Points of Order

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are about to debate the National Security Bill. In the Second Reading debate, the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), asked the then Minister, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), for a commitment that there would be a Committee of the whole House to discuss a number of important matters in the Bill. The Minister responded by saying:

“I hear the request from my right hon. Friend…I can assure him that I have heard colleagues—him and others—on the importance of having time for scrutiny.”—[Official Report, 6 June 2022; Vol. 715, c. 639.]

Since then, 130 or so amendments and new clauses have been tabled in the last week, more than half from the Government, and we have 100 or so to debate today. There will be barely two hours before we are required to vote, and then presumably a near non- existent Third Reading. May I ask whether you have had any information from the Leader of the House about the intention of the Government to find more time to debate this matter, or indeed to have the important parts of this Bill debated fully on the Floor of the House?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I raise one specific issue that is directly linked with this? I discovered one day ago—overnight, almost—that the Government had tabled amendment 60, which will add certain offences to the list of offences that are not eligible for statutory defence for victims of modern-day slavery. Whether or not this amendment improves the Bill, the truth is that we have had no chance to scrutinise it at all, and it will be done today and gone. My concern is that this is a delicate area, often dealing with people who have very great problems, and I simply want to ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker, whether it is feasible for us to raise a complaint that this is becoming an abuse of the House.

Edmonton EcoPark: Proposed Expansion

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to observe social distancing and to wear masks when they are not speaking.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential environmental and health impacts of the proposed expansion at Edmonton EcoPark.

It is a privilege to serve under your stewardship, Mr Hosie. This debate does not directly have an effect on you, but I hope that you will find something interesting in it that may be applicable elsewhere.

This debate on the proposed expansion at Edmonton EcoPark, with its health and environmental impacts, is critical to those in my area and in my constituency, and I have an apology from the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor), who is unable to attend. I want to read out a list of those who have signed letters and been involved in campaigning to stop the proposed incinerator, who include myself and the hon. Member for Edmonton; my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell); my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Dame Eleanor Laing), who has expressed her views on this; the hon. Members for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) and for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer); the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is here; and Assembly Members Emma Best, Joanne McCartney, Siân Berry, Andrew Boff, Caroline Pidgeon, Zack Polanski and Caroline Russell. The AMs obviously could not be here. Some of the Members of Parliament could not be here either, but I thought it would be useful for that list to be read into the record. Those people are all in support of what I am about to say.

The problem is that, for some years, I have been deeply concerned about the way in which the process has been going. The incinerator that was built originally is about to be significantly increased in size. This is a cross-party issue, not one that divides along normal party lines, because it affects ordinary people in the constituencies and areas to which I have referred. They are affected regardless of their political views. I have pretty much never come across a constituent who actually wants this project.

The incinerator sits like an eyesore just below my constituency but, because of the prevailing winds from the south-west, the whole constituency is hit by what comes out of the chimneys. The other day, I happened to visit a shopping centre nearby. It was a cold day and the plume engulfed us as it travelled across my constituency. However, it goes to others as well.

I pay tribute in all of this to the active local campaign group, Stop the Edmonton Incinerator Now, which represents the feelings of many of our constituents. Carina Millstone in particular, and others, have been active on this issue. That is a good sign of how local politics is alive and well and talking about real issues, rather than some of the stuff we sometimes get bound up in in this building.

The project does not represent good value for money, which is the key element of the argument that I am making. In almost everything else we do in the Government or Opposition, we ask whether what we are about to do is good value for money and, further down the road, if costs increase, whether it still represents good value for money. I do not think that the incinerator expansion is a good return for taxpayers in our constituencies. The costs have spiralled, almost doubling from the original £650 million to £1.2 billion now, and nothing has yet been built. The North London Waste Authority has already spent £4.3 million developing plans for the new incinerator. Everywhere, I and other Members have asked for a value for money review of the project, from the Public Accounts Committee right the way through to every single Department and pretty much every single Secretary of State—I do not think I have asked the Defence Secretary, but who knows. The fact is, I have tried to ask everyone.

In normal circumstances, with a budget of £1.2 billion, might someone not want to ask whether a project still represents good value for money? However, nobody seems to say that they will take responsibility for it in Government or local government. It appears that the only body that is capable of reviewing or changing the project is the North London Waste Authority itself. In a way, it sets the exam question and answers it for itself every time. That cannot be right. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will give us some inkling as to whether the Government think that the project carrying on is right.

The high cost is a key reason why we should pause, review and ask fundamental questions about whether this is still the best course of action for our constituents. Let us look at overcapacity. The incinerator is already burning over 320,000 tonnes of waste that could be recycled and composted—just imagine that we are pressing ahead on that basis. Since the plans to expand were originally drawn up, waste generation has actually fallen, because most members of the public are reacting to the drive for recycling and taking greater care in what they do.

The NLWA had a long-standing goal of reaching a 50% recycling and composting rate by 2020, but it is currently still below 30%. If it had got to the 50% marker, there would be even less reason for the incinerator to be there for the local area, and the plan was that it was for the local area—north-west London. I am therefore concerned about the plans because they are no longer about north-west London. To make the project viable, we will now have to drag stuff all the way across London to keep this thing burning. Now we are going to have more traffic on the road, extra fumes and extra environmental damage—just to keep an incinerator going. Why are we so fixed on having this huge thing near my constituency—so much so that we have to drag waste from all over London and clog up the roads just to keep it going? If it does not have enough from the local area as it stands at the moment, what is its purpose?

There are serious health implications for our constituents if the expansion goes ahead. Some 700,000 tonnes of waste will be incinerated every year, releasing what we call ultrafine particulate matter over residential areas. The levels of air pollution over parts of my constituency are already dangerously high. I am informed by Plume Plotter, an independent organisation that plots the plumes of incinerators across the country, that today the plume from the incinerator is blowing right across the whole of my constituency, but particularly the north part, and across the other constituencies I have already named.

We already have many hotspots in my constituency where air pollution is above the World Health Organisation’s air quality guideline levels. Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation have calculated that 100% of schools, GP surgeries and care homes in my constituency are in areas that are already above the recommended guidelines. Even before any attempts to expand the Edmonton EcoPark, air pollution is having a significant impact on the health of residents across the constituency.

Public Health England has shown that short and long-term exposure to air pollution has significant health risks, including reducing life expectancy and having an impact on lung function, which increases asthma cases and cardiovascular admissions—all extra costs in pure value for money terms, even if we do not think too hard about the terrible health implications.

Seventy NHS GPs from across north London wrote to the Prime Minister last year and said that the plans to expand the incinerator should be pulled. In their letter, they claim that the Prime Minister could save more lives by pulling the expansion than they will save in their entire careers. So here is a big dilemma: the Government tell me that they do not have the power to intervene, but it seems that the waste authority has an unlimited demand for money. Something has gone badly wrong in all this.

The environmental impacts are huge. The issue is that incineration captures only a small amount of carbon from the material it burns. We know that alternative waste disposal methods exist, such as mechanical biological treatment, steam autoclaving and anaerobic digestion. All those things are now being used elsewhere, but not here. Over all the years, we have remained wedded to the idea that we have to burn waste. The methods I have mentioned have all lowered carbon emissions, yet the waste authority continues to push for incineration. Most notable scientific advisers have said exactly the same and questioned the suitability of incineration as a method of waste disposal.

I remind right hon. and hon. Members that the Edmonton EcoPark is right in the middle of a residential area. It is not as though this is some industrial park; it is right in the middle of a very densely occupied residential area, which covers all the constituencies that I named. The chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that the UK should move away from incineration and find better ways to use the value of materials, rather than turning them into carbon dioxide.

This is meant to be a competitive bid, but it is not. It is now down to one bidder. In other words, it is a slam dunk—name your own price. Acciona, the company involved, won the contract with no competitors. The chief executive officer of Acciona acknowledged the other day that the proposed plant is significantly larger than it should be. The man who is building it now does not actually think it should be built. It is bizarre. Every day I look at this project and wonder whether this is a parallel universe. The CEO said at a panel event at COP26:

“The massive oversizing of the [Edmonton] plant is something that is beyond our control. It’s a specific issue of the plant.”

I have raised this issue with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with Housing, with the Chancellor and even with the Prime Minister. Civil servants have said constantly that it is not feasible to intervene, but the North London Waste Authority, surely, somewhere along the line, needs to be held to account on all the points I have made, which I am sure hon. Members will add to. What more evidence do we need?

Here we have the intransigent, inflexible, arrogant North London Waste Authority—and I mean arrogant, because at hearings it has just swept evidence from doctors and scientists to one side—refusing to budge on a policy that is clearly wrong and that is failing. It is a shameful state of affairs when a public body can no longer be held to account, because it no longer represents what the public want.

When something goes so badly wrong, the Government have to look at it again and ask how it can be that, amidst spiralling costs, health damage and pollution issues, we still plough ahead with a technology that is no longer needed and that will damage people’s lives in my constituency and others. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to answer those questions.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, I would just say that if the Back-Bench Members could contain their remarks to around eight minutes we will have plenty time for the Front-Bench speeches. I call Jeremy Corbyn.

Trade Bill

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Iain Duncan Smith

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree. I put the question back to my hon. Friend, as I have to other hon. Friends. If, on balance, the courts decide—we have faith in our courts—that this is likely to be genocide, I simply ask why would we be doing a trade deal with a country that is guilty of genocide. We may not wish to disagree, but the power still remains. The pedantic point put forward by the Government was that it was all about loss of power. I say that that is simply not the case. It would certainly not be in our amendment, because it is very specific that the Government have to do that.

On the vexatious claims point, the High Court is quite capable of dismissing anything on that level. By the way, this is the highest bar that can be set for any accusation. To try to wipe out an ethnic group is the No. 1 crime in the world. The High Court knows that and would dismiss anything that was vexatious. There would be no point in doing otherwise—that would demean it and wreck its reputation.

The Government say that the amendment, being limited to genocide, is practically unenforceable. Well, maybe that is true, in which case we need to look again at the UN charter, but the reality is that right now this is unenforceable—nobody out there can bring a charge of genocide, because they are blocked. We come back to the same point: we argue about genocide, and the Government say they do not want to do deals with people who commit genocide. I have huge admiration for my right hon. Friend the Minister. We have worked very closely together on many things. However, I noted his language when it came to accusations of the sale of the NHS. He said, “Not and never will be sold.” When it came to China and a trade deal it was, “No plans to do one yet.” We can be emphatic from the Dispatch Box when we want to be. We can make absolute statements when we want to, but when we do not—I have been in Government—we simply do not. That tells us everything we need to know. The Government need to have that check on them.

I conclude by saying that the Government cannot have it both ways. If they say it is for the courts, then the question is which court and the amendment says that. Overall, I have to say that the amendment is not anti-China, but it is anti-genocide. We need now to stand tall. We left the European Union because we did not want to accept judgments from a court over which we said we did not have power. We did not come away because we disliked our courts. I think we have the best courts in the world, and I think they can make this judgment. My question, therefore, is this: what is it about? Why did we leave? So that we would stand tall and have a global vision about the morality of what we do. I say to my colleagues and to those on the Front Bench that tonight is about more than just pettifogging. Tonight is all about shining a light of hope to all those out there who have failed to get their day in court and to be treated properly. If this country does not stand up for that, then I want to know what would it ever stand up for again. I urge my colleagues to vote to keep Lords amendment 3 in the Bill.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) [V]]

If I may start by making some general observations, we have previously agreed with the Secretary of State for International Trade about the necessity of keeping trade open, recognising the importance of supply chains and how important it is that we stand against protectionism. I am happy to reiterate all of that today. Indeed, we all should, because we need to combat the three main threats to trade. The first, self-evidently, is the covid crisis, which the World Health Organisation suggests could lead to a massive fall in global trade. The second is the impact of Brexit, and thirdly, we must address the systemic problem of the continued implementation of new trade restriction measures, and the continuation of existing ones. For example, tariffs valued at somewhere north of $1.6 trillion are in force around the world. I am not confident that any of those problems will be resolved any time soon, and the Bill does not address any of those matters directly. It is presented mainly as trying to facilitate the roll-over of existing deals, and maintaining trade that the UK has with third countries, which is vital.

The Bill does a number of other things, as the Minister set out. It creates procurement obligations arising from membership of the agreement on Government procurement. It creates the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and gives power to HMRC to collect and share data. As I have said, however, it is not without its problems, as evidenced by the large number of amendments that have come from the other place, which cover a large number of areas. I will address those issues shortly—and hopefully briefly.

As the Scottish National party has made clear during the passage of the Bill, a number of the problems relate to the impact on the devolved Administrations and consent, the role and powers of any scrutinising Committee, parliamentary scrutiny and approval, international standards and agreements, food and animal welfare issues, concerns about the NHS and, as we have just heard, concerns about human rights in trading partner countries. The amendments from the other place deal with a number of those issues.

Let me summarise the SNP’s attitude to the main amendments. Lords amendment 1 seeks to enshrine parliamentary approval of trade agreements. That is one of the fundamental problems with the Bill as it stands. The absence of meaningful parliamentary scrutiny and a parliamentary vote on significant changes or modifications, or in future on new trade deals that may be envisaged by the Government, is a massive problem. Modern democracies need full scrutiny of trade agreements, from the scope of the negotiating mandate, right through to implementation. Without amendment 1, the CRaG provisions, which are prayed in aid by the Government, amount to little more than a “take it or leave it” choice at the end of the negotiations, without the ability to amend. That is inadequate.

Lords amendment 1 also requires the UK Government to consult the devolved nations. That is not consent, but it is progress of a sort.

Lords amendment 2 seeks compliance with international obligations. We raised that matter previously, and new clause 7 on Report was designed to do a number of things. First, it was intended to affirm the UK’s rights and obligations under the sanitary and phytosanitary measures in annex 1A of the WTO agreement. The amendment focuses mainly on human rights, but it also states that before publishing trade objectives, the Government must conduct a risk assessment to consider whether the agreement would comply with the UK’s international treaties and other obligations. It seems eminently sensible to ensure that any free trade agreement complies with international obligations, whether human rights obligations or otherwise.

Lords amendment 3 deals with genocide, and as the Minister knows, there has been a great deal of support for such a measure. There are some serious concerns about the amendment as it stands, not least in allowing the English High Court to determine what is and what is not genocide, but the principle of revoking a trade deal with a state committing such heinous crimes is beyond reproach.

Lords amendment 4 covers IT and related activities in the NHS. I have previously argued that there should be no use of negative listings, because such clauses require that all industries are liberalised in trade agreements unless there are specific carve-outs, and it is not always easy to define which services count as, for example, health services. Digital services may be irrelevant to health, but NHS data management and GP appointment systems are increasingly digitised. There should be no standstill or ratchet clauses, because those provisions would mean that after a trade deal was signed, parties would not be able to reduce the level of liberalisation beyond what it was at the point of signature. Lords amendment 4 explicitly excludes the use of such negative listing and ratchet clauses and rules out the use of ISDS-type provisions for public services, including health, which would be extremely popular with the public.

Lords amendment 5 addresses ratification, including the requirement for a debate. I have previously asked whether, if it was the intention of the Government to provide sensitive information to a scrutiny Committee, that would be the Select Committee on International Trade, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I also asked whether any papers provided would be publishable or restricted. Lords amendment 5 would force the Government to publish an analysis, which would presumably ensure that such information was more widely available. The amendment would also ensure that a debate was held, on the recommendation of such a Committee. That is a very sensible measure indeed.

Lords amendment 6 deals with standards, including food and animal welfare standards, which are of massive concern to the public. As I said on Report, we know that trade deals can put pressure on food standards and lead to the importation of low-standard food. For example, the previous US Administration made it clear that they wanted the UK to lower its food and animal welfare standards. We suggested a ban on the importation of food that was produced to standards lower than those in the UK. Lords amendment 6 is clear that a Minister of the Crown should ensure

“as far as possible that a future trade agreement is consistent with United Kingdom levels of statutory protection regarding, among other things—

(a) human, animal or plant life or health;

(b) animal welfare;

(c) the environment;

(d) food safety, quality, hygiene and traceability;”

and so on. That is an eminently sensible thing to do. The amendment also states that should a Minister seek to change standards, they would have to “seek the consent” of the devolved nations in advance. That is absolutely the right way to proceed.

Lords amendment 7 seeks additional protection for children online, ensuring that legislation is consistent with international treaties. Lords amendment 13, which I understand the Government are minded to accept, addresses the relationship with the devolved Administrations, ensuring that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can provide information to the devolved Administrations so that they can fulfil their obligations in terms of trade.

A comprehensive trade Bill is vital, but it has to be right. This Bill has been subject to dozens of amendments in the other place, many with widescale public support. There is still a great deal of work to be done and compromises to be made before this Bill is acceptable.