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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“I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for saying incisively what I was trying to convey to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford. My hon. Friend is entirely right. We want a comprehensive Bill that is fit for purpose and does the job that business expects it to do. This Bill does not do that. We want it to do what the Queen’s Speech promised it would, but we do not want the Government to use the Bill to abuse their powers and widen the powers available to them. Let me speak first to amendment 3, so that what we seek to achieve through it is clear. The amendment expands the Bill through paragraphs (a) to (d) to include new trade agreements that do not correspond to any prior or existing EU agreement.”
“The consequences for jobs, small and medium-sized enterprises and vulnerable economic groups are particularly significant, as free trade agreements have sometimes been to the disadvantage of all but the most powerful economic actors.”
“Any impact assessment must incorporate consultation with the devolved Administrations and with representatives of all those businesses and trade unions that are likely to be affected, as well as offering the opportunity for all other bodies to contribute to it. We have also written into the new clause that the consultation must be in line with the existing code of practice for Whitehall consultations—something that we might usually consider unnecessary to include in legislation. Given the extraordinary mishandling of the consultation prior to this Bill, there obviously needs to be a reminder that every consultation should follow the rules. The assessment needs to cover the economic impacts of any trade agreement, and importantly those impacts need to be disaggregated both geographically and by sector.”
“Carrying out a sustainability impact assessment is already a standard requirement for every new set of EU trade negotiations, and the methodology for conducting such assessments has been developed considerably over the years. Our new clause 5 provides basic instructions as to what a sustainability impact assessment should include at a minimum. For those who want to take the methodological issue further, the European Commission published in 2016 the second edition of its “Handbook for trade sustainability impact assessment”, which I refer the Minister to and is freely available online. Crucially, our blueprint for what a sustainability impact assessment should include relates not only to the content of the assessment, but to the process that lies behind it.”
“The fourth is the need for regular progress reports to Parliament after each round of negotiations. The fifth is the submission to Parliament of the full text of the agreement as negotiated before its signing. The sixth is a resolution from the House of Commons to give the Secretary of State the green light to sign the agreement. The first step in any proper procedure towards negotiating a free trade agreement is to undertake a sustainability impact assessment to identify the opportunities and risks that the agreement might present. Nick Ashton-Hart spoke of the importance of that in his oral evidence to the Committee.”
“We want a constructive procedure that focuses on the best possible outcomes for our future trade agreements, not one where the whole ship is spoiled for a ha’p’orth of tar. I will run through, in plain English, the six stages we have set out and then expand on them as necessary as they have been placed in the amendments, as subsequent new clauses hang off the overview clause. The first is the need for a sustainability impact assessment before the launch of negotiations towards a free trade agreement. The second is the need for Parliament to be involved in setting the mandate for the objectives of the negotiations. The third is the need for transparency—and, in particular, access to negotiating texts—while the negotiations are being conducted.”
“Our aim in bringing forward the maximum possible scrutiny and oversight before signing is to ensure that Parliament can amend and improve free trade agreements where they are found to be wanting. That is infinitely preferable to a system whereby Members are presented with negotiated agreements on a “take it or leave it” basis, thus risking the loss of an entire agreement and all the vital export opportunities that go with it simply because there was no possibility of excising or amending one or two of the offending provisions. In oral evidence, Dr Hestermeyer referred to the system in Germany, where Parliament is involved early on in the proceedings precisely so that it can direct the federal Government in respect of trade negotiations, even though their negotiations are carried out by the European Commission.”
“Once again, let me underline that the procedure is designed to apply to free trade agreements, not to other international trade agreements referred to in the Bill under clause 2(2)(b). Equally, let me emphasise the importance of the words “before signature” in the title of the new clause. We have deliberately designed a procedure so that Parliament has the opportunity to debate and direct trade negotiations in the early stages, rather than protesting once it is too late. We will surely be supported by the Government in that, given how publicly the Secretary of State has rued the loss of legitimacy that led to the failure of the TTIP negotiations between the EU and the USA. Nick Dearden from Global Justice Now touched on exactly that point in our first evidence session.”
“Amendment 4 is consequential on amendment 3 and would require any regulations made under clause 2(1) of the Bill to be subject to the provisions not of subsections (3) to (5), as at present, but of subsection (2A), which would be introduced via amendment 3, and subsection (5), which speaks across to the Treasury’s powers to set tariffs under the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill currently going through Committee in parallel with this Bill. Together with amendments 3 and 4, I would like to speak to the four new clauses that they bring into play, namely new clauses 4 to 7. New clause 4 is the top-line clause, because it outlines the stages of what we consider to be a proper parliamentary procedure for scrutiny and oversight of free trade agreements before signature.”
“That is why the Government’s suggestion that they should be granted the powers to smuggle the implementing regulations past Parliament with no provision for scrutiny is so outrageous. The need for a proper parliamentary oversight process for such agreements was alluded to by our witnesses, Jude Kirton-Darling, the rapporteur on the EU Trade Committee, and Dr Brigid Fowler from the Hansard Society. They stressed that point repeatedly in their oral evidence to the Committee, as did so many other witnesses. To that end, paragraph (b) in amendment 3 looks ahead to the enhanced scrutiny procedures that we will propose under schedule 2 to replace the negative resolution procedure envisaged by the Bill as it currently stands.”
“The Minister, in his sedentary position, remains immobile but a smirk is creeping across his face. Those discussions are taking place behind closed doors, so we do not know what the Government have already said, and what they have said they would be prepared to trade away. Make no mistake: the Government are keen to ensure that they get deals done. This whole endeavour is a different way of approaching our trading future, and the credibility of the Government’s position politically relies on being able to conclude deals swiftly. We must be very wary of negotiations done in secret in order to achieve quick results for political convenience to save the Government’s blushes. We know that we are talking about new agreements, which could well include substantial new obligations on the part of the UK.”
“We heard in the first evidence session that there is every likelihood that the UK’s trading partners will regard the negotiation of new trade agreements as an opportunity to re-open the provisions that they had previously negotiated with the EU. Those agreements were designed to meet the interests of all 28 member states of the European Union, and the relative weight of the EU in the negotiations that informed them means that the third country in question would have been pressed into making sacrifices that it might not choose to make when acting alone in forming a bilateral relationship with the UK. Discussions on those countries’ new agreements with the UK are taking place now. I know that the Government are respectful of the EU treaties and are not trying to negotiate at the moment, but they are having fairly detailed discussions.”
“Again, my hon. Friend makes a very important point. We heard from our witnesses about the importance of understanding what we are doing before we rush out and do it. My remarks on this afternoon’s legislation have been extremely cautious in many respects, because I think that legislation is important. It is particularly important in this area, because we are talking about internationally binding obligations that are extremely difficult for us, as a country, to reverse. That is precisely why my hon. Friend’s point is so essential. We need proper impact assessments before we have our mandates established and before negotiations are concluded.”
“That is why putting these strictures in place is a vital part of what a responsible Government must do in relation to our future trade policy.”
“In the bottom left-hand quadrant were those countries where both GDP and average income are declining. In the top left-hand quadrant were those countries where GDP is declining but average income is growing. In the bottom right-hand quadrant were those countries where GDP is increasing but average income is declining. There was only one country in that bottom right-hand quadrant: the United Kingdom. That is a disgrace. That is a shame. It shows precisely why we need economic impact assessments. As many trade agreements have shown over the years, it is possible to increase the GDP of a country through a trade agreement while the people of the country become poorer. That is why we must take these deliberations so seriously.”
“I am very happy to take that comment on board, but I do not want to get sucked back into our previous debate—I know that you would not let me anyway, Mr Davies. That is precisely what an economic impact assessment is there to do: to show up those areas of the economy that might benefit and those that might be losers from an international trade agreement. It is then a matter for the Government, and a responsible Government should be trying to balance the interests around all of the United Kingdom to spread wealth and prosperity throughout all of the parts of these islands. The other day, I was deeply affected to see a graph that I had not seen before and is specifically relevant to the hon. Gentleman’s point. In the top right-hand quadrant were those countries where both GDP and average income are growing.”
“I am pointing out to the Minister, in response to his earlier remarks, the reason I voted for CRAGA then. I think I am right in saying that while his party voted against CRAGA, which it is now relying upon so heavily—there is an irony there—he did not turn up for the vote. I turned up for the vote and I voted for it, but because it was subject to all the scrutiny procedures that were already in place from the EU. The situation has changed.”
“We will precisely return to the issue of scrutiny for these new replacement UK agreements as we go through the rest of the Bill.”
“Let me conclude this section of my remarks by repeating that we have tabled the amendments and new clauses to establish a procedure for new free trade agreements that do not correspond to any prior EU agreement—that is the point I just made to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford. I was struck by how forcefully the representatives of business made the case to the Committee in our final oral evidence session on 23 January that there needs to be substantially greater consultation on the new trade agreements that the Government are negotiating, which correspond to prior EU agreements. Wherever those EU agreements are modified to incorporate new obligations, those obligations must be highlighted and presented to Parliament, to business and to the country as a whole, for proper debate, proper scrutiny and proper accountability.”
“In fact, they would not have to wait. I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman and I know he speaks with real experience in these matters, having been a trade Minister. I ask him to look at what we have proposed: we have tried to introduce the bifurcation at a high level in the legislation. We have put the proposals in at that point. Of course, they would have an impact on all the new free trade agreements. We are trying to ensure that for new free trade agreements, this is the proper process of scrutiny that will come into place. On the corresponding agreements—where the EU already has an agreement—there will be a streamlined procedure, but one that is still subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, particularly where those agreements have been substantially amended.”
“The Minister must be more straight- forward with the Committee. We have already been over this ground. He knows that the negative procedure does not make provision for anything but the grace and favour of the Government in giving Her Majesty’s Opposition an opportunity to object. There is no necessity at all for a debate or vote on the Floor of the House. He must be straightforward about that.”
“I will see him as a man of his word, and will be looking forward to going through what I assume will be a very similar text to the one I have tried to present to the Committee today. I will not press these amendments today, but I put the Government on notice that it is time for them to act and to come forward with their own proposals. If they do not, these Opposition measures will return at a later stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Craig Whittaker.)”
“I will try to extract the crumbs of comfort from the Minister’s remarks. He has said that he recognises that there is a role for greater parliamentary scrutiny of our trade arrangements and that these are matters to which we should return in due course. He has also suggested that we should be able to have a proper consultation on the future trading arrangements. Those are things that I take as good will on the part of the Minister. I propose not to press these amendments, but I make it clear to the Minister that, at a later stage in the passage of this legislation, he should table his own amendments to do what the Bill says it is about and what Her Majesty in the Gracious Speech to Parliament said it was going to be about. If he does that, I will be very happy.”
“Where they have an interest in changing the terms to their benefit, they will seek to do so, because that is what Trade Ministries do—they seek economic benefit for their country, and they expect you to seek it for yours. Unless the trade benefits for them are exactly the same for us alone as they are for 28 other countries, they are going to ask for changes in their interests. If the shoe were on the other foot, I suspect we can all imagine that it would be hard for our Trade Ministry officials to come to you all and say, “Well, we have just copied an agreement with a large trading bloc for one country’s benefit because it is in a hurry.” I suspect we will find that this will take some time—trade agreements always do.”
“Q Nick Ashton-Hart, how easy will it be to simply roll over and replicate the existing trade agreements that we have through the EU? In your view, does the Bill make provision for appropriate levels of consultation, parliamentary scrutiny and accountability? Nick Ashton-Hart: Thank you for inviting me—this is a first for me. To answer the first question, it depends very much on whether it is in the interests of the counterparties to those agreements to roll them over without modification. Since those agreements were created for a number of member states other than just us, those partner countries will go through a process of evaluating the net trade benefit to them of applying those terms to us alone.”
“Intellectual property, which has a direct correlation to the price of medicines and the price that the NHS may bear for them, through to local government procurement and e-commerce can also be added to that. Modern trade deals touch on huge areas of public policy, which should be within the scope of Parliament to control. We are concerned that the Bill does not allow for that scope. As Nick said, it is difficult for us to imagine that many of these deals will be a straight cut and paste. That is why the explanatory notes allow for substantial changes to be made to the deals, but without the requisite scrutiny that we believe Members deserve and require if we are to have proper control of our trade policy.”
“Q Perhaps Nick Dearden could pick up the same topic and, in light of what Nick Ashton-Hart has said, comment on the use of Henry VIII powers within the Bill. Nick Dearden: We are really concerned about the lack of scrutiny and accountability in the Bill. Global Justice Now, and a number of other organisations, worked on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership for a long time. We had some concerns about that agreement—not with the potential tariff areas, but with the non-tariff areas. In modern trade deals, non-tariff aspects make up the bulk of the agreement. That means everything from regulation—we probably all now know more than we would like about chlorinated chickens, but that is just one symbol of the regulatory aspects of trade deals that really concern the public, and I think many parliamentarians, too.”
“What likely trade-offs would we have to do with the other side?” But that process would generally be informed by a consultation with the stakeholders in the industrial sectors that have most to gain or lose, the unions in those sectors and the like, so that before you even get into a negotiation, you know where your benefits lie, you have your stakeholders signed up to what you are trying to achieve and the other side knows that you have those things. As I pointed out in my comments, the reason why you see so many leaks in trade negotiations is that it is in the interest of one party or another to put pressure on the other in their capital. Leaks do not happen by accident; they are deliberate.”
“Generally, the Trade Ministry will say, “We want to achieve these objectives over the course of this Parliament or this year,” and that is done in consultation with the relevant parliamentary Committees. Ambassadors explore ideas with countries all the time; they do not need a mandate to do that. When it becomes clear that there is interest in formalising something, a process goes on in the capital to say, “Okay, what is our net benefit to be achieved?” To do a deal of any configuration with country X, the economics teams in the Ministry would go away and say, “Where is the net trade-generative agreement here? What sectors would we have to include?”
“Q You were talking about the way in which other countries do the preparation of mandate and scrutiny of the process of creating a trade agreement. I wonder whether perhaps Nick Ashton-Hart could talk about the system in Australia and how the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties does it—or perhaps the system in Germany. Could one of you talk about that? Nick Ashton-Hart: I would also say on the point about when terms of reference are set and whether our ambassadors need permission before they go and talk, I worked with most of our trading partners in Geneva and dozens of other countries. There are a lot of commonalities in how legislatures interact with Trade Ministries.”
“On the scrutiny side, we had a sort of mirror of this debate in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill negotiation and discussions in Parliament. There may be some—”
“Might one of the reasons why the Bill puts in place a Henry VIII power be precisely because it envisages a scenario where such amendments might be made and where we might have to accommodate them, and the Minister then adopts that power in order to do so? Christopher Howarth: I think it is true to say that the agreements the European Union made were fitted around European Union interests and that if the UK were starting from scratch, we may have had other interests. The EU interests would protect French farmers and the French audio-visual industry. You would get a price on the other side, say with Canadian agriculture. If the UK was doing it, we might do it differently. That is probably a discussion that would take longer and we would come back to later, and these agreements would probably stay exactly as they are.”
“Q You made an important point. Clearly we need to ensure that the trade we have with many of these existing partner countries continues. That is an essential focus, which I think is uncontroversial around this room, but when you are talking about the amendments that might be made—as these treaties cease to be simply EU treaties that we are part of and become bilateral relationships with these countries, new treaties and distinct legal entities, as the addendums to the Bill have made clear—do you agree that it would be a fine opportunity for many of these countries to say that they want greater access to our markets in return for having this new agreement with us, or that they might take the opportunity to protect their market a little bit more?”
“Q Sorry, I did not ask about the scrutiny. I asked about the Henry VIII power, because if, as you have just suggested, most of these things will simply be rolled over and there will not be changes, what is the point of the Henry VIII power? Why would the Government need that, unless they precisely envisaged that there would be changes that they required that power to accommodate? Christopher Howarth: There may be some minor changes, potentially around the EU agreements and our relationship with the European Union. If there is an EU-agreed quota in an agreement with a third country—in terms of how we split that up, how we change that or the wording of the agreement—then there may be references that need changing in the agreements. There may be minor changes, but I imagine the substance of the agreements will stay pretty much as they are.”
“Q Why would a third-party country not take this opportunity? You took the issues of audio-visual in France, agriculture and so on. Why would a country not see this as an opportunity to get a better deal, as Nick Ashton-Hart has suggested they may well do? Christopher Howarth: Indeed, it might be an opportunity for the UK to get a better deal, because if we are a more liberal economy and we have more to offer, we may be able to get better access.”
“Q Indeed, but we have the need for speed. We do not want to gum things up. We want this to be done as quickly as possible, but that may not happen. Knowing that we are between a rock and a hard place in terms of time, other countries might see a negotiating advantage and an opportunity to press their case. Is that not the case? Christopher Howarth: Yes, but speed will probably be the overarching thing that dictates that they will remain as they are for the foreseeable future. We may come back to that at a later date.”
“Q Would we be negligent if we did not take this opportunity to try to improve the economic benefit that we get out of these deals? Nick Ashton-Hart: I cannot imagine that the constituencies of this country would see it any other way. This is a substantial portion of our GDP; it is a substantial portion of our export and import. How can you say to people that you passed up an opportunity to make things better, when that was part of the premise under which we are doing this whole exercise in the first place? And our other counterparties certainly will not see our need for speed as anything other than an advantage to them, because it is. We are the ones in a hurry. Japan is 1.8% of our exports or something like that.”
“An independent body, yes, but there must be representation within that independent body to represent all the important voices, which includes all those here, but I would also include NGOs and civil society, who have equal interest in the implications of trade. They must be at the table and that has to be in everyone’s interest, including business—big, small and medium. Martin McTague: Barry, it will not come as a massive surprise to you that, yes, I do agree that small business should be a serious voice on this. It is nice to know that James supports me. That is a welcome change. [ Interruption. ] It is something that we have clearly got unanimity on.”
“James Ashton-Bell: My organisation does not have a defined position on that blank sheet of paper you have just described, but to follow your rationale, and consistent with what I have said so far, bigger organisations do not have a monopoly on understanding how trade impacts the economy. In anything where you are making choices about trade and how it will impact the wider economy, you should have a wide and balanced group of people advising Government, or an independent authority, about how to make those choices. That means, indeed, that small business are very much equal to big business, and workers also, because workers are just as impacted as the businesses themselves. Chris Southworth: I just want to clarify my point. It is exactly the same: the representation is a critical point.”
“Q Mr Ashton-Bell, can I pick up on something you said because I noticed that you were nodding when Mr Burke was saying that. You said you struggled to understand how we could get the best deal without engaging every part of society in the debate. You also posed the question of who makes the fundamental decision. Do you therefore agree with Mr Burke that it would be helpful to have, in the nine places available on the TRA, statutory representatives perhaps of small business, the trade unions and producers? At the moment, the Bill has it as a blank sheet for those nine spaces, and nobody is really quite clear who might be appointed. Perhaps you could all comment on that, starting with Mr Ashton-Bell.”
“At the end of the day, these are people’s livelihoods, so it is very important, but it comes back to the same premise throughout this conversation: consultation, proper scrutiny across the stakeholders with Government and then coming to a conclusion as to what is right.”
“Q I am heartened by what has been said about taking this as an opportunity to improve things. I think that that is absolutely right of both the TRA and the scrutiny. The EU is evolving its system to include social and environmental dumping in trade defence. Does the panel think that we should include those things in our TRA? If the EU is doing that and we are not, do we risk becoming the favoured dumping ground against Europe, which is adopting such measures? Chris Southworth: Again, I think it all goes back to consultation and scrutiny. If people have an opportunity to look at the measures or issues properly, you are more likely to head those issues off. I agree that we do not want to become the second best option, or the optimal option for the wrong reasons, if you know what I mean.”
“When you look at what could happen with the dumping of goods and how that affects particular companies or industries that centre around certain areas, I think it is absolutely essential. As colleagues have said here, you have to take into account an industrial strategy that ensures that all regions and industries—particularly foundation industries—are protected as best as we can possibly do it. We definitely would need to include the environment, but social impact on localities and industries is very important.”
“The backlash to that model is sufficient to make everybody sit up in their seats and say, “That doesn’t work, let’s try and be better.” The answer to your question is yes. James Ashton-Bell: I agree with that. We do not have a defined position as an organisation on this, but I would say that we do have a defined position that trade, industrial strategy and your wider domestic agenda are inherently linked and should never be seen as running in parallel or separate. Given those concerns, we would say that you would never take a decision on anything to do with trade defences without taking into account every impact on your wider economy before making that choice. Tony Burke: I agree. The question of taking the environment into account is important, but so is this question of social impact.”
“Q Specifically on the way in which the EU is introducing those environmental and social considerations into its assessment, I think the proposals elsewhere in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill are talking about the powers of the Bill and clearly that will be more closely defined there, but in principle, are those considerations ones that you would like to see in any impact assessment that the Government are conducting on their trade remedies? Chris Southworth: If we are going to create a free trade model that works for everyone, the answer is absolutely yes. There must be those considerations and there must be that input from the range of stakeholders. It has to be the right way forward. It is the only way forward, because what we definitely know is that what we have at the moment does not work.”
“Protect Mr Pursglove’s constituents. Martin McTague: The only thing I can add to that is that I do not see anything in the Bill that prevents you from doing that. This is something that we would support in secondary legislation.”
“Q Just to follow up, when the consultation period on the Bill ended and the MTRA had submitted its evidence to the Government, how long was it before the Government published the Bill, and do you consider that the Government took time to properly consider the representations to the consultation that they received? Did that maintain trust in the process from industry bodies? Tony Burke: Are you referring directly to the MTRA’s evidence, Mr Gardiner?”
“Well— Tony Burke: Yes. Well, as I said earlier on, one of the issues was that we have done a tremendous amount of work on this and lots of wide consultation. We came up with our proposals and we were quite surprised that almost overnight that was what we were going to do. What was the feeling? The industries represented on there were somewhat taken aback that it was done so quickly, and concerned—as would be expected—about whether their voices would be listened to. From the union’s point of view, that was very much the same. We thought that we had done one hell of a lot and put the arguments there very clearly, and obviously some of the key issues for us, such as ILO standards and employment protections, were not there. Hopefully we can try to revisit them and get them in at some point.”
“Q Just for clarity, the consultation finished on 6 November and the Bill was published on the 7 November. Is that right? Tony Burke: I believe that was the case, but then I will stand corrected. I remember it all happening.”
“Q Mr Ashton-Bell, what are your comments on the way in which that would be perceived in terms of consultation being effective and the trust that Government were engendering? James Ashton-Bell: The thing I can say is that the optics were not ideal.”