Trade Deals and Fair Trade

I beg to move,

That this House has considered trade deals and fair trade.

It is a great pleasure to move the motion during Fairtrade fortnight. The debate is about how to hardwire the ethics of fair trade into future trade deals as we break out of Europe. I stand here as a Labour and Co-operative MP. The Co-op has a proud tradition of fair trade, solidarity and social justice, and, on the retail side, promoting Fairtrade coffee, bananas, wine, chocolate, and so on.

I represent Swansea West, and I am pleased to say that Swansea has been a Fairtrade city since 2004. In fact, Wales became the first fair trade nation in 2008, and a lot of that work was done by the Swansea fair trade forum. I am also a supporter of the Fairtrade Foundation, which has tended to focus on cocoa producers in the Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where there are issues surrounding living incomes, gender inequality and environmental standards.

Coming to the crux of the matter, we are all aware that we face opportunities and risks in striking trade deals. Naturally, a lot of focus has been on the removal of subsidies and tariffs, and some of the focus has moved on to standards of products and services. However, I wish to talk about standards in relation to the environment, labour, and crop diseases and the like, which can be used to undermine free and fair trade by providing unlevel playing fields.

In a nutshell, fair trade is the principle that market actors should not gain a competitive advantage by adopting practices in other states that would be unlawful or unethical in their home states. The fair trade principle is that we should not outsource abuse—whether in terms of human rights or environmental standards—and then import products made under such conditions, creating unfair competition for domestic producers, who have to live up to high environmental and ethical standards. It is important that we do not import products that are produced below our standards and by virtual slave labour. Such imports naturally lead to people complaining locally that trade is uncompetitive, and to rhetoric about stopping trade and how everything is unfair to domestic producers, who miss out.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate in Fairtrade fortnight. Does he agree that Britain needs to be a real example around the world in standards, and would it not be a good idea if the Government set out clearly that they intend to remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights?

Yes, that is crucial. There has been some ambiguity over whether we will continue with the European convention on human rights. Ministers have simply said, “We’re still in it,” when questioned. They have not ruled out leaving it, and that is of great concern. If we, as a country, decide on our own definitions of rights and human rights, other countries, such as China, Russia and others, will say, “Oh well, Britain is doing that.” We became a signatory 60 years ago. Winston Churchill was an architect of the convention. It is very important for our standing that we remain a signatory to it.

There used to be a commitment to including dynamic alignment on environmental and labour standards in our agreement with the EU, but that is no longer the case. If those commitments are not given, the EU will consider imposing restrictions based on the presumption that non-alignment might be a doorway to providing uncompetitive trade and an unfair advantage, by undermining rights, the environment and labour standards. I certainly would not want to see that.

International agreements tend to be policed by independent tribunals invoked by investor-state dispute settlements. Those settlements focus very much on the interests of the inward investor, and on any profit that they might lose from the host nation’s introduction of laws and restrictions. Such laws and restrictions are often introduced to protect the host environment, workers’ rights and so on, and such settlements make it possible for a fine to be levied against the host country. The Minister will know of cases such as Lone Pine fracking in Canada, which sued Canada for hundreds of millions of dollars because Quebec decided to have a moratorium on fracking. There are cases of companies suing Mexico on the grounds that it introduced a tax on fizzy drinks to protect people from diabetes. There are cases of such mechanisms being used against Slovakia when it tried to roll back privatisation.

The point that I am making is that such arrangements contain a chapter for the investor that completely overwhelms the balance of power in relation to human rights and the environment. There may be an environmental chapter in some of the agreements, but it will not have the enforceability that investor-state tribunals do. The Government should look at that in order to hardwire labour and environmental standards into trading agreements, and to help to sustain and grow fair trade. It would also be ideal to hardwire the Paris agreement and the convention on human rights into new trade deals. We know that in the US-UK negotiations, the US explicitly wants to rule out climate change and the Paris agreement, and that is of great concern.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he share the Co-operative party’s concern about the mooted winding up or merging of the Department for International Development? We need it to grow in order to tackle inequalities around the world.

That point is very well made. This is a critical time, during which DFID needs to be closely engaged in the whole issue of negotiating trade deals. It is helpful for DFID to be separate from the Department for International Trade. We do not want DFID to be absorbed, eliminated, pushed into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or whatever; we want it to be a strong voice in a difficult time as we move forward, so that Britain can be seen to champion these values for others to follow, rather than undermining standards and leading people in the opposite direction.

Coming back to the point about democracy, it is important that we are all in this together, so to speak, by virtue of having democratic scrutiny and a vote on the mandate. The process should be as transparent as is sensible, and then there should be final scrutiny and a vote on the deal in Parliament. That is something that the US Congress enjoys, and democracy in trade deals is not much of an innovation. The US Congress looks at trade deals, and there is public consultation. Of course, the European Parliament also has a vote on trade deals. If we are taking back control, we should have similar or better rights ourselves.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. Does he agree that the current avenues for public and parliamentary scrutiny of future trade deals are not fit for purpose; that the Government must be transparent about their negotiating priorities to ensure that social and environmental protections are adequate; and that they must provide scope for genuine parliamentary debate and influence in any and all trade deals?

Order. Can I just say to the hon. Lady that it is normally good practice to not intervene on a speech when you have not heard the beginning of it? The hon. Gentleman gave way, so I allowed the hon. Lady to speak, but it is not good practice to come in midway through a speech and intervene.

Thank you very much, Mr Stringer, and I thank my hon. Friend very much for her intervention. I agree with the points that she made, because in a mature and open democracy such as ours we do not want to have trade deals done in secret, and then find out that they contained all sorts of strange things that we did not want. By way of example, we would not want to wake up one day and find GM food scraps on our shelves. Neither would we want chlorinated chicken or hormone-impregnated beef, which provokes premature puberty in children.

We would not want certain things to be negotiated on the grounds of regulatory co-operation. That might include moving away from REACH—a process that the Minister will know about—on the chemical front. Under that process, if he were to produce a chemical, he would have to show that it was safe. If I were to produce a chemical in the United States, however, the Environmental Protection Agency would have to show it was hazardous. That is why asbestos is still for sale in the United States. We would certainly want to debate and scrutinise whether regulatory co-operation would lead to a much higher incidence of hazardous chemicals or poor food, which I would not want to see.

I know that the Government have committed to maintaining our standards of food production. However, the threat now is that while our farmers are delivering good food, the doorway will be left open for American farmers to pump in low-grade, low-price products that are consumed by poorer people who are under the hammer of austerity, and who end up feeding hormone-impregnated beef to their children, with strange medical side effects. I would not want that, and we would certainly want an open debate and discussion about it, so the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) was well made.

In addition, we do not want our NHS to be undermined behind closed doors. The Government have said, “The NHS is safe in our hands,” and all that sort of stuff, but as we already know, the Americans will want to compete in areas of the NHS that are nationalised. They want access to patient data, and in fact a lot of patient data has already been leaked to private companies. They also want to increase medicine prices by protecting patents more effectively, and the World Health Organisation also promotes higher medicine costs. At this tragic time when we face the threat of coronavirus, and when we are talking about public health and equality of availability of drugs to deal with this and any future threats, such protections are essential.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Do you agree with me—I think you do, from what you said earlier about dumping and the issues faced by developing countries—that the new deals must not erode the hard-fought preferences given to countries in the global south? There is a real danger that the new trade agreements that are brokered with other trading blocs will not be in those countries’ development interests. We need further public and Government scrutiny of those deals so we can be assured that that will not happen.

Order. I recognise that the hon. Lady is a new Member, but if she says “you”, she is referring to me, and I do not have a view on this. It is an easy mistake to make.

Thank you very much, Mr Stringer. agree precisely: it is important that as we move forward, Britain shows leadership in this area. As has been pointed out, DFID continues to exist to champion the needs of developing countries, including elimination of poverty, protection of our environment and sustainable development in the context of the Paris agreement, and to ensure those things are not undermined by future trade agreements made in private.

There is also the question of the EU’s economic partnership agreements for Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. There are problems with those agreements, because they undermine regional integration and domestic production in those zones. It would seem fair to have a balance of power between the different groupings of nations, rather than bigger powers making smaller powers less weak. Arguably, there is an opportunity for Britain to continue to lead here—unfortunately from without, as opposed to within—while keeping those trading preferences.

I know that a lot of people want to speak on this important subject, so I will simply say that this is a new chapter in Britain’s history as we move forward as a great trading nation. It is our responsibility to uphold the very best standards in human rights, workers’ rights, fair play, social justice, the environment and democracy. I hope that the Minister can give the reassurances that I have requested, and that we can go from strength to strength on fair trade, rather than using our EU exit as an opportunity to move in reverse.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for securing this debate in Fairtrade fortnight. I will make four short points.

First, it would be wrong of us not to acknowledge that the Fairtrade establishment needs a considerable amount of reform. The poorest countries in the world, which are trying their hardest to participate in it, find it difficult to get Fairtrade certification, because they are poor and simply cannot meet its regulatory requirements. If we are trying to ensure an even spread across the world, we need to look at that so that we can access Fairtrade products.

To be clear, is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that Fairtrade should be reformed so that ethical and other standards are reduced, rather than maintained, to allow a level playing field? Surely we should invest further in international development to make sure that we level up.

The hon. Gentleman misquotes me. I am not saying that standards should be reduced, but there is a definite difficulty with the Fairtrade method when the poorest cannot afford the Fairtrade certification that is required to get their products to the rest of the world.

Secondly, on the human rights question, I am fully committed to the human rights that we have and to the European Court of Human Rights. As the hon. Member for Swansea West knows from our common membership for some time of the Council of Europe, I am absolutely committed to the Council and the ECHR. Recently, a Member in the other place asked about the future of the ECHR and the UK Government’s commitment to it, and I was pleased to note that the Minister responsible gave a firm commitment to the ECHR. There is, however, a serious corruption problem in the ECHR, which we need to acknowledge and do something about. The petition about it has already reached something like 13,000 signatures, including mine. It is apparent that several of the judges whom we elect—I reiterate that we as members of the Council of Europe elect the judges of the ECHR—come not from legal practice but from non-governmental organisations. They are the very NGOs that bring cases before the judges without a declaration of interest. That undermines the credibility of the ECHR in taking great strides forward on our human rights.

If the hon. Gentleman would like a defence of the ECHR, I am happy to provide that, but this is probably not the occasion. I point out, however, that about 96% of cases that are brought before the ECHR are dismissed by its secretariat as worthless and having no legal merit and do not get to a judge. In the few cases that are brought before a judge, we are by far the winners in the way that we defend them and that they are taken forward. I share his commitment to the ECHR and will do all I can to ensure that we stay part of it.

Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the agreement with Africa. As he knows, I have been and still am the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Nigeria. The UK’s involvement with the Nigerian economy is productive. The UK has gone out of its way to try to achieve good things for the Nigerian state and the UK, one of which is the abolition of modern slavery. Agriculture is a sector full of opportunities for modern slavery. When I went to see Unilever and its operations, I was pleased that it and its entire supply chain are working with organisations to eradicate modern slavery. There is an enormous opportunity for British companies to get into Nigeria and to work constructively with Nigerian companies. That is why a year and a half ago I was pleased to invite the Nigerian Federal Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development to see the entire supply chain of the agricultural sector, from growing to packaging and selling, and everything along the way.