Barry Gardiner
MP for Brent West · Labour · United Kingdom
“Sir Desmond, imagine that the top brains in the country’s security and intelligence community produced a report that told you how to save the world. You would want to see it, right? Well, the report we are discussing is not about how to save the world; it is about what happens if we do not.”
“The nuclear threat will rise as clashes between nuclear powers become more frequent. Those are the cold assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Government were right to think that those assessments might scare people—they scare me—but they were wrong to think that they could hide them from the public.”
“The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb.”
“The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchi…”
“We know how much land there is in the UK, and we know the extent of our inland waters and seas, so we can know how much we have to do to protect them, as we are required to do by target 3 of the global biodiversity framework.”
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“The Chancellor has made some excellent announcements, and none more so than to the hospitality sector. The prospect in his May announcement to that sector of grants of up to £25,000 delighted 9,000 hospitality businesses in my borough of Brent. That was the prospect. The reality was very different. His Department released just £3.3 million to Brent, which would have given each of those businesses no more than £366. What can he say to those 9,000 disappointed businesses, and will he back up today’s announcements with real cash this time?”
“What assessment the Church Commissioners have made of the effectiveness of the transition pathway initiative managed by the Church of England pension fund trustees.”
“I am very grateful for that answer, and congratulate the Church’s pension trustees on their innovation and vision. The TPI has worked with major global companies to reduce their emissions and has established a framework for pension funds to move towards net zero emissions. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether our own parliamentary pension fund is able to sign up to the initiative, and what more the Church could do to encourage other pension funds to join that $20 trillion of assets?”
“I will accept the Home Secretary’s offer to come in and work with her officials, because it is unforgivable that after accepting that he was right all along, the Government have still not sent him the British passport that he applied for five years ago, and they have not even begun to compensate him for his lost earnings or lost pension entitlement, let alone his pain or suffering. If the compensation team at the Home Office does not need more staff, as the Home Secretary has just assured the House, why has my constituent still not been contacted? He is now 68 years of age. How long will he have to wait?”
“His school had been demolished more than 30 years before and he had never been in trouble, so there was no record of him with the police either. We searched the archives at Kew, the central NHS and Brent Council. It was difficult going back 54 years, because most records had been destroyed or the systems had changed, but after three years, the Home Office accepted that Mr Breedy had arrived—as he said, freely landed—aged nine in 1962 and had paid his national insurance contributions for 45 years until the Home Office had written to his employers in 2016 and put him out of a job.”
“Professor Newton spoke today of the vital importance of increasing serology to tackle the virus. Capillary blood from fingerprick tests has long been used to test and control viruses, from measles to dengue fever. Will the Secretary of State therefore explain why the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency guidance asks providers of fingerprick tests to stop offering the service? Can he point to any published scientific data that suggests a clinical difference between capillary and venous blood? If not, why is he blocking the serology roll-out that Professor Newton considers so important?”
“As a man born and bred in Glasgow, I welcome the fact that COP26 is going to be hosted there. However, the original plan included a proposal to house 30,000 delegates in cruise liners docked in the Clyde. Not only was that ludicrously expensive, but the pollution from the diesel from those vessels would have sent entirely the wrong message from the COP. What assurance can the Minister give that more suitable accommodation is now being prepared?”
“The NHS is not an entity that can be sold, but free trade agreements can contain an innocuous-sounding provision about the restructuring of pharmaceutical pricing models. That is the way to undermine the health service—by downgrading our bulk purchasing power against big pharma companies. So much for the NHS being “safe” in their hands. Finally, does it follow that if this Bill is enacted, by necessity we will end up with all these measures? No, it does not. It does mean, however, that if they exist in any proposed FTA, Parliament will have no means of stopping that. This debate is about more than trade; it is about the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. It is about the sovereignty of Parliament—something that every Tory who will vote for this obnoxious Bill swore in their manifesto to defend.”
“It is impossible to specify in a list a service that has not yet been invented. The negative list process would stop the UK Government making a decision about how such services should be provided in future. So much for making our own way in the world. Conservative Members said that they would safeguard our domestic environmental protections, food safety regulations and animal welfare laws, but simply keeping our regulations for our farmers here does not protect them in a free trade agreement. Allowing the importation of goods produced elsewhere to lower standards will undermine our producers and lead to a race to the bottom—so much for safeguarding our food and welfare standards. The Government said they would not sell off the NHS, and of course they cannot.”
“That is why I believe the Bill is dangerous. Let me remind Conservative Members of what they claimed to be fighting for at the last general election. They said that sovereignty meant not accepting the rulings of supranational courts such as the European Court of Justice. Do they therefore agree with us that the use of investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms in future trade agreements should be ruled out in any form? They give higher rights to foreign investors than to our own domestic companies, allowing them to sue our Government in private courts for policy decisions that have an impact on their potential profits. So much for gaining freedom from a supranational court. Conservative Members said that Britain had to be free to chart its own future in the world. Do they therefore agree that negative lists of services should be banned?”
“The Committee on International Trade—the INTA Committee —scrutinised treaties before passing them to the European Parliament to vote on. Treaties then came to the European Scrutiny Committee in the Commons for further examination before the CRAGA process ratified them. Under the Bill, all that is left is the rubber stamp of CRAGA. All other layers are gone. The Bill should try to replace those layers. It cannot be right that there is no democratic oversight whatsoever of trade agreements. Members of Parliament may disagree about whether an agreement will benefit jobs or adequately protect standards, but they should have at least the right to debate those matters and hold the Government to account. The Bill denies us that right. This is not Parliament taking back control, but Government snatching it from Parliament.”
“The truth is that the Bill is about the Government’s abrogating to themselves all future power in relation to trade agreements, freed from the inconvenient scrutiny of Parliament. The procedure for ratifying international agreements is set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010—CRAGA. It stipulates that any treaty need only be laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days. If there is no vote against it during that period, it passes into law. But the Government decide Parliament’s business and can simply arrange that no vote takes place. When CRAGA was introduced, a huge number of democratic scrutiny processes were in place through the European Union. There was the European Council’s negotiation mandate and formal consultation procedures.”
“The Trade Bill is a bad Bill. It is bad because it fails to establish a proper framework whereby Parliament can scrutinise, ratify and implement all future international trade treaties, because it creates one of the weakest trade remedy authorities in the world, and because it pretends that it is necessary to roll over our existing agreements with third countries through the EU. So necessary is the measure that the Minister will have great difficulty when summing up in explaining how the Government have managed to roll over the majority of them before the Bill has passed into law. This is legislative prestidigitation of the highest order. The Government say that they need the Bill to do what they proudly boast they have already succeeded in doing without it.”
“Brent Council was at the epicentre of the initial covid outbreak, with one of the highest hospital death rates in the country, but back in February it spent £1.5 million to purchase PPE, which it made available to its care homes. In March, it established a separate care facility to provide 14 days’ isolation for any patients discharged from hospital back into the care system, whether or not they had tested positive for coronavirus. Now Brent has one of the lowest number of care home deaths in London. I know the right hon. Gentleman will want to congratulate Brent, which actually did put in place a protective ring around its care homes, but what he must answer is: if Brent Council had the good sense and foresight to get this right, why didn’t he?”
“It was specifically told that, to allow occupation without making occupants aware, there would be no protection against the spread of fire— [ I naudible] — therefore leaving life at risk, as these areas did not comply with current building regulations. That was tantamount to fraud under the Fraud Act 2006. The regulations were there; the proper, disinterested monitoring and enforcement were not. No matter what sensible regulations the Government put on this bookshelf of a Bill, they cannot make safe a building that was not constructed safely. My constituents thought they were protected. The law said so in the regulations. They have learned that to have a right, but no means of enforcing that right, is to have no right at all.”
“He refused to provide further information, and shortly thereafter the company went into a very convenient liquidation—so much for CICAIR accreditation. Finally, what of the project managers, CBRE? It made literally thousands of inspections. Its corporate social responsibility report declares that it is a leader in responsible business practices, serving its clients with integrity. Surely it would not have signed off on a building that it knew to be unsafe. Perhaps, but I have received leaked copies of internal correspondence between the company and its own clerk of works at the development. In that correspondence, the company is accused of amending reports he had submitted detailing the failures of defects.”
“The law says that final responsibility for building control matters lies with the developer, but the approved inspector is key to the developer being able to discharge that responsibility. Competition between private approved inspectors has undermined the impartial inspection regime provided by local authorities. Head Projects, with the approved inspectors, was obliged under the Construction Industry Council approved inspectors register code to provide a guarantee of compliance with the building regulation—in this case Approved Document B of the 2005 Fire Safety Order. I wrote to Rob Burrows, its managing director, asking how such systemic failings in the construction had come about under his regime.”
“The answer, it appears, was everybody and nobody. The National House Building Council conducted over 1,000 spot inspections before it issued its insurance certificate in 2015. Its CEO, Steve Wood, informed me that he was disappointed to learn of the failures in the original construction. I wrote back to say that he could hardly have been surprised, given that his own inspection reports, which I had obtained, spoke of “potential risk to health and safety of occupants, fire safety compartmentation, inadequate fire stopping, barriers to separating walls between units not fitted to design.” The National House-Building Council signed off and issued the insurance cover just two months later without any further in situ checks being done. Instead, it relied on everyone else.”
“When the building was completed in 2015, the regulations from the 2005 order were not unclear in any way. Approved document B specified that fire and smoke will be prevented from spreading to concealed spaces in the building structure by fire stopping and fire cavity barriers. Those are the rules. They are good rules, and they were not followed. When it became clear in 2017 how unsafe the building was, my constituents had every confidence that the developers, Royal London and NEAT, would swiftly put things right. They were wrong. A complex blame game began. In January this year, the remediation work had scarcely started and was loosely timetabled to take another two or three years. When the defects were found, I asked what I believed was a simple question: who was responsible for inspecting the work?”
“Criticising this Bill would be as futile as criticising an empty bookshelf: one needs to look at the quality of the books. Clause 1 simply clarifies the fire safety order of 2005, and clause 2 is no more than a delegated power to make regulations amending that order in future. While the Bill is, in itself, welcome, it is no more than a piece of legislative furniture—the content is yet to come. I want to illustrate the futility of even the best regulations on fire safety if the monitoring and enforcement regime is flawed from the beginning. Almost 1,000 people had their homes in the TNQ development of 460 flats in my constituency. The flats are unsafe because of fire stopping and other defects, which means that there is no compartmentation between them and a fire would spread swiftly up inside the walls of the building.”
“The Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommended an urgent lockdown to save lives on 26 February, but it took another three and a half weeks to implement it. The Government like to claim that they have been following the scientific advice, but they haven’t, have they?”
“The Minister said that only children of parents who are engaged in essential services should be going to school. Earlier in his remarks he talked about “essential” construction. Can he confirm that the children of construction workers working on an essential site will also be included?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it within your powers to suspend this sitting while an urgent request is made to the Prime Minister or Chancellor to come and announce what he has already said he is going to announce tomorrow?”
“What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his foreign counterparts about the extension of visas, which may expire during the lockdown in other countries? What action is he taking on airlines to stop the profiteering that is going on, with inflated prices for flights home? In other words, will he send a simple message to those British nationals stranded overseas: “You are not in the last chance saloon; you are in safe hands, and this Government will get you home”?”
“Will he make it absolutely clear that the Government remain committed to helping all British nationals; that embassies will have telephone lines available so that they can get the support and advice that they need, whenever they need it; that the Government will find a flight to get them home, no matter how long it takes; and that they will be guaranteed continued accommodation in the meantime? Does the Secretary of State have a plan to ensure the safe care and medical assessment of British cruise line passengers and their current health assessment? Is he negotiating with countries to ensure their safety during quarantine? Is he arranging safe travel home for all who are stranded? How is he keeping in touch with worried citizens abroad and their families here in the UK?”
“They are all in desperate need of reassurance from the Government, so I hope the Secretary of State will take the chance today to clarify the statement he made yesterday, which was reported across the media as an instruction to British nationals abroad—indeed, this is a direct quote from him—to “come home…now while you still can.” Despite the headlines, the Secretary of State obviously meant that for individuals who have the option of taking a commercial flight to Britain, but does he accept that that is now very much the exception, not the norm, and that for hundreds of thousands of British nationals the option he highlighted is simply no option at all?”
“Since the House last discussed these issues, we have seen some progress, especially in the planned provision of repatriation flights for British nationals stranded in Peru, and I thank the Foreign Office for its work on that, but as today’s media coverage shows—indeed, as is shown by the dozens of emails, calls and letters that Members from all parties are receiving from Indonesia, New Zealand, Morocco and Pakistan, where I understand no outbound flights are now available—this is not a crisis that can be resolved one traveller, one airline, or indeed one country at a time. It is a crisis affecting British nationals in every continent, many of them accompanied by young children, many of them with worsening health conditions, and many of them running out of money and in danger of losing their accommodation.”
“I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for securing it. This is a medical crisis, not a wartime one, but she certainly gave the Foreign Secretary some friendly fire, and she spoke for us all in the concerns she expressed for the hundreds of thousands of British nationals stranded overseas.”
“Can the Minister confirm that, under what the Government euphemistically call this Australia-style trade agreement, all the bilateral investment agreements we have with EU states, which were suspended while we were a member of the EU, will come back into force? What assessment has he made of the likely dispute proceedings that investors from those countries could launch and of the impact that would have on UK trade?”
“The Secretary of State will be familiar with the Brexit voucher scheme that has been launched by the Irish Government to support small and medium-sized enterprises trading across borders and affected by Brexit. The Dutch have introduced a similar scheme paying grants of over €2,000 and loans of up to €1.5 million. What assessment has she made of those measures and whether they are compliant with state aid rules, and if they are, why has she not introduced any similar measures to support our own SMEs, which face unknown tariffs, increased checks and inspections, and substantial delays to their trade?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Today the Prime Minister is holding an important strategy meeting about COP26—a meeting that many think should have been held before the former president of the COP was appointed, never mind sacked. Have you received any indication from the Government that a statement will be made in the House about perhaps the most important issue facing our country over the next 12 months, which is the climate conference in Glasgow in December? We want to be absolutely bipartisan and ensure that that conference is a success, but we need it to be discussed and debated in this place. The Government must be open with us about the strategy that they want to adopt, so that we can back them and ensure that we achieve the real objectives of the COP.”
“It has therefore never been more important for this Parliament to articulate its support for an open and fair rules-based global trading system that creates wealth and jobs in a way that protects workplace rights and environmental standards and ensures that vital sectors of our national economy are protected from unfair external competition.”
“At the end of last year, the American President made good on his promise to undermine the WTO by refusing to ratify the appointments to the appellate court. These actions go to the heart of the multilateral rules-based order. None of this is meant as a criticism of Government. It is merely to set out the context against which the prudence of Government action must be assessed, because it is against this background that our country is tomorrow pulling out of the largest and most powerful free trade grouping in the world and, paradoxically, doing so in the name of free trade itself.”
“The system of rules that has been at the core of world trade for the past 70 years is at breaking point. Corporations such as Google, Amazon and Huawei have arrogated to themselves enormous power. They are able to stand up to sovereign Governments, if not always their own, and to undermine fiscal and public policy. Countries such as China are emerging from non-market economy status with labour and utility costs that enable them to dump subsidised products on to western markets that undercut our domestic producers. The response from the USA has been increased protectionism, imposing arbitrary tariffs on aircraft, steel, aluminium and—my personal non-favourite—Scotch whisky, the impacts of which colleagues will be debating later today in Westminster Hall.”
“To ask the Government for their strategy is not to talk Britain down or to act against the national interest; it is simply to ask that we work together as grown-ups to devise a new relationship with our closest trading partners and to agree a set of priorities for our country’s future relations with others in an increasingly fraught geopolitical context.”
“The right hon. Gentleman mistakes me. I am not seeking to reopen the debate about the EU. We are leaving the EU tomorrow, and we must forge a positive and constructive future. Madam Deputy Speaker, if you feel any sense of déjà vu in what I believe is the fifth debate entitled “Global Britain” in the past two years, then for my part it will only be in asking the Government to set out a coherent strategy as to what that phrase is going to mean in practice. In previous debates, I heard calls from Government Members to bring back the royal yacht and talk of something called empire 2.0, but that does not constitute a strategy.”
“Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) said, in ceramics, which the Secretary of State talked about, and in major producers such as the automotive sector. I ask the Minister of State, Department for International Trade, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), to set out in his reply to the debate out how the Government will protect our manufacturers, producers and farmers from a flurry of such imports under future trade agreements.”
“Producers must not be doubly impacted by a surge of cheaper imports from overseas, particularly where they are manufactured to standards lower than our own or in markets that are distorted by unfair or illegal practices. The Secretary of State knows that she is introducing what has been called the “weakest trade remedies regime in the world”, and industry confidence was knocked still further by interim most favoured nation tariff measures that propose to abolish tariffs on up to 87% of imports. The EU and US are introducing safeguard measures that could see tariffs on our exports and increased diversion of dumped goods on to our market, wiping out foundation industries and the thousands of jobs that they account for in steel, as my hon.”
“To that end, our relationship with the European Union must be the priority. We need a free trade agreement that not only protects our existing trade with zero tariffs and zero quotas, but ensures minimum future disruption in both goods and services. We cannot and must not allow a situation to arise whereby our businesses face tariffs on their goods to the EU, alongside onerous and complex administrative burdens, border inspections or delays to the supply chain. Will the Minister address whether the Government intend to remain part of the pan-Euro-Mediterranean cumulation regime? If not, what is their assessment of the impact that that might have on UK industries and of how it might affect third countries with which we have concluded roll-over agreements and that have already included cumulation regimes in their own subsequent treaties?”
“That means that we want to invest in future technologies and next generation industries, foster innovation and grow jobs in the economy, and to do so in a way that helps our trade partners to do the same. We do not see trade as a zero-sum game of winners and losers. We see open and fair trade as a way of increasing global wealth, along with global justice and equality. At a time of global turmoil and escalating trade wars, it is imperative to have a strategy that ensures that the UK is not helpless against a triple assault: the dumping of subsidised products into our markets, which undercuts our producers; punitive protectionist tariffs imposed upon our exports by our would-be partners; and potential disruption to our trade with the EU, which is still by far our largest trading partner.”
“My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. She will know about America’s imposition of section 232 to impose tariffs, with the excuse being that its steel industry was necessary for national security. However, I accept that the Government say they want to negotiate a zero-tariff, zero-quota free trade agreement with the EU. We need to do that, and we certainly need to do it for the steel industry, which my hon. Friend represents. Perhaps those who have the audacity to ask for a plan ought to be prepared to provide suggestions, so in that spirit, let me be clear that the Opposition will champion the United Kingdom as a leader on the world stage that uses its position to tackle injustice and the imminent climate catastrophe.”
“Is this the global Britain that Conservative Members aspire to be: compounding economic hardship, legitimising oppression and actively supporting regimes that flagrantly abuse human rights and international humanitarian law? I do not think so, but it is what will happen unless the Government openly and frankly outline a detailed strategy for global Britain, and unless Parliament is allowed to fulfil its constitutional role of holding the Government to account.”
“Other recent treaties that replicate economic partnership agreements concluded between the EU and countries in central and southern Africa, for example, force market liberalisation measures without allowing for any modernisation or incubation capacity for industry in those partner nations. That effectively locks in economic dependency and prevents the broadening of their economic and industrial base, which is essential to achieving their development goals. The impact on chicken farming in Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal has been well documented. Dumped chicken products from the EU, farmed with subsidy support under the common agricultural policy, have decimated local chicken production, raising genuine food security questions for these least developed countries.”
“Our own High Court ruled just last year that the territory of Western Sahara is separate from Morocco under international law and that the UK Government are acting unlawfully by failing to distinguish between the territory of Morocco and the occupied territory of Western Sahara. The proposed UK-Morocco association agreement is thus contrary to international law and our own law, and it should not be ratified by Parliament until all references to Western Sahara are removed. This is what happens when there is no process of prior consultation, mandate-setting, scrutiny, transparency or debate as part of the ratification process.”
“The European Court of Justice has twice ruled, in 2016 and 2018, that Western Sahara is a “separate and distinct” territory from Morocco under international law, and that no agreement with Morocco can be applied to the territory of Western Sahara without the consent of the Sahrawi people. The group internationally recognised as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people has rejected every proposal that the EU’s trade agreement with Morocco should apply to them. In fact, a coalition of 93 Sahrawi civil society groups has confirmed that the people of Western Sahara reject the inclusion of their territory in any agreement concluded by Morocco.”
“They commit our successors in international law and cannot simply be repealed by a future Parliament in the way primary legislation normally can. Let us examine what is happening under CRAGA. One such agreement currently pending ratification, having been laid before Parliament on 20 December 2019, is the UK-Morocco association agreement, which purports to cover Western Sahara. Western Sahara is categorised as a non self-governing territory under chapter 11 of the UN charter, and it has been under military occupation by Morocco since 1975 after Spain surrendered the colony. The Sahrawi people have been denied the referendum that would allow them to exercise their right to self-determination.”
“Those trade agreements have been subject to little public scrutiny, with the Government taking advantage of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 process to ratify treaties without giving Parliament the opportunity to debate them. New Members may be unaware of the vagaries of CRAGA, under which an international treaty is automatically ratified after it has been published and laid before Parliament for 21 sitting days, so long as neither House has resolved against it. How do we resolve against it? The Government have to make time or provide an Opposition day for such a vote, but they have no compulsion to do either. That means Parliament can be presented with a fait accompli—so much for the return of sovereignty. International treaties are possibly the most binding law we pass in this place.”
“We asked for consultation with industry, a published mandate agreed by Parliament, transparency of agreed texts, scrutiny, debate and positive ratification, but we were blocked. In the other place, their lordships valiantly reinstated the democratic safeguards and, despite all the Government’s attempts at obfuscation and frustration, their lordships actually managed to introduce significant amendments to the Bill. No wonder it has now languished down the other end of the building for almost a year. In the meantime, the Government have signed a raft of trade agreements—not the 40 originally promised for a minute after midnight on 29 March last year—many of which try to mirror the existing terms of the third-party agreements with the EU.”
“I say “could” because I am trying to be generous, since Government Members have sought to assure us that no such thing will happen on their watch, but that takes us to the heart of things: if that is so, why are they refusing to allow any degree of scrutiny or engagement in the process? The trade Bill was supposed to be one of the flagship Bills underpinning global Britain. The Government boasted that it would set out the framework under which future trade agreements would be concluded, but it has been delayed. It has been kicked into the long grass. In fact, it actually came out of its eighth and supposedly final Committee debate two years ago tomorrow. In Committee, we made every effort to legislate for proper democratic oversight of trade agreements. How unreasonable we were!”
“The hon. Gentleman tempts me, and I have a great deal of sympathy with his position. I believe that the decision that the Government have reached on Huawei is already a risk too far, so I share that view with him. Of course, he is right to point out that the Chinese Government’s subsidy to Huawei is just as damaging in that sector as subsidies for steel or aluminium. Future trade agreements could undermine rights and standards, could change the nature of work and the protections offered to workers, such as leave arrangements and parental leave, could reverse environmental protections, and could compromise data privacy and our capacity to regulate in the public interest. Trade agreements could also see our public services being locked into greater privatisation and different pricing models.”