Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Robert Walter Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

My hon. Friend is completely right. There are people who say there is no risk from ISDS, but there is a lot of evidence and a track record of multinationals using the powers at their disposal to extract money where laws are passed undermining future profit flows. Philip Morris is the obvious example: it is suing Uruguay and Australia for something like $100 million. Lone Pine is suing the Canadian Government for about $250 million, because Quebec wants a moratorium on fracking. Achmea, the Dutch insurer, is suing the Slovakian Government who tried to reverse some of their health privatisations. Argentina has paid more than $1 billion to US and EU energy giants, because it froze energy and water prices. If these powers are available, they will be used to fleece the taxpayer. In my view, they are unnecessary. I accept that some protection may be needed between developed economies and democracies and rogue states, but rogue states are certainly not the United States. Mature democracies and economies, namely the EU and the US, do not need anything more than contract law to protect investors.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may be aware that the United Kingdom is a party to some 90 international trade deals that involve the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. Does he know how many cases the United Kingdom has ever lost using the mechanism?

[Geraint Davies]

I do not have the numbers to hand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar), who has made a convincing argument in favour of this trade deal. I support the motion of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) because I, too, am a democrat and I believe in parliamentary scrutiny. I believe the European Commission should ensure the regular publication of documents on the state of the negotiations and they should include more detailed information on what TTIP is all about. The current information that is floating around is based on leaked, rather than officially released, documents and therefore on myths rather than on facts. As the motion suggests, this House—and the other place—should be closely involved in the process, and I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government are committed to it.

We must also encourage the European Parliament to pursue its involvement in the negotiations. I hope that the European Commission will live up to its promise to give Members of the European Parliament access to all the negotiation documents. I also hope that, in the forthcoming meetings between the United States and the European Union, the negotiation teams will take into consideration the concerns that we have raised. I hope that the European Commission will secure an agreement on safeguards for the highest environmental and consumer standards, which are already in place here in the European Union and in the United States. I am convinced that achieving a satisfactory compromise on both sides of the Atlantic is both possible and desirable. The European Union has already successfully established an internal market among its 28 member states, but bridging the space between the United States and the European Union by adapting common rules and standards while maintaining the highest levels of regulatory protection is a challenge. I do not believe that it is an impossible task, however.

Today’s debate should be about the substance of the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. It provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enhance the economic security and prosperity of the British people while at the same time making a real contribution to the welfare of the peoples of Europe, north America and beyond. I wholeheartedly believe in free trade, and I subscribe to the goal of global trade that is both free and fair. However, achieving that goal is a slow and grinding process. In my view, it will be many decades before there is any meaningful World Trade Organisation-led, top-down framework that we can call global free trade. That is because the parties involved range from the richest nations on the planet to the poorest, and from the prairie farmers of north America to the subsistence agriculture of sub-Saharan Africa.

If we truly believe in free trade, we should use the building blocks that we have today. The European Union is the world’s largest market, and we are part of it. It is the biggest building block in this equation. Let us consider the numbers. European Union GDP is 19.4% of world GDP, and United States GDP is 18.9% of world GDP, so together that makes nearly 40% of the world’s productive wealth. Between us, however, we still maintain some of the most stringent tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Below the wire, 30% of the European Union’s stock of foreign direct investment is in the United States, and 29% of the United States’ FDI is in the European Union.

I believe that this debate is a no-brainer. If we can create free trade across the Atlantic—with Canada as well, of course—and have a transatlantic trade and investment partnership, that will be good for world trade, for the United States, for Europe and for Britain. There are some who want us to turn our backs on all this and leave the European Union, and therefore leave a trade deal representing 40% of world GDP. The TTIP negotiations will not be easy, because there are many vested interests, as well as the many concerns that have prompted this debate today. I am optimistic that we can achieve this, however, because the prize is so great and the balance of power so favourable to a deal. Of course, as some eurosceptics would argue in spite of the hard facts, we would still be better off out and better off negotiating our own free trade deal with the US alone. That is a fantasy. Can the UK afford to squander the strategic and economic opportunity that is TTIP? I do not believe we can.

I reiterate my support for the Government’s commitment to keeping us firmly in the European Union, and for the Government’s commitment to making sure that these TTIP negotiations are a success. I believe this House should have a role to play in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

May I start by commending the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for bringing this debate to the House? Like others, I have had hundreds of constituents in touch with me about TTIP, particularly about the potential implications for the NHS. That brings home to me not just how preciously people hold their access to health care and how anxious they are about the future of the NHS, but that we are debating a treaty that does not actually exist yet, and that we are not yet in a position to analyse or assess. That is exactly why this process should be open to more effective scrutiny now, and we need to have a much wider debate.

Having waded through some of the papers released by the European institutions—the Commission and others—in recent days, I do not think that they provide definitive answers to the key questions I am being asked, and we really need better answers. When it comes down to it, we need an explicit exclusion of public health care and associated services from TTIP.

Ministers must try to understand why there is such public concern. The negotiations have been shrouded in secrecy, and Ministers have failed to address fully the questions posed by the devolved Governments that arise as a consequence of the distinctive structures and policies of the NHS in the home nations. We need more transparency in this process and cast iron assurances that the treaty will not be a route to the backdoor privatisation of our NHS.

The bottom line is that Scotland must not be bound by a trade deal that could undermine public ownership of our NHS and our ability to make accountable, democratic decisions about public health care and that could usher in creeping clandestine privatisation.

[Mr Walter]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady received the same letter as I did on 19 December from the Secretary of State for Business. It said:

“And the new Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, has also stated explicitly that ‘public service, including health, education and water management, are not on the agenda.’”

[Dr Whiteford]

I have read those documents, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raises that point. What we have had repeatedly are assertions. I read the Commission’s latest publications, which do appear to indicate that state monopolies will be protected. But elsewhere in the text, relating to services of general economic interest—namely utilities and public services—it says that they would be governed by normal competition law

“in so far as the application of such rules does not obstruct the performance in law, or in fact, of the particular tasks assigned to the enterprises in question.”

That does seem to water down the seemingly categorical assurances we have heard elsewhere. In reality, it is not at all clear that the requirement will protect public services in the absence of an explicit opt-out.