Employment Rights Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

Much of this seems to be an unknown, which begs the need for a detailed impact assessment of the creative industries. My noble friend Lord Freyberg has put down an amendment to that effect that we will hear later in the Bill. Such an assessment should be a deep dive into the differing kinds of jobs and work status in this sector. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, was introduced only on Friday, belying its considerable importance to the creative industries. I hope that he will bring it back on Report, because we need time to hear differing views from the full range of stakeholders on this issue.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I was prepared to put my name to this amendment because I believe that the whole nature of the creative industries, and theatre and festivals in particular, depends on flexibility. Let me give noble Lords an example. When I joined the board of the Royal Opera House, there were in place at the time union restrictions which meant that several operas in the repertoire would go beyond them because they could not possibly fit into that time. The unions and management got together and worked out a flexibility that would allow operas—Wagner’s, for example—to go beyond the hours without penalising people. It is a give-and-take situation. The arts need the flexibility that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is suggesting in his amendment, and I simply rise to endorse it.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to stick with being very brief. We have had three exceptionally powerful speeches. Amendment 16 is, in a sense, tackling a subset of a debate that this Committee has already had on Amendment 7 in the name of my noble and good friend Lord Goddard. I hope that the Government are beginning to accept that not all work comes in steady flows; it can have peaks and troughs and be disrupted by events way beyond anybody’s control. I hope that the Minister is going to take this away and work out how the current drafting needs to change in order to make the necessary allowances, whether it is for theatres, festivals, farmers or food and drink. A whole series of activities that experience those irregular patterns must be incorporated into this Bill.

Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, on the whole I tend to support the idea of having one’s sparring partners join the club, because there is then a way to communicate. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, made this point. Communication is incredibly important, such as through cultural and sporting exchange.

However, the points made by my noble friend Lord Alton seem to me to rather trump that consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, said that we would be making an exception in the case of this country. But why would we make an exception? I suggest that the answer lies in my noble friend’s point that the country has behaved exceptionally and therefore that we have to take that into account.

Finally, I say that we must learn from the Post Office affair, for example, which we will come on to, that we can never probe enough—we need to look at things in depth, especially something such as this where there are clearly areas that we could consider more thoroughly. I repeat what the noble Lord said: this is a plea to look further. It is not doing anything else at this stage. It asks the Government to allow us to look further at something that has considerable consequences.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for presenting this amendment calling on the Secretary of State to publish a report assessing the potential impact of China’s accession to the CPTPP on the United Kingdom and saying that both Houses of Parliament must be presented with a Motion for resolution on the said report.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, indicated earlier, we on this side of the House would have preferred this amendment to cover all new accession countries—but for the purposes of this amendment I will refer just to China. Several noble Lords spoke in Committee on the case for this amendment and I do not propose to repeat what was said. However, I will make noble Lords aware of China’s non-market trade practices and its history of using economic coercion against CPTPP members, which must be considered in any valuation of its prospective accession.

First, there are aggressive military exercises and drills in the Taiwan Strait that threaten peace and stability in the South China Sea. This could be destabilising to regional trade. In addition, China has ongoing territorial disputes with other CPTPP members, including Japan, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam. Its willingness to use coercion against countries that disagree with it has often strained relationships with several CPTPP members. For example, it halted imports of Canadian canola and meat products in response to the arrest of a Huawei executive in Vancouver. Japan was denied access to rare earth materials in 2010 and Australian exports have suffered from Chinese import bans. Furthermore, several CPTPP member states have expressed concerns that China’s subsidies of state-owned firms and arbitrary application laws would be likely to make it hard for the country to join the trade pact.

I wanted to quote two examples, but the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned the Japanese State Minister, so I will leave it at that and bring in another example of our very own British CPTPP trade negotiator, Graham Zebedee. Without commenting specifically on China’s application, if a country’s economic rules are really quite far apart from what CPTPP says, inevitably there is quite a big question about whether they could undertake really massive reforms. These concerns alone seem to provide sound justification for the commissioning of a report and Motion for resolution, as required by this amendment, so that both Houses of Parliament have the opportunity to fully consider the case for and against China’s accession to the trading bloc.

Recent newspaper reports have shown the lengths to which President Xi will go to crack down on companies when strengthening his control of the economy. Business leaders in China are under immense pressure. Last year, more than a dozen top executives from sectors including technology, finance and real estate went missing, faced detention or were accused of corruption practices. China’s national security law, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Kennedy, is dangerously vague and broad. Virtually anything could be deemed a threat to national security under its provision and it can be applied to anyone on this planet. This law has provided little or no protection to people targeted. Lawyers, scholars, journalists, pastors and NGO workers have all been convicted of national security offences, simply for exercising their freedom of expression and defending human rights. Business leaders may face the same treatment.

China’s current policies and practices are at odds with many of the provisions and requirements of the CPTPP, and it is unlikely to be able to conform to them unless current members agree to significant concessions in the negotiations. This is why concerns about coercion are particularly relevant. Without considerable concessions, it is hard to see how China would qualify for accession. Equally, China is highly unlikely to make the changes to its laws and regulatory systems that would be required to gain the acceptance of CPTPP.

We are obviously sympathetic to the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others in support of this amendment. However, there is not yet any agreement for any other country to join the partnership. It would be improper to single out any one of the possible new members at this stage, including China. At Second Reading and in Committee, we put on record our strong concern about China’s human rights record, but we believe that our human rights concerns should be universal and that one country should not be singled out. Should the noble Lord, Lord Alton, decide to divide the House on this amendment, we will abstain.