Trade Bill

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I am not going to take further interventions —there is only an hour for this debate.

It is up to Committees how they report, but such a report could come about in response to evidence produced by their own inquiries or to a finding of genocide by a competent criminal court, whether international or domestic. Such an approach rightly puts Parliament, not the courts, in the driving seat on this issue, which is who generates a debate in Parliament. Our policy on the legal determination of genocide has not changed. It has long been the Government’s position that genocide determination is a matter for the relevant court, which includes international courts and domestic criminal courts. However, whether to have a debate in Parliament should be a matter for Parliament.

I hope the House agrees that the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee is a reasonable middle ground: it delivers the result envisaged by the Lords amendment—that is, to have a parliamentary debate—and the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, but it does so through Parliament, not the courts. It allows Parliament to act quickly and decisively on the issue of genocide and, crucially, places a specific duty on the Government to act on the Committee’s concerns. It does so without upsetting the delicate separation of powers and without judicial encroachment. It ensures that Parliament has a clear role and that the Government have a clear duty when credible reports of genocide are raised with regard to a proposed bilateral FTA partner. I hope that Members from all parties will come together in support of the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

At the outset, I thank the hon. Members for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and the many others from all parties who, like our colleagues in the other place, who have worked with great persistence, and always in good faith, to achieve the right outcomes today.

Do you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker? It was 52 years ago this week that the House of Commons debated the introduction of Britain’s very first Genocide Act, which made genocide a distinct offence in our country and gave our courts the power to determine when it had been committed. When one looks back at that debate, it really strikes one that, were it not for some recognisable names, one would not know which MPs were Labour, Conservatives or Liberal, such was the unity in the House on the issue. Such obvious pride was taken by all Members in being part of a decision, taken by the British Parliament and led by the British Government, that would resonate around the world.

I fear that today, the atmosphere and outcome of our debate may be very different. Any future generations who choose to look back will ask themselves why on earth the Government of the day were playing procedural parliamentary games on an issue as serious as momentous as the genocidal crimes being committed against the Uyghurs in China. Rather than dwell on the shameful, shabby and shifty behaviour of the Government Whips in seeking to prevent a straight vote on the genocide amendment, let me instead address the key point of substance in the amendment that the Government have put forward to wreck it.

In the space of the last three weeks, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Trade Secretary have all stated on the record that the courts can determine what is and what is not genocide. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) himself, the Chair of the Justice Committee, wrote an article, which has already been quoted. Let me quote another bit of it, in which he said:

“Successive governments have said that the attribution of genocide is a matter for judicial determination.”

Yet he and the Government are now proposing an amendment that would remove the courts from that process entirely and hand the responsibility instead to the Select Committees, which have already said publicly that they do not have the capacity to make such judgments. In other words, the Government wish to take a strong, substantive and historic new process for attributing genocide through the courts and acting on those rulings through our Parliament, and replace all of that with a weak, flawed and, frankly, entirely forgettable adjustment to the existing powers of Select Committees, and that is not good enough. I hope that Members on all sides will reject what I am afraid has to be said is a shameful wrecking effort, and vote instead for the original amendments 2B and 3B.

The Government’s other wrecking amendment today, on non-regression of standards, is equally flawed and equally contemptuous of Parliament’s will. It has been, I am afraid, very deliberately drafted to apply only to the continuity trade agreements already signed by the Government over the past two years, not to the trade agreements that the Government are negotiating with the likes of America and Australia today. In other words, the amendment would act retrospectively to prevent our standards for food safety, animal welfare, NHS data and online harms being undermined by the deals we signed two years ago.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

I am not going to take any interventions, because my view is that we have so little time, I think it is only fair just to continue. [Interruption.] I have made it clear that I am not going to take any interventions.

The amendment the Government have tabled is one whereby we are just talking about continuity agreements, not about agreements to come. Those deals are deals such as the ones we signed two years ago with Lesotho or with Liechtenstein, and this will have no bearing whatever on any trade deal that we negotiate in the next two years with Washington or Canberra. That is the level of contempt with which the Government Whips are treating the House of Commons today. So again, I would urge Members on all sides to reject this ridiculous wrecking effort, and vote instead for amendment 6B.

In closing, I think we can all do something today even more powerful than rejecting those wrecking amendments and standing up to the shameful tactics employed by the Government Whips. We can draw the only logical conclusion from today’s events—namely, that if we do not act to guarantee the rights of Parliament to scrutinise and approve the Government’s decisions on trade, then we leave ourselves entirely at the mercy of the Government Whips, who have shown today that they will stop at nothing to deny us a voice and deny us a vote.

We have it in our power today, by backing Lord Lansley’s amendment 1B, to guarantee Parliament a vote on all future trade deals and take responsibility in this House for ensuring that our standards and our values are not undermined by the deals that we do abroad. It is a very simple idea, and in the absence of a straight vote on what I would call the Alton amendment, passing the Lansley amendment would be the very best safety net that we could put in place to prevent the agreement of trade deals with countries that commit genocide and the very best rejoinder that we could provide to anyone who would seek to suppress the will of this Parliament. If we can achieve that outcome, we can turn this from a day of shameful, shabby, shifty tactics to a day a pride for our democracy and a day of promise for the Uyghurs.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There is a three-minute limit on all Back-Bench contributions from now.