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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“UK assistance has been vital to many of those countries, and we welcome the £5 million that was made available to Dominica, as well as the additional funding announced from DFID when the Prince of Wales visited Antigua and Barbuda last week. But perhaps the Foreign Secretary should reflect on the 10% cut in the financial support for our overseas territories and consider reversing it. Disaster relief is not the answer to climate change, which is one of the central challenges facing the international community. With the UN climate conference having just finished in Bonn, the opportunity provided by the Budget should have been used to make key policy announcements on policies that would mitigate climate change.”
“Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) was shouted down by Government Members when she pointed out that, as page 22 of the Red Book sets out, ODA budgets will be adjusted to reflect the OBR’s revised GNI forecast. They will, therefore, be cut by £375 million in 2018-19 and £520 million in 2019-20—a reduction of almost £1 billion. There have been 17 named storms in the Atlantic hurricane season this year, many of them at category 5. That has made the season the costliest on record, with an estimated $367.5 billion of damage. Harvey, Irma and Maria have not just cost dollars; they have devastated the lives of our friends and Commonwealth partners throughout the Caribbean and beyond.”
“Their plight moved the new Secretary of State for International Development to tears on her visit over the weekend to Bangladesh, and she is reported to have said that it appears to be ethnic cleansing. I think that most hon. Members in this House would simply say, “Yes, it is.” But I pay respect to her for going so quickly to apprise herself of the situation there and in the Caribbean. I trust that she will be a strong advocate for her Department’s financial needs against the siren voices in the Conservative party who wish Britain to downgrade its 0.7% commitment or to circumscribe our aid budget in such a way as to refocus it away from poverty reduction, disaster relief or sustainable development. My hon.”
“Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, have warned that cutting our armed forces by a further 12,000 will seriously undermine our global capacity. Recently, Government Back Benchers have reportedly engaged with their Treasury colleagues on this subject in the fashion of an English wicketkeeper greeting an Aussie batsman. The depletion of our armed forces capacity in an uncertain world is something that the Government contemplate at their peril. Another challenge, which was raised powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), is the appalling suffering of the Rohingya people who have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine province.”
“The global theme of today’s Budget debate has enabled the House to examine the impact of the Chancellor’s statement on Britain’s place in our world and our readiness to respond to the global challenges we face. Many of those challenges have been referred to by hon. Members. The whole House was shocked by the attack on the al-Rawda mosque, in which 305 Sufi worshippers, including 27 children, were slaughtered. The threat of terrorism is global, and although this particular atrocity was perhaps symptomatic of the metastasis of the cancer that is Daesh and a result of its military defeat in Raqqa, we must understand the implications for the strength of our military. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House, including my hon.”
“The Secretary of State is indeed an optimist, and it is good to hear him so upbeat about all the trade opportunities that he thinks await us in the post-Brexit world. Perhaps he can explain why, when the Red Book shows trade in the world economy increasing year-on-year by 4% over the next five years, it shows the UK’s export growth decline from 3.4% next year to 1.2% in 2019, and then plummet to just 0.1% in each of the following three years. Is the Secretary of State perhaps an optimist who can find no rational grounds for his optimism?”
“America’s Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross told the CBI this month that the essential precondition of a trade deal with the USA was to move our regulation standards and environmental protections away from the EU and closer to those of the Americans. Last week, Michel Barnier said that the essential precondition of a good trade deal with the EU was to keep our regulation standards and environmental protections close to the European model. The Government say their top priority is securing barrier-free trade with the EU, so does the Secretary of State accept that he can have American cake or European gateau, but he cannot have both?”
“Germany has said 2030; Norway and Holland are aiming for 2025. The Chinese owners of Volvo say that all their new models will have an electric motor from 2019. As the climate conference in Bonn begins, does the Secretary of State consider that the UK Government’s plan to ban the sale of fossil fuel vehicles from only 2040 is somewhat lacking in ambition, failing to provide strong leadership, or downright pathetic and making the UK a laughing stock?”
“The Secretary of State knows full well that a technical rectification would disadvantage other members, which is why seven member states of the WTO have written to Azevêdo specifically setting out that that is unacceptable to them. On 6 July, the Secretary of State said that he was confident that a technical rectification of WTO schedules would be “smooth and fully understood by our trading partners.” —[ Official Report , 6 July 2017; Vol. 626, c. 1364.] Well, it is not. What is he going to do about that? What assessment has he made of the delays and of the impact on our businesses that will result from that?”
“Thank you, Sir; it is always good to have you keeping me up to pace. Recent reports suggest that Boeing provided Monarch Airlines with 45 Boeing 737 MAX jets at a cut price and that Boeing used a complex sale and leaseback deal to provide Monarch with more than £100 million in cash against a paper profit. Given the Secretary of State’s earlier commitment to trade defence remedies, why has he left it to me to write to the EU Commissioners to ask them to investigate this as a matter of potential illegal dumping and anti-competitive behaviour?”
“The Minister is right to say that we have an excellent method of calculating our emissions, but she might have pointed out that other countries do not, and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is currently preparing updated guidelines on how best to account for emissions. Will she confirm that, for that vital work to proceed, the UK Government will be one of those who increase their financial contribution to the IPCC to make good the shortfall left by President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement? Does she also agree, now that the cost of offshore wind energy has fallen by a half in just two years, that those are the easiest emissions to calculate, because they are zero?”
“Will he agree to make the evidence that was available only in closed session available to Members of this House on Privy Council terms or, indeed, to the Intelligence and Security Committee? Does the Secretary of State agree that we would all wish this country not only to adopt the highest ethical standards and controls but to be seen to adopt them, and that it would be helpful if he could now give his assurance to the House that it is his considered view that not only were the Government rational in adopting the view they did, given the procedures they followed and the evidence they considered, but that there is, to his certain knowledge, no risk whatever that UK arms might be used by Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war in any way that might constitute a violation of our obligations in international humanitarian law?”
“The Government relied on material they brought forward only in closed hearing. That evidence could not be seen or heard by the claimant—the Campaign Against Arms Trade—or its lawyers, Leigh Day. As such, the court ruling that the Government’s decision was a rational one, given the procedures and evidence they considered, was based on secret evidence, which it was impossible to challenge. Does the Secretary of State accept that the court judgment makes specific reference to the substantial body of evidence presented in open session, which in fact suggests that a clear risk does exist that British arms might be used in violation of international humanitarian law?”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that today’s judgment did not seek to rule on whether the Government were correct in concluding that there was no clear risk of a serious breach of international humanitarian law, but rather on whether, in so concluding, they had reached a decision that could be considered rational, given the procedures they had adopted and the evidence they had considered? Does he further accept that if those procedures themselves were defective, or the evidence the Government considered was insufficient, misleading or even simply not comprehensive, it follows that the decision, however rational within its own parameters, could be deeply flawed, and this country might be at grave risk of violating our obligations in international humanitarian law?”
“Does the Secretary of State recall that evidence revealed in the High Court in February this year showed that the civil servant at the head of export control had provided advice to a previous Secretary of State recommending that the UK suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia “given the gaps in knowledge about Saudi operations”? Can he explain to the House why that recommendation was overruled by the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), who sits alongside him? Does the Secretary of State agree that the Committees on Arms Export Controls should be set up in this Parliament without delay so that export licensing for arms sales can come under the necessary parliamentary scrutiny?”
“Does he recall that, on 21 July last year, the Government corrected their previous declarations that they had no evidence of any violations, and that the Foreign Secretary stated in September last year that the Government’s new position was that they had been unable to make an assessment and that the Saudi authorities were best placed to make such an assessment? Does he accept that the Foreign Secretary was wrong to franchise out our obligation in this way, and that we, not the Saudis, have the duty to assess whether there is a risk that British arms sold to the Saudis might be used in contravention of international humanitarian law?”
“Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the UK has licensed more than £3.3 billion of arms to the Saudi regime, including: £2.2 billion of ML10 licences, dealing with aircraft, helicopters and drones; £1.1 billion of ML4 licences, dealing with grenades, bombs, missiles and countermeasures; and £430,000-worth of ML6 licences, dealing with armoured vehicles and tanks. The Secretary of State knows that indiscriminate use of air strikes, the destruction of a country’s means of food production and the targeting of civilians are all classed as war crimes under international humanitarian law. Does he recall that a United Nations panel of experts reported in January 2016 that Saudi Arabian forces had engaged in “widespread and systematic” targeting of civilians?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and early sight of it. I know that he and the whole House will agree that the war in Yemen is a humanitarian tragedy. Thousands of people, including women and children, have been its victims both directly and indirectly through the loss of life-saving infrastructures such as hospitals and water supplies. All of us should, and do, mourn that keenly. The question for the High Court was whether the Secretary of State was entitled to conclude that there was no risk that British weapons might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
“Of course, the Minister could have pointed out that a trade agreement can only take place with Mercosur, because Brazil is part of that bloc, and should an EU trade agreement be put in place with Mercosur prior to our leaving the EU, it would become one of the agreements the EU currently has with some 50 countries. How does the Secretary of State propose to carry out his manifesto commitment to replicate all of those existing agreements after Brexit, and specifically, what legislative instruments does he propose to introduce to that end in the trade Bill?”
“In his recent talks in the United States, did the Secretary of State discuss President Trump’s initiation of a section 232 investigation into the effect of steel imports on US national security? What concerns does the Secretary of State have about the impact such a protectionist ruling might have on the UK’s steel sector and on jobs in our steel industry due to lost exports and trade deflection of dumped goods on our market?”
“The figures released just last week by the Office for National Statistics show that in quarter 1, the UK’s current account deficit was £16.9 billion—a widening of £4.8 billion from a deficit of £12.1 billion in the previous quarter—most of which is due to the widening of the trade deficit. Despite sterling being so low, exports increased by only £1.7 billion, whereas imported goods increased by £4.3 billion—a widening of £2.6 billion.”
“First, I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer and all the other victims who suffered on that fateful day in March when this debate was last scheduled. The Secretary of State is at the Dispatch Box fielding for the first time since the creation of his Department almost a year ago a debate on Government trade policy in Government time. It is not exactly normal practice for Trade Ministers to hasten to the Dispatch Box when the country has just posted one of the worst sets of balance of payments figures in its recorded history. Although I admire the right hon. Gentleman’s chutzpah, I am not entirely convinced about his timing.”
“I want us to get a deal. Of course we want the best deal for this country, but the hon. Gentleman has to take on board the fact that since the referendum decision our country’s currency has depreciated by 12%. I trust that that is not something that he feels sanguine about.”
“Let me be absolutely clear: we welcome foreign direct investment in this country—of course we do. We want people to be investing in our jobs, our economy and our future—”
“Only yesterday, we read that the Chancellor is demanding that the Secretary of State prove the case that our ability to strike trade deals after Brexit will make up for losing tariff-free access to the EU. In other words, the right hon. Gentleman is being asked to justify his job as the Secretary of State for International Trade once leaving the customs union gives us the competence—perhaps in this case I should say the right—to negotiate our own independent trade agreements.”
“Perhaps if I can finish responding to the Secretary of State’s intervention, at an appropriate juncture the hon. Gentleman might catch my eye. There is no difference between the Secretary of State and me on those matters. In fairness, I will say that in the past 50 years there have been 15 sets of quarterly balance of payments figures that have been worse than last week’s, and one of them was under a Labour Government, just after the global financial crisis. The other 14 have all been in the past five years, under the Conservatives. It would be mean of me to give the right hon. Gentleman too hard a slapdown because the Chancellor has been doing it so effectively on behalf of us all.”
“I will, in a little while. A year on from the referendum, a year on from the Government’s announcement that they were taking back competence in international trade negotiations, the Cabinet is still divided on what it has all been about. That is extraordinary. The country is crying out for leadership, and all its current leaders can do is sit around the Cabinet table plotting who amongst them should be their next leader. A year on, what has been achieved?”
“I urge the right hon. Gentleman to read precisely what our manifesto says. We have made our position on those points extremely clear: we are leaving the European Union; that means that we want to secure the best benefits, and we will look to secure exactly what the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said he would achieve, which is the exact same benefit benefits as we currently have inside the European Union.”
“The right hon. Gentleman really must allow me to respond to his first intervention before seeking to follow it up with a second. The trouble with the right hon. Gentleman is that he does not want to listen to the answer. [ Interruption. ] Is he quite calm?”
“As I was saying before I was persistently—and, I must say, quite rudely—interrupted, we have set out very clearly that we will try to secure exactly the same benefits that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union claimed would be procured in the negotiations, but we are not fixated on the structures; we are fixated on the outcomes. But we will be leaving the European Union. The right hon. Gentleman can be assured that we are committed to honouring that manifesto commitment.”
“The truth is that no deal is not a trump card to be thrown on the negotiating table in some macho gesture; it is actually the procedural outcome of article 50, because if we fail to negotiate a deal within the two-year period, we will be ejected from the single market of the European Union and put on World Trade Organisation terms. Far from being a trump card to be played, no deal is actually a cliff edge over which we would be pushed.”
“However, if we are to rise to these challenges, we need more than the patriotic flag-waving we have seen from the Government Front Bench; we need clarity and careful planning, which we have not had. We are setting out to leave our major trading partner. Where is the road map? There is no White Paper. Where is the estimate of costs? That appears to be what the Chancellor has now started demanding. Government Ministers appear incapable of presenting anything approaching a unified view on the matter. The Prime Minister repeatedly tells us that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, and her Chancellor says that actually “no deal would be a very, very bad outcome for Britain”, while her Brexit Secretary tells us that he is “pretty sure”, but “not certain” and “not 100% sure”, that there will ever be a deal.”
“If only they would agree to publish a trade White Paper that integrates industrial strategy with international trade policy, that creates a network of regional trade and investment champions to promote exports, that promises full transparency and scrutiny of future trade deals, and that builds human rights and social justice as a key strand in trade policy, perhaps our encounters at the Dispatch Box would become a lot more consensual. The challenges we face in leaving the EU are not insurmountable. Ours is a great and proud country and we are an enterprising people. Our goods and services are among the best in the world, our economy is a dynamic and attractive marketplace for investment, and we will be a thought leader in the next wave of industrial growth.”
“Of course, we were promised a trade Bill, which has now been confirmed in the Queen’s Speech. The accompanying notes actually state that one of the main benefits of the trade Bill will be: “To meet the manifesto commitment to ‘introduce a Trade Bill”. Well, yes, but it is something of a tautology. I am heartened to note that the Secretary of State clearly read our manifesto, because since the general election his Department has adopted Labour’s manifesto pledge to guarantee market access for the least developed countries to the same level they currently have with the EU. Since the general election the Government have also agreed with Labour’s manifesto pledge to address trade remedies.”
“No, the right hon. Gentleman has had his chance. A year on, what has been achieved? It took Donald Trump’s Administration seven weeks to produce a trade policy paper. This maladministration has failed to do so in an entire year. I have now been asking the Secretary of State to produce a trade White Paper for seven months. How extraordinary it is that the Department for International Trade has existed for a year but has completely failed to set out its mission and vision in a White Paper so that British businesses can have some clarity about their future. Nor was there any clarity in the Conservative manifesto. It was scant on detail and peppered with vague promises, such as: “We will work to forge a new culture of exporting” and “We will take a more active role in supporting British consortia to win…contracts”.”
“I have absolutely said that I want us to be in a strong position in these negotiations, but what I also want is clarity from the Government about what the future will mean for our businesses.”
“We must all hope that we will ensure that we get a deal, and that it will absolutely provide us with friction-free access for our goods and services.”
“The point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that the triggering of article 50 was setting precisely the timeframe in which he was to buy the car. It said that within two years either we had to negotiate a deal, or we would be trading on World Trade Organisation terms. He makes my point precisely.”
“Prospective trade agreement partners will want to know what trading bilaterally with the UK will mean for access onwards into the EU.”
“The UK will continue to be subject to some supranational court system—if not the European Court of Justice, we will be subject at least to the World Trade Organisation dispute settlement procedures. Importantly, modern free trade agreements often involve the harmonisation of national standards to match those of the partner country in order to be able to trade freely. This is not necessarily negative. International trade agreements provide an opportunity to promote higher standards across the world, rather than a race to the bottom, if they are negotiated correctly. There is no dichotomy between trade with the EU and trade with the rest of the world—that is simply absurd—but our global trade opportunities will be shaped by our future relationship with the EU, whatever that is.”
“Our future legislative framework will need to be aligned to that of the EU in order to maintain the mutual recognition and equivalence necessary to trade into the European market. This is something that many British and foreign companies, including Toyota, BMW and the Confederation of British Industry, have been calling for. We will no longer have a seat around the negotiating table that decides on product and other standards, but we will be forced to accept them if we wish to continue trading into the single market. People might think that this is a rather hollow way of returning sovereignty to the UK. In any free trade agreement that the UK negotiates after we have left the EU, we will have to make some compromises on our sovereignty.”
“The Government are to bring in the great repeal Bill to get rid of the European Communities Act 1972, which incorporates European legislation into domestic law and grants it supremacy over domestic law. Therefore, European legislation currently in place will be converted into ordinary repealable legislation. On the face of it, that appears to mean that the UK will be able to legislate without any regard to EU law. However, if we are to maintain a high level of access into the single market and preserve the supply chains currently in place, our exports will still have to meet European standards and requirements. Much of the current legislation will have to remain as is.”
“His Mansion House speech certainly seemed to have swallowed the Labour party playbook whole: fair and managed migration; a Brexit for jobs; and no deal being a very, very bad deal. Securing a trade agreement with the EU must remain the Government’s No. 1 priority. Leaving the EU without a trade agreement would be a significant failure by the Government, and the British public will remember that they were repeatedly told—we heard it repeated today—that it could not happen because the EU countries traded with us more than we did with them. Without an early and comprehensive deal with the EU, there will be substantive tariff and non-tariff measures, which will cause friction in trade between the UK and the EU, whether in customs duties, customs checks, visa processes for service providers or renewed VAT procedures.”
“The top 10 Commonwealth trading partners combined account for just 8% of our exports, and the entire Commonwealth—all 52 countries—accounts for just 9%. The Secretary of State once referred to protectionism as a class A drug. If he really thinks that his current round of trade dialogues could possibly make up for the shortfall in goods exports of leaving the EU without a new free trade agreement in place, then protectionism is not the only class A drug he has been smoking. Labour, business and the trade unions are united in prioritising the best possible access to the single market once we have left the EU. That means continued tariff-free access, no new non-tariff barriers to goods or services and, if necessary, a transitional arrangement to avoid any cliff edge. It seems that we might lately have recruited the Chancellor to our cause.”
“I am sorry, but I will not give way again, because I have given way many times and I am conscious that more than 20 Members wish to participate in the debate, and we have to be fair to colleagues. My party has consistently said that economic logic should dictate the outcomes of the Brexit negotiations. Certainly we must not jeopardise a positive new trade deal for some arbitrary immigration targets set for political reasons. We need a new trade deal with the EU. It must maintain the supply chains and business relationships that link us to the EU and that are so critical for jobs and economic wellbeing. Let us remind ourselves just what is at stake. The European Union currently accounts for 44% of our exports. The EU remains our closest trading partner, in terms of the volume of trade and geographical proximity.”
“Will he guarantee today that our future trading relationships will not be based upon the sacrificing of British farmers and their livelihoods? It is not just the EU that will be pressurising the UK to drop its share of agricultural subsidies. A number of countries have already expressed interest in free trade agreements with the UK on the basis of liberalising our agricultural market. Countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa are active members of the Cairns Group, which is a WTO negotiating group precisely for agricultural trade liberalisation and the reduction of subsidies. Does the Secretary of State regard this liberalisation as positive for our farmers?”
“Our food and farming industry is the product of decades of shaping by the European single market and the £3 billion-plus of support from the common agricultural policy. The EU’s combined rights and shared obligations under the WTO include a specified limit on the amount of agricultural subsidies that the EU may utilise. The UK is entitled to a share of these as part of the Brexit divorce and could, in theory, continue with a modified version of the CAP. But the Secretary of State will know that there are rumours that his Government are considering a deal whereby the UK would give up a share of its agricultural subsidies to the EU in order to secure a more favourable deal for other sectors of our economy.”
“Will the Minister set out what discussions he has had with industry on this and what decision, if any, he has taken about the appropriate way to go forward? He will appreciate that the issue of cross-border data flows is not just about facilitating market access. It is also about the regulatory framework to provide data protection for privacy and human rights. The second example of the inseparability of EU trade and our policy for trade with the rest of the world relates to the future support that we provide our agricultural industry. The UK’s food and farming industry is not only important to our national identity; agriculture also contributed £9.7 billion to the UK economy in 2016.”
“techUK speaks for business when it says that the Government need to facilitate access to both the European market and the rest of the world, but this requires appropriate cross-border data flow arrangements with our different trading partners. It sounds simple. It is not. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations on the EU’s privacy shield framework to replace the safe harbour privacy principles demonstrated that facilitating cross-border data flows between the European system and the American system is a genuine challenge that will not be addressed overnight in future free trade agreements. We cannot simply create a separate trade policy on this issue for the EU and a different one for non-EU countries. The direction we take on one influences our options on the other.”
“My hon. Friend does not want to see a decline in jobs in any sector of this country. It is really not right simply to dismiss the fact that, if we do not secure friction-free, tariff-free arrangements with the European market, those jobs could be prejudiced in this country. I am sure that he would want to take cognisance of that. Cross-border data flows are a key cornerstone of the digital economy. They help to drive UK innovation, economic growth and business efficiency through facilitating data transfers between organisations located in different countries. To help our economy grow and create jobs in the UK, we need to create a trade environment that drives innovation and positions the UK as a leader in the digital economy.”