Barbara Young – 2023 Speech on the Australia/New Zealand Trade Deal (Baroness Young of Old Scone)
The speech made by Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone, in the House of Lords on 9 January 2023.
My Lords, I declare my environmental interests, as well as my interest as chair of the Royal Veterinary College. I had not really thought of declaring my Australian and New Zealand relatives until I was reminded by several previous speakers. I have umpteen of them. We were good Scots: we spotted the £10 immigration grant—the Ten Pound Poms scheme, as it was known—and took full advantage of it. I am a frequent visitor to Australia and New Zealand.
Noble Lords have remarked upon the fact that this Bill is very narrow in scope in that it deals only with the power to implement the obligations in the government procurement chapters of the two FTAs, but it is of course an open goal in terms of the opportunity to talk about the wider issues of trade agreements, including the scrutiny process. I would also like to focus on environmental standards. I hope that these broader comments will benefit future agreements.
On the scrutiny process, much of the scrutiny happens far too late. It needs to take place before things are set in concrete. I welcomed the assurances from the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, about future ground rules and improvements in the processes, but they did not go far enough. We need full parliamentary debate and agreement on negotiating objectives before negotiation starts, and proper opportunity for parliamentary debate in both Houses before the agreement is signed, not after—or, in the case of these two agreements, never at all, as far as the House of Commons was concerned.
As the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said, we used to have such provisions in place for trade and other negotiations within an EU setting. It is slightly bizarre that we do not have such open arrangements now that we are allegedly free to do what we want. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how he intends to reinstitute those processes.
I would also like, in common with other noble Lords, to talk about trade strategy, or the absence thereof. All future agreements need to be set in the context of a proper trade strategy. The International Agreements Committee, the International Trade Committee and the EFRA Committee have all asked for a trade strategy, and I am sure that many noble Lords will today. I hope it will cover such crucial issues as whether the Department for International Trade has a clear role in promoting democratic values and environmental reform through trade.
I turn to some specific areas in relation to environment and agriculture. I was rather taken aback at how almost incandescently messianic the Minister was about the benefits of these two agreements; I thought I might have been reading two different agreements. Let me be a party pooper, perhaps, or diminish the messianic nature of the Minister’s rapture, and talk about some of the issues that some people are not quite so convinced about as he is in terms of the environment and agriculture.
On the process for environmental impact assessments, EIAs happen only after the signing; they take no account of cumulative effects of several trade deals; and they do not really cover such key issues as transport-related emissions and the potential for increased carbon leakage. There are no permanent bilateral safeguards to ensure that imports with lower environmental standards than those we set in the UK do not come into this country. So, the EIAs result in an incomplete picture which can obscure the true risk of offshoring climate and environmental impacts as a result of trade agreements. If we think that was a minor issue in the Australia and New Zealand agreements, we ain’t seen nothing yet—we are going to be dealing with much bigger fish to fry in the future.
I am still monumentally unclear about how environmental standards of imports are monitored on an ongoing basis. During our debate on the Trade Bill, the Minister assured us that systems were in place but gave us no detail. To be honest, at that stage I had almost given up the will to live in dealing with these issues and did not pursue it, but I entirely plan to continue to pursue it now. Will the Minister tell us what the systems are for monitoring environmental standards of imports on an ongoing basis? What review has there been so far of their effectiveness? What remedies are there, apart from the transient remedies in these two agreements, if such standards are infringed?
I turn to agriculture. I was never a great fan of the Trade and Agriculture Commission; it is pretty light on environmental expertise and comes into play only once FTAs are signed, which is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The Trade and Agriculture Commission reported on the UK-Australia FTA, but this process needs to be strengthened by expanding the remit of the TAC and the scope of the Government’s report required under Section 42 of the Agriculture Act. At present, both are incredibly narrow, and that is compounded by the fact that the TAC also has very limited resources, including limited expertise, to conduct proper scrutiny of larger, more complex negotiations in future. That needs to be addressed before we start playing with the big boys, otherwise the Government will not get proper, early enough and wide enough advice from the TAC. In the Australia agreement, that has resulted in several outstanding questions being left unanswered. For example, how far can Australia’s less stringent regulation of pesticides interplay with and give an unfair competitive advantage to them over UK producers?
We want the TAC to be involved in and comment on how negotiations should be framed rather than only examining agreements once they are signed. I also believe that the TAC should be tasked on an ongoing basis to consider the cumulative impacts of trade deals.
What about the impact of the two agreements on farmers in the UK? It is interesting that the National Farmers’ Union is not so messianic about the benefits for British farming as the Minister is. The flaw in these agreements is that they offer us very small markets which already have only low-tariff barriers, so there is not a huge benefit in the agricultural sphere to this country. On the downside, both of the countries with which we are making free trade agreements are big exporters, which could swamp our smaller-scale UK markets. The temporary bilateral safeguards that are our freight quotas are just that: temporary. They are also bilateral and probably will not persist in the face of WTO arrangements. Can the Minister tell us how swamping UK markets can be prevented in future negotiations with even bigger producing and exporting nations? Or does he really want us to be a niche agricultural product nation?
I hope over the course of this Bill we can tempt the Minister down from his ecstatic heights at these two FTAs to address some very real concerns about these deals and the future processes. With our traditional relationship with, no doubt, hundreds of my relatives in Australia and New Zealand, these agreements were conducted on comparatively friendly terms. We need to sort out these processes before we start playing footsie with some bigger and more aggressive beasts in the trade jungle.
