My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 23 in particular. All the amendments in this group have very similar goals—they just choose rather different avenues for achieving them.
Amendment 23 would require that trade agreements maintain UK statutory levels of protection for human, animal or plant life or health, animal welfare, the environment, employment and labour. I join noble Lords in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, who, along with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and I, is a signatory to this amendment. He said that upholding standards should not be a matter of trust. We live in a country where important principles are reinforced in law and in statute. That is exactly what this amendment tries to do; I suspect that the other amendments in this group are trying to do the same.
I particularly support this amendment because, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, it uses the exact language of a government amendment agreed on a cross-party basis and introduced into the Trade Bill in 2019. On that basis, one would think that the Government would have no problem with it, yet they have removed that language from the Bill. That act of removal is very powerful. Choosing to omit a clause—in effect, withdrawing it—sends a message. I am sure that those countries with whom we are negotiating trade deals, whether they are continuity deals or future deals, have taken note. I am very sure that the United States
has taken note of the decision to remove this language and the clause. As we know, actions speak louder than words. I also take the view that, if Amendment 23 does not apply to continuity agreements, why would anyone negotiating a future agreement suddenly insist that the precedent should be broken?
In this context, I want to pick up a point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, in the debate on an earlier amendment. He said that regulatory standards are not set in trade Bills. For many years, I worked in the United States as a banker in two major companies. I can tell the noble Viscount that his description will be real news to American companies, which have a long history of using dispute resolution mechanisms in trade Bills to achieving particular policies regardless of whether they override domestic legislation. As we look forward to negotiating a US-UK FTA, we must be well aware that everything we do will make that conversation either more difficult or easier.
In the United States, a complex mix of federal and state regulators set and uphold a wide range of standards. The fragmentation is one of the reasons why the US is so successful at keeping out imports; few exporters want to take on the highly complex US federal and state court systems. In the United States, where there is a very different culture, in nearly every company, there is a real taste for aggressive litigation. Many companies have deep pockets in which large amounts of money are set aside for litigation, making such companies effective at intimidating negotiating partners. In effect, they export US standards regardless of domestic legislation elsewhere.
We are in a period when trade is a tense issue. Historically, we would probably have said that most major developed countries would avoid trade battles with each other. We are not in that period any more. The US is at present taking a very aggressive view towards trade protectionism, and any kind of loophole or weakness within any trade deal will be fully exploited. When we say that we must have safeguards to protect our standards, I hope that the Government will recognise that that protection must extend to this Trade Bill.
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