Oral Answers to Questions

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There are days when I genuinely have to thank God that the Labour party is the Opposition and not the Government of this country. We have £1.3 trillion of outward stock invested, including things like pension funds that British people will depend on for their prosperity. Were we to abandon the concept of investor-state dispute resolutions, what would happen to the protections for our investment overseas? The Labour party needs to start to think about the wider interests of this country.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services are excluded from future trade deals.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to ensure that contracts for the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services will be excluded from future trade deals.

[The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)]

Existing EU trade agreements, such as the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement and the EU-Japan economic partnership agreement, contain provisions that ensure that it remains for the United Kingdom to decide how our public services are run. As we leave the EU, the Government will ensure that all future trade agreements continue to protect the UK’s right to regulate public services.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Technically, there is little that MPs and the public can do to prevent the Government from signing trade deals that could negatively impact on the NHS. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will expand the transparency and scrutiny mechanisms that pertain to any future trade deals?

[Dr Fox]

I recommend the Government’s Command Paper on this issue, which we published last week. It sets out the scrutiny plans that will provide greater scrutiny in this country than most of our fellow countries in the European Union have.