My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who spoke very eloquently; I endorse what she said.
I will speak to Amendment 18, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and my noble friends, which I have signed. I very much endorse the speeches of my noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lady Bennett. On Amendment 18 in particular, I welcome and endorse the excellent contribution of my noble friend Lord Hendy, who adds enormous authority on these issues.
My noble friend mentioned that the Canada-European Union agreement—CETA—includes the very kinds of provisions that we are asking for in Amendment 18. I note that leading Conservatives—Brexiteers—have spoken of “Canada-plus” as a future basis for a trade agreement with the European Union. Does Canada-plus mean labour rights-minus? A failure to adopt Amendment 18 would imply that that is the case, and that that is the real agenda of the Brexiteers.
Amendment 18 would preclude the UK from agreeing any international trade agreement if its regulations contravened the UK’s international labour law commitments. The UK is a member of the International Labour Organization and has been so since 28 June 1919. Under the auspices of the ILO, fully 88 conventions and two protocols have already been ratified by the United Kingdom. I cannot see why the Minister could not agree to this amendment and why the Government would not endorse it since, in effect, it reinforces the status quo to which we have already signed up in all future trade agreements.
Of course, that is unless the Government’s real agenda is a kind of Singapore-upon-Thames, with a deregulated structure of labour rights, environmental rights and all sorts of other rights that we have come to expect as representing the standards that we want in Britain; an offshore haven of low labour regulations, low standards and low tax. That is what leading Conservatives, particularly the Prime Minister and his henchman Dominic Cummings, have been talking about. Surely we should not be racing to the bottom in every respect for British citizens and workers but seeking to match the best, such as the Scandinavian countries, which have high standards in these matters—high levels of public services and the public expenditure to sustain that. They have also had, by the way, much higher levels of productivity and economic success than Britain has had under this Government for the last 10 years, prior to Covid.
What sort of “taking back control” will it mean if we do not adopt Amendment 18, or at least a version of it that the Government might favour for technical reasons? What does “taking back control” mean for Brexiteers? Instead of high-quality, high-skilled standards it would mean low-quality, low-skilled standards, particularly on labour rights.
I should point out that the ILO standards that this amendment seeks to reinforce and insist on for any future trade agreements that the UK might strike with other countries are a minimum, not a maximum. They have been achieved by agreement across the world and therefore, inevitably, are not the maximum we should be aiming for. Surely we should, in a high-quality Britain that aims to be the best for its citizens, aim for the maximum. As my noble friend Lord Hendy said so poignantly, the amendment is surely uncontroversial because it asks the Government to adopt in future trade agreements what they have already signed up to in ILO conventions and protocols. I hope that the Minister will accept it or explain why not and what sort of agenda is really on offer for the British people from his Government.