Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-02
Topic: Foreign Trade
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Minister for his opening remarks and the reassurances that he seeks to give us about health, social care and data. We return to this issue because we raised it in Committee and on Report and there has been considerable support across your Lordships’ House. A Division took place on 7 December at around midnight, which was won quite substantially. I am again inviting the Minister to accept this amendment so that the Government can proceed with their trade negotiations, confident that Parliament has expressed its clear intention The reason this is so important is that although the Government have repeatedly promised that the NHS will be "off the table"—those promises were repeated at some length by the Minister, for which I am very grateful—to ensure that this is the case, and that future Governments are able to reform the NHS and the interface with social care moves towards a more collaborative model, the Bill must ensure that the health and social care sectors are excluded from the scope of all future trade agreements, including services and investment chapters While the Government have repeatedly pledged that the NHS is not on the table in trade negotiations, we also know that there have been detailed conversations between the UK and US negotiators, revealing that health services have been discussed and that the US is probing the UK’s health insurance system and has made clear its desire for the UK to change its drug pricing mechanism. I was reassured by many of the things the Minister said, but he repeated what the Government have always said about the NHS—they guarantee that it will be free at the point of use. That is great, but it does not say, "We are protecting the public ownership of our NHS." That really is the point; many things can be free at the point of use that are not publicly owned. It is important to recognise that that takes us only so far The Bill is being discussed in the context that Parliament does not yet have adequate powers to guide and scrutinise trade negotiations; I sat in on the end of the previous discussion, which was about work in progress. The current process provides no legal mechanism to directly influence or permanently block trade agreements—hence the amendments which we have discussed throughout the passage of the Bill. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Patel, Lord Freyberg and Lord Fox, who supported this amendment on Report This amendment is a merging of the important amendment about NHS data tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, with the one about the NHS and public health. These are national assets which must not be put in jeopardy or squandered in whatever the future holds for UK trade with the world. To guarantee protection, the Bill must ensure that the health and social care sectors are excluded from the scope of all future trade agreements. It is important that the Minister says that this is the case, and he has done so this evening The Bill must rule out investor protection and dispute resolution mechanisms in UK trade deals to ensure that private foreign companies cannot sue the UK Government for legitimate public procurement and regulatory decisions that we decide to take with regard to our public services, including the NHS. If a future Government want to change the structure of the NHS, they must not be prevented from doing so by trade deals that this Government might agree. The Minister needs to guarantee that this will not happen. I beg to move.