Australia and New Zealand Trade Deals

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I know that he takes a strong, keen and constant interest in these issues. Let me say to him that the UK’s commitment to human rights, workers’ rights and various social justices are not always best pursued through trade agreements; we do pursue them bilaterally as well. I do not believe that there are any widespread concerns in relation to Australia and New Zealand, but I am happy for him to write to me if he has concerns about workers’ rights in those two countries. However, it is not obvious to me how a trade deal will necessarily be the best way to pursue those objectives in any case.

Together our nations can use trade to address contemporary challenges such as economic degradation, health pandemics and threats to global security. Both of these deals support that endeavour, including the provisions that uphold high standards and foster co-operation on shared challenges. With world-leading chapters on trade and gender equality, the deals demonstrate our commitment to break down barriers that exist for women in trade, whether as workers, business owners or entrepreneurs.

The UK-Australia agreement contains an innovation chapter, which is the first of its kind in any FTA between two partners in the world. This will ensure that our trading relationship remains at the forefront of emerging technologies. I might just add that the Confederation of British Industry said that our deal with New Zealand puts us at the fore of the green trade revolution and showcases to the world that trade and climate change can go hand in hand.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister talked earlier about allowing the British public the chance to purchase in a competitive environment, but competition requires information. If there is no adequate chapter in the Australia agreement about environmental standards and the use of coal, for example, can he tell the House how it is possible for an educated consumer to buy in the way that he suggests?

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Member raises a very good point. The UK-Australia deal is the first Australia trade deal that has a dedicated chapter on the environment. I recommend that he looks at the deal to see what it does for the environment, which is something we take very seriously indeed. We did it in the run-up to COP, so it is very topical as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see the newly branded hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) in his place. His language is a degree more restrained than I am used to. Perhaps I can speak a bit for him in making the points about scrutiny. Let us be honest about this: parliamentary scrutiny of these two trade agreements has been woefully inadequate. That is because of a lack of commitment by senior Ministers throughout the process to expose themselves to the Select Committee and, more generally, to scrutiny. That matters enormously. It is also a matter of fact that the process itself is inadequate not simply because of the lack of political commitment, but because there is not the capacity to hold Ministers to account, to hold the Government to account and to hold the negotiators to account.

The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) made some telling comments. I do not wish to put him in a difficult position but he was forthright in what he said today. He talked about the process and its failure to adequately reflect inter-departmental concerns and the fact that there was some failure in the political process, as proper account was not taken of the multiple needs that a trade agreement should address. That is the source of the concern over how we have operated scrutiny. We know that, post Brexit, the Government were in a hurry to establish that the UK was a nation that could negotiate trade agreements. That is not of itself anything to criticise the Government for. What we can criticise them for is the haste and recklessness with which that process went ahead, and their determination to say, almost irrespective of what trade agreements emerged, that those trade agreements were optimal; clearly, in no sense could anyone put that view forward.

In introducing the debate, the Minister talked about our being at the forefront of international trade policy. That rings very hollow when we know that the protections that the EU gained in terms of its relationship with New Zealand—the trade agreement and so on—were better for the UK agricultural position than those that we obtained as the UK. The idea that we are at the forefront of trade policy is, therefore, bogus and ridiculous. We have to learn the lessons from that. We have to learn we can do better.

One thing that Ministers have to take away from this debate is the need for a genuine trade strategy. On the basis of these two trade deals, it is impossible to see what the UK’s trade strategy is all about. I agree with those who said that every trade deal is going to have its own specific characteristics. That is inevitable. Even the New Zealand and Australia trade deals are not the same. It will be very different when we come to the CPTPP negotiations and when we come to negotiate with Mercosur and Brazil—the frameworks within which we operate are bound to be very different.

However, it is possible for the Government to share their overall strategy with the House. Some of the things such a strategy would address are obvious. Earlier, an hon. Member intervened to make a point about food security. In a world that is changing and where climate change is devastating the capacity to produce the food that the world needs, food security for our nation has to be fundamental, yet that is not written into any trade strategy that the Government have come up with. There is a need to balance the advantages and disadvantages not simply for the nation as a whole, but for different parts of the nation. That has to be fundamental. The agricultural parts of this country have very different needs from, say, the service sector of the City of London. It may be that we make great gains for the City and, objectively, nobody can be against that concept, but we will be concerned about the impact on communities if we see disruption of the employment base and of the capacity of our agricultural areas to operate in the way that we need as a nation.

Where is the strategy that allows us to see the Government’s ambitions for regional distribution? We know that there is very little reference in these two trade deals to the impact on Northern Ireland. That is such a serious matter when we are debating—whatever our different views are—the validity of the Northern Ireland protocol. How is the protocol going to be affected by these two trade deals? That is a matter of fundamental importance. But it is simply not there—it is not in these two agreements, or even in the way the Government are prepared to discuss trade policy. Across the piece, we need an international trading strategy that allows us to establish what our basic national interests are, and they are not there in either of these trade agreements.

If we look beyond these agreements, we will hopefully sign over the coming years many different and beneficial trade agreements, but they must be set against the objective standards of how we balance national interests. What is the national interest? Who are the winners and who are the losers? What do we do when there are losers, as there always will be in any deal that changes the terms of trade? On that basis, what do we do to protect the communities that are detrimentally affected by such changes?

Getting into the specifics of the two agreements, one remarkable thing is how much the Government have been prepared to trade away in a way that we did not see from the European Union. We know that the protections that the EU demanded, particularly for its own agricultural base, were very different from those that the UK obtained. Other hon. Members have already gone through the details of the tonnage that would be allowed, but we have ceded control in ways that the European Union simply did not.

I do not want to re-run the Brexit argument, but clearly Britain would have been better off within the European Union and with the EU’s negotiating position than with our own. That has to be a fundamental critique of and challenge to the capacity and competence of this Government. A simple conclusion would be, “If we cannot do better, why not?”. Ministers have not answered, or even attempted to answer, that in this debate.

Across the piece, we have gained relatively minimal benefits. Nobody can be against the concept of trade deals, but the benefits are minimal compared with what we have given away and what we could have negotiated better. My challenge to Ministers in this case is to own up. They have not done the work they should have done; politics and the need to gain political advantage by seeming to come up with rapid agreements have been put ahead of careful and skilful negotiation.

We need to get back to the fundamentals, because the way these two trade deals have been done cannot possibly be the template for the future. The real challenge is the fact that we need to do so much better in future. If this new grouping in the Department for International Trade are the Ministers we really want there, and are better than their predecessors, the question for them is why they cannot do better, because better they could have done, and better this nation of ours should demand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Exactly. I must wrap up— [Interruption.] Oh, I will continue, then. I thought you were giving me the eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

That is exactly the problem. If we have higher climate change standards, workers’ rights or environmental standards, and we have free trade with another country that has lower standards, all we are doing is exporting British jobs, opening the door and saying to companies, “Don’t worry about our climate change rules, our carbon trading or the standards we expect you to meet. Go and set up your companies in that other country, and we will still import all the goods and services.” That is an unemployment note for British workers, and the Government are signing it constantly, with country after country, because they are obsessed with getting deals over the line rather than with the quality of those deals.

[Tony Lloyd]

The environment chapter ought to have been capable of actually changing the climate change debate in Australia, so it is disappointing that it has, quite frankly, no teeth whatever. What does that say to countries with which we might want to negotiate to stop deforestation, mining coal and so on?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Exactly. Australia is a deep friend of ours. I spent hours outside the Australian embassy for the last elections, canvassing and campaigning for the Australian Labour party, which is now in government—although I do not think that success is all down to me. I regularly meet our counterparts in the Australian Labour party, and I am proud to say that not only are they friends, but my senior researcher is from that party and now works for me. There are strong links between our systems and our people. If, with friends, we cannot negotiate a deal that has teeth on environment and climate, we have no hope whatever when dealing with much more difficult countries.

This is partly because of the Government’s refusal to have proper parliamentary scrutiny. First, there was no need for them to trigger CRaG, because the agreement cannot be put in place until we have passed the enacting legislation, which has not even come back for Third Reading. The Government forcing through CRaG without parliamentary scrutiny was just arrogance on the part of Ministers and the Government—there was no other reason for it. They show the same arrogance to the International Trade Committee, which, time and again, they refuse to come and speak to. I cannot ascertain whether it is the arrogance of Ministers or the arrogance of senior civil servants—maybe it is a bit of both—but it is clear that the Department for International Trade has shown in this process that it is not fit for purpose and needs a real overhaul.

I am quite in favour of some of the ideas that the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) set out. We should have a Department of trade, of foreign negotiations, or probably of foreign affairs—a Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one might say—that co-ordinates expertise in other Departments, such as the former Department for International Development. I was in DFID negotiations on the environment and on the Rio process year in, year out, all through our European period, and our colleagues in DFID led many of the discussions on the oceans and biodiversity. It had real expertise in those negotiations. We should have been using it. We have failed in the environmental chapters of this agreement because we did not leverage the fantastic negotiators as well enough as we have in other Departments.

The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth was also right to say that proper scrutiny in this place can help the Government’s hand. I remember when I was a trade unionist, and we would want our members to lay out strong, hard lines to us so that when we went into negotiations with the employer, we were able to say, “Look, I am the reasonable one here—I am trying to get to an agreement—but my members are livid; they are angry; they are fuming. You need to give me a bit more so we can strike this deal and avoid any action.” It is the same process in trade deals, but the Government’s refusal to use us means that they have sold this deal short.

Finally, I will touch on procurement. In the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill Committee, we heard that some of the wording on procurement puts British companies in a worse position than they are currently, and I will briefly explain why. There is already a global agreement on procurement under which British companies already have the right to bid for procurement contracts in Australia. Those agreements require that if a company has worked up a credible bid that is then rejected, the company can claim certain costs. This trade agreement excludes those particular words. Of course, a company will probably go to the Australian courts or to our courts, where they will be able to argue their case, but the insecurity of different wording in different agreements now means that although a French company would have a 100% cast-iron guarantee of protection, because it is part of the same global agreement on procurement, a British company would be insecure in that protection.

In some areas, the agreement not only falls short of what we want, but actively sells our country short. That is why the agreement is such a shame; that is why we should have gone further; and that is why, if we had had earlier debates, none of this mess from the bungling lot on the Government Benches would have happened.

Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement: Scrutiny

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jayawardena]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his work in support of bringing the CANZUK nations closer together. He is right that this is just the beginning. Not only have we secured trade deals with 71 countries around the world plus the EU, covering trade worth £800 billion, but we are now applying for accession to the CPTPP, which includes Australia, New Zealand and Canada, to deepen our trade ties even further. In his region, the east of England, there are already £498 million-worth of exports to Australia and £81 million-worth of exports to New Zealand. With his championing of business in Peterborough, I am sure those will increase even further.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister is deliberately choosing to miss the point of the urgent question. However much he grins at the Dispatch Box, it will not alter that fact. This is not about whether the deal is good or bad; it is about the fact that this is the first trade deal to come before the House, and about whether scrutiny has been delivered in an acceptable way. As you know, Mr Speaker, the scrutiny belongs to the whole of this House of Commons, not simply to a Select Committee. The Minister must explain how we will get that scrutiny, because he is not doing it in a UQ.

UK-Andean Trade Agreement: Human Rights

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to observe social distancing and wear masks. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered human rights and the UK-Andean Trade Agreement.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. This debate concerns human rights and the UK’s trade agreement with the Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. For the benefit of the Ecuadorians present, Ecuador is not one of the countries of concern to me; Peru—though only a little—and Colombia are the objects of my concern.

It is commonly agreed that any trade agreement nowadays should go beyond merely the management of trade flows between different countries. The then Foreign Secretary, who is now the Justice Secretary, said in January 2021 that

“we shouldn’t be engaged in free trade negotiations with countries abusing human rights”.

That is clear and unequivocal. The Minister for the Middle East, North Africa and North America, the right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), told the Commons last July that

“our commitment to human rights is a foundation stone of our foreign policy… We will ensure that we use our trade relationships not just to export products and services but to export our principles and values.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 800.]

That is a strong, powerful statement.

Even in their report to the House on the trade agreement with the Andean countries, the Government stated:

“The UK has long supported the promotion of our values globally and this will continue as we leave the EU. We want to ensure economic growth, development and labour and environmental protection go hand-in-hand.”

There we have it: human rights, labour standards and environmental protection should all be part of any modern trade agreement.

It gets a little better; there are strong statements in the agreement itself. Article 1 states:

“Respect for democratic principles and fundamental human rights…underpins the internal and international policies of the Parties. Respect for these principles constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”

Article 269 commits both parties to

“the promotion and effective implementation in its laws and practice…of internationally recognised core labour standards”.

Sadly, there is no mechanism to enforce that. There are no sanctions and no discussion of what we do when things go wrong. There is an acceptance that we should have domestic advisory groups on both sides to represent civil society, trade unions, employers and so on, which could monitor adherence to labour standards and human rights commitments. I shall be asking the Minister where we are with our own domestic advisory group in the UK.

I will start with Peru, which in many ways is an easier case. Peru generates concern around environmental standards. Back in 2017, Peruvian civil society representatives and their European counterparts filed a complaint before the European Commission against the Peruvian Government for failure to comply with environmental and labour obligations under the free trade agreement with the EU, was then the guiding trade agreement. The Peruvian Government continue to fail to establish clear objectives and indicators to monitor progress on tackling these big environmental issues, so there is concern about Peru.

Colombia is a country I know reasonably well. It had a horrendous civil war, which in a way continues. It reached, in part, a negotiated solution. However, that has not stopped the huge erosion of basic human rights, including the right to life and others.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman often brings human rights issues to Westminster Hall about which he and I are on the same page, as we are today. While respect for democratic principles, fundamental human rights and the rule of law should be an essential part of any agreement, does he not agree that we need not simply words but actions? We should not continue to trade with those whose flagrant disregard for and abuse of human rights is prevalent and persevering. I believe that he will now illustrate, in addressing what has happened in Colombia—land grabs and murders of peasant people—that those in authority there have a disregard for life itself.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s support. He is absolutely right. I will continue on exactly that theme.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has information about 196 human rights defenders —those who protect the population more generally and go out of their way to act as a human shield—who were killed in 2021. They faced increasing death threats in the aftermath of protests last year. In the first 24 days of this year, 10 human rights defenders were murdered. The International Trade Union Confederation rates Colombia as one of the worst countries in the world for workers’ rights and documents 22 trade unionists who have been murdered in the last year. Colombia is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be active in a trade union.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is good that an issue as important as international human rights has been brought to this Chamber. Does my hon. Friend agree that we have to start dealing with such issues in Colombia? Only on Monday, José González Marín, an agricultural workers trade union representative, was shot six times and killed, the rationale being that he wanted the UK-Colombia free trade agreement suspended. This cannot continue.

[Tony Lloyd]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case. That someone was shot for being a trade unionist going about trade union activities is simply an outrage. The right to life is a fundamental right. The right to protest is a fundamental right. In this country in the past, trade unionists may have faced imprisonment, but rarely death, I have to say. It is shocking that that is still the way things are in this world.

More than 1,200 Colombian social leaders, often representing the indigenous community, are estimated to have been murdered since the 2016 peace agreement was signed. I was involved in supporting the creation of that agreement, so I bow to nobody in recognising its importance, but we recognise that it did not solve the problem of violence. Worse than that, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified that at least 46 people—two of them state agents, the rest civilians—were killed during protests, with at least 28 of those killings attributed to the police. One young woman, who may not count as one of the 28, was gang-raped by the police and took her own life as a result.

State repression and widespread killing of protestors by the police breaches every democratic principle known to us all. Rather like my hon. Friend said, the question arises of what the remedy should be. The problem with the Andean agreement is that it ultimately makes no demand on the authorities in Colombia or, indeed, Peru. The UK did not consider the Colombian Government’s failure to uphold many of their obligations under the peace agreement when negotiating the Andean agreement. I recognise that the agreement is a roll-over of the EU agreement, but the human rights commitments are nevertheless real, despite the violations that contravene the commitments of the Colombian Government, who have failed to live up to their own expressed intentions.

Will the Minister say where we are on this? I recognise that the treaty is in transition. What do we say to the Colombians and to the Peruvian Government about the gross breaches of the standards to which they agreed and to which we as a country are committed to uphold in our trade negotiations?

Like my hon. Friend, the Trades Union Congress has joined the Colombian trade unions in asking for the agreement to be suspended until there are effective measures to ensure that human rights are observed and, in the case of Peru, that environmental and labour standards are upheld. Clearly, in the absence of any capacity to do that, what matters is how we monitor human rights abuse. What do we do in terms of our dialogue with the Colombian authorities?

I mentioned that there is provision in the treaty for the establishment of domestic advisory groups that ought to be able—through civil society, trade unions, employers’ organisations and civil organisations such as non-governmental organisations and the like—to say what the situation is on the ground and to be listened to. Only by listening away from Government sources do we get the real information on the ground.

I have listened over the years. I was a Minister in the Foreign Office years back. As a recipient of Foreign Office advice about Colombia from our embassy, I did not always find it to be as complete as the information that one would get from civil society and from those on the ground who saw the erosion of standards in people’s real lives and, brutally, people’s real deaths. Where are we up to with the establishment of the domestic advisory groups? It is so important that we have the capacity to monitor, to inform and, where appropriate, to give real criticism and look at whether we want to be part of a trade agreement that is so lacking in enforcement.

More broadly, will the Minister comment on our policy with respect to free trade agreements and human rights clauses? If this is the example that we are using with other regimes where we know that there are regular human rights abuses, we will be creating a very difficult future for our commitment to maintain human rights and to maintain pressure on labour standards and, importantly, environmental standards. We are likely to be talking in the near future to Brazil and other Governments in Latin America. I have to say that the present Brazilian Government would probably not pass muster in terms of their commitments on human rights standards, so what does the Andean agreement say about our ability to work in the future where human rights are central to the whole operation?

I know that the Minister is a trade Minister and is not directly responsible for our embassies, although there are trade representatives in them. What kind of information and advice pertinent to the agreement do the Minister and her colleagues get from our embassy in Bogotá? The ambassador is due to speak to groups of MPs in the not-too-distant future, so I hope that we will hear that directly from him, but he will perhaps give a little more information to Ministers than to a Back-Bench MP, however interested in Colombia I am.

[Ian Lavery]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we expect human rights issues in countries to be discussed and ironed out in free trade agreements, arrangements, discussions and negotiations? He has just explained how many people have been killed only this year, and it continues. I would think that the UK Government do raise this issue, but the fact that they do so and nothing happens is not acceptable. What does he think should happen with these negotiations? We cannot continue to turn a blind eye.

[Tony Lloyd]

That is almost exactly where I want to end. We have got to an agreement. The Government and the Opposition agree that human rights, labour standards and environmental standards are fundamental. That has been enshrined by the then Foreign Secretary, by Foreign Office Ministers and by trade Ministers too. We are in agreement that Colombia is a very difficult case. Peru is perhaps less difficult, but it nevertheless causes some problems. There are therefore two problem countries out of the three Andean treaty countries. In that context, what is the value of writing human rights clauses into an agreement if, in the end, nothing is done about the erosion of standards?

We have to rethink the way that we do things. We have to rethink whether sanctions or a road map need to be delivered, saying that we expect change and transformation. In the end, we expect to have the capacity, if our interlocuters in Bogotá or other capitals—in Peru, Brazil or wherever—are not conforming, to say, “We really can no longer live with this agreement.” I put it to the Minister that the time has now come to listen to the call, from the Colombian trade unions in particular, for us to suspend this agreement until such time that there is a recognisable road map for human rights, labour standards and environmental improvement.

UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Absolutely. We hope that the TAC review will give us a good report and we await that; this cohort is there exactly to answer some of the challenges and anxieties brought to us, and I am very hopeful that we will pass its examination well. In addition, going forward, as I mentioned earlier, we are opening up many other new markets for our farmers, not only because we want our indigenous food suppliers to thrive, but because we want to make sure the rest of the world can enjoy their products too.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The Secretary of State will know that at some point we will need to have a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU; that is in the interests of our agricultural community across the board, and in Northern Ireland in particular. Can she give an absolute guarantee that there is nothing in this agreement or any other negotiations she is contemplating that would put that SPS agreement at risk?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

This agreement has a very detailed SPS chapter, and I would be very happy to sit down with the hon. Gentleman and ask the officials to talk him through it in more detail and reassure him accordingly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

What recent discussions she has had with UK trade partners on inserting clauses on human rights in future trade deals.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

What recent discussions she has had with UK trade partners on inserting clauses on human rights in future trade deals.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

What recent discussions she has had with UK trade partners on inserting clauses on human rights in future trade deals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jayawardena]

We are clear that Britain has a long history of protecting rights and promoting our values globally. We will continue to encourage all states to uphold international rights obligations, including under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. We supported an amendment in this House on the principle of a formal parliamentary process leading to a guaranteed debate, but the latest amendment is unacceptable because it seeks to bring about constitutional reform by the back door, and it would impinge on the proper constitutional settlement, blurring the distinctions between the courts and Parliament.

[Tony Lloyd [V]]

I say to the Minister that this country does have a proud record of upholding human rights, but this Government have a very unhappy record of allowing, for example, arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which has seen the killing of innocent men, women and children. On that basis, does he accept that trust is fundamentally important on the issue of human rights under any Government? Why should anybody trust this Government?

[Mr Jayawardena]

I certainly want to make sure that all Members across this House can trust this Government, but I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that Labour’s record on this is hypocritical and, sadly, it enabled antisemitism to be rife within its ranks. They turned a blind eye to terrible behaviour from countries that they like, like Venezuela, and the shadow Secretary of State even shared a platform with Hamas. So we will not be lectured by the Opposition on these issues.

Continuity Trade Agreements: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Even in the negotiation of continuity agreements, it is important to ensure that we get the best possible deal for British consumers and British businesses, including those in his Aylesbury constituency.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister glossed over a question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) earlier. My hon. Friend made the point that the CRaG procedures were established when the European Union was our main negotiating host and the scrutiny came through that process. Does the Minister accept that public distrust of bad trade agreements and public confidence in trade agreements will be established by parliamentary scrutiny, and will he now re-examine whether these procedures are adequate for a modern trading country such as the United Kingdom?

[Greg Hands]

As I pointed out earlier, we have we added quite a lot and gone beyond the CRaG process to ensure that Parliament is incredibly well informed. Over the course of this year, we have had many debates and published many documents, impact assessments, economic assessments and now reports on individual trade agreements. Parliament has been kept very well informed. When it comes to public distrust, the data shows that the UK public remain strongly in support of free trade.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jayawardena]

I am sure the whole House will join my hon. Friend in sending sympathies. We are ramping up defence engagement. We supported Britain’s largest ever delegation to the Indian defence expo in February this year, including 160 British business leaders. India increasingly prefers to contract defence and security deals via Government-to-Government frameworks, so we are leading that cross-government work to enable British businesses to do more in the future.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Environmental protections do work in bilateral trade agreements, but they work best when the process is genuinely internationalised. Will Ministers tell the House and the country what steps are being taken in the preparations for COP26 to make sure that international trade with strong environmental protections is a major item, to ensure that we can save the planet?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. As we take up our independent seat at the World Trade Organisation we intend, alongside pushing our agenda on technology and services, to work with like-minded partners on the environment to get strong environmental agreement alongside our work on COP26.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I point out to the hon. Lady that it is illegal and unlawful to discriminate in such a way, and employers are breaking the law in doing it. As constituency MPs, we can highlight to the women we meet or who come to our surgeries—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady says that she wants action from the Government, but action has been taken—it is against the law.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to increase provision of women’s refuges.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to increase provision of women’s refuges.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

Refuges provide vital support for victims of domestic abuse. Since 2014 we have invested a total of £33.5 million in services to support victims of domestic abuse, including supporting our refuges.

[Tony Lloyd]

The Minister will recognise that refuges are places of safety for women and children in flight from domestic violence and that in extreme cases they are literally life-saving, but does he understand the concern of organisations such as Women’s Aid that the changes to supported housing can have the effect of putting refuges under real pressure? Will he talk to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure we get the answer right, so we have a national network of refuges?

[Jake Berry]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. Knowing his experience with the police force, he will understand that this is an extremely complicated area. The Government are absolutely determined to get this right, because it is of vital importance that we do so. There is no question but that refuges provide a life-saving role in our community and that is why we are currently consulting on the best way to ensure their future funding is right to make sure they are supported as permanent parts of our community.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Does the International Trade Secretary recognise that people fear that in the event of, for example, a very right-wing, ideological Government, we could see the erosion of social standards through our trade agreements or even the erosion of our ability to protect our national health service with the wrong type of trade treaty? Will he guarantee parliamentary scrutiny of every trade deal done?

[Dr Fox]

I would like the Government to be judged by their actions. Therefore, as I indicated to the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), as we want to transition the already agreed EU free trade agreements into UK law—which will include, for example, workers’ rights and environmental standards—I hope that we will get the full support of the Opposition in doing that and in getting the legislation available to give us the powers to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his work with the all-party group on Brazil in the last Parliament, and he makes the good point that we do not need to have a free trade agreement to have free trade. Indeed, as I am sure he knows, the EU has no free trade agreement with the world’s largest markets such as the US, China, India and, indeed, Brazil. So there are many trade barriers that we can address without having a formal free trade agreement. This is very much our approach in Brazil, as seen by our joint committee talks and my own visit in March.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that the barriers to trade are not simply those that would be covered in an orthodox trade deal; there is also the unfamiliarity with local customs and so on. If we are to encourage our small and medium-sized enterprises to export, what practical facilities can be given to open up markets like Brazil, potentially enormous but at present very difficult for SMEs to access?

[Greg Hands]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and welcome him back to his place; I have fond memories of working closely with him in previous Departments on trade and other issues.

There are two things to say in response to the hon. Gentleman’s question. He is right that the removal of non-tariff barriers—the grit in the system—is a key aspect of our Department’s work, and he is right to emphasise that this is about not just free trade agreements in the future, but also removing those practical barriers, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State had those talks back in December. In terms of supporting SMEs, the GREAT.gov.uk portal is very good; there is good access to Brazilian deals that are coming up, and I urge all SMEs to go to that portal, in order to access that.