health services could be laid waste by predatory multinationals and the American healthcare industry. I welcome this opportunity to restate my opposition to any part of the NHS being treated as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with the USA.

I wish I could tell my constituents that their fears are without foundation, but in Washington politicians from across the board are pushing for the NHS to be on the negotiating table in free trade negotiations. Chuck Grassley, the influential Chair of the Senate’s Committee on Finance, said that

“a trade deal ought to include almost anything”.

He added:

“I would hope that the National Health service would be open to some competitive approach that would benefit our pharmaceutical companies”.

The ambition of the American healthcare lobby is clear. It wants full market access to our national health service and an end to price controls on drugs and pharmaceutical products so that it can rinse the NHS of every penny. It also wants to exploit investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms so that it can sue the British Government for making decisions that may be in the best interests of the public but fail to reward corporate private shareholders.

The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that the NHS is not up for sale, but when the time came for him to put his money where his mouth is, he refused to support amendments to the Trade Bill that would have enshrined protections for the NHS in law. I am not fearmongering; I am issuing a clear warning that, without those legal protections, the NHS remains at risk of having “for sale” signs slapped on its services.

As a member of the International Trade Committee, I have followed the ongoing trade negotiations closely, and I know that the UK is not negotiating from a position of strength. The Government are playing a dangerous game of chicken with the European Union, our single largest trading partner. The looming prospect of a no-deal Brexit leaves us dangerously dependent on securing a trade deal with the United States. Although I welcome the end of the Trump era in Washington, President-elect Biden has been clear that he will prioritise a deal with the EU over one with Britain.

The fear that I share with my constituents is that, as the EU transition period ends, the scramble for trade deals will be stepped up, the pressure to put the NHS on the table will grow, and a deal at any price will be rushed through. We cannot allow that to happen. Our NHS must remain just that: ours.