Trade Policy: Environmental Considerations

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to draw attention to scrutiny. I am always happy to repeat our commitment to scrutiny from the Dispatch Box. Both the Australia and New Zealand agreements are at the in-principle stage, at the moment. The full texts will be published in due course. They will be made available to the House in good time and will be scrutinised by the TAC and by your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee. We will make sure that there is time for all those processes to be completed thoroughly and to the standard that noble Lords wish.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

Documents leaked to Sky News reveal that the Department for International Trade can drop both the climate asks on precedence of multilateral environmental agreements over FTA provisions and on the reference to the Paris Agreement temperature goals. This is of great concern. Can the Minister say whether the Norway agreement last week was one of very few including such clauses because Norway insisted, and otherwise, for a Conservative Government, it is always trade deals at all costs, irrespective of other issues?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to comment categorically that the leaked document to which the noble Lord refers is not government policy and is not being considered by Ministers.