Gulf States: Trade and Human Rights

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)]

Free trade agreements such as this are hugely beneficial to both economies, and I do not think that is at the cost of things such as human rights. It is really important that we all hold dear to us our own standards and become huge ambassadors and advocates for those standards around the world.

Where you are best able effect change is by having standards such as labour provisioning and against forced labour, and where you are able to articulate those within free trade agreements, you should really consider and use those opportunities to do that. When it comes to much broader policies about how you set out and articulate much wider, free-ranging ambitions, I do not necessarily see that those free trade agreements are always the place to do that. Instead, those are conversations that are being had between organisations such as the FCDO and direct counterparts within each of these countries, to work with them collaboratively and co-operatively, to share best practice, to help and support and to raise their ambitions. I do not think this is something that you can simply document as an ambition on a piece of paper and put it away in a cupboard for years and years until it is renegotiated; it is the consequence of consistent and live ongoing conversations.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I do not understand the answer that the Minister has just given, because when Labour was in opposition, this House, in the ping-pong on the Trade Bill, insisted on a Labour amendment—which these Benches supported wholeheartedly—that every trade agreement would have a human rights chapter. So have the Government have done a really regrettable U-turn on human rights and trade agreements or has the human rights scenario in the Gulf improved so much that the Labour Government do not think it is warranted?

[Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)]

I do not believe that is what I said. What we are seeing is a combination of understanding that human rights are complex and broad. It is a much broader range of things: modern slavery and thinking about our labour standards, cultural things, same-sex marriages and how we think about women in the workplace. It is broad and far-reaching. Things such as labour standards can be clearly articulated and clarified in agreements such as this, but there are broader aspects that are a consequence of much wider-ranging conversations, and which happen as an ongoing conversation. Yes, there are places and tactical specifics where free trade agreements stand as an opportunity, but there are also much broader, more encompassing conversations which happen collaboratively.