Trade Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

Parliamentary approval of international trade agreements and treaties

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now come to the message from the House of Lords on the Trade Bill, which is to be considered in accordance with the order of 19 January. We begin with the Government motion to disagree with the Lords in their amendment 1B, with which it will be convenient to consider the other Government motions and amendments on the notice paper.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Government to group the amendments in such a way as to deny Members votes on specific amendments?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

As I said in my introduction, all of this is being done under the provisions of the programme motion agreed by the House on 19 January. The questions to be put at that time are governed by Standing Order No. 83G, which does not allow for questions to be put on motions or amendments moved other than by Ministers. It is therefore not possible to have a Division on certain amendments that have been tabled, but I can assure the hon. Member that everything is in order.

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1B.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to consider the following:

Lords amendments 2B and 3B, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Amendment (i) to Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Lords amendment 6B, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu.

[Greg Hands]

We move ever closer to getting the Trade Bill on to the statute books. I recognise that we are very limited in our time for debate, so I will get straight into the details. I will deal with parliamentary scrutiny, followed by standards, followed by human rights and genocide.

I begin with Lords amendment 1B, on parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament of course plays a vital role in scrutinising our trade policy. We currently have robust scrutiny arrangements that allow Parliament to hold the Government to account. The Government have provided extensive information to Parliament on our free trade negotiations, including publishing our objectives, which are also shared with the devolved Administrations, economic scoping assessments and the Government’s response to the public consultation prior to the start of each set of talks. We have also shared the text of each deal with the relevant Committees in advance of their being laid before Parliament under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The Committees then have the option to produce independent reports on each agreement. Furthermore, if Parliament is not content with a free trade agreement that has been negotiated, it has powers under CRaG to prevent ratification by resolving against ratification indefinitely, acting as an effective veto.

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[Emily Thornberry]

I am not going to take any interventions, because my view is that we have so little time, I think it is only fair just to continue. [Interruption.] I have made it clear that I am not going to take any interventions.

The amendment the Government have tabled is one whereby we are just talking about continuity agreements, not about agreements to come. Those deals are deals such as the ones we signed two years ago with Lesotho or with Liechtenstein, and this will have no bearing whatever on any trade deal that we negotiate in the next two years with Washington or Canberra. That is the level of contempt with which the Government Whips are treating the House of Commons today. So again, I would urge Members on all sides to reject this ridiculous wrecking effort, and vote instead for amendment 6B.

In closing, I think we can all do something today even more powerful than rejecting those wrecking amendments and standing up to the shameful tactics employed by the Government Whips. We can draw the only logical conclusion from today’s events—namely, that if we do not act to guarantee the rights of Parliament to scrutinise and approve the Government’s decisions on trade, then we leave ourselves entirely at the mercy of the Government Whips, who have shown today that they will stop at nothing to deny us a voice and deny us a vote.

We have it in our power today, by backing Lord Lansley’s amendment 1B, to guarantee Parliament a vote on all future trade deals and take responsibility in this House for ensuring that our standards and our values are not undermined by the deals that we do abroad. It is a very simple idea, and in the absence of a straight vote on what I would call the Alton amendment, passing the Lansley amendment would be the very best safety net that we could put in place to prevent the agreement of trade deals with countries that commit genocide and the very best rejoinder that we could provide to anyone who would seek to suppress the will of this Parliament. If we can achieve that outcome, we can turn this from a day of shameful, shabby, shifty tactics to a day a pride for our democracy and a day of promise for the Uyghurs.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There is a three-minute limit on all Back-Bench contributions from now.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is a very short time, so I will do my level best to get my three points across.

I just want to say something about the procedure today. Of course, we would not be sitting here if it was not in order for these proceedings, but there are different ways to be in order, and the reality of bundling together all these things into one motion—an amendment tabled by the Government—means that of course there is no way we will get to vote on the Lords amendment on genocide. I simply point out that fact. It reminds me that this little dispute is a little bit like the Handforth parish council one, and it is always a good idea to read the Standing Orders. I have read them, and they tell me what has happened: the Government have deliberately blocked this. I am sorry, but that is what this is. No point of order on that one; that is the reality. I simply say to my hon. Friends that I have been here long enough, and this is beneath them. I wish they had thought again, and I hope they do not try this one again.

I respect my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy enormously, as he knows, but I must pick up on a few points that he made, as I did table an amendment. First, he extols the virtues of the Government amendment and attacks the idea that the courts could make the judgment, as that would impinge on our position as a Parliament. Yet literally yesterday, in answer to a parliamentary question about whether genocide was a matter for the courts, the Foreign Office said:

“It is the policy of the UK Government that any judgment on whether genocide has occurred is a matter for competent courts rather than Governments or other non-judicial bodies.”

I ask my right hon. Friend: what is a Select Committee? Is it a judicial or a non-judicial body? If it is a non-judicial body, the Government amendment puts the power in the hands of a non-judicial body. What are we doing? We are running in circles just to avoid the reality.

My point is that we have been a little insulting about judges in the amendment that my right hon. Friend is talking about. I have my own differences with judges, but I remind the House that when we need an impartial taking of evidence and judgment—Savile, Grenfell, Hillsborough or any of the other cases—we turn not to Select Committees but to a judge. Why do we do that? First, because we assume that they are impartial and secondly, because they are trained to take and deal with evidence. We are not; we are partial—that is why we are here. We have Select Committees and we have prejudices, and that is the point.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP) [V]]

Lords amendment 1B covers one of the most glaring omissions from the Bill and it simply serves to underline the ideologically driven and confusing motives of the Government, who have already dealt so much damage to people, families and businesses right across Scotland and the other nations of the UK—and for what? It is supposedly for undiluted parliamentary sovereignty, yet the Government have not seen fit to give Parliament a role in setting the agenda on trade negotiations. That is extraordinary. It is damning of this Government, given the scrutiny arrangements that other Parliaments have around the world, including the EU’s, where they have control over both mandates and the progress of negotiations. The UK has now sunk to the bottom, relative to what is undertaken elsewhere.

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[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I yield to no one in my detestation of genocide and I yield to no one in my admiration for the domestic courts of the United Kingdom. Despite the good intentions of Lords amendment 3B, it has to be faced that it has a fundamental flaw, in that it brings the domestic courts of the United Kingdom into areas where, constitutionally, they have never sought to go.

When we refer to the competent courts in relation to genocide, it is abundantly clear from the convention and subsequent legislation that we refer to the international courts and, in certain circumstances, the criminal courts of the United Kingdom in relation to individuals who are within their jurisdiction. That is wholly different from what is proposed in Lords amendment 3B, which brings the civil courts of the United Kingdom into a wholly novel area of jurisprudence, linked only to one specific issue, which is genocide in contemplation of a trade deal, not more generally.

The decisions on trade deals are constitutionally entirely matters for Parliament. That is why, despite the best endeavours and intentions of the amendment, I cannot support it and why I brought forward the amendment in lieu in my name, supported by three former law officers of the Crown. This would enable Parliament to express a clear view and would, inevitably, in real political terms, enable it to block a trade agreement with a genocidal state, because no Government could ignore that, but it would do so at the end of a parliamentary process. This would then give the appropriate Select Committee greater powers than Select Committees otherwise have, because they will be entitled not only to demand as a matter of law that the Government table the motion that they require if they are dissatisfied with the Government’s response, but to write the wording of the motion. This goes further than the powers that Select Committees have at the moment. That would be most important, as it would enable us to have a proper lock on the matter. We must not allow the courts to be dragged into an area where they have not themselves sought to go. We saw the wholly unfair and unjust criticism of our courts in cases such as the Miller litigation. To place them in this situation, where they will be obliged to step beyond what is the normal constitutional balance, would not be fair on them. They would not be in an easy position to come to a determination, as has been pointed out. Above all, it would inevitably be inviting them to trespass into areas that are highly politically contentious.

I want to have a means of scrutinising future trade deals. That is why I have much more sympathy for Lords amendment 1B than I have for Lords amendment 3B, because that would give a means of dealing with it. Lords amendment 3B, it is misconceived because of that misunderstanding in relation to what a competent court is and the need not to stretch that beyond our constitutional practices—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will leave it there, Sir Robert.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab) [V]]

Genocide and grave human rights abuses are the most horrific and wicked crimes a state can commit, and those who perpetrate such crimes should be held accountable by this Government and the entire international community. Let me be absolutely clear: they are not internal issues, as Ministers often claim, but international issues. The Government should therefore be using the trade deals they negotiate with other countries as a means of strengthening our human rights commitments, as I advocated during the passage of the Bill last year.

Yet despite so many Members from across the House agreeing that trade deals should at least uphold our human rights obligations, Ministers have shown that they believe otherwise, defeating by the slimmest of margins the amendments that would have prevented them from signing trade deals with genocidal states, and proposing today a counter-amendment that is a pale imitation of what we should be doing as a country. In acting this way, they risk further emboldening those who continue to commit serious crimes against humanity. We have, sadly, already seen where refusing to take strong action against the Burmese military for their genocide of the Rohingya, for example, leads.

The bottom line is that we should not be signing any trade deal with any state that is committing any crime against humanity. Turning a blind eye and doing business with the very regimes that torture, abuse and kill others will sign away any moral authority that we have to call ourselves defenders of human rights, to enforce sanctions against abusers, or to advocate for stronger protections. However, while the Government’s previous vote against the amendments and the amendment they propose today are bitterly disappointing, they are sadly not surprising. On far too many occasions, I have urged them in Parliament to act against those committing human rights abuses and genocide, including in Kashmir. I have repeatedly called for action to protect Kashmiris from the persecution, oppression and injustice that they face on a daily basis at the hands of the Indian armed forces, only for Ministers to utter warm but meaningless and hollow words while the sons and daughters of Kashmir continue to suffer.

Trade is one of the few tools that we have left, in an interconnected, globalised world, to pursue a foreign policy based on protecting human rights. We must therefore take strong action in this Bill to show that we value human rights and that we will stand up for the many persecuted and oppressed peoples around the world.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) [V]]

This country should never trade with any country where genocide is being practised. We are as guilty as others when we seek to perpetuate that kind of trade. It is appalling that all five signs of genocide incorporated in the genocide convention are now present in China in Xinjiang province, and that President Xi is personally implicated.

It is no use us clasping our pearls, signing holocaust memorial books or weeping about genocide in the 1930s if we are not prepared to do every single thing that we possibly can today to protect the vulnerable. That means wielding every single instrument, national and international, commercial and diplomatic, to protect the victims of abuse. We failed for far too long because we delayed in the 1930s and ended up having to go to war. Their humanity is our humanity; we are involved in their lives and in their deaths.

China already makes it impossible for us to act in an international court or any international body, so of course we should use the UK courts. I say to the Chair of the Justice Committee that Lord Hope of Craighead made it absolutely clear that a preliminary determination of genocide should be located within the High Court precisely because it is not a criminal process. That is the whole point of the amendment. It should be the courts, not politicians, that make these decisions because they know how to sift evidence and are able to require witnesses and evidence to be brought before them.

I saw the amendment that has been presented, supposedly by the Chair of the Justice Committee, last week; it was very definitely a Government amendment long before it appeared on the Order Paper. It is as tawdry a piece of parliamentary jiggery-pokery as I have seen in my 20 years in the House. Select Committees already have every single one of the powers that are supposedly being given to us by the amendment. The Government already dismisses every single substantive motion agreed by the House if they just do not like it. They did so on the Yazidis, when the House’s view was unanimous, and they did so on the Foreign Affairs Committee reports on the Rohingya.

By constructing the amendment in the way they have, the Government have deliberately denied the House a clear vote on genocide and how we would like to tackle it in relation to trade. The bottom line is that the Government seem to do everything in their power to prevent us as a nation from standing clearly and unambiguously against human rights abuses in China, and up with this we will not put.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To finish no later than 5.31 pm, I call Katherine Fletcher.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Let me cut right to the chase: free trade is too important to end up with consequences being felt elsewhere. The Lords amendments are noble. I agree: China risks perpetrating atrocities of oppression, torture, sterilisation and the incarceration of people just because they have the cheek to want to be a different type of person or think something different. Its ideology and its ideas are failing, and the people will rise up.

However, I fear that the Lords amendments would have unintended consequences. Genocide in other countries is hard to prove in our courts. It is hard to get witnesses to come to speak. We have no power to compel hostile Governments to appear before our courts. What happens if a judicial procedure or a court finds that there is not enough evidence to prove genocide? Cue the lies, manipulation and crowing that would come from a dictatorship. “Fake news” is what they would describe from their machine. “The British courts have cleared us,” would scream the headlines. Who have we helped then? Nobody. Parliament can investigate and vote. We can and should decide, and I will be supporting the Government amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and the Secretary of State.

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The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83G), That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1B.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind the House that, following Mr Speaker’s recent announcement, where second and subsequent Divisions take place on the same item of business, the doors will normally be locked after five minutes, rather than eight—that is, after eight minutes on the first Division and after five minutes for each subsequent one.