Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Albert Owen Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

I will resist responding to the comment about barking.

On the ISDS, we know that big companies use the powers available to them to sue democratically elected Governments. For example, the Lone Pine fracking company is suing the Canadian Government for hundreds of millions of dollars because Quebec brought out a moratorium on fracking. In a well-known case, Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia over tobacco packaging. The Dutch insurance company, Achmea, is suing the Slovakians for trying to reverse health privatisation. If those powers are available, corporations will use them to maximise profit. Why should they not? That is what they are there to do. I am not saying that they are immoral, because that is what they do and that is what we expect. Our job is to regulate to ensure that the public interest is put first.

There is also an issue of sovereignty. The comprehensive economic and trade agreement will last for 20 years; some people are worried about the EU, but future Governments would be bound by these rules for 20 years. I think that is wrong, and a lot of Conservative Members have raised that point with me.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Geraint Davies]

No, I will not.

[Albert Owen]

Will he give way on that point?

[Geraint Davies]

Go on then.

[Albert Owen]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I realise that he is getting a little frustrated with the amount of interventions, but mine is brief and specific to the motion. He talks about the scrutiny of this House. Will he explain what method of scrutiny would be used? Would scrutiny be done by a Committee, or would a Minister come to the Dispatch Box, so that the whole House could provide scrutiny?

[Geraint Davies]

The issue is already being scrutinised by the European Scrutiny Committee, and the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee is also interested in it, and the provision will clearly have a widespread impact, so it should be brought before the House. I would like recommendations to be made by this House in an advisory way to the European Parliament, so that it can table amendments. At the moment, everything is being decided by negotiators behind closed doors. That is completely unacceptable, and it will just be a yes/no decision with ratification. CETA was agreed in September 2014, and it sounds as if it is having some sort of legal washing. It will be brought before Members of the European Parliament next spring.

I want to mention regulatory chill because of the pressure and threat of that sort of action. Already, the EU has withdrawn its demands for transparency and clinical data in trials. That means that if a big drugs company does 10 trials and three go wrong—thalidomide, for example—and seven go right, it only has to publish details of the seven that go right. That is worrying, as are the bits and pieces about trade secrets, which clearly undermine and inhibit democracy. There are issues of rights at work, and the problem of CETA being agreed, because that is a Trojan horse that allows all the powers created in the investor-state dispute settlement to come in through the back door and bite our democracy, public services and public finances.