Trade Bill

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

I would like start by commending the Department for International Trade for its fantastic work in continuing to secure free trade agreements around the world. Last week, I hosted a webinar on exporting, in partnership with the Department and my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan). It was inspiring to hear of the opportunities our small and medium-sized businesses were taking in boosting skills and jobs in our local areas. With about 6.5 million UK jobs supported by UK exports, it is vital that we continue to support and encourage businesses to export, which will help drive a jobs-led recovery from the covid-19 pandemic.

The Bill updates and builds on our existing continuity trading relationship, which formed part of our membership with the EU. I particularly welcome the WTO’s agreement on Government procurement, which will secure access for UK businesses to overseas procurement opportunities worth £1.3 trillion a year. I also welcome the new trade remedies authority, which will enable Britain to secure the benefits of freedom while providing a safety net for domestic industries.

This country leads the way in making the case for human rights, as proven by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary’s statement this afternoon, and we have not embraced an independent trading policy to do otherwise. Our trading policy must therefore reflect our human rights priorities in a way that is both practical and coherent with our constitution. First, in order to work effectively, the determination of matters of genocide needs to be practical and follow established methods. As a result, it is perfectly reasonable for the judgment to rest with the competent courts, which include domestic criminal courts and relevant international courts, rather than Governments or non-judicial bodies. We all support the objective of upholding human rights; it is a question of how we best achieve that in practice.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) has already stated, the Government have listened and given an assurance that Parliament and Select Committee Chairs will be part of the process to establish new joint committees or sub-committees or to bring in the expertise of former members of the judiciary. Amendments proposed by the other place, however, would apply a wrecking ball and enable the High Court to fundamentally challenge the royal prerogative. In my view, such a move would undermine our confidence in Parliament.

Brexit was about strengthening the voice that Parliament has. This Bill and the amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) give a clear role for Parliament to act quickly and decisively in human rights situations, while also seizing the new global opportunities ahead.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD) [V]]

As the shadow Secretary of State for International Trade pointed out earlier, we have had many debates in this place about the Trade Bill, but today there is only one question before us: should the UK have trade deals or agreements with countries that practise genocide on their own people? It seems very clear to me and my fellow Liberal Democrat Members that we need to grab this opportunity to make that very clear statement. We welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement earlier today about the Magnitsky sanctions, but we absolutely must follow that up and make it so clear in everything we do that we do not tolerate genocide in any shape or form.

The Liberal Democrats therefore remain unflinching in our support of Lord Alton’s amendment. We welcome the fact that their lordships have once again returned the Bill to the Commons with this amendment. I urge the Government to listen to all the cross-party voices on this issue and allow the amendment to stand. Time is short, so I will not rehearse all the reasons why this genocide amendment is so necessary in combating the actions of regimes against their own people, such as we are currently seeing against the Uyghurs in China at this very moment.

It continues to baffle me that this Government, which fought so hard for the rights of the UK to agree its own trade deals, have so little to say about how they plan to use that power. They have resisted calls from across the House to use the power of our trade deals to demand environmental, social or human rights improvements from our trading partners. How can we ensure that our goods and services will not be cheaply traded away if the Government will not even allow this amendment? The Government’s objections to the original amendment have been ably addressed by their lordships, and we will be voting this evening for the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani).

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

I would have no hesitation in voting against a trade deal with a state that commits genocide, nor would I have any hesitation in voting against a trade deal with a state whose oppressive behaviour and conduct fell short of the legal definition of genocide. But either way, those are political decisions and should be taken here; therefore, we need a political process to deal with those.

That is why, despite the changes, there still remain difficulties with the latest iteration of this Bill to come back from their lordships. The problem is given away by the language, which was recognised by the shadow Secretary of State when she referred to a finding by our country’s most experienced judges. That is the rub of the wording of the amendment. When it talks about a “Parliamentary Judicial Committee” and “a preliminary determination”, later defined as “a public finding”, that is the language of courts rather than of Parliaments.

The tension is further revealed by the provisions specifying the procedure by which judges may be appointed to the parliamentary judicial committee. That is constitutionally inaccurate, never mind anything else, because once former members of the judiciary sit in the other place, they sit there as former members, no longer as judges. They have ceased their judicial function. To pass this amendment with its current wording would be constitutionally illiterate. Although the expertise of the former members of the judiciary is very great and very welcome, it is surely objectionable in principle to create a parliamentary Committee on which only one class Member of either House can serve by reference purely to their previous occupation.

Secondly, it seems to me undesirable that, by statute, we should seek to circumscribe so closely both the membership of a Committee of either House or the proceedings by which such a Committee operates, which normally should be a matter for Standing Orders. I would have thought that that was much the better way to go.