Trade Bill

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and endorse the points that she made. This may be the final debate on this issue for the moment, but it has nevertheless been a strong one.

In my mind, the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Adonis, got to the nub of the issue: the dilemma that we face when we seek to trade with countries that move away from the human rights standards that we seek. However, that dilemma is not new; what is perhaps new is the scale of it over the past few years. I remember clearly when, as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, I and a number of committee members shook hands with the Dalai Lama on a visit to Edinburgh. An official Government of China communiqué said that the economy of Scotland would be harmed as a result of this handshake. This was 15 years ago, so there is no new element of the line—as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, put it—that the Foreign Office has trodden for a great number of years, in raising human rights aspects but also seeking to increase trade with the largest trading country in future.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, indicated that it is not just FTAs that cover this gamut. I am interested to know whether the Minister at the Dispatch Box can confirm that the Office for Investment, set up and chaired by the Prime Minister, is not proactively seeking investment agreements with China at the moment. If the Minister can confirm that, that would be reassuring, because it would be a live-time example of whether or not a government office chaired by a trade Minister is seeking new financial trading relationships on a preferential basis with China. If the Minister could confirm that in his winding-up speech, I would be grateful.

Perhaps it is different now because the tightrope—as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, called it—is impossible to straddle because of, as the Foreign Secretary said, the

“industrial-scale human rights abuses.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/21; col. 622.]

The question is what consequences there are in our trading relationships with preferential trade. Sir Geoffrey Nice, who is held in very high regard in this area, communicated with me and my noble friend Lady Northover today. He said something in his email which I asked his permission to quote as it really struck me. He reflected on the fact that, in my opinion, somewhere in the last two generations we have lost something. He said that we should understand and recognise that human rights exist for and should be honoured by

“every citizen of the world for every other citizen of the world, not just sometimes by some governments when it suits them.”

Some people argue that trading relationships are between businesses and people and treaty-making and diplomacy are Government-to-Government, but now, in this very interconnected and complex trading world in which we live, with comprehensive trading agreements, investment partnerships and strategic alliances, there is a wide gamut of preferential terms of access to the UK financial sector, the UK market or areas where we have sought the competitive advantage of China’s massive industrial and commercial manufacturing base.

It is the moral ambiguity that my noble friend Lord Fox and others have indicated at the heart of this Government’s policy that we have been highlighting. I would go further and say that there is a degree of intransigence and contradiction at the centre of the Government’s policy in this area. One contradiction is that the very approach outlined by the Minister today at the Dispatch Box and in his letter this afternoon, in which he describes the process now going forward, is against the mechanism that he and the Government have indicated for other trading agreements, and parliamentary approval is against UK constitutional approaches with regard to scrutiny. We cannot have both, so I hope that the Government will see that opening up scrutiny and allowing greater parliamentary say, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, indicated, is of benefit, not against UK constitutional approaches. In my view it should be one of the core elements of the UK constitutional approach that Parliament has a key role in these areas.

I share, as have others, my noble friend’s perseverance on this issue and that of those on the Government Benches in the Commons who have consistently told the Government to think again. On our Benches, Alistair Carmichael and Layla Moran were part of a wide coalition that will not now go away. The debate that has been started—the persistence and the perseverance —indicates that there will need to be much greater comprehensive elements in the Government’s approach to trade and human rights. We have said repeatedly that there should be a trade and human rights policy that outlines the Government’s policy, with triggering mechanisms that will suspend bilateral agreements, not just FTAs, when there are significant human rights concerns.

There needs to be a triggering mechanism, because we know that the nuclear option of cancelling all trade with a country should be reserved for the most grotesque situations, as we have been debating. However, there are other situations where we wish to use UK preferential market access as a lever around the world. It is a contradiction because we have moved away from an approach, which we were party to in recent years as part of the EU, of having triggering mechanisms to suspend bilateral agreements when countries are in breach because of significant human rights concerns. Indeed, there is a contradiction at the heart of what the Government are currently doing by reinstating preferential terms for Cambodia while the EU had withdrawn them because of human rights concerns. This Government have reinstated them without any indication of why.

When it comes to wider aspects of the partnership agreements, strategic alliances and other preferential areas, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in response to the Statement earlier today, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, whether any of our current preferential trading agreements with China have been suspended as a result of the alleged genocide against the Uighur community in China. It is quite clear that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, did not have an answer in his briefing pack—if he had, he would have said so—so I hope that the Minister for Trade will give an indication of whether we have indicated that any preferential trade agreements with China are now open for suspension.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, indicated, it is now time to open the debate about moving some of these decisions away from Governments. If this Government are refusing to, or perhaps any Government cannot, tread the line the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, indicated, of making decisions about suspending trading relations or preferential trading relations when there are gross human rights abuses, now is the time to start debating whether the UK should have an independent trade and human rights commission, not only for the sanctions regime but for other areas of new trading relationships.

When the noble Lord, Lord Alton, was a very young MP for Liverpool—I hope he will not mind me saying so since it was his birthday recently—he was a street campaigner and coined one of things that every Liberal campaigner, including me, has copied since, which was a slogan on the focus leaflets: “A record of action, a promise of more”. We have seen his record on this issue. I know there is a promise of more. As a veteran of three trade Bills in three years, I will not say goodbye to this issue but “Au revoir” until the next one. Inevitably there will be one. These issues—the contradictions at play and the moral ambiguities—need to be ironed out. This House and many others will do our best to do so.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is the last round on the Trade Bill—for the moment, as has just been said—and, as my right honourable friend the shadow Secretary of State said in the other place, it has taken

“three years, two months and two weeks”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/21; col. 668.]

to get to where we are today, which is quite a record and may indeed be worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. Given the length of time we have been involved in this, it is appropriate to thank all involved in this parliamentary marathon, not least both Ministers, the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, and the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone. Of my colleagues, I make special mention of my noble friends Lord Grantchester, Lord Bassam and Lord Lennie and, in particular, my noble friend Lord Collins, who has been taking the weight over the past few weeks while we have been discussing this issue and hoping for a better resolution than we have got.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for his work in trying to forge an amendment on scrutiny issues that we could persuade the Government to accept. As he said, we have not got there yet, but it is a work in progress and I am sure we will get there eventually. The noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, were instrumental in keeping the pressure on in relation to non-regression of standards. I pay tribute to them for their tireless work on that, and I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has been much in our thoughts in the past few weeks, particularly today. He again made a wonderful speech and covered the ground so carefully and so well that we cannot forget the issues that we have in front of us.

In almost three and a quarter years, trade policy has been transformed from being a largely commercial issue handled at arm’s length, because it was dealt with in policy terms by the EU, to being a central policy driver as important to the people of this country as every other mainstream policy—arguably more so, because trade deals that we sign in the future will shape who we are as a nation and how we will be regarded as a partner, even though we have made a bit of a bad start on that.

In some senses, the narrow issue which, sadly, is being determined today in favour of the Government, against the strong wishes of your Lordships’ House over three successive ping-pongs, is a measure of how much further we need to go to complete the work of creating an appropriate structure for the determination of trade policy in this country in the future. I think the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, pointed out rather effectively the gaps that already exist in the new arrangements; they are not as comprehensive, and certainly not as complete, as we would wish. But he also urged us, rightly, to make the new system work and to learn the lessons from the activity in the committees and in Parliament when we are able to do so, which will allow us to inform future debates and discussions.