Trade Bill

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is engaged by Lords amendment 11. If the Lords amendment engaging financial privilege is agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving Commons financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.

After Clause 2

Parliamentary approval of trade agreements

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 2, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 3, Government motion to disagree, and amendment (a) in lieu.

Lords amendment 4, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 5, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 6, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 7, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 8, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 9, and Government amendments (a) and (b) thereto.

Lords amendment 10, and Government amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 11 to 31.

This Bill marks a significant milestone. Its passage into law will have numerous benefits for the UK economy: giving certainty to business with regard to our continuity trade agreements; confirming the UK’s access to the global procurement markets; providing protection to businesses and consumers from unfair trading practices; and ensuring that we have the appropriate data to support our exporters and importers. This Bill has enjoyed rigorous parliamentary scrutiny, having been through many of its parliamentary stages twice, and I am delighted to finally see it reach this stage. I am sure it will soon be passed into law, to the satisfaction of all.

I will speak to each amendment in turn, beginning with Lords amendment 1, which is in the name of Liberal Democrat peer Lord Purvis. With our new-found freedom, it is right that Parliament should be able to scrutinise effectively the UK Government’s ambitious free trade agreement programme. However, Lords amendment 1 goes far beyond what would be appropriate for our unique constitutional make-up and would unduly tie the hands of Government to in negotiating in the best interests of the UK. The Government have listened to the concerns of both Houses throughout the passage of this Bill and have moved significantly to improve further its enhanced transparency and scrutiny arrangements.

My right hon. Friend said that the amendment would go too far. In the European Parliament the power existed for MEPs to give consent to trade Bills. Now that power has come back to this country, is he suggesting that this should not go to MPs but should go to the Executive? I think that is what he is suggesting.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that he has taken a long-standing interest, during the passage of this Bill and its predecessor, in these questions, and I will make two points. First, it would be inappropriate to compare this Westminster style of democracy with the European Parliament and the European Commission. Secondly, all the trade agreements in scope within the continuity provisions of the Bill have already been scrutinised in this House. These arrangements were set out in a written ministerial statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade on 7 December. The enhanced arrangements that we have set out are entirely appropriate for a Westminster-style democracy such as ourselves; they are at least as strong as, and in some cases are stronger than, the arrangements in comparable systems, such as those in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

I am going to make a bit more progress.

Finally, I remind the House that ultimately if Parliament is not content with a trade deal that we have negotiated, it has statutory powers, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, to prevent ratification by resolving against ratification indefinitely. That is in addition to Parliament’s power to vote down any necessary implementing legislation, again thereby preventing ratification.

That brings me on to Lords amendment 5. I suggest to the House that this amendment is unnecessary, as it covers things that the Government are already doing, or that are established precedent of the UK as a dualist state. The Government are already under a statutory obligation to publish an explanatory memorandum when a treaty is laid before Parliament. As Members will have seen, in section 5 of our explanatory memorandum to our agreement with Japan, we set out how we would implement the agreement and where legislation would be required. We, as a dualist state, have well-established precedents for putting in place implementing legislation before ratification of a treaty. If we did not do so, we would risk the UK being in breach of its international obligations. We have no desire to change this established way of working.

The Government have clearly stated that we will work to facilitate requests for debates, including from the relevant Select Committees, on free trade agreements as part of CRaG, subject to available parliamentary time. The Government have a good record of this; last year, debates took place in this House and the other place on the Japan free trade agreement, and that is in addition to the six debates we have facilitated in the other place on our continuity agreements.

One of the complaints of the International Trade Committee, on which I sit, was that there was not enough time to debate the report that the Committee put forward on the Japanese trade deal. Will my right hon. Friend perhaps look at offering extra parliamentary time—I know it is perhaps not in his purview—for Parliament to have such debates? They could be followed up with debates on the general trade agreement that has been agreed by the Government at the time.

My hon. Friend makes a very strong point. The whole purpose of providing the relevant Select Committee with the relevant text in advance is so that the Select Committee can produce a report that will inform debate in Parliament. In that sense, I agree with him. On his specific point about making time available to the Select Committee to debate that report, I think that question is properly within the domain of Parliament, rather than the Government. I am sure you would agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, that allowing time for a parliamentary Select Committee to debate a report is best done through the usual channels, in conjunction with the Speaker’s Office. I do not think it is entirely within the gift of the Government to allocate time to a parliamentary Select Committee.

Will the Minister give way?

No, I am going to move on, because I want to come on to what I think might be the areas of greatest interest in this debate, including Lords amendments 2 and 3 on human rights. I remind hon. and right hon. Members of the Foreign Secretary’s statement on Tuesday last week, in which he outlined a range of measures in response to the deplorable human rights situation in Xinjiang. I also refer colleagues to the article I wrote about Xinjiang as long ago as 2011, showing my personal interest in that question.

I recognise that the amendments before the House are not specific to China per se, but some of the supporters have China in mind, and it is worth reminding Members of what the new measures the Foreign Secretary announced will do, as they are germane to the ongoing debate on human rights. The measures will help to ensure that UK businesses and the public sector are in no way complicit in human rights violations in Xinjiang. They include: first, strengthening the overseas business risk guidance to make clearer the risk to UK businesses investing in, or with supply chains in, Xinjiang; secondly, a review of export controls as they apply to the situation in Xinjiang to ensure we are doing all we can to prevent the export of goods that may contribute to human rights violations in Xinjiang; thirdly, the introduction of financial penalties for organisations that fail to comply with the Modern Slavery Act 2015; and, fourthly, ensuring that the Government or public sector bodies have the evidence they require to help them exclude suppliers that are complicit in human rights violations in Xinjiang.

I understand the point my right hon. Friend is making, and we do not have a free trade deal with China at the moment, and we are not likely to, but many of us for years have been frustrated that every time we try to raise genocide in this place in terms of trade deals, we are told that it is subject to the international courts, and that China, Russia or other countries in the UN Security Council have a veto on the matter. Is there any way we can acknowledge that genocide is taking place in a country when we do a trade deal, without losing parliamentary control of our trade deals, and without getting trade deals bogged down for months or even years in courts?

I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the Government are very ready to have these discussions. I am sure that the amendment in the name of Lord Alton is not an appropriate amendment to put into this Bill. As my right hon. Friend will have seen from the Foreign Secretary’s statement last week, we do take the situation in Xinjiang, and other allegations of serious human rights abuses, extremely seriously. However, we also have to think about what we are dealing with—the appropriate role for the High Court in international treaties, and particularly the right in the Alton amendment for an automatic revocation of an international treaty.