That this House regrets the Economic Partnership Agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Cameroon given (1) the human rights abuses committed by President Biya’s regime, and (2) the lack of parliamentary scrutiny before trading arrangements came into force on 1 January.
Relevant document:1st Report from the International Agreements Committee
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for tabling his Motion on Ghana, and I welcome the debate taking place on both of these today. I will necessarily be focusing my remarks on Cameroon, leaving him to focus on the partnership agreement with Ghana, given the importance of tonight.
We have had a very busy couple of weeks of trade developments: CPTPP negotiations launching, an Australian deal being partially announced and the TRA’s recommendations on steel imports coming out. I want to make clear that we on this side want good trade deals that grow the economy, stimulate sectors and protect livelihoods and standards, reflecting the modern approach to trade that goes wider than mere economic exchange. As we ask questions and debate agreements, I want the Government always to remember that.
The Government do not seem to appreciate not only how scrutiny of trade deals should change to reflect the new status of the United Kingdom having left the EU, with all the constitutional arrangements that need to reflect that, but that trade deals need to reflect the new trading realities in the world today, which is undergoing a climate crisis against the backcloth of the pandemic, and where respect for rights, minorities and sustainability needs to become ingrained. These points were repeatedly made during the passage of the Trade Bill through your Lordships’ House last year, when many questions were asked about the future trading policy of this Government. It was repeatedly stated that the Trade Act referred only to rollover deals, with the Government refusing to answer how they would address and adapt the CRaG process to account for these sentiments. I remind the Minister that the CRaG process was set as appropriate for the UK being a member state of the EU.
In the rush forward with these new developments, a theme can be seen and identified where Ministers appear to be prioritising trade at any cost without any clear policies or moral compass, whether that means abandoning the fishing industry, selling out British farmers, failing British steel or abandoning British families. I believe that Cameroon fits into that pattern. Although accounting for only 0.1% of total UK trade, this deal means much more for human rights, scrutiny and future trade agreements.
The first part of my Motion necessarily focuses on human rights violations. Government forces have committed widespread abuse across Cameroon’s anglophone region since 2017. The UN estimates that 3,500 people have died and 700,000 have been displaced. Suspected violations include extrajudicial killings, torture, the destruction of property, fair trial violations and inhumane and degrading conditions of detention. Events in Cameroon have been painstakingly logged by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford, with one media report from 20 May 2019 stating that
“the military came in as the mother was struggling to prepare food for the family … The soldiers came in … and shot the child in the back of the head.”
My Lords, I rise to speak to the take-note Motion in my name and in so doing declare an interest, in that I co-chair the All-Party Group on Trade out of Poverty, and through that I co-chaired a commission on trade and development in the Commonwealth.
I thank the Government Whips’ Office for facilitating this debate. I have been pleased to work very closely with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in ensuring that this joint debate takes place. Perhaps he did not have the opportunity to say so, but if he seeks to test the opinion of the House on his Motion to Regret, we on these Benches will support him, for reasons that I will outline in a moment.
My Liberal Democrat colleague Sarah Olney secured an Adjournment debate on the UK agreements with Cameroon and Ghana in the Commons on 9 June. Had she not done so, the Commons would not have debated them at all. Sarah Olney and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, raised human rights concerns in Cameroon. He raised them very well, and I need not repeat what was said, as I agree with his views. I have been following these abuses with despair since I visited, a number of years ago, the Africa group of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, where I met both anglophone and francophone MPs from Cameroon.
I am not alone in wanting the Government to have taken a less passive role in this area. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, on 1 January 2020 the US took the decision to terminate Cameroon’s eligibility for the trade preferences under its African Growth and Opportunity Act. However, the UK Government seem to disagree with the United States that there should be restrictions on access to trade with them. Can the Minister explain why the UK Government disagree with the US Government?
In his reply to the International Agreements Committee’s report, the Minister in the Commons stated:
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. I declare my interests as listed in the register and that, in my time as Minister for Africa, I had the chance to visit both countries and to meet President Paul Biya and President Nana Akufo-Addo.
The benefits of free trade are absolutely huge and although the figures for our bilateral trade with Ghana, which is £1.2 billion, and with Cameroon, which is £200 million, may sound quite large, when you compare this to, for example, our bilateral trade with the Republic of Ireland, which is £70 billion, our total bilateral trade with sub-Saharan Africa is only £40 billion, so the scope for an increase in that is absolutely huge. I suggest that we have to take these really fast-growing economies more seriously. I welcome the focus on Africa in the recent integrated review of security, defence and development, because these are some of the countries where there are growing middle-income parts of the population and other countries are aggressively using their influence to try to build their trade, particularly China, Russia, Turkey and Brazil. We need to act quickly and these rollover treaties are an incredibly important part of that.
I absolutely take on board the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. What a huge contrast there is with Ghana, which has transitioned from one regime to another with the minimum of fuss and been an exemplar for smooth democracy in west Africa. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting Nana Akufo-Addo many times as the result of the partnership between his party, the NPP, and my party, the Conservative Party, over many years. We were called to the Bar at roughly the same time. He worked incredibly hard for his position, persevered and fought a number of elections. On many occasions he accepted the result and eventually he won the prize as president. What a contrast with Paul Biya, who we all know runs what is effectively a dictatorship. There have been repeated human right abuses over a number of years and, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, pointed out, there has been a focus on human rights abuses in the anglophone part of southern Cameroon, which I have visited on occasions.
While I sympathise with the spirit of the Motion to Regret, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, like the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, I cannot support it because our imports from Cameroon are so marginal that to impose any restriction on them would penalise some people in a very poor country without having any effect at all on the policies of their Government. EU sanctions might make a difference; on our own, we cannot. Trade flows with Ghana and Cameroon are marginal for us, but the point I draw to the House’s attention is seriously significant to British business because it is common to all these so-called rollover agreements. It is addressed in paragraphs 11 and 22 of the report that we are looking at today and concerns asymmetrical rules of origin, which seem to me to be one of the principal respects in which the new agreements are worse for British business than the situation before Brexit.
Take Cameroon as an example. It imports five times as much from France and more from Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy than it does from this country. Given integrated EU supply chains, there will have been UK content in these imports from the EU, but because our new TCA with the EU does not permit diagonal cumulation, such content will now disqualify such goods from the EU’s preferential trade arrangements, such as those with Cameroon. So, continental businesses will tend to look elsewhere for their components. It is asymmetrical: Cameroon’s exports to us will, under this agreement, still satisfy our rules of origin, however many European components they contain. More seriously, the same asymmetry applies in agreements with major trading partners such as Japan. Under the trade and co-operation agreement, not only will UK-assembled goods—motor vehicles, for example—not have tariff-free access to the continental market; those assembled here will not qualify for the EU’s preferential deals with third countries if their third-country content, in the first case, or their third-country and UK content in the second case, exceed rather low thresholds. That is bound to have serious economic effects in this country.
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register of interests. I support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Grantchester and welcome the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on Ghana.
Cameroon is in the grip of a major humanitarian conflict, fuelled by events in the north with Boko Haram and in the anglophone region with the movement there for secession. There are major food shortages and more than 1 million externally and internally displaced people. Ghana, by contrast, is a fully functioning, secure, successful, multi-party democracy. Both, however, have huge potential in terms of agriculture, minerals and manufacturing export. Trade is the key to their future prosperity, and it is on regional trade that I will seek to address the House today.
The Africa free trade agreement offers the best hope for growth in GDP and the alleviation of poverty. Will the Government commit to work, as a matter of urgency and with a specific timetable, to enter into negotiations with the ECOWAS region so as to maximise economic transformation and development through successful regional integration?
The agreement signed with Ghana commits the British Government to do that. It will be vital for there to be capacity, not just within ECOWAS and Ghana in order to negotiate such an agreement. The FCDO has a role to play in that in terms of building capacity, but it is also important that there is a joined-up effort among departments within our own Government in order to ensure that we are able to come to an agreement with the whole of ECOWAS as a matter of urgency. Engagement is crucial.
The Government also, and importantly, need to replicate within west Africa their success in TradeMark East Africa, which supports the development of the market value chain and the development of manufacture and agribusiness in east Africa. We need to see the same in west Africa.
My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and my noble friend Lord Purvis for obtaining this debate, and also express my appreciation to the committee for its reports.
At the time that it achieved independence, Ghana ran on British imports, and Kwame Nkrumah was determined to develop home-produced wares. With that in view, he encouraged textiles, which, through a number of state-owned enterprises, provided a great deal of employment. The coup which ousted him in 1966 unhappily let those developments rust away, so that today only 2% of Ghana’s high-quality cotton is processed in the country; most is exported to China and other south-east Asian countries.
In the Covid epidemic, the Ghanaian Government adopted a policy of self-reliance. For example, they developed the production of PPE in their factories and are trying to produce their own pharmaceuticals. Can the Minister tell us to what extent this trade agreement assists this policy of self-reliance? It is clearly in the interests of this country, by reason of our colonial history, not to regard Ghana simply as a customer for our exports; it is important that we use trade to support stability and prosperity in this region, beyond buying their bananas. At the moment, Ghana is less impacted by the terrorist raids and atrocities that undermine some of its neighbours to the north. Let us hope it remains so. The imposition of tariffs on its banana exports, at the beginning of the year, was not helpful. What steps have the Government taken to reimburse those producers whose businesses were hit?
As for the trade deal with Cameroon, can the Minister explain why we have entered into a rollover agreement with a country whose administration is so mired by human rights abuses that even Donald Trump withdrew trade privileges from them? The protection of human rights is said to be an essential element in the agreement, but words are not enough in the face of ongoing human rights abuses, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester.
My Lords, I cannot support the noble Lord’s Motion to Regret. I cannot see that removing preferences will help banana workers in south- west Cameroon.
I will sketch the appalling troubles in Cameroon’s south-west. Britain, Germany and France bear a grave responsibility for restoring peace and stability. Britain’s involvement began in 1845 with the Baptist missionary Alfred Saker, who, with freed Jamaican slaves, built Victoria, now called Limbe, on the gulf. Kew first worked close to Limbe on plant diversity in 1860. I was Kew’s chairman when, in the 1990s, we restored the Limbe botanic garden. Kew has 55,000 specimens from Cameroon and is working on protecting the Ebo forest from logging, by designating it a tropical important plant area.
As chief executive of CDC, I was responsible for its management of the ex-German plantations in the south-west. This started before independence, ran for 40 years and came to an end only when the Blair Government forced CDC to pull out. Skilful management of plantations is a great aid to stability. CDC today, skilfully chaired by Sir Graham Wrigley, is invested in electricity generation and distribution, and has been in Cameroon for 70 years so far. Britain’s pressing responsibilities arise from this 175-year involvement. We need to stay involved to contribute to the much-needed improvement in the lives of Cameroonians.
Regrettably, Cameroon’s development to date is disappointing. This wonderful country’s development is way behind what could and should have been achieved. The re-establishment of peace and security is of the highest importance but cannot rely on Cameroon’s Government. The United Nations cannot do the necessary—we must. Outside the EU, we need to find our own way forward. What is the Government’s policy towards the anglophone crisis in south-west Cameroon?
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The report goes on to call on the international community to “help us”.
This incident is heartbreaking but not isolated. Human Rights Watch has said that government forces committed widespread human rights abuses throughout 2020, and yet, at the end of that year, our Government agreed to roll over trade arrangements with the regime responsible. Can the Minister simply tell the House why? This was in spite of the Foreign Secretary saying in January that we should not be engaged in free trade negotiations with countries abusing human rights, and in spite of the Minister saying in this House in December 2020, again in February this year, and yet again in March, that trade does not have to come at the expense of human rights.
Clearly, the gap between the Government’s rhetoric and actions is vast, and that is also becoming a clear hallmark of this Government. By signing this agreement, the UK is actually moving in the opposite direction to the US and more enlightened trading relationships. In January 2020, the US terminated Cameroon’s eligibility for trade preference benefits due to the Biya regime’s persistent violations of internationally recognised human rights. Let us not be confused: this was under the previous US Administration. If President Trump can act, why cannot Secretary of State Truss?
On 1 January this year, the same day that the trading arrangement was rolled over by our Government, a unanimous United States Senate resolution was passed criticising the Biya regime for abuses. Just as a media report called on the international community to act, the Senate resolution urged other countries to join a collective effort to put pressure on Cameroon through the use of available diplomatic and punitive tools. The Government will recognise that this includes trade. Your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee has called on the Government to set out the process they plan to monitor human rights compliance that could put Cameroon in material breach of the essential elements in this agreement. Can the Minister explain this process today?
Can the Minister confirm that all future explanatory memorandums to trade deals will include information about significant issues of concern raised by devolved Administrations and how they have been addressed? Looking to future arrangements, can the Minister also explain the UK’s policy on the inclusion of human rights clauses and how they will be reflected in every deal? The recent Norway and Iceland treaty contained no such clauses. While I am not worried specifically about those countries, I am worried about what precedent this sets for agreements with the Gulf states and Brazil.
This returns us to the focus on parliamentary scrutiny. On 27 December, the UK and Cameroon agreed through a memorandum of understanding to bridge the gap between the end of the post-Brexit transition period and a provisional application to maintain the effects of the EU-Central Africa EPA and apply the tariff preferences of the UK-Cameroon EPA, but the MoU was not published until four months later. The Government announced a new deal signed on 9 March but, once again, Parliament did not get to see the text until 20 April, with your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee being able to consider it only on 26 May.
Under challenge from the shadow Secretary of State Emily Thornberry, the Secretary of State replied in a letter dated 7 June that “on this occasion, I do not believe a debate is appropriate”. She referred to a debate having taken place on the continuity agreement in Parliament back when the existing EU agreement was negotiated with Cameroon, but that was only a 14-minute debate back in 2010, with open conflict against the English-speaking population in Cameroon beginning in 2017.
I pay tribute to the Minister for the many times that he has committed the Government to proper parliamentary scrutiny. I know that he will remember doing so during the Trade Bill and in answering many Questions and making Written Ministerial Statements. Indeed, his pronouncements have been codified into the “Grimstone rule”. I know that he is committed to good governance, even under the outdated CRaG process.
It is disheartening to witness the actual interpretation of scrutiny arrangements by this Government—
“Our long-standing relationship with Cameroon allows us to have open, candid discussions”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/21; col. 1070.]
He cited the Minister for Africa’s meetings and said that the UK is monitoring the situation. Today, I ask for clarity, as I did in our debates on the Trade Bill, on what processes the UK has in place to transparently judge human rights compliance. In the UK-Cameroon agreement there is a so-called nuclear option of the essential elements clauses for human rights violations. However, we still have no idea what escalation-triggering mechanisms the UK would seek to use in any successor agreement, or indeed any agreement at all. My frustration is that the Government, having been given many opportunities through the Trade Bill, have resolutely refused to publish a trade and human rights policy which sets out human rights criteria, observation and monitoring mechanisms, public reporting, and a staged process of escalation that could lead to suspension or removal of preferential access to UK markets.
During the passage of the Trade Bill, I stated repeatedly—and, indeed, had amendments to the Bill referring to—the need for the UK to have a successor to the Cotonou agreement. On 15 April the EU and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries agreed a replacement to the Cotonou agreement, and the UK has been left in a vacuum. The new EU-OACPS partnership agreement covers the priority areas of democracy and human rights, sustainable economic growth and development, climate change, human and social development, peace and security, and migration and mobility. It has a structure, including an ACP-EU council of ministers, a committee of ambassadors, a development finance co-operation committee, a ministerial trade committee and a joint ACP-EU parliamentary assembly, but there is nothing from the UK. Can the Minister therefore explain what the Government’s intention is? Are we to have a UK agreement with the ACP states?
On trade facilitation, I agree with the Minister when he says, frequently, that these agreements mean nothing if they cannot be operationalised. The reality for developing countries is that we have added more burdens on them for continuity of trade and have committed ourselves to supporting their implementation, but the Government have not said how.
On Cameroon, paragraph 3 of Article 9, on the financing of the partnership, states:
“The UK will provide funding through mechanisms such as the UK Prosperity Fund to support implementation of this Agreement.”
But a letter of 3 June from the Foreign Secretary to the International Development Committee in the Commons states that Cameroon will receive no—that is, zero—bilateral development assistance from the UK in 2021-22. What precisely is the support of the UK in this treaty obligation? Similarly, for Ghana, paragraph 2 of Article 4 states that
“supporting the implementation of this Agreement shall be among the priorities.”
Paragraph 5 commits the UK to providing
“funding to support implementation of this Agreement with a view to ensuring a simple, efficient and quick implementation.”
I hope that that is not simply a reference to an existing UK-Ghana partnership for jobs and economic transformation scheme, which I saw elements of for myself when I visited Accra. Can the Minister confirm that funding for this has not been cut, what new funding exists to honour this treaty obligation, and over what timescale?
The burden on Ghana and its Fairtrade farmers was felt immediately at the end of the transition period when the UK applied tariffs on imported goods. Some of the goods were turned away because the UK ports were not ready. I had warned of this before the end of the transition, when the Minister said there was no problem, and afterwards I raised it in the House, as the IAC report has highlighted, and the Government said that it could not have been helped. There was a problem and it could have been prevented.
In response to the justified conclusion of the IAC on the lack of a bridging mechanism to avoid this, the Minister said in his letter that Her Majesty’s Government
“could not use a bridging mechanism to maintain Ghana’s duty free quota free access during this period, as negotiations on the agreement were ongoing.”
But the department’s letter is directly contradicted by its information note of December 2020, which states in paragraph 5:
“Where we or our treaty partners are unable to fully ratify or provisionally apply an agreement, we will seek to give effect to the preferences under the signed UK agreements (or, if necessary, under the existing EU agreements) through alternative bridging mechanisms.”
So, as the department states itself, it could have bridged the existing EU mechanisms but chose not to. Can the Minister say why it did not?
Finally, by definition these agreements are already out of date, but the UK has not signalled any clear intention of renewal or expansion. I hope that the Minister will respond positively by giving a clear signal of the successor agreements and that he will find time to meet me, members of the all-party group and other colleagues who believe that there is great potential in our trade with these countries, specifically Ghana. There are barriers to overcome but by working together, we should be able to realise that potential.
I would just say to the noble Lord that we have two options here. Either we remain engaged and have a dialogue with Cameroon and exert influence. I found that, when I was able to meet President Biya, in private we were able to achieve much more by making representations around human rights, but at the same time remaining engaged. I just say to the noble Lord, and others who have a regret about this Motion, we do not have a dispute with the Cameroonian people. We want prosperity, engagement and wealth creation, and if we can achieve those aims, we will see Cameroon move to democracy and to proper all-party elections and, in the meantime, create prosperity for the people of Cameroon and, indeed, the people of this country as well.
The problem was addressed at some length in chapter 3 of the EU Committee’s 24th report, of 25 March, Beyond Brexit: Trade in Goods, but I have not seen any government response and the Minister did not address the issue in the letter he kindly sent us yesterday. I would be grateful if he could now tell us what impact assessment the Government have made of the omission of diagonal cumulation under the TCA and its effects on future third-country trade. Perhaps he could also tell us when the House and the country can expect to see such an assessment.
We need to publish a medium-term strategy for our trade support to both Ghana and the Cameroon—and the whole of the ECOWAS region—in order to deliver that as a matter of urgency. Aid will take Africa and this region only so far; trade is much more important in the short, medium and long term. These agreements ought to be working in ways that promote successful integration. I hope that the Government will commit to the resources to make that happen.
The arrests, arbitrary detentions and prosecutions in military courts of opposition members, in the latter part of last year, is just one more example. Another is the violent clearing by police and military, with the use of tear gas, of a magistrates’ court last December, when a group of a hundred lawyers protested against refusal of bail for two of their number, who had been arrested for exercising freedom of speech. The harsh repression of opposition and dissenting voices shows no sign of abating. I am afraid this Government lack the moral compass to do anything to discourage it.