I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Damien Egan) on his excellent speech. He mentioned that he has been elected at the tail-end of a Government and that an election is coming soon. I reassure him that the diligence he has already demonstrated in this House and his constituency should secure his re-election. It is wonderful to hear a Member speaking for a constituency with its accent.
I will address amendment 2 and new clause 8, although I support virtually every amendment that has been tabled, which shows the weakness of the process by which we have examined this treaty. I have been involved in discussions with the Secretary of State and the Minister over a number of months on ISDS, and I am concerned about the contradiction between their refusal to secure a side letter with regard to this treaty and what happened with regard to Australia and New Zealand. The negotiating brief for the Canadian free trade agreement also had a specific remit to prevent an ISDS process. I have never got to the bottom of that contradiction.
Amendment 2 follows our lengthy debate about the scrutiny of treaties. I have not given notice to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) that I will be referring to him in the Chamber, although I am not sure that we have to give notice ahead of praising, rather than criticising, another Member. I am a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which he chairs, and he has become the 21st-century Walter Bagehot, with a solid mixture of Trollope. He steered our discussions on the formal process for examining treaties with immense skill, drawing on a range of evidence that led to consensus—there is almost consensus in the Chamber at the moment—and this is what our report says:
“CRAG has been an insufficient legislative tool to facilitate meaningful Parliamentary scrutiny of treaties… the current legislation provides only a passive role for Parliament and as such there is no opportunity for Parliament to express its explicit approval or disapproval of a treaty.”
That is a common theme of all the debates. We have to do better than this.
Having read the report, the worry is that the Government have not responded positively by trying to get some order, particularly on the early negotiating processes and the debates that should take place. The Committee’s general view on this treaty, like the others, is that Parliament has been largely bypassed. We were offered no say on the Government’s negotiating objectives at the earliest stage, which is important, and no oversight
of the negotiations as they progressed. Now we are refused a vote on the final terms of accession. This is not acceptable as a democratic process. The formal CRaG period, under which we can nominally have a say on the agreement, concludes this Friday, after a 21-day period. We are offered no vote or even a debate on the substantive terms of the CPTPP during this period, and accession is likely to receive our consent without any of us being given a single vote.
As I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I have tabled a prayer to try to secure a time extension to enable the Government to bring forward time for a debate. My view is exactly the same as his: we are debating a narrow, technical, implementing Bill and that is no substitute for a confirmatory debate and vote on the accession itself. I agree with the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, who has raised this issue with the Government in correspondence over the past two weeks. It is preposterous for the Government then to say with a straight face that there is not parliamentary time to have such a debate, given our current sitting arrangements. Those who have been here for as long as me, or perhaps even longer, will know that there has not been a problem on parliamentary time in the past, as we have simply found the time and sat and gone through the business when it is so important.
My amendment 2 seeks to address that wrong by formalising a requirement for the Government to ask for Parliament’s consent for the UK’s accession to the CPTPP. That is a basic democratic point of principle. If the Government do not accept that, I come back to the urgings of Members from across the House and say that I hope the Government will take seriously the recommendations of the PACAC report for reform of the process overall. We are dealing with an undemocratic structure. The PACAC report’s incredibly practical proposals are for a sifting process, a sifting Committee, the identification of treaties that require longer consideration and giving the House itself a proper process of democratic scrutiny and democratic decision.
I shall deal briefly with new clause 8, which stands in my name and deals with the labour chapter of the CPTPP. I have raised this issue before, and the point has been made by a number of colleagues, the TUC, in particular, and various other campaigning organisations throughout this ratification process. The labour provisions of the CPTPP are outdated and inadequate. This treaty will include a number of countries, some of which have been mentioned, with the prospect of others joining, where abuses of labour rights are widespread. Putting in place effective labour provisions is therefore vital in any treaty we undertake.
That view has been expressed across the House for a number of years now, but let me give some examples. In Brunei and Vietnam, independent trade unions are banned—they are not allowed legally to operate. In Malaysia, which has been mentioned in our previous debates, forced labour has been documented extensively. That issue has been raised in this House time and again.
In that context, it is crucial that the CPTPP’s labour provisions are readily enforceable and are linked to the removal of trade preferences, to ensure that membership does not lead to a race to the bottom on labour standards, exactly as the right hon. Gentleman said. I agree with him on the fear about China, because union colleagues
of mine from Hong Kong, whom I have worked with for decades, are in prison at the moment purely and simply because they are trade unionists and have stood up for democratic rights.