Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords]

Debate between John McDonnell and Iain Duncan Smith

Report stage
Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree. I was not so certain about this, so I looked at what Lord Lisvane, the one-time chief Clerk in the House, said about it. He produced a note on it, which I quote:

“The issue, as I recall, was whether a Motion to approve the PRC’s accession could be amended. Commons S.O. No 24B says that when a Motion in neutral terms (in the judgement of the Chair) is tabled, no amendments to it may be tabled. I think this would probably rule out seeking to amend a simple ‘take note’ or ‘has considered’ Motion.”

I want to emphasise that it is not true that a motion to take note can be amended—that was used in the other place as a defence. The CRaG process does not provide for a vote; it does not even guarantee a debate. That is why the new clause is needed.

Under UK trade policy, it is not unusual for bilateral trade agreements to be subject to parliamentary approval—free trade agreements are routinely subject to it. In response to criticism of the CRaG process in 2021, the Grimstone rule was established, whereby the Government agreed in principle to allow time to debate prospective FTAs where the International Agreements Committee has published a report. I happen to believe that there are Ministers who are keen and happy to have debates—I mention no names, but that is the case. However, I know that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office absolutely opposes them, because it hates to have any serious debates about its prerogative.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman is keen on debates. On that basis, I invite him to sign my prayer against this treaty, to urge the Government to give us a debate on the treaty as a whole.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to tempt me beyond my new clause. I always happy to look at this issue, and I believe in debate. It is vital, otherwise Governments are never held to account.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Damien Egan) on his excellent speech. He mentioned that he has been elected at the tail-end of a Government and that an election is coming soon. I reassure him that the diligence he has already demonstrated in this House and his constituency should secure his re-election. It is wonderful to hear a Member speaking for a constituency with its accent.

I will address amendment 2 and new clause 8, although I support virtually every amendment that has been tabled, which shows the weakness of the process by which we have examined this treaty. I have been involved in discussions with the Secretary of State and the Minister over a number of months on ISDS, and I am concerned about the contradiction between their refusal to secure a side letter with regard to this treaty and what happened with regard to Australia and New Zealand. The negotiating brief for the Canadian free trade agreement also had a specific remit to prevent an ISDS process. I have never got to the bottom of that contradiction.

Amendment 2 follows our lengthy debate about the scrutiny of treaties. I have not given notice to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) that I will be referring to him in the Chamber, although I am not sure that we have to give notice ahead of praising, rather than criticising, another Member. I am a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which he chairs, and he has become the 21st-century Walter Bagehot, with a solid mixture of Trollope. He steered our discussions on the formal process for examining treaties with immense skill, drawing on a range of evidence that led to consensus—there is almost consensus in the Chamber at the moment—and this is what our report says:

“CRAG has been an insufficient legislative tool to facilitate meaningful Parliamentary scrutiny of treaties… the current legislation provides only a passive role for Parliament and as such there is no opportunity for Parliament to express its explicit approval or disapproval of a treaty.”

That is a common theme of all the debates. We have to do better than this.

Having read the report, the worry is that the Government have not responded positively by trying to get some order, particularly on the early negotiating processes and the debates that should take place. The Committee’s general view on this treaty, like the others, is that Parliament has been largely bypassed. We were offered no say on the Government’s negotiating objectives at the earliest stage, which is important, and no oversight of the negotiations as they progressed. Now we are refused a vote on the final terms of accession. This is not acceptable as a democratic process. The formal CRaG period, under which we can nominally have a say on the agreement, concludes this Friday, after a 21-day period. We are offered no vote or even a debate on the substantive terms of the CPTPP during this period, and accession is likely to receive our consent without any of us being given a single vote.

As I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I have tabled a prayer to try to secure a time extension to enable the Government to bring forward time for a debate. My view is exactly the same as his: we are debating a narrow, technical, implementing Bill and that is no substitute for a confirmatory debate and vote on the accession itself. I agree with the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, who has raised this issue with the Government in correspondence over the past two weeks. It is preposterous for the Government then to say with a straight face that there is not parliamentary time to have such a debate, given our current sitting arrangements. Those who have been here for as long as me, or perhaps even longer, will know that there has not been a problem on parliamentary time in the past, as we have simply found the time and sat and gone through the business when it is so important.

My amendment 2 seeks to address that wrong by formalising a requirement for the Government to ask for Parliament’s consent for the UK’s accession to the CPTPP. That is a basic democratic point of principle. If the Government do not accept that, I come back to the urgings of Members from across the House and say that I hope the Government will take seriously the recommendations of the PACAC report for reform of the process overall. We are dealing with an undemocratic structure. The PACAC report’s incredibly practical proposals are for a sifting process, a sifting Committee, the identification of treaties that require longer consideration and giving the House itself a proper process of democratic scrutiny and democratic decision.

I shall deal briefly with new clause 8, which stands in my name and deals with the labour chapter of the CPTPP. I have raised this issue before, and the point has been made by a number of colleagues, the TUC, in particular, and various other campaigning organisations throughout this ratification process. The labour provisions of the CPTPP are outdated and inadequate. This treaty will include a number of countries, some of which have been mentioned, with the prospect of others joining, where abuses of labour rights are widespread. Putting in place effective labour provisions is therefore vital in any treaty we undertake.

That view has been expressed across the House for a number of years now, but let me give some examples. In Brunei and Vietnam, independent trade unions are banned—they are not allowed legally to operate. In Malaysia, which has been mentioned in our previous debates, forced labour has been documented extensively. That issue has been raised in this House time and again.

In that context, it is crucial that the CPTPP’s labour provisions are readily enforceable and are linked to the removal of trade preferences, to ensure that membership does not lead to a race to the bottom on labour standards, exactly as the right hon. Gentleman said. I agree with him on the fear about China, because union colleagues of mine from Hong Kong, whom I have worked with for decades, are in prison at the moment purely and simply because they are trade unionists and have stood up for democratic rights.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The point I was trying to make is that there is also an economic issue here. If China practises slave or forced labour, as it does on a wide scale, it undercuts all the reasonable labour. One good example is that the UK is desperately trying to get more solar arrays, but the polysilicon that is critical to those is mined in Xinjiang under slave labour conditions. No wonder everybody else is undercut, but we still pay for this.

[John McDonnell]

It is a point of economic principle that such things will occur if we do not have proper rights or regulations installed, or the appropriate sanctions when anything takes place. At the moment, those are not contained in the treaty. One member state can challenge another for failing to uphold labour rights, but, as we have seen time and again across various treaties, it is notoriously difficult to prove that such failure has affected trade. To challenge those labour practices, we have to demonstrate the effect on trade, but, under current provisions, that is almost impossible to do.

The International Trade Union Confederation has rightly pointed to the ability of states to buy their way out of issues via dispute settlement, as the amount of compensation has been calculated time and again as a fraction of the violation’s impact on trade. So the sanctions do not work, and they will not work under this treaty.

Procurement Bill [Lords]

Debate between John McDonnell and Iain Duncan Smith

Report stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The Cabinet Office must now decide the pace of this change. I hear that it is talking about six months and will come forward with a clear and explicit decision. In line with what my right hon. Friend has just said, it ought to explain the timescales for how Departments are going to take them away and how quickly, and an endpoint. That is critical, because otherwise, as I saw with the FOIs, Government Departments will do whatever they can not to do this because they are frightened and they say it will cost them extra. What really costs us is if they fail to do it.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

On telecoms, not TikTok in this instance. According to reports last week, the UK telecoms arm of CK Hutchison, 3 mobile, is merging with Vodafone. Vodafone is extensively involved in Government contracts and evidence by Unite the union published this week is basically saying that CK directors supported the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong. In fact, the chair of the company, Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, is adviser to the Hong Kong Chief Executive. The right hon. Gentleman knows that John Lee, the Chief Executive, has been involved in the suppression of protests and in the arrest of trade union colleagues of mine, members of Unite. Does he share my concern that people linked to this company now are going to have access to Government contracts in the UK?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

That is not the subject of the amendment but I will touch on it briefly. I have already spoken to the unions on this and I am very much in line with their position. The Government need to look very carefully at what has taken place, particularly because it reduces competition in the market. The links to the authoritarianism of the Chinese is one of the big worries, so I suggest that the Government have a serious look at that.

Returning to the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), these cameras are also being used in internal suppression in China. We know about the suppression of the Uyghurs; that is a genocide that is taking place. Even though the Government will not say it is genocide, everybody else believes it is: Parliament here has said it; the Americans have now said it; and so, too, have many other countries. I do not know why we cannot say this is genocide, but that is a question for another debate. The fact is that many of these instruments are being used as part of that suppression in the camps as well as to watch carefully so that suppression can take place. Right now, forced labour, forced sterilisation and re-education in camps are all taking place in China.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) referred from the Dispatch Box to the Opposition’s amendments. It is worth reminding her that China poses a risk in just about every single area with its human rights abuses and abuses of workers’ rights, yet so many of our companies want to ignore that.

While I welcome much of what the Government have done, I do not plan to move new clause 1 today, but only because I want more from the Government. I think they understand that.

I come back to the “sensitive” point. The truth is that, by definition, all Government Departments must be sensitive. As I said, I spent six years in charge of the DWP, and what I know is that there is arguably no more sensitive Department, because stopping payments for one or two days from the DWP would wreak havoc across the United Kingdom. People would not be able to get money to pay their rent, to buy their food or to live—all those things of vital importance. So a foreign power might be able to use information to target a Department such as the DWP that is not on the list because it may not appear as sensitive as the Ministry of Defence, GCHQ or—God bless us—the Foreign Office, when in reality, it is much more sensitive.

When we try to use a word like “sensitive” to give ourselves a little bit of a break, the problem becomes: who defines sensitive, and how often we will redefine it? I recommend that the Government describe all Departments as sensitive or else get rid of the word. That would put the onus on the Departments to come to the Cabinet Office to say, “We need an exemption for a period” or, “We can’t do this as fast.” The current wording means that they will not have to do that if they are outwith the term “sensitive.”

The reality is that we have had a number of Dispatch Box commitments from a load of Government Ministers about interpreting these things, but they never come to fruition. We were promised guidance in the other place on slavery during the passage of the Nationality and Borders Bill, but that was never put in. We really want the Government to commit at the Dispatch Box to changing what they are doing with “sensitive” when the Bill goes to the other place. “Sensitive” is too weak a position. It lets Departments off the hook and will put all the onus on the Cabinet Office. That must be reversed to ensure that this removal gets done.