Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Debate between Geraint Davies and Julian Huppert

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

I very much welcome that intervention. The harsh reality is that this deal is being stitched up behind closed doors by negotiators, with the influence of big corporations and the dark arts of corporate lawyers. They are stitching up rules that would be outside contract law and common law, and outside the shining light of democracy, to give powers to multinationals to sue Governments over laws that were designed to protect their citizens.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he welcome, as I do, the suspension of the investor-state dispute settlement section of the negotiations, and does that hopefully mean that we can be in a better place, without some of the concerns to which he has correctly alluded?

[Geraint Davies]

I will move on to those issues and I do, of course, agree.

There is a current risk that the agreement struck behind closed doors is only subjected to yes or no—take it or leave it—in the European Parliament, and that ratification in this House occurs after the implementation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. That is hardly democracy. Today I am calling—it is not much of a call—simply for parliamentarians here and in Europe to have the right to scrutiny. The mechanics for that would be to empower us to recommend amendments that could be made by other representatives in Europe.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

I very much agree with that important point. We are all aware of the political difficulties in the Conservative party and the differences within the coalition and across the House. Same-sex marriage is an important measure and it is imperative that we deal with it now. If it does not happen now, political complexions may change as we approach the 2015 election and we might miss the opportunity. People may make the calculated gamble that if the issue is pushed into the long grass, it will stay there. Thousands of people want us to move forward on same-sex marriage, a large and growing community of people want us to move forward on humanist marriage and, as we have heard Government Members say, there are people who want us to move forward on civil partnerships. I hope that the review on that matter makes rapid progress and that the options are provided in a fully informed way.

I was very surprised by the Attorney-General’s intervention in which he seemed to say that new clause 15 would be in breach of article 14 of the European convention on human rights and would open the door for people who wanted to marry in the name of tiddlywinks. That was very peculiar. I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, to which the European Court of Human Rights has regard. I have not heard it suggested in any serious chamber that there ought to be parity between the rights of those who want humanist weddings, which are already an option in Scotland, and those who demand tiddlywinks marriages.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geraint Davies]

I did not know that the hon. Gentleman was a tiddlywinks fanatic.

[Dr Huppert]

I am not a tiddlywinks expert, but I am a humanist. I am a member of the British Humanist Association and the all-party humanist group. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that there has been a judgment on the what test should be for serious beliefs in such cases. The judgment in Grainger plc v. Nicholson states:

“The belief must be genuinely held, must be a belief and not an opinion based on present available information and a weighty or substantial aspect of human life and behaviour”.

None of that could really apply to tiddlywinks.

[Geraint Davies]

I am grateful for that intervention. It elaborates the point that we should not spend too much time talking about tiddlywinks. However, it was brought up by the Attorney-General and I thought that I had better deal with the matter because he said that his best criticism of new clause 15 was that it would be in breach of article 14 of the European convention on human rights. That seems very unlikely, to put it mildly. It is scraping the barrel and was a bizarre thing for the Attorney-General to say.

I realise that the intention behind new clause 14 was to start a discussion, but it would abolish marriage and civil partnership and replace them with civil union. People who had been married in good faith would wake up one day and find that they were no longer married. That is not something that we should seriously consider. In the cut and thrust of political dialogue, it was famously said that people who went to bed with Nick Clegg might wake up with David Cameron. This proposal is akin to that idea. One day people would be married and suddenly, after a change in the legislation, they would no longer be married.