Trade Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Djanogly

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

A qualitative impact would be the impact on the environment, for example. We want to know not just the economic quantity of the impacts in terms of how much trade gain we are going to get out of a negotiation, but the qualitative impact on the public policy areas that I am talking about. We cannot quantify necessarily the impact of a trade deal on our own environmental standards, but we can say whether qualitatively those standards are going to be degraded. That is why we need both those terms: we want to know the quantitative and the qualitative impacts. They are separate, and it is not that difficult to see the difference.

New clause 3 sets out the kind of framework we need. Before commencing the negotiation of a trade agreement, Ministers must bring before Parliament at the very least a sustainability impact assessment conducted by a credible independent body, covering not just the potential economic impacts, but the social and environmental ones. The devolved authorities, businesses, trade unions and the public must be consulted about the potential agreement, as is required in the US. If the decision is to go ahead, Parliament would be required to give its consent to a mandate for the negotiations, setting guidelines and boundaries, a process based on the Danish model. The Government would conduct negotiations transparently, releasing texts before and after each negotiating round, building upon the procedure in the EU and following practices common in other areas of international negotiation, such as climate talks.

My amendment is a very basic and simple one. It is asking for things that are common in many other countries around the world, and saying that we should do the same.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

We are clearly in a very much better situation now with this Bill’s regulation scrutiny provisions than after the Second Reading in this House, and on that basis my recommendation will be that hon. Members do not vote for my new clause 6 or my amendments 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, but that they vote for the alternative Government amendments, new clauses 12, 13 and 14 and all their tabled amendments to clause 2. If the Government amendments pass, Henry VIII will have been banished from this Bill and a sensible compromise scrutiny system will have been inserted. The Government have listened and done the right thing and we should support them for that, but there are still issues, so let me explain my thinking.

This Bill applies to around 40 existing EU trade-related agreements involving some 70-plus third countries. This actually also includes some agreements that are concluded but are still due to be implemented, which I shall call collectively FTAs. It is estimated that 10 of the UK’s top 50 export markets are served by these EU FTAs, accounting for 35% of UK trade. I can therefore understand why the Government are keen for the UK to adopt these FTAs post Brexit, or “roll them over” in the terminology used by Ministers. In addition, I understand the practicalities of the situation: the Government have limited negotiating capacity and the idea of dealing with all of these 70 third countries and starting deals from scratch is undoubtedly unrealistic in the immediate term. Indeed, the average time for negotiating an FTA is seven years and the recent Canada deal took more like 15 years. So I understand that there is a lot at stake here for the UK, and I appreciate that the International Trade Department is under a lot of pressure to deliver.

Having said that, I do not think that the Department has covered itself in glory in its handling of these roll-overs. To start, I would make the point that we have been given a wall of silence. The International Trade Committee back in March asked the then Minister to prioritise these negotiations more, to publish a detailed timetable of the work-streams involved, to produce a risk register identifying clearly the agreements concerned and to have contingency plans even for where third countries have only given an assent in principle. It took the Government until 15 May to respond to the Committee report, and to call their response bland and non-committal would be an understatement. In the meantime, various leaks and rumours have been appearing, maintaining that some of the negotiations with third countries have not been going quite according to plan and that the EU has not been as helpful as the Ministers had originally thought it might be. This would include the EU telling us that it will not ask its FTA trade partners to allow the UK to benefit from their existing deals until the UK signs the final legal text of the Brexit deal. That could leave us with only a few months up to next March in which to negotiate the roll-overs.

Given all this, I have some sympathy with new clause 16, tabled by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), which demands further details of the status of these proposed roll-over deals, and the Minister should acknowledge the frustration on this that is shared by everyone outside his own Department. We have received vague assurances from the Department that the roll-over discussions are going according to plan and that everything will be all right on the night. We are also being told that the Government need to have this legislation in place so that they can action the roll-overs, and that they need the regulatory powers to make this happen quickly if need be, including in the situation of our Brexiting with a no-deal scenario.

I am trying to show that the Government have asked for sweeping Henry VIII powers while keeping people pretty much in the dark as to what they might be needed for, and while providing little hard evidence of what has been achieved to date. Of course, UK business has also been crying out to know where we stand as regards these important overseas markets. I hope that the Government are right and that the roll-overs will take place as planned with no or few changes, but that does not mean that it would be acceptable that any material changes to the deals should just be waved through by Ministers without any parliamentary scrutiny. For instance, let us say that one of the EU third countries with which we wish to roll over a deal says, “Yes, we agree that you can roll over, but let’s face it, you are a market of only 50 million people rather than 500 million, so we’ll agree to roll over, but only on condition that we also get 50,000 visas a year.” Under the Bill, that could be pushed through by Ministers on a negative order with no scrutiny at all. By the way, I do not see this as a remain argument or a leave argument; I see that as simply wrong. If Brexit is about returning power to Parliament, it is surely not about then just giving Ministers sweeping new powers, not least in a scenario where so little information has been given to hon. Members.

The Government have been maintaining that they wish to use these powers to roll over existing EU deals before possibly coming back to renegotiate substantive deals with the same countries, which would be subject to a scrutiny process yet to be proposed. However, I do not see why these same powers should not be capable of being used again after roll-over to make further changes to the same FTA during the five-year period—a sunset period which, with a possible further five-year extension, is in my opinion much too long.

All those reasons led me to think that we have a real problem with these provisions and I therefore tabled my amendments, looking for a triage and scrutiny system. However, since tabling the amendments, I have had an ongoing dialogue with Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) and more recently the Minister for Trade Policy, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery). Discussions have been courteous and positive, and I am pleased to say that the Government have listened and tabled their own amendments—I think more than 40 of them—to clause 2.

This will mean that the first proposed statutory instruments related to an FTA will need to be laid not less than 10 sitting days after the issuing by a Minister of an explanatory report. The changes proposed in the report will then be cross-referred to in the related SI’s explanatory memorandum. Further, it is now proposed that all related SIs will be subject to the affirmative procedure, however material or immaterial they may be. This effectively takes away any need for sifting provisions. Finally, the sunset period is proposed to be cut from five to three years, plus up to a possible further three years following an affirmative resolution.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Djanogly

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I accept that business wants consistency and answers, and that it wants to know which way it is heading. However, even under the amendment it would not have that, so I still say that we should stick with the Prime Minister, who has her plan.

The Lords amendment on the customs union is a more complicated scenario, as it does not mandate us to join a customs union, as the amendment to the Trade Bill would. Rather, the Lords’ proposal in this Bill is simply that a Minister should lay a report outlining the steps taken to negotiate a customs union. In theory, therefore, the Minister could comply simply by reporting that steps had been taken, even though they were leading nowhere. On the other hand, I appreciate that having this amendment would give some comfort that the Government had not written off a customs union as a fall-back if Brussels were to reject the Prime Minister’s proposals. It also makes a statement that this House rejects the concept of a hard Brexit—a lesson that needs to be understood by many Members of this House.

However, it has been put to us by the Prime Minister that any vote on this issue will, in her opinion, seriously undermine her negotiating position in Brussels. I was told directly that such an amendment could lead Mr Barnier to throw out the Government’s negotiating proposals on the basis that the EU could say that it was being manipulated by them. I would dispute that interpretation, but I also accept that it is ultimately the Prime Minister who is going to negotiate for us on what I believe will be a fair basis.

Furthermore I recognise the Government’s concession a couple of days ago, after no little debate, in allowing the Lords amendment if the words “customs union” were changed to “customs arrangement”. That also needs to be put into the context of the Government’s concession on Northern Ireland in the amendments to Lords amendment 88. Importantly, those amendments require everyone to act with regard to the December 2017 UK-EU joint report. So I suggest that, if we add the “customs arrangement” wording to the Irish compromise in the joint report, which will need to be applied throughout the UK, and throw in the Irish backstop proposals for good measure, we will be much closer to a customs arrangement resembling a customs union than we were before. I note that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and various other hon. Members have made the same point.

For all those reasons, and despite all the confusion, the lack of policy and the Brexiteer antics, I have decided to back the Prime Minister in her June EU meetings, and I will vote with the Government on these amendments.

[Caroline Lucas]

I rise to put on the record my support for all seven still contested Lords amendments, but given that we are so short of time I will primarily focus on Lords amendment 3 and the environment. I am surprised that the Government have not accepted the amendment given that all it does is seek to give effect to the Government’s own much-vaunted environmental ambitions. In a written statement to the House in January, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explained that the Government’s 25-year environment plan will be underpinned by

“a world-leading environmental watchdog, an independent, statutory body, to hold Government to account for upholding environmental standards.”

To me, that means at least a watchdog with a bite as well as a bark, not a toothless, neutered, three-legged mutt of a watchdog that cannot even impose financial penalties, much less launch legal action. However, that was all that the Environment Secretary’s overhyped and deeply underwhelming consultation was able to offer when it was belatedly published on 10 May.

Lords amendment 3 seeks to give the watchdog at least a few teeth by giving effect to the claim repeated by Government Members that withdrawal from the EU will not lead to any dilution of environmental standards. Given that, I genuinely do not understand why the Government are objecting to the Lords amendment and instead supporting amendment (a) in lieu, which represents a significant watering down of what the Lords amendment contains.

The amendment in lieu makes no provision to guarantee the independence of the environment watchdog, so we may well end up with a green poodle, not a green watchdog. We need clear guarantees that the replacements for the Commission and the European Court of Justice will be protected from Ministers’ whims. The amendment in lieu massively limits the watchdog’s remit. By deleting the overarching subsection (1) of the Lords amendment, we will lose all the essential requirements for the Government not to remove or reduce any of the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, remedies and procedures that currently contribute to the protection and, crucially, the improvement of our environment. For example, there is no explicit guarantee that we will have a freely accessible citizens’ complaint mechanism. All such things are all vital components of an effective governance system for protecting the environment. They are not optional add-ons to this lazy attempt at standing up for nature.

As I mentioned earlier, the amendment in lieu limits the scope of the watchdog to central Government, which is absurd given that local authorities are so much responsible for areas of compliance. Ministers would be compelled only to have regard to vital environmental principles, not to act in accordance with them. All those things are good reasons to have grave concerns about this weakening of Lords amendment 3 and to say to the Government that we are running out of time to get the joined-up approach to the environment that they have promised us.

In the minute I have left, I want to make a comment about the single market and customs union. It is notable that every single economic scenario that the Government have produced shows a country that will be worse off by leaving the EU. The only real protection for jobs and the economy is staying inside the single market and the customs union, which is also the only way of achieving a frictionless border in Northern Ireland. It is quite extraordinary to see the Government proudly and loudly leading the country to a poorer future, and it is almost as extraordinary to see the shadow Front-Bench team pretty much complicit in that. The Opposition’s amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51 would not be accepted by the EU and they know it, so I make this plea: do not give this shambles of a Tory Government a free pass to a hard Brexit. It is not too late to reconsider and to back Lords amendment 51. History will not judge kindly those who put party politics first at this crucial moment, when it is precisely those with the least who most need their politicians to be brave.