Trade Deals: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship for the second time today, Ms Elliott. I thank the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) for securing this important debate on scrutiny of trade deals.

The Government have simply failed to ensure that parliamentarians, businesses, non-governmental organisations, sector representatives, devolved Administrations—as the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar), said—and civic society can scrutinise our trade policy adequately. Trade can and should be a force for good: it supports well-paid jobs here in the UK and overseas, it can reduce poverty around the globe and it can be a vehicle for tackling the evils of our world, from human trafficking to environmental degradation, to name but two.

Effective trade, however, needs effective scrutiny, as all other equivalent nations have. We in the UK could learn a lot from those nations, but for this Government “scrutiny” avoids engagement. The whole process they operate avoids scrutiny and engagement and actively harms the development of effective trade policy and trade deals. We are not dealing in abstract facts. When I met NFU representatives in Wales this summer, they told me about their concerns and worries about the deal, particularly for red-meat farmers. Moreover, when they did meet Ministers and civil servants, they felt that they were being ignored.

To top that off, we have seen the sordid spectacle of the Government hiding from a debate in the Commons. Before recess, the then Secretary of State tried to deflect one and to claim that no parliamentary time was available for a debate on the detail of the UK-Australia deal. As the answer to a written question that I tabled suggested, that was not true.

Why does this matter? This is not an abstract parliamentary topic; it is about ensuring that consumers, farmers, businesses, civic society, NGOs and Members of both Houses are involved in matters of national importance. With his US example, the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) showed why engagement strengthens trade deals. That is why virtually every other modern developed nation has much stronger scrutiny requirements—not just parliamentary scrutiny—for trade deals, including the US, the EU and South Africa. I met parliamentarians in South Africa to discuss this very issue, and we could learn a lot from South African transparency in negotiating trade deals.

Effective scrutiny makes for effective deals. It increases support for trade deals if consumers, workers and businesses feel that they have been listened to as well as just consulted, yet the free trade deal with Australia has a climate-shaped hole in it. The president of the NFU has warned that

“this deal simply serves to heap further pressure on farm businesses at a time when they are facing extraordinary inflationary pressure”.

That happened because key stakeholders such as farmers were not included in the process.

As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, trade is not free if it is not fair. On the agreements with the Gulf, there are serious human rights issues in countries there, whether on the right to protest or the rights of women, migrant labourers or many others. We now know that the Government stripped human rights and the rule of law out of their objectives for a Gulf deal.

The FTAs with India and the Gulf would have huge implications for our climate commitments. My first question to the Minister is, what assurances will he give that human rights will now be raised as part of the process and that there will be proper scrutiny for any free trade agreement with the Gulf?

The Secretary of State has been critical of the Government’s own net zero pledge, calling it “arbitrary”. Perhaps that is why they might wish to avoid any scrutiny. When the Prime Minister was Secretary of State for International Trade, she selectively released partial polling data, only to be rebuked by the British Polling Council. We saw her ignore officials’ advice about the impact of the UK-Australia deal on UK farmers.

In the past year, the former Secretary of State dodged the International Trade Committee multiple times, as we have heard today. The Department was even issued with an enforcement notice by the Information Commissioner for delays to freedom of information requests, further suggesting a fear of scrutiny and openness. That suggests that the Government are avoiding scrutiny and debate in both Houses.

I have focused on the Government’s attitude to the parliamentary process, but we need assurances that Ministers are meeting, and actually listening to the concerns of, other stakeholders. The stakeholders we met feel there is too little consultation, and even when there is they feel like they are being talked at rather than listened to.

Will the Government grant a debate on the Floor of the House on the UK-New Zealand trade agreement before it is ratified? If the International Trade Committee requests a debate on the FTA with India, will the Government grant it?

Finally, the Labour party is a pro-trade party. We want to see the Government striking ambitious trade deals. We want to see trade deals that support British business, British values and economic growth. To do that, trade deals need to be accompanied by proper scrutiny.