Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

My right hon. Friend knows that a large number of ISDS bilaterals are in play, and that no cases have been taken against us. He also knows that exposure to ISDS will increase by about 300%. If his pet dog goes around biting the neighbours, that does not guarantee that it will not bite him. Just because other people die from cigarettes and he has not, that does not mean he will not. We should protect ourselves against the provisions in ISDS, rather than hear those spurious arguments that are normally regurgitated by Government Members.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

On the specific point raised by our hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar)—

[Mr Spellar]

Right honourable.

[Helen Goodman]

By our right honourable Friend, this is not about the number of court cases taken; it is about ministerial action being inhibited for fear of those court cases. I had that experience as a Minister, and our right hon. Friend is barking up the wrong tree.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We need short interventions because there is a lot of interest in this debate. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) is 10 to 15 minutes into his opening speech, and I would not like him to give it all away through interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I wish to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing this debate. I am very grateful to him for asking me to support his application to the Backbench Business Committee for this very important debate, and I agreed with everything that he said about the risks of TTIP and about the need for us to think more deeply about the institutional architecture as we move forward, so that trade, environment and labour standards are all put on an equal footing.

I also want to say what an excellent speech my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) made. He drew out the problems that similar arrangements have caused in developing countries. The point that he made demonstrated that those of us who are raising questions are fully in the tradition of all those who back the human rights and democratic values of Europe and America.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has analysed the benefits of TTIP. Its estimate is that the gain in this country by 2027 in terms of higher GDP would be £7 billion. When one hears the figure of £7 billion a year, that sounds like quite a lot, but let me put it in the context of the amount of trade we have in this country and the huge uncertainties about the forecasts as we go forward.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I just want to make the point that statistics are bandied about for political advantage. My hon. Friend is quite right about the £7 billion, but how would it compare with the £62 billion of trade deficit with the European Union? Those are the kind of figures that make £7 billion very small indeed.

[Helen Goodman]

The point that I was going to make was that the Office for Budget Responsibility, in its forecast of GDP out to 2020, has an uncertainty of 6% in GDP. That is £160 billion, so we lose the £7 billion of economic benefits in the rounding. I am not saying that there will not be some economic benefits, but we should consider how significant they are and weigh them against the disadvantages that other hon. Members have mentioned. Will this have a significant benefit for our level of exports? By way of comparison, the impact on the level of growth in the markets to which we export is expected to be £338 billion over the next five years. If we have variations in the exchange rate, that will be far greater than the possible benefits we can get from this trade deal.

I am resting my case on the analysis from the Minister’s Department. On the assumption that the Department has got this right, each person in this country would benefit to the tune of £110 a year, or about £2 a week. It is very nice to have £2 a week and I am sure that we would all rather have it than not, but if the price that has to be paid is a loss of working conditions, labour standards and potential improvements in the national minimum wage or national living wage, the benefits will not in practice accrue to ordinary people in this country. That is why people have doubts about this.

Colleagues have raised the concerns about the national health service, the environment and food standards. I think that the carve-out in the European Commission’s negotiating mandate secured by the French on audio-visual services is extremely important; it is also important that we maintain our cultural resources.

Let me come to the big downside of TTIP, which is the loss of sovereignty inherent in the investor-state dispute settlement. The intellectual integrity and honesty displayed in the speech of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, made it a very important contribution to the debate.

[Mr Spellar]

Is not the logic of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) just as much that he would rather we were not involved with the EU either, as another supranational body? Is there not a danger in this line of argument?

[Helen Goodman]

There is nothing in our arrangements with the EU that is similar in any way to the private court system under the ISDS. That was the point that the former Secretary of State was making.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) said earlier that not many cases have been taken under ISDS or won under ISDS, but it inhibits ministerial action because Ministers are worried about court cases. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester made the point that in developing countries the costs of running these court cases are a further inhibition on ministerial and democratic action.

[Geraint Davies]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that in most ISDS cases, we are the investor in developing countries, and we would be the ones to take action? In the American cases, they would be taking action against us. We have all the fire to come.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, but I just want to say that I think that Ministers are inhibited from taking policy action by fear of court and legal proceedings. When I was a Minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, albeit a very junior one, I was interested in considering the entitlements to benefits of migrants from eastern Europe. My officials not only would not make the changes I was asking them to make, but would not even give me advice on the matter. They said, “Minister, to advise you on that would be to advise you on an illegal action.” That is exactly the kind of conversation Ministers will get into with the ISDS.

[Mr Lilley]

indicated assent.

[Helen Goodman]

I am pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman nodding in agreement.

[Robert Jenrick]

The UK has 110 bilateral investment treaties, almost all of which have ISDS, including with some very sophisticated countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, where the legal system, certainly for commercial cases, is acknowledged to be excellent and akin to ours. Is the hon. Lady saying that the UK should withdraw from all or some of those bilateral investment treaties, on the basis of her previous experience as a Minister?

[Helen Goodman]

I am not saying we should withdraw. Perhaps we should have more parliamentary scrutiny of what is going on under the arrangements we have; perhaps we are shedding a light on them; and perhaps we should be grateful for those constituents who have alerted us to the issue. I am grateful not because we have to accept every single message in its last detail, but because they have triggered my looking into this more deeply.

Lack of transparency in the negotiations, weak parliamentary scrutiny and the risks mean that it is very important that we do not agree to this measure unless we strip out the ISDS. I am extremely pleased to support the motion this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry]

No I will not.

It does not enhance the reputation of the Chamber when hon. Members refer to the lack of people present, because that does not mean that other hon. Members are not in their rooms working and following the debate, or that they will not read it in Hansard. We all care, on all sides of the House, about this matter.

My hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole, for Aberconwy and for Newark made very important points about the scare stories. There has been a lot of unpleasantness around this matter. I would just say to the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) that perhaps he and others on the Labour Benches are now experiencing the sort of abuse and attack that, frankly, most of us on the Conservative Benches have been receiving for many, many years. This is really a rather good example of it. We have been told that we do not believe in our national health service, although we do, and that we want in some way to privatise it, which we do not. Equally, we have been told by an SNP Member that such was his concern that he decided to write to the Prime Minister and that the Prime Minister wrote back giving an unequivocal guarantee that neither the NHS nor any other public service was under threat from this agreement, at which point he—the hon. Gentleman—said it was not worth the paper it was written on. I do not think that that advances democracy; it is grossly insulting to the office of the Prime Minister and it does the hon. Gentleman no credit at all.

We then have the letter from the European Commission. I will not repeat it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole read out the most important points and put them on the record. Well, I hope hon. Members will take the view of the European Commission. It is a remarkable document from the EU. It is succinct and it answers good questions with good straight answers. It is absolutely clear that this trade agreement poses no threat to the national health service or any other bit of the public sector. It is most unfortunate that too many Opposition Members refuse to listen to the reality and take those assurances, and instead scaremonger and whip up a storm where no storm exists.

There has been criticism about an apparent lack of transparency. I am very grateful to the European Union, which during the course of the debate has tweeted a link to its website. I have visited its website. If Members follow me on Twitter, I will very happily provide a link to it. Again, I have to say—perhaps remarkably, although I am a firm supporter of our continued membership of the European Union; that is well known and has been known for donkeys’ years—in all seriousness that it absolutely lays out everything that is being negotiated very clearly in good plain English. The idea, therefore, that this is all being conducted in a secret manner is absolute nonsense.

It is very important to make the point that there have been six debates about TTIP in this place, and rightly so. That is exactly what this place does extremely well. Backbench Business debates, Westminster Hall debates—it matters not. They have all been opportunities, like today, for hon. Members quite properly to stand up and raise their concerns, as the hon. Member for Swansea West so ably did.

[Helen Goodman]

Will the Minister use the last three minutes to respond to the questions that have been raised about ISDS, instead of telling us what she drinks?

[Anna Soubry]

The hon. Lady has just wasted 30 seconds in which I could have provided exactly that response.

May I now deal with the actual subject of the debate, even though others seem to have drifted off? This is an important trade agreement and it is all about free trade. It will bring huge benefits to the economy of this country. We have heard mention, quite rightly, of independent assessments that say that the benefit to the United Kingdom economy is somewhere in the region of £10 billion—that is real benefit to everybody. We have many examples of previous treaties. The hon. Lady should know all about these investment treaties and ISDS clauses, which she says she does not like in this treaty. She should like them. She should know all about them, because when she was in government she approved 20 of them—20 of these sorts of treaties were signed by the previous Labour Government, and rightly so. We have a great record of creating the right environment in the United Kingdom for investors and for treating them fairly. We have over 90 such agreements in place with other countries, and, as other hon. Members have said, there has never been a successful claim brought against the United Kingdom. To date, 90-plus existing bilateral investment treaties have not led to any regulatory chill. The European Union wants an improved approach to investment protection, and ISDS in TTIP guarantees the right of Governments to legislate in the public interest fairly and without discrimination.

I will deal quickly with the point about small and medium-sized businesses. I take exception to the idea that they will somehow suffer disproportionately under TTIP. On the contrary, large companies can often overcome non-tariff barriers, such as differing regulatory standards, because they have the necessary resources that small businesses simply do not have—small businesses cannot afford the time and the costs involved. TTIP is likely to be most beneficial precisely to small businesses in our country, because it will help them trade, notably with the United States.

I can assure hon. Members that these provisions will not prevent the Government from taking regulatory action to protect the public or the environment, nor will they force the Government to change laws, to open markets, or, as I say, to privatise public services such as the NHS. I want to make it absolutely clear that climate change policies are not on the table in the TTIP negotiations, so TTIP will not hold back action on climate change or undermine current or future legal obligations, under the United Nations framework convention on climate change, to reduce carbon emissions.

TTIP is not a secret negotiation. It is there for everybody to read on the internet, and it is reaching the right conclusions. When it has concluded, it will be for this Chamber to ratify it. It will lie here for 21 days. At that point, any hon. Member could put before the House a motion to reject it. However, I hope that when that day comes Members will accept this agreement because it is about free trade and it is the right thing to do.