Agreement Establishing an Economic Partnership Agreement between the Eastern and Southern Africa States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, for initiating this debate and agree with many of the points that he made—for example, publishing the agreements and those that they replace together. I also agree that there should be consultation wherever possible—for example, with the Scottish Parliament on the Faroe Islands.

Like my noble friend Lady Verma, I sit on the European Union Select Committee. We have been helping the scrutiny process in this House by reviewing the international agreements laid before Parliament in accordance with Section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The EU Committee was asked to take on this task rather late in the day, and it has involved a commendable cross-party effort by the committee and its sub-committees. However, as has already been said by previous speakers, the main credit should go to the clerks and our expert advisers, who, frankly, have done a fabulous job, working long hours and diving into the wearying complexities of these agreements. As we have heard, we published our sixth report in this series today—HL Paper 315, for the enthusiastic.

I am not sure that I have the chutzpah to table a Motion on this issue myself when there is so much parliamentary business to progress. However, I take this opportunity to draw attention to our work on treaties and to mention the UK-Swiss trade agreement, on which we reported today. This example is “illustrative”, in the word of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. I very much understand that my noble friend the Minister may not be able to comment on this agreement, although she is very good at pulling rabbits out of hats. Switzerland is the 10th largest trading partner for the UK. As a committee, we were disappointed that the Government, in bringing forward the UK-Swiss trade agreement for scrutiny, had not provided an explanation of the plans for future UK-Swiss services trade, which accounts for 52% of overall trade between the UK and Switzerland. Services are as important as goods to our economy. Given that they now represent nearly 85% of GDP, you might say that they are even more important to the wealth and success of our islands. I am sorry that the process gives them so little focus.

In the meantime, I support the words of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, about the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. I would like to see the three agreements before us passed without delay. I look forward to many further debates on the very important area of future trade agreements, which will potentially have big implications and lead to big changes to our country.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I suppose this is in the nature of an experiment. This is the first time we have had an opportunity to go into detail about the new world that beckons, whichever side of the Brexit divide one is on. At some point in the future, whether sooner or later, the UK will certainly be faced with making a very large number of these treaties. We need to get used to wading through them and investigating in detail.

I had only a short time to go through the agreements on the Order Paper, but I was left reeling, not only from the pages that dealt with the individual tariff lines—I know I will have to do more work on these because of the Government’s announcement today. Even so, it was a pretty scary moment to try to realise exactly what was going on there, equally so to recognise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that a modern trade agreement is not just about widgets and physical objects but trade in services, attitudes, approaches, commitments to work together, future developments—all sorts of areas. It is a very complex area. I do not think one quite has a sense of how that works in practice until one reads the raw text.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is right to ask us to dwell on how the process works. Obviously, the committee’s work is exemplary in this way. It may have been short of time and the necessary expertise, but it certainly managed to get access to quite a lot of information. It is full of information that would be very difficult to get if one did not have access to our expert support. It is very useful to give an initial sense of what we are really up against and to take the benefit of those who have gone before us. I do not think there is much more, other than to listen to the Minister’s response, which I am sure will be very fair and cover all the ground.

I want to flag up that I will be looking at these with one particular issue—investment—in mind. That should not be a surprise, since I have been raising this issue over all these trade agreements over a period of time. I looked through the agreements on the Order Paper today and could only find one reference to investment in Article 39 of the agreement establishing an economic partnership agreement between eastern and southern African states and the UK. Is this the only one with an investment chapter in it? Will the noble Baroness comment on whether that is a trend or just the way things are? I probably know the answer to that.

Given that this one has an investment chapter in it, what is the meaning behind paragraph 1(e) of Article 39? It says that the parties recognise the importance of investment and the objectives in this case are to,

“develop a legal framework that promotes investment by both Parties, with a view to promoting and protecting investment and work towards harmonised and simplified procedures and administrative practices”.

Does this mean motherhood and apple pie, or is it code for some new system of secret courts meeting in secret locations and taking decisions on investment with an adverse effect on the political and social economy of the countries concerned? I may have extended slightly to make my point, but I would be grateful for a response.

Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 4th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering but for a quite different reason. As I said all those months ago at Second Reading, we need a highly professional team to look after the UK’s trade interests, but I am not convinced that we need a new authority separate from the trade department. I may be out of date, but my recollection is that the work in Brussels is done by the Directorate-General for Trade, not by a special agency—and it seems to get along very well, as we keep hearing.

I might not be able to convince my noble friend the Minister, but I emphasise that the proposed body must be of a very special type. The agency, if we must have it, should be run by people who are independent-minded with Civil Service values, not representatives of any particular stakeholder sector. Such people must be able to stand up to the vested interests who will approach them in the way that they approach Brussels under the current arrangements. I remember lobbying DG Trade on bra quotas in Brussels. I have to say that I was one of many very fluent stakeholders interested in the cargos that were sitting on the sea and not arriving in the shops in Britain.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we are dealing with a clause stand part amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. But she and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, have raised a number of points that actually come in the next group. I wonder if for the convenience of the House we should merge these groups and hear now the speech by my noble friend Lord McNicol, which I have had the privilege of seeing. It covers much the same ground as that covered by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, will probably come in on the ceramics aspects. It might be easier to finish this group together, so I suggest that my noble friend Lord McNicol speaks next.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I read that a few moments ago and now I have lost it. I think it is on the merits and on the process. To that extent, because this is a probing amendment, I will not push this too hard and it is for the Government to decide. In my limited experience in your Lordships’ House, every time that I have led on a Bill we have come up against this question of what an appeal actually means. I have detected that the Government have gradually been moving away from merits-based appeals, because they seem to take up an awful lot of time, and argue that appeals done simply on a JR basis are becoming increasingly softer-edged, rather than being simply about the process. Therefore, the two come together and the legislation has tended towards being purely on the procedural elements.

I retain the rather purer view that there should always be an appeal system in some way, in which case it should not simply be limited to the procedures because that just restarts the clock. It should also include merits. But that is a matter for the Government to consider. The question was: if, in the other place, the Secretary of State has confirmed that there would be an appeal system, what is it and can we please have it clearly explained before we get to Report?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Has the noble Lord considered whether one could have an appeal to the courts? Of course, on the EU model that we were discussing earlier, the appeal is to the ECJ.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

I will get through this very quickly and then questions can flow in. Amendment 85, which has already been accepted, therefore sets out an appeals process for the Government to respond to. Amendment 86 relates to how these are disposed of and the procedures for that. The two go together and will be difficult to separate, but again the Government must take that forward.

We have already had reference to how recommendations from the TRA for action or no action would be based on two issues—an economic interest test and a public interest test—but we do not have any definition of those. They are obviously good ideas and sensible approaches, around which decisions can be placed, but the narrow question of what they constitute and, more importantly, how they would be kept in scope with how people’s views change over time, is not dealt with in the Bill. Therefore, Amendment 87, which deals with the public interest test, and Amendment 88, which deals with the economic interest test, set out not so much the detail of what they consist of but the process under which they might be organised.

Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we move from future prospects and problems around definitions and what other partners will do to a matter which will lie very much in the hands of the Government as we go forward. As and when trade agreements become the responsibility of this Parliament, there need to be procedures for establishing how and on what basis these are agreed, but also, as is the subject of Amendment 32, for reviewing our progress in carrying these forward.

The amendment is rather full. It contains a long list of issues so it is perhaps not a probing amendment, but I hope the Minister will accept that we would be open to further discussion on the wording. It is meant to set out broadly all the issues that we think need to come into play on this issue but the detail itself could be subject to discussion.

I hope all Members of the Committee will agree that we need to have a system under which we have confidence that any trade negotiations taking place on behalf of the people of this country are subject to effective periodic review of the issues involved, what the process will be and how many dimensions are involved in the consultations and engagement with the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, as well as the involvement of those affected by the negotiations, such as consumers, those who work in the industries concerned and the companies themselves.

Of course, there is an issue about what impact these trade agreements will have regionally, not just across the national regions but within England in particular, with variations that will need to be picked up. We need to make sure that Parliament, in assessing how these trade deals are done, has access to all the information that is required.

The whole process is set out in Amendment 32. Amendment 81, in the name of my noble friend Lord McNicol—he did so well with his previous amendment that we have given him the afternoon off to recover, so I am speaking for him on this amendment; we are working together, of course, as noble Lords would expect—sets out in more detail the question of independence for the responsible body. There are many candidates for that. We do not need to go into it, but it is important that there is separation between those who set up and agree trade agreements and those who review them for the benefit of the public interest.

This issue can be developed across various activities. I think there will be contributions from those who will wish to see more stress placed on the social rather than the economic issues. The Government are involved in international treaties that will come into play on this. There is a great deal to be said about how you would do this, with what process and everything else. The amendment attempts to set that up. I beg to move.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 64 in my name in this group. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, to the joys of tabling amendments. They provide the ability to lead scrutiny and discussion of significance in a very freewheeling way. I was also going to say “succinct”, except that the previous group, on rules of origin, took nearly an hour.

My amendment is inspired by Amendment 32, which was just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. However, having studied other amendments to the Bill and the Government’s reaction to them, I have opted for a simpler formula in the hope that this might attract support across the Committee. It provides for a review, after five years, by the Secretary of State of the impact and effectiveness of each international trade agreement under Clause 2, but it deliberately omits the long list of criteria in Amendment 32. That is because I believe in simplicity. I do not believe we should lay down detailed areas that the review should cover, worthy though they may be. As we know, policy priorities change over time and the review should be conducted from a contemporary perspective.

I pray in aid a precedent that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, will remember well: the report on innovation and economic growth provided for under the Intellectual Property Act 2014. I believe that was the result of an amendment that he tabled during the passage of that Act. As a Minister, I found the process of producing the report every year very helpful, as did the Intellectual Property Office. In fact, its CEO confirmed that to me only last week.

I have some doubts about the wisdom of setting up a special compliance monitoring agency, as proposed in Amendment 81, which is also in this group. It seems a big stick, given the Bill’s scope. However, on a separate point, compliance would appear to be in the purview of a general review of effectiveness. I have provided for such a review to be laid before the devolved Parliaments, to which the noble Lord attached importance, because I believe this would be a good way to keep them up to date, ensuring that the reviewers, looking back, think about their interests as well as English and UK interests. Such a review would also cover SMEs, which we discussed in another long debate last week. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister.

Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 11th June 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 29 I will speak to linked Amendments 30 and 34. I should perhaps express my regret that I arrived too late to speak at Second Reading as a consequence of other commitments.

The purpose of these amendments is to make it more difficult to extend the duration of a price cap and to ensure that it is temporary, if I may pick up the useful word used by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, in her amendment to Clause 2. As the helpful notes on the Bill say in paragraph 15:

“The cap applies until the end of 2020 but it may be extended, for a year on up to three occasions, if the conditions for effective competition in the market for supply contracts are not in place”.


The basic point is that I am unconvinced of the merits of price caps. Setting prices at a low level may seem superficially attractive but experience in many jurisdictions shows the problems that they create. For example, in California in 2001 retail prices were capped at levels that ended up being below the wholesale cost of energy. As a result, retailers found themselves $20 billion in debt and one of them went bankrupt. The state then had to step in. Price caps are against most economic theory and have unintended consequences, as we have discussed, so there is no need for me to labour the point.

If I may, though, I will share one personal experience of price regulation somewhat akin to what we are now discussing. As a junior civil servant, I was responsible for the milk costing system, administered with the help of a leading accountancy firm. In effect, we were responsible for setting the permitted retail price of milk. Unfortunately, a member of the departmental team unwisely agreed that a visit to an international dairy conference in Miami was a legitimate expense. As a result, everyone paid more for their milk. This was an early lesson in why it is better to avoid government interference in pricing.

Still, we are where we are and we need to improve the Bill. I believe it would be much better if the cap ended in 2020 and that, as drafted, it is far too easy for the Government to extend it. Indeed, there seems to be almost no prospect of ending it before 2023. Yet the Minister, Claire Perry, said in Committee in the Commons that there was,

“strong consensus in the Committee”,

that the cap should be temporary and that a proposal under discussion to extend it further,

“creates disincentives and uncertainty in a market where we have to have certainty to generate investment”.—[Official Report, Commons, Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill Committee, 15/3/18; cols. 86-88.]

I would add that price caps where the case for a cap is strongest—for those 4 million households with prepayment meters, and for a million vulnerable consumers—have already been introduced by Ofgem. I ask the Minister to update us on the impact of those before the Bill leaves Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, made some powerful points about those very consumers and the complications of dealing with them. I hope his commission will come up with some simple innovative ideas that we can all support.

I heartily dislike needless regulation. I would like the Government to come back to Parliament and seek primary legislation if they want to extend these temporary controls beyond 2020. Clause 8 makes it far too easy to extend them, and my amendments would return this power to Parliament. I know from my wide experience of government as a civil servant, from working in business and as a Business Minister that getting rid of regulation is always a low priority in the modern world. This hurts competitiveness and is bad for our economy. I very much welcome the use of a sunset clause but it should be just that. As for the detail of what is proposed, my Amendments 29, 30 and 34 would remove the possibility of extending the cap by deleting most of Clause 8 and making related amendments to the review procedure in Clause 7.

I have to accept that there is a political dimension to the proposed price cap, and I know the Minister will have to support the Bill in the round. However, I would ask him to go away and think about whether we should really extend the cap beyond 2020 without primary legislation—that is, another Bill—and the process of review that always precedes such legislation. I beg to move.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this is a somewhat complicated group of amendments because within it are points of view that are mutually contradictory and indeed on which we hold contradictory positions. So we are not going to agree on this, and I look forward to hearing the Minister trying to weave a way through that does not upset one side or the other too much. He does not normally care too much about whether he does that, but that is for another time.

Our amendments are probably based on the assumption that the rather high aspirations that you can read into the Bill in terms of how it might reform and change the basic market for electricity and gas supply will be achieved, and takes the sanguine view that they are not going to be achieved in time for the cap to be reduced at the appropriate time. If that is the case, it also has the benefit of making sure that vulnerable consumers are not caught by the other schemes referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, which we discussed earlier. They would continue to operate and we would take that to be a good thing, but as we have discovered, that is of course not the primary purpose of this Bill.

Designs (International Registration of Industrial Designs) Order 2017

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, what I will say follows closely on what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said. He and I—if I dare also bring in the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe—are part of a declining band who followed the paths of the intellectual property legislation that this House has looked at over the past six or seven years. His intervention brought back fond memories of the time when we were happily discussing some of the issues that are clearly still in mind and will be in play as Brexit negotiations go on.

I make a slightly different point—also one that the Minister may wish to take back—which is that a lot of the effort that went into the earlier Bills was around the question of registered and unregistered designs. We are still in the situation alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones: a huge proportion of the designs generated in this country—for which we should be very proud—are unregistered. That is partly to do with the nature of the industries involved: where short-term designs, such as fashion designs, are being created, there is probably no incentive to register them, because they are copied and lose economic value so quickly. That design element would not necessarily qualify as a design. However—I made this point before to the noble Baroness; I am sure that she will recognise it and I do not need a response— the Government missed a trick on this. Government ought to be thinking very hard about what package of measures could be brought together to encourage people with design skills and knowledge, of whom we have so many talented examples, to register their designs, because the protections that they can get, as exemplified by this order, are significant, though they are not recognised as such. The point was well illustrated by the fact that so few responded to the consultation document; I was a bit shocked to hear how small a number it was.

Nevertheless, we are where we are. I am sure I will make myself slightly unpopular with the noble Lord, who will find a way of coming back to me—

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way on the subject of designs? Like him, I am very keen that design rights should be properly protected. It is such a growing part of the creative industries. The Intellectual Property Office has done some very good work. I know this because my daughter-in-law was looking to register a design and I discovered, first, that it was relatively inexpensive and, secondly, that the IPO had set up a very good IT option. The Minister may well be able to tell us more about what they were doing, but I thought that this was interesting consumer research.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That is very good news indeed. If it is moving in that direction that picks up the point I am making. There is an unexplored case for more work here, which will bring benefits to UK plc in time.

As I was saying, I was going to grandstand a little on the instrument to ask a couple of questions that I am very confident the Minister will not be able to respond to directly. I am happy to have a letter on them. The first is specifically on the consultation exercise. The Minister touched on this in his opening speech. The comment is made that the UK does not need to keep its own register of registered design rights because after we accede to the Hague agreement, which is what we are doing today, it automatically confers protection on the UK because the UK signed up to the Designview database, operated by OHIM. However, what is the mechanism under which we will continue to have access to it after Brexit? If it is in any way tied to membership it will raise, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, considerable difficulties in negotiating a fair price and the conditional arrangements. If there are to be cost barriers that will further diminish the pressure on people who wish to register designs. It is important and clearly a useful tool for protecting design rights, but if it is inaccessible it will obviously not be of any value. WIPO and the role it plays are very valuable. The IPO does not have much of a role in this. It again seems a slightly missed opportunity to beat the drum for registration, but if the connection is directly to WIPO and we are to be affected by Brexit, clearly that is a problem.

Secondly, the Minister may be aware of a Supreme Court decision in the Trunki case, PMS v Magmatic. It raised the interesting question of whether one could register or even protect shapes of articles. In this case, the well-known Trunki is a small ride-on suitcase that children use rather irritatingly, at speed, in airport lounges, which my ankles have felt over the years—not my children, I confess; there were third parties involved. The case raised the interesting issue that our systems do not allow anyone who has a visual representation or design representation to register it. As I understand it, the Hague agreement has some flexibility about what can or cannot be registered. It would be interesting to get a sense from the officials in due course about whether they think it would be possible to use the flexibilities in the Hague agreement to allow those talented members of our design profession who design representation to register those designs. I look forward to hearing from the Minister in due course.

Unified Patent Court (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2017

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Wilcox on her contribution to intellectual property. I was honoured to succeed her in an area where Britain is very strong. Obviously, that was a delight. I was intimately involved in the Unified Patent Court discussions in both Brussels and Luxembourg last year—after, as has been said, many, many years of discussion on its establishment and its location here in London, and the other centres. I want simply to welcome it and to congratulate the Minister and the Intellectual Property Office, which is headquartered in Newport. I wish them well in finding a sensible deal for patents in the Brexit negotiations. I have one point of clarification, which I think the Minister touched on: when does the patent court in London actually open its doors?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be grateful to know that the shadow cast upon the previous debate does not extend this far. I will be a ray of sunlight in his life and he will emerge, if not hopping and skipping, possibly with a little spring in his step at the pleasure we express and the way in which this piece of legislation is coming forward.

In passing, it was unfortunate that the Minister caught what appeared to be a full blast from both barrels from my noble friend. He should have seen him in the earlier stages of that Bill, when the hapless victim was the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. The full wrath that my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn could express at the whole approach that the Government were daring to take to this important area was expressed in many amendments that we had to discuss. The Minister got off lightly; he may not feel that. We certainly look forward to his letter when it comes.

I am going to say absolutely nothing about the substance of the statutory instrument because we agree with it and are happy for it to go through. It shines a light on the way some people manage to live their lives—in tax-free environments, free of all exemptions and penalties; some people have all the luck—but nevertheless that is the way it is done. I am glad that it is coming forward.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, whose work on this I salute—as well as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, who preceded her—I am interested to learn a little more about what is actually happening on the ground. There are rumours of premises having been secured and buildings having nameplates attached to them, and so on. It would be nice to know what exactly is going to happen and what the timing is, if it is possible for the Minister to tell us.

The other thing that might be interesting to find out is whether there is yet any feel for whether there will be a sufficient caseload to warrant other centres being opened. During the passage of the original Bill we talked about the possibility that the Court of Session’s responsibility for patent determinations in Scotland might be echoed by having a similar court based there, if there was sufficient casework, because there is expertise and knowledge in Edinburgh in this area, and it would be sad if those were not able to be expressed. But these are matters that the Minister may not yet have the detail on and I am happy to have that at a later stage.

As I said, I am a ray of sunlight. We support this statutory instrument.