Trade Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Faisal Rashid and Tom Pursglove

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Faisal Rashid]

If there is no new Trade Bill, those Henry VIII powers stay.

Chris Southworth: I go back to my point that, if I were living in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the Yorkshire Dales—where I am from—Sheffield or the north, I would be concerned about where my voice is coming into this process. We are talking about rolling over the terms of 88 countries. That is a lot of countries, and they are not all EU. It is extremely unlikely to happen. I would want to have a say in that process, not to wait.

Tony Burke: When the Manufacturing Trade Remedies Alliance put forward its document, which it had worked considerably hard to produce over a long time, we were surprised at the speed at which the whole thing moved. There were areas that we had gone through in great detail to prepare.

As I have said, there was unanimity on things such as International Labour Organisation conventions, trade union representation and industry representation, and on some of the real technical detail as well, which we could not go into today. We would be happy to revisit that document. I understand that the other folk from the MTRA are giving evidence to a different Committee today, and I think they will say very much the same thing. We have no problem in going through it again and picking out some of the key issues from the point of view not just of trade unions but of industry.

Some trade associations on that body are very concerned about what could happen to their industries. They will be putting forward those points of view today. The speed at which it was done was far too fast. The view seemed to be that that was it, even though people had spent a lot of time putting the arguments together.

[Tom Pursglove]

Q In my constituency—I represent the steel town of Corby—trade remedies are not theoretical, but reality. Mr Burke, what do you think the impact would be of not having a Trade Remedies Authority in place on day one when we leave the European Union?

Tony Burke: The big danger is that, if we do not have one that works on day one, we could be subject to what we have already seen in the past few years. Steel has been subject to the most horrendous situation for the past two or three years—lots of jobs have been lost. The industry came together to try to make sure that it holds together, but without a trade remedies structure in place, the big fear is that we would be subject to the dumping of steel again, particularly from countries such as China, although I am not singling it out. That is one of the issues.

There are other constituencies where we talk to colleagues—MPs and others—and our members. The tyres industry, for instance, is very concerned about the dumping of cheap tyres on the market, which would undermine our premium brands and well-paid skilled jobs. We need something in place. Of course, as I have said, we have not had anything for 40 years and it will take some time to work through, but it is important to have a wider group of people who can push the arguments for various industries.

My fear, and the fear of our members in steel in Corby and other steel areas, is that, if we do not have trade remedies in place, we could be faced with horrendous dumping on the basis that, in respect of what is happening and what has been said, there is massive over-capacity. Steel in particular is being sold at cheaper rates than it costs to produce.