European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Geraint Davies and Philippa Whitford

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

Well, that was very helpful.

Some hon. Members have failed to understand this. I remember the big debate over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, for example, and over these investor-state dispute settlement clauses being used by the Americans on fracking and other issues. Once we are in a situation where, instead of being in the powerful trading bloc of the EU, negotiating head to head with China or the United States from a position of strength to sustain our environmental and workers’ rights and our standards, we will suddenly instead be broken free, semi-detached, and turning our back on our biggest local market—[Interruption.] It is all very well for the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) to chunter, but that is what will happen. It is already being discussed in the trading arrangements with the United States. The United States is saying, “Right, you’re on your own now and we are going to have this relationship and we will enforce it through the international tribunal.” That is what is going to happen.

Let us take as an example the simple European REACH protection—the regulations concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. If the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green were making chemicals in Europe, he would have to prove they were safe before marketing them. In the United States, he would just be able to market them and an environmental protection organisation would have to prove them harmful. That is why they sell asbestos in America, and that is why there will be pressure for us to have asbestos in our brake pads here. That is why there will be pressure for us to have hormone-impregnated meat from America imposed on our growing children, who could then have premature pubescence. I know that some people think that that is sovereignty, but I do not.

[Dr Whitford]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a threat to the sugar tax is already within the trade papers that have come out, registering the discussions that have already been happening with the US? The sheer threat of a Government, whether a devolved Government or this one here, being dragged through an investor-state dispute settlement can create a fear of public health measures such as the one we have in Scotland on the minimum unit pricing on alcohol, which this Parliament have not got round to. They might find that they struggle to get round to it in the future because they would be challenged, which would threaten the public health of everyone in the United Kingdom.

[Geraint Davies]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point about the chilling effect of that overhanging threat.

Let us be clear on the specifics. Lots of people talk about the impact of this on our health service and about the Americans arriving and taking our data and privatising the health service. But apart from that, let us think about the public health impact of these changes in relation to sugar. The NHS spends £12 billion a year on diabetes—