Wednesday 23rd January 2019
(5 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberTrade Bill 2017-19 View all Trade Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 127-II(Rev)(a) Amendment for Committee, supplementary to the revised second marshalled list (PDF) - (23 Jan 2019)
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, it is welcome to move from the group of amendments that caused maximum divergence to the group of amendments after dinner where there is maximum convergence. I think we all side with the way that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, led this debate by pointing to the immense benefits in achieving sustainable development goal 1, the eradication of extreme poverty by 2030. We are not going to do that by aid—aid is around £1.5 billion a year. It requires significant trade flows and therefore this is crucial.
I will make some very brief general remarks. Around £20 billion of goods a year are shipped to the UK from developing countries, accounting for around one-third of our clothing, one quarter of our coffee and other everyday goods such as cocoa, bananas and roses. This trade also creates jobs, helping people to work their way out of poverty. Consequently, I am pleased to confirm to the Committee that this has already been legislated for in the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act. My noble friend Lord Lansley might still have been on vacation when on 4 September I took that Bill through this House. Although the debate on it was brief, it was very good. I shall come back to that point later.
The trade White Paper confirmed the Government’s intention to provide, as a minimum, the same level of import duty reductions to all current beneficiaries of the EU’s GSP scheme as we leave the EU. I am also pleased to assure the Committee that Section 10 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act enshrines in UK law the obligation to provide duty-free and quota-free trade access for least developed countries. The Government will lay secondary legislation to set out these details of the scheme before we leave the EU if needed by March 2019, or at the end of the implementation period. In the future, we will look to improve the UK’s trade preference scheme by making it even more generous, simpler to attain and capable of working better for the poorest people around the world. Alongside this, our aid spending will continue to provide support and expert advice to help break down barriers to trade and to promote investment so that developing countries can take better advantage of these arrangements.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned, I also have the privilege of being the Minister with responsibility for economic development in the Department for International Development. It may be of interest to my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lady Neville-Rolfe and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that in that context I am undertaking a review of how we might approach the opportunities to look at more beneficial trade and tariff-reduction packages and economic partnership agreements in future as we leave the EU. I would be delighted to take this conversation into the Department for International Development, for those who are interested, to meet officials so that we can delve more into some of the great expertise and ideas that we have heard today.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The Minister’s commitment is very welcome. We know that we can take him at his word on that because he is very open and a very responsive Minister who is respected across the House. I will follow up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. With regard to the 49 countries under the EU Everything But Arms policy and, according to the OBR, the 27 other low-income countries that the EU has defined, if on exit we are going to replicate the EU system we would also have to replicate the rules of origin system that comes with GSP+. GSP+ has distinct EU rules of origin requirements for those countries that are part of it. Is the Government’s intention to replicate the rules of origin criteria that the EU currently operates for them?
Lord Bates
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. His precise point is that we are aiming to replicate what currently exists, so we would take across the current applicable rules of origin into what we would be laying in secondary legislation before we leave the European Union. Once we have left—without a deal or, we hope, after an implementation period—we could devise our own scheme during that implementation period and be aware of the EU’s thinking. I know from serving on the Foreign Affairs Council that it has done some tremendous development work, particular with the post-Cotonou negotiations, as to how we fit. The current plan is that what is presently the case will initially also be the case for these countries.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Before my noble friend sits down, could he give me some reassurance about the wealthier countries on the list? Have they actually come off the list or is it our plan to make sure that the benefit of tariff-free trade is given to those who are worse off?
Lord Bates
Yes, and my noble friend Lord Lansley touched on this point. He talked about the treatment of different countries. We work from a World Bank list and an OECD DAC list of the least developed countries. As countries graduate—which is a normal procedure—they need to move to other agreements as well.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his full response. We would welcome the opportunity to meet up with him.
We are converging on this point, though the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is coming from a slightly different direction. She is hoping to see some quite quick change towards—I cannot think of the right word—a family relationship, involving Commonwealth and other markers which are not a feature of the other lists we have been talking about. It might make sense to try to work out where this is going.
We are among friends, so I can confess that I tried to do exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, did, which was to go back to the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 and try to work out where we were. I gave up, but he did not. I could not make out the list markers. The confusion comes because we are working from two different directions, as the Minister said. One is from a World Bank list of economic measures and the other is from a trading and development list which gives a different feel. Clearly, you get a different group of countries if you look at different indicators—not just poverty but the potential to export, the development status of their industrial arrangements and their other markets. We would have to think hard about all these. This does not vitiate the main point that it may not be necessary to put an amendment into this Bill, but it would be quite useful to have something where we, on all sides of the House, roughly understand the basis on which the Government are progressing. The Minister did say rather remarkably—but I hope it is true—that, whatever the timing, even if it were 29 March, they would be ready to make sure and clarify full details of what would be available to all the countries in scope on the GSP and on the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act approach. If that is true, he is obviously ready for the meeting and we are too. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Minister of State, Department for International Trade (Baroness Fairhead) (Con)
My Lords, first, I reassure your Lordships that the powers in the Bill will not be used to implement investment protection provisions, because such provisions in trade agreements do not require domestic legislation. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his explanation of the rationale behind Amendment 29, in his name. However, it would mean that no future free trade agreement could be signed or ratified unless any claims brought by foreign investors against the UK were heard by UK courts or tribunals.
The amendment overlooks the fact that foreign investors already have significant rights to legal redress in the UK—for example, through domestic law and normal procedures such as judicial reviews or commercial arbitration. As I think noble Lords would agree, UK courts are regarded internationally as reliable and independent. The amendment would preclude the possibility of disputes being resolved through ad hoc international arbitration tribunals, which is the internationally and currently accepted means of investor-state dispute settlements—ISDSs—in any future free trade agreement. So requiring investment disputes to be heard by UK courts or tribunals in all instances could undermine a framework that has successfully supported UK investors in many countries worldwide for, as the noble Lord said, a long time. In fact it has done so for the past 40 years.
The ISDS system does not allow other countries’ courts to have jurisdiction over matters that UK courts could determine themselves. Instead, it is independent of both states’ legal systems. It is important for foreign investors to have an independent means of redress, as they may be more susceptible to certain risks such as discrimination, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said. ISDSs allow claims to be brought for potential breaches of obligations of the type that the noble Baroness referred to—expropriation and discriminatory practice, et cetera.
The UK expects other countries to treat British businesses operating abroad as we treat investors in the UK. Although I do not believe that this was intended, it is likely that if this amendment were adopted, any future partners would insist on reciprocal provisions, meaning that any disputes brought by UK investors against a host state might also be required to be heard in that host nation’s courts.
I turn to Amendment 56, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. Accepting this amendment would mean that for any future trade agreements to be signed and ratified, they would have to contain an agreement on the parties pursuing a multilateral investment tribunal system and an appellate mechanism for the settlement of investor-state disputes. Before I go on, there is an issue with the WTO appellate court; I think that the members of the WTO are trying to resolve it. It is not directly relevant to the ISDS as it is a different system, so in the interests of time I will stick to ISDS.
Not all trade agreements cover investor protection and dispute settlements. We therefore do not think it appropriate to require all trade agreements to include a commitment to pursue a multilateral investment tribunal system. In fact, to introduce such a requirement might hinder the development of our trade policy. As I mentioned, ISDSs have provided UK investors overseas with a means of redress which is independent of and outside the host state’s national courts. The UK has over 90 bilateral investment treaties which include these provisions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is absolutely right that reform of ISDS is under scrutiny. It has taken centre stage in recent years, frankly, with many international fora taking a keen interest. The UK supports the reform agendas which, as she said, focus on ensuring: fair, efficient and cost-effective outcomes of claims; high ethical standards for arbitrators; and increased transparency of hearings. We in the UK have supported the EU’s mandate to open negotiations to establish a multilateral investment court, or MIC, which would be a permanent body created to hear investment disputes. The CETA with Canada is currently the only EU FTA containing that investment court system. We are working with our Canadian partners on its provisions as part of the broader work on trade agreement continuity. This includes the question of our future approach to investor-state dispute settlements.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
The Minister mentioned Canada and it was interesting to hear that. May I seek clarification? I raised this issue on Monday in Committee with regard to Singapore. As a consequence of the court of justice judgment in May 2017, the Singapore agreement was made into two: a stand-alone free-trade agreement and a separate investment protection agreement. These draft trade and investment agreements were signed on 19 October last year. What is our position in the UK on seeking to roll them over? I think the Government have stated clearly that they will roll over the free trade agreement. Do they intend to roll over the investment protection agreement also, which is quite distinct?
Baroness Fairhead
My understanding is that it does not require any further domestic legislation. I will write to the noble Lord if that is in error, but I understand that it is already in domestic legislation. If that is incorrect, I will write to him and put a letter on file in the Library.
Baroness Kramer
I understand what the Minister is saying, but as she addresses that issue, would it be possible to understand what will happen with the other continuity agreements? Singapore is just the beginning. We will be seeing others moving over to this split—a free trade agreement here, a dispute resolution system there—and it is unclear whether we will have negotiated to follow that pattern and to mirror that split of the new structure, or whether we will remain tied into the old structure while the EU moves on to the new one. There must have been an internal decision somewhere in government on how we deal with this.
Baroness Fairhead
I am happy to meet the noble Baroness and the noble Lord with officials to go through the detail of this, and then we will prepare a letter for the Committee if required. The discussions on whether the UN Commission on International Trade Law—UNCITRAL—should seek to establish a multilateral investment court are in their preliminary stages; there are no firm proposals on the structure, governance or cost. We are actively engaged. However, discussions on that possible reform are at an early stage. We should not prejudge the outcome of that process, because to do so could preclude the UK from making a later judgment when proposals are more advanced. We look forward to working with international partners. In addition to the discussion I offered, I welcome discussing this topic further. There are a range of views on this question. At this stage, should the UK require a universal commitment to pursue a multilateral investment court in all future agreements, that could result in the loss of our negotiating space.
In respect of the true aims of this Bill and the resolution systems that are already in place, and given our commitments to discuss MICs, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I am grateful to the Minister for her full discussion of these issues. As she started I was thinking that we could have got a better result if we had drafted Amendment 29 in the positive rather than negative tone—to make it optional in, rather than to restrict out, which was the main complaint she had about it. As the argument has extended, I can see there is a lot more going on here than we were aware of at the time we drafted it. I am sure that I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, the idea that if we can have a discussion about all the various things going forward, we might be able to have a better understanding of where, if at all, there is any need to move on that.
Having said that, the Minister mentioned that there was a lot of interest in it. I stress again that this is the one single issue that I have had the most correspondence about. Just about every group involved in trade and development has picked this as its number one issue. It is good that work is being done on it, in the sense that one is not trying to constrain good and effective systems that arrive at having a fair, efficient and highly regarded court that will have all the details and be able to deal with the various aspects of it. Clearly, we do not want to disadvantage other countries in relation to anything we might be doing. These are the pieces in play, as it were, and it is a question of trying to get confidence from Ministers and officials that things are moving forward.
In some ways—although this may be the wrong line to follow—it is quite like the discussions on the Unified Patent Court. There is a person not too far away from the noble Baroness who has quite a lot of detailed experience of that. That is an ad hominem—I do not know what the Latin is—but it relates to a particular issue: patentem. It has a link into but is not part of the European Court of Justice, which would play back to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. It might be too elegant a solution, but I wonder if that might be something we might also pick up, because there is something in there that might square all the circles. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, my son lives in Kent. I enjoy giving sparkling English wine from an excellent local vineyard as a present to various people, so I am slightly put out to understand that some local campaigners for Brexit have been urging vineyard owners to look forward to the day in late March when they will be able to call their product “champagne”—apparently with the Government’s backing, they have been assured. It is important that we understand the reciprocal nature of an arrangement like this. Therefore, to feed the expectation that we will keep our designation but remove it from other people is highly dangerous, and I suspect that the Minister sitting on the opposite Bench will have heard some very similar language.
Baroness Fairhead
My Lords, the Government see GIs as extremely important, and we are working to ensure that existing UK GIs will continue to be protected in future. I note the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Tyler and Lord Taylor, about the importance to specific rural economies. I could not agree more. They play a really important role in some very remote economies. For example, lest Scotland be forgotten, I know that the Scottish salmon industry directly supports 8,800 people, mainly in coastal locations. I hope my words today will offer noble Lords significant reassurance on a number of the points raised.
Baroness Kramer
I will be asked this question by the sparkling wine producer. Will Champagne, for example, need to apply to the UK for protection of its name, or will this carry over?
Baroness Fairhead
I was just coming on to that point: the future protection of UK GIs in the EU and then the reciprocal. We have heard loud and clear the desire of UK GI producers, and I can assure noble Lords that we are seeking to make this happen. At the time of this amendment being tabled, I believe there was no public statement from the EU on the future of existing GIs after exit. Since then, the European Commission has publicly stated, in November 2018, that:
“EU-approved geographical indications bearing names of UK origin … remain unaffected within the EU and therefore continue to be protected in the EU”.
This is consistent with what has always been the UK’s understanding. We expected that existing UK GIs would enjoy continued protection even after exit, because the current legislation means that the protection is indefinite unless specific grounds for cancellation are met. These grounds do not include removal from the EU. UK GIs will therefore continue to have the same level of protection as other third-country GIs protected in the EU. They are protected by virtue of being on the register, having earned that right by successfully passing the EU scrutiny processes. That protection will remain unless the relevant entries can justifiably be removed.
Lord Tyler
The Minister has been very kind in giving us so much detail. Do I understand that the EU has guaranteed that the reciprocal arrangement will continue if by any chance there is no agreement? What happens if one of the other countries challenges that designation—that protected status—and we are no longer a member?
Baroness Fairhead
As I stated, the protection is indefinite unless there is a justifiable challenge, which would take an enormous amount of time—and that does not include leaving the EU.
The EU needs to comply with the TRIPS agreement in relation to how it handles GIs, and the EU member states are also bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. In terms of future protection of the GIs in the rest of the world, we are currently working with global trading partners to transition those EU FT agreements, which also include obligations on the protection of GIs.
Regarding the protection of EU GIs in the UK—I think the noble Lord was talking about reciprocal arrangements—should we reach a withdrawal agreement with the EU, existing EU GIs will be provided with the same level of protection as now until the future economic relationship agreement between the UK and the EU comes into force or becomes applicable and supersedes. The potential long-term protection of EU GIs in the UK would therefore be determined as part of the negotiations under the future economic partnership. It is key for the Government to retain different options to give the flexibility needed successfully to conclude these negotiations.
Baroness Kramer
I did not understand this: so if there is no deal, the EU has given a guarantee that it will protect UK GIs—and its system would require it to do so—but the UK has given no guarantee that it will protect EU GIs or those of any other country. Is that correct, unless it goes forward into the continuity agreement?
Baroness Fairhead
The departure from the EU is just between the EU 27 and the UK. It is true that, legally, UK GIs are protected under EU law indefinitely and in the UK the matter is subject to negotiation under the FEP.
I have assured your Lordships that we understand the desires of UK GI producers for continuity. We will continue the protection in the UK, and the public statements of the European Commission give us assurance. If this amendment passes, it would remove the flexibility necessary for the UK’s negotiating position to successfully build new trade relationships with the EU. I believe that a number of my answers addressed the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. If he feels that they have not, I am happy to write to him, but I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Grantchester
Following up on the assiduous questioning by the Liberal Democrat Benches, I entirely understand what the Minister is saying about the EU and the UK and that the position will be maintained indefinitely going forward. However, can she clarify the situation of the two registers and how reciprocal they will be? Will it involve two applications from a UK producer, one to the UK register and one to the EU register, or will reciprocity maintain throughout, such that when they appear on the UK one, they will necessarily appear on the EU one at the same time? Will there be one system with two applications, as it were, both inside the EU when the UK is within it and outside the EU when the UK leaves? I hope I have made myself clear on that point.
Could the Minister say anything at all about the appeal process—the dispute mechanism—or will that be included in her letter to me on the more erudite questions I have asked her?
Baroness Fairhead
My answer on the application procedure is that there will be a very similar procedure of application when the UK leaves the EU. There will be two processes that are very similar, but equally the UK will have to comply with TRIPS and with the European Court of Human Rights.
I just wanted to add a word about the CETA agreement without taking too much time. There are no UK GIs recognised in the CETA agreement. That was because Scotch whisky already had protection in Canada. The final decision on which GI products were submitted in the trade deal negotiations was made by the EU in an agreement negotiated with all parties. On leaving the EU, the UK will be able to take back that decision-making, but I am happy to confirm that and I will write to the noble Lord on that subsequent point. On that, I invite him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Grantchester
I thank the Minister for all her clarifications. They have been very helpful. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and his colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. I realise that Cornwall is a very long way away from Merseyside and Cheshire, but I will have to check my passport arrangements. I do know that Cornish people are always very eloquent, and I thank him for all his comments. Having said all that, and understanding the utmost importance and gravity in which this subject is held dear to the Government’s heart, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.