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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“If I speak to the average leave voter, they would say “Why don’t you get on with it?” This isn’t fast enough for them. The average remainer will consider it a recklessly rushed process. We are not reaching a conclusion—it depends on which perspective is looking at this. That is largely the view we are getting from small businesses.”
“Maybe not, but I have more confidence that there is opportunity for the House to alter this legislation to fill in on the more controversial element. Chris Southworth: My overall impression is twofold: too fast, and not enough consultation of the international business community, bearing in mind we are talking trade here. This is not public health in Yorkshire or somewhere. This is trade. We must be talking to our trading partners, who are just as perplexed and confused about what is going on over here as anybody else. I don’t think they were consulted enough, partly because of the speed and partly because there was not enough communication as to what the UK is trying to do. That would be my answer. Martin McTague: The best way to answer this is that small business as a whole is completely split down the middle.”
“You should go into the diplomatic service. James Ashton-Bell: We start from a position that much of what is in this Bill is a framework. The framework itself can be argued to a greater or lesser extent as non-controversial. The controversy starts arising when you start putting in the detail that is not currently in the Bill as it stands and, from our perspective, more importantly, what is not in the Bill at all and probably should be. Those are bigger questions. On that basis, we know a number of conversations happened in the run-up to publishing this Bill, particularly around the issue of dumping. The elements that went into the Bill seemed to be the ones that were the least controversial and could be built around with more detail. Presentationally, was it the right thing to do?”
“But however quickly you take the process, you would want— Martin McTague: How quickly you take the process is either perceived as being far too fast or reckless.”
“On that basis, I make two points. First, Parliament needs to be happy that it has procedures in place to deal with agreements that might be changed significantly. Even the Government have indicated that that is a possibility—they use language about substantive change in the Bill documents. Secondly is the point about transparency and possibly some kind of reporting function, which does not have to go into the Bill; it could be done through other means. However, I feel that, given the number of these agreements that have to be dealt with in the amount of time that we are talking about, some kind of regular reporting transparency about exactly what is going on would be useful to Parliament.”
“Once we start opening trade deals up to technical tinkering, whether that is a number here or a point there, our trading counterparts will also use that opportunity to try to get a bit more leeway for their interests. It is likely that these deals will be very different at the end of the process from what we have at the beginning. That parliamentary scrutiny—the role of MPs in ensuring that there is democratic oversight—is absolutely crucial but entirely missing from the legislation. Dr Fowler: If the question is which of these agreements will change significantly, my answer is, we do not know that. Other people who are much more expert than me in the details of trade agreements would have better sight of that, but as someone who looks at what is coming to and through the Westminster Parliament, we simply do not know at the moment.”
“No-one on the panel has mentioned that so far. In terms of process, compared with the parliamentary scrutiny powers that British MEPs have today in the European Parliament, the Bill is an enormous step back in democratic oversight of trade agreements. To add to what has already been said from a legal perspective about what these trade deals are, any kind of roll-over is likely to come up against the offensive interests of our trading partners. We have already seen that what was supposed to be quite a technical question of the division of tariff-rate quotas going to the World Trade Organisation has turned into an enormous political issue, with countries who supposedly are our friends and allies defending very actively their offensive interests in relation to tariff-rate quotas.”
“There are provisions in the FTAs in addition to intellectual property: competition law, labour and environmental protection provisions are in all the modern EU agreements that we have talked about. Essentially, this gives the Government the ability to implement labour standards provisions, which include not exactly sanctions, but obligations that need to be performed. Frankly, these two Bills strike me as very old-fashioned; they do not seem up to date with the reality of modern trade agreements. Jude Kirton-Darling: I will follow on directly from that last thought, from my experience inside the European Parliament as an MEP, scrutinising trade policy at EU level. Of course, our MEPs have done that job for the last few decades. From our perspective, what really is missing from the Bill is the parliamentary scrutiny dimension.”
“Environmental agreements have trade aspects; the Montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer is all about banning trade in ozone-depleting substances. The convention on international trade in endangered species is all about trade in endangered species. Therefore, I think the definition is a little bit unclear. One could say, “Well, it’s agreements that just liberalise trade,” but that is a problem too, because FTAs do not just liberalise trade. They have intellectual property provisions, which might arguably in some way promote trade, but more likely investment. Certainly, they are not the first thing that you think about when thinking about a trade liberalising agreement.”
“I must say that I think the amendment is very comprehensive; for a start, the strategic partnership agreement is not even tangentially about trade, so it could not really be described as an agreement about trade. The point of it is political and human rights conditionality and so on. In that sense, the definition is over-inclusive. It is also under-inclusive, in the sense that mutual recognition agreements are only one type of agreement relating to trade that one might legitimately want to include here. For instance, one would also have customs co-operation agreements as an obvious agreement that should be rolled over and implemented. The broader point is that, despite what I said about the strategic partnership agreement, it is an outlier in this respect. A lot of agreements have to do with trade.”
“There are other points to do with the definition of the sorts of agreements that are covered here, such as a free trade agreement, which is here defined to include a free trade agreement and a customs union agreement by reference to World Trade Organisation definitions. Then, interestingly, we have in clause 2(2)(b), “an international agreement that mainly relates to trade, other than a free trade agreement.” I do not know whether you would like me to say anything about that now. It could be quite broad. I noticed one idea in some of the amendments, which was that it could be further defined as including a strategic partnership agreement, the language used for the framework agreement sitting on top of CETA, and mutual recognition agreements.”
“One point of interest is that the Bill extends to agreements that have been signed but not ratified as of Brexit day. I think we can safely say that that is likely to be the comprehensive economic and trade agreement with Canada, the agreement with Japan and others as well; and if the EU agreement is provisionally applied at the same time, some might think that they are in force and ratified. In fact, I found the language in some of the documents around this area blurred the point a little bit, but there is a fundamental difference in international law between a signed and provisionally applied agreement and a ratified agreement. The Bill is quite extensive when it comes to signed agreements.”
“That amounts to roughly half the trade we are talking about, or half the 15% that the Government assessment arrived at for those agreements. I do not think that will be rolled over, because I am not sure we would want it, quite apart from the technical issues that will arise and the question of whether other states and our partners will say, “We also want something.” Dr Bartels: I would rather focus on the implementation aspects. Obviously, the question of which agreements the Government choose to roll over is a political decision; it depends on negotiations and so on. My reading of the Bill is that it talks about the implementation of those agreements. What is important there is to identify the scope of the agreements that can then be implemented.”
“Do we really want to reproduce those deals by statutory instrument? It seems peculiar to me that we would want that. Turkey, for example, is in a customs union with the European Union. Do we want a customs union with the European Union? We might say yes or no, but I wonder whether a statutory instrument is really the way to take those decisions. Switzerland has a whole number of agreements, some of them linked by what is called a guillotine clause, free movement. Do we want that? That probably could not be reproduced even if we did want it, so that is also a no. You might say, “All this is insignificant,” but if you add up the numbers, the EEA is 2% of UK trade, according to the Government’s assessment of the Bill; Turkey is 1.3% and Switzerland is 3.1%.”
“As to their content, first, there are the technical details that will need to be changed—for example, rules of origin, which define when a product benefits from a trade deal. Those are quantities, so they will say, “50% of a car has to be from the EU.” That, of course, no longer fits; it will have to be the UK, and the numbers will have to be changed too, because a UK car is substantially now 44% UK-content. We will not benefit from the deals if we do not change the numbers. Those are technical issues, but they are vital. There are some deals that are structurally so different that, quite frankly, I wonder whether we really want to reproduce them one-on-one. For example, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are in the European economic area—as was recently explained, in the sidecar to the single market.”
“Q I suppose what I would like to try to get out of this session is whether you feel that any lacunae have been created by Brexit in our system, whether there is appropriate scrutiny and transparency, and whether you feel that there are shortcomings in the Bill that need to be filled. May I start by asking the panel, perhaps beginning with Dr Hestermeyer, for examples of deals that will be the same, and of deals that may be different? Are they simply roll-over deals or are they substantively new, distinct legal entities? Dr Hestermeyer: The first thing to note—in fact, it is even in the Government’s comments on the Bill—is that the deals will be technically new international agreements, so they will be technically separate.”
“The developing countries are put through the agony of trying to negotiate together, which is very costly and time-absorbing for them, and rather ineffective. What we need to do is to try to find a much simpler way of allowing developing countries access to the British market than the current EPAs.”
“Q Perhaps I could start by asking Professor Winters about the economic partnership agreements that the EU has with developing countries. They are in the list of those that the Government are seeking to replicate. Do you believe that replicating those agreements and creating EU-UK equivalence is the best way forward in our engagement with the developing world? Are they models that the economic partnership agreements countries themselves would wish to see replicated? Professor Winters : In general, they have been a pretty poor piece of policy. As far as the UK is concerned, I would suggest that we might want to consider rolling them over for two or three years, but I would hope that that two or three-year period was then used to try to devise a more satisfactory regime. They encourage distortions in the developing countries.”
“Q Given that there is this renegotiation going on, do you feel that those countries might seek to use the occasion as a means of bettering the current agreement in some way? Or would they feel—if they are being told, “You will not get a trade agreement unless you do this quickly”—that they are being bullied into doing it against their will? Professor Winters: By and large, countries find it very difficult to resist the offer of tariff-free access to a market. If they were put in a position where they were told it was the equivalent of the EPA or nothing indefinitely, my guess is that most would shrug and accept the EPA, but given one quarter of a chance, they would want to talk to us about a more reasonable and satisfactory—and in the end more efficient—process of market access.”
“Q Picking up on both what Professor Winters said about not unpicking—Parliament should not be able to unpick a trade agreement—and what Mr Peretz said about Canada, Mr Clancy, once the UK Government, rather than the EU, set international trade agreements in place, what would be the implications if the devolved Administrations had a consent reserve and could implement some form of veto on internationally agreed obligations? How do you get that whole-of-governance approach where the consensus Mr Peretz was talking about is achieved so we know that what is agreed can ultimately be delivered without introducing an ex post facto power of veto that would stop it being implemented? Michael Clancy: That is a very difficult question to answer without getting into uncomfortably hot waters.”
“The question, therefore, is what is an existing agreement and how far does it have to be changed for it to change from being an existing agreement to a different agreement. That is a question that I do not care to essay on at the moment.”
“I am sure that parliamentary draftspeople have an amour propre in respect of such things, but an ordinary individual—a rather rustic lawyer like myself—is not going to catch it immediately. These are the issues we ought to look at: parliamentary oversight, extending across these islands, and how we write something that attains the intention of Parliament. If I might just cross over, I do not think the Bill is meant to implement new agreements; it is meant to transpose existing agreements. That is quite an important facet to dwell on. Although, if one scoots to the explanatory notes, one sees in paragraph 44 that there may be “technical changes to the agreement” and in paragraph 53 it says: “It may also be necessary to substantively amend the text” of the provisions.”
“Earlier, we heard Brigid Fowler explain that the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 provisions are inadequate. Why are they inadequate? Because they have only got this perpetualisation of the 21-day period, and this Bill does not allow for any form of implementation order other than a negative procedure order. Therefore, there is an issue about that. The read across to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and the sifting procedure that the Procedure Committee advanced and had accepted into the Bill—Mr Walker’s amendment last week or the week before—raises issues about what the relationship is between orders under this Bill and those under the EUWB. Why does this Bill amend the EUWB? Why not have amendments brought forward for that Bill, reflecting this Bill?”
“You could write to the Committee. Michael Clancy: Let’s give it a shot, shall we? The important thing is that the UK Government are the negotiator of these international agreements. Parliament is the body that then ratifies agreements made by the sovereign power, exercised by Government. Therefore, in that sense, it is quite difficult to see how the devolved Parliaments would be able to exercise any form of consent reserve in respect of the making of an agreement and the ratification of an agreement. The issue is that the parliamentary oversight of the agreement is deficient in this place and it is even more restrained when it comes to the devolved legislatures. That is the issue I would like people to focus on. Clearly something needs to be done to enhance oversight here.”
“I would be more comfortable if there was a more rigorous approach for parliamentarians to get involved in the setting of the rules for the system as well.”
“There is already a proposal for there to be an annual report. The EU anti-dumping regulation is quite specific about what the European Commission must report to the European Parliament in terms of the statistics it must provide. A little more detail ensuring that certain things were provided in this report would be useful. Tom Reynolds: The question about Parliament’s ongoing role with the Trade Remedies Authority is an interesting one, but so is Parliament’s role in setting up the rules for the system. The point made by Jude Kirton-Darling earlier on about the level of involvement of MEPs in scrutinising and offering amendments on, for instance, the new anti-dumping methodology and the TDI modernisation, which was mentioned, has been integral in improving that legislation from the Commission’s original proposals.”
“Q Picking up on your last point, Mr Stevenson, in the EU, the Commission is obliged to report to the European Parliament on trade events, so there would be an annual production of just such statistics. There is a lacuna in the Bill in that there is no provision to make such a report to Parliament and to aid parliamentary scrutiny on trade remedies in that way. Is that something that you and the trade remedies alliance would seek to redress? Would you like to see introduced in this Bill some way in which a report ought to be made—an annual report perhaps—to Parliament? Cliff Stevenson: Yes, what would definitely be of importance is to have a substantial report submitted to Parliament on an annual basis. In the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill, there is a provision on reporting.”
“Everyone is saying that if we did not apply it in the UK it would be dreadful—consumer prices would rise and it would be awful—but €16 is all it would increase the price of a €45,000 car by.”
“It did not import anything, and within four years, because there were no duties in place, China had 43% of the UK market. Then, once duties came in, the percentage went back to zero. I know I have to go, but I want to make just one point about the lesser duty rule, which I am sure will be raised later. I know it is not in the Bill but it is very important, in that there is talk that if we did not have a lesser duty rule prices would rise and the consumer would be disadvantaged. Let me put that into context. In the hot-rolled flat case we had recently, the injury margin was 17.5% and the dumping margin was 29%. There is a difference there of 11%. If we think of a luxury car priced at €45,000, not applying the lesser duty rule in that case would increase the price of that car by a whopping €16.50.”
“It is the same when we think about the zero tariff for steel with developed countries. When India exports steel to the UK, it is at zero tariff; when we supply steel to India a tariff is applied. So when we say to India, “Can we do a free trade agreement with you? Hey, you know, we could do zero tariff”, India will say, “We already have zero tariff, so why would we want to do anything else?” What would add something would be having a strong trade remedies regime in place. If we had a weak regime, what would that mean? We talked about that before. It would mean a loss of jobs, and in the steel sector I do not want to talk about loss of jobs, because we saw a lot of that in 2015-16. But we would also see a rapid rise in imports. In rebar—reinforcing bar that goes into construction—in one year China had zero per cent. of the UK market.”
“Q Picking up on something you said earlier about the importance of not having a weak trade remedies regime, in your view would it be a mistake to think that such a regime, which did not protect producers’ interests, might encourage other countries to do easier, quicker trade deals with us? Would it be a mistake to use that in some sense as a bargaining chip to get a trade deal? Gareth Stace: I think it would. You are not going to say to the USA, “Hey look, can we do a really great free trade agreement with you? Look, our trade remedies is really weak and yours is really strong so can you weaken yours and then we will do a great deal?” They will not do that. They will keep their regime and hope that ours is weak, and they will then see more trade coming from them to us.”
“For about one in seven of our members, the existence of a free trade agreement is the determining factor in whether they export to or import from a country. I urge the Government to give stronger assurances for those agreements, as Mr Bain has mentioned, that already provide for, or have clauses mentioning, diagonal cumulation, but also to look at all the EU trade agreements and particularly those that have the greatest economic significance for the UK, and open up those discussions to provide for that as they are rolled over into UK-third country FTAs.”
“I think that diagonal cumulation is involved in the rules of origin in respect of the CARIFORUM trade agreements. These are areas where it seems that time is running out, the clock is ticking, and a solution needs to be found if British business and British consumers are not to face a large cliff edge in March 2019. Anastassia Beliakova: Absolutely. Rules of origin are a headache for businesses, and if we consider that there is the likelihood, in the roll-over of existing trade agreements, that they may have to comply with tougher rules of origin or that some of the benefits that they currently get by counting both EU and UK origin as single origin might be lost, that is very concerning.”
“A great deal depends on the kind of transitional arrangements that are adopted, but the kind of additional MFN tariffs that would apply would be 12% in relation to clothing from Turkey, 13% in relation to soft fruit from Chile and Peru and 27% on imported processed canned tuna from the Seychelles. Those would, I think, lead retailers and consumers to face considerable price pressures, so the main element that we would want to see is replication of the zero-tariff or low-tariff provisions on imports. The other key areas that are very difficult in terms of replication and, we believe, may require a degree of assistance from the European Union are in relation to rules of origin. For example, with the Canada trade agreement, there is a complex rule of origin. The same is true in relation to South Korea.”
“Q I will kick off, then, with the British Retail Consortium. [Laughter.] I am just keeping you on your toes! The BRC has identified, among others, the agreements involving Norway and Turkey as the most significant of our EU FTAs. Of course, the Government have already indicated that there will be an end to free movement, which rules out simply replicating the Norway model, and that we will leave the customs union, which rules out simply rolling over the Turkish model, so what elements of the agreements—not just those two, but the others—do you consider it most important to replicate on substantially the same terms? William Bain: The key provisions are those on tariffs, because if the UK leaves the European Union, it is not part of the EU’s common external tariff system, and we could then face higher tariffs on imported goods.”
“In the context of other areas, where there is an assessment that change is possible, the sift Committee strikes me as a very sensible mechanism to prioritise and assess those changes and the degree of scrutiny that is required.”
“There are going to be some major changes, such as those we talked about with Turkey and the customs union, and with Norway, free movement of people and the four freedoms. Do you not think, given that you have already recommended a sift Committee in one form, that a similar sort of mechanism for trying to distinguish between what is and what is not vital, and what should have parliamentary scrutiny, is a sensible way to proceed? Stephen Jones: Yes, sorry; forgive me for the lack of clarity. My reference was really to the existing provisions between the UK and the EU in relation to financial services. In my assessment, for the purposes of transition and of business services in financial services, the chances of change, and therefore of the need for sift, are zero. There just is not the time.”
“Q I want to pursue what Mr Jones said. We have got away from the initial question of the sift Committee. You stressed the urgency of this and the need to try to get things through as quickly as possible, and you adopted an approach to delegated powers and Henry VIII powers of, “Well, maybe they’re necessary in the circumstances”. However, it was your organisation that recommended that there should be a sift Committee in the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. Would that not be an appropriate way of trying to say, “What we’re talking about here is a minor change to an existing agreement, but this is actually a major change”? We are talking about 100 separate agreements between the EU and Switzerland alone, some of which include free movement of people.”
“As has been said, negotiations take a long time, sometimes even up to a decade, and during those negotiations you still need to be able to test both the public views and the impacts. I would urge for these kinds of mechanisms to be put in place where new agreements are implemented.”
“Anastassia Beliakova: To follow up on what Mr Bowles said, the TTIP example certainly shows us how critical it is to have appropriate stakeholder engagement mechanisms. At the moment, the Bill is meant to deal just with continuity of existing agreements that have already had the relevant scrutiny from the European Parliament and have passed through the European Scrutiny Committee here. However, if there are very substantial changes or if we are talking about completely new agreements, provisions certainly need to be made for appropriate scrutiny in Parliament, and for stakeholder engagement for business, civil society and non-governmental organisations. It might make sense for that to have some form of statutory underpinning so that there is input that is not contingent on the political environment, which may change.”
“Effectively, that stymied the political will to take the negotiation further forward even before the new President was elected. It was absolutely clear that there are lessons to be learned from a negotiation of that scale, ambition and impact for the UK’s economy, to make sure that you have the right level of engagement, transparency, scrutiny and so on in an ongoing manner. For a much smaller market, I dare say that, given the time involved, it may not necessarily warrant a full-scale similar application of scrutiny because, frankly, the relative impact for the UK economy, and therefore for consumers, healthcare and so on, would be much less. Judge each of them on their merits.”
“Given that, should the scrutiny not be in place for Parliament either to assist procedure or, using some other mechanism, to say, “Yes, this is important, and we need to make sure that we, as Parliament, deal with it in the appropriate democratic way”? Edward Bowles: I would say be careful what you wish for, and I do not say that completely comedically. It would very much depend upon the scale of the market that you are interacting with, and the significance of it. The experience that I had of TTIP was one where the lack of initial transparency, of engagement with civic sector societies, and of disclosure of the mandate for the first 15 months of the negotiations very much allowed the debate to be run by outside interests that felt disenfranchised.”
“Q To follow up, I want to ask you all a question as business people. If someone introduced a break clause in a contract with you or one of your businesses, would you not take the opportunity to renegotiate the deal? Given all that you have said about the importance of clarity, stability, understanding and certainty about the future, which we entirely agree with you on—that is why we need a Bill to do this—do you not think that, if we were seeing changes introduced by these countries because of this opportunity, and some of the changes were substantial, and changed that clarity and certainty, then actually there should be a process of parliamentary scrutiny looking at them? At the moment, we may not be in control of that process. We know that we would like it to be very simple, but it may not be.”
“Does the Secretary of State consider that that regulatory alignment to a trade agreement negotiated in secret to suit the economies of the Pacific Rim, which constitute under 8% of our export market, is a viable proposition for our country?”
“I, too, welcome the new arrival to the Government Front Bench. I also welcome yesterday’s trade statistics. The Secretary of State and I may disagree over how much that owes to the depreciation of sterling, but we both agree that the narrowing of the trade deficit is a very good thing. With regard to the TPP, the Secretary of State says, “These are not mutually exclusive”, but he must account for regulatory alignment, which is part of the impact that joining the TPP would have. Indeed, the former permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy declared that joining the TPP would be “cloud cuckoo land”.”
“The steel industry has repeatedly complained that the Government are not prepared to impose penalties on exports from countries with significant market distortions. America is clear, having imposed penalties on China under section 232, and the EU is clear, having recently voted to pass new anti-dumping rules, but the Secretary of State has constantly ducked the issue and refused to say what his Department will do after we leave the EU. When will he give the steel industry a straight answer?”
“Will the Secretary of State confirm that the 2010 Act proceeds by negative resolution and it is not open to any debate, any scrutiny, any vote and may not even be amended? Therefore, the sort of scrutiny that most Members of this place would expect to take place for any new trade agreements will not occur in the way he has led the House to believe.”
“But I am 100% certain that those of our fellow citizens who did vote to leave the EU did not vote for sovereign powers to be taken away from the bureaucrats, as they regarded them, in Brussels, only to be handed over to the Secretary of State for International Trade. They thought—indeed, they were told—that we were taking back control to our sovereign Parliament, yet the Bill contains Henry VIII powers that explicitly give Ministers the right to amend primary legislation.”
“We were repeatedly told that the Trade Bill would provide the basis for the country’s future trade policy once we had left the EU. To quote the Queen’s Speech policy paper from last June: “The Bill will put in place the essential and necessary legislative framework to allow the UK to operate its own independent trade policy upon exit from the European Union.” It does not do that. Instead, it represents yet another attempt by the Government to appropriate to themselves powers that should by rights be afforded to Parliament. I must acknowledge my bias: I voted to remain in the EU and I think our country has embarked on an act of economic self-harm.”
“The need for a Bill to establish a trade remedies authority, to establish our independent membership of the WTO government procurement agreement, to enable us to maintain strong trading ties with partner countries that have had historical agreements with us through the EU, and to establish the power to collect and share trade information—all are uncontroversial requirements. However, the way in which the Government have gone about this process is not uncontroversial; it is quite the opposite. On the face of it, this is a modest little Bill that has a lot to be modest about. The four things that the Bill does, it does badly. But what is worse is that the one thing it absolutely should have done well—namely, to provide appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and oversight of our country’s trade agreements—it fails to do entirely.”