The hon. Lady makes a false premise. Many parts of this deal would be welcomed, but there are essential parts of it that cannot be welcomed and which would stop us, therefore, being able to ratify it in the way she suggests.
The ISDS mechanisms give superior legal rights only to foreign investors to raise disputes against our Government to petition for compensation when their profits, or even their potential profits, are impacted by legislative or public policy decisions. This effectively allows companies to sue Governments when they are legislating in the public interest; for example, by introducing plain packaging for cigarettes, national insurance, minimum wages or even banning fracking. These provisions have become increasingly commonplace in new-generation trade agreements and this is what has resulted in such widespread international public outcry against deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and CETA.
The proliferation of investor-state dispute settlements can encourage treaty shopping, whereby investors restructure their activities to establish in countries where they may benefit from ISDS mechanisms, should they seek to effect policy change or petition for compensation. While the Government have previously argued that the UK has only ever been subject to four such dispute cases, and that the UK never lost such a case, it begs the question: why does the Secretary of State feel that this mechanism needs to be incorporated in a deal with a country such as Canada?