Trade (Disclosure of Information) Bill — House of Commons, 2020-12-16
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am very pleased to be able to speak in this Second Reading debate. This is actually the first time I have spoken in the Chamber since I contributed to the debate on the Chancellor’s financial statement immediately before lockdown. The reason for that is that I believe it is incumbent on all of us not to be here unless we absolutely have to. I greatly regret the fact that the Government have not brought forward proposals to reactivate the full remote participation in debates that we had for a short time earlier in the year Obviously I did not travel down here to take part in this debate, because we did not know that it was taking place. I did so because of two important pieces of secondary legislation on the Order Paper that are no longer there. I was on the train yesterday morning on my way down especially to speak on those two items when I got an email saying that they had been pulled and asking if I would mind contributing for the SNP on this one. Rather than have a situation where the taxpayer was paying for me to travel from Fife, have a couple of nights in London, and then go back up again when I did not need to be here at all, I was tempted to make sure that they got their money’s worth, and every penny of it, by taking up the full three hours that is allocated to this Second Reading debate. However, my reading of the mood music is that that would not endear me to anybody here or to anybody else, so I will not do it That trivial example of the impact that this has had on my planning for today is a tiny fraction of the bigger picture. The only reason this Bill has had to come forward at all just now, and the reason it is having to be brought forward in such a hurry, is that the Government do not have control of the process. A process that was supposed to be about Parliament taking back control is now seeing Parliament having its business chopped and changed at a few hours’ notice. At the moment, the hundreds of people who work here—not just MPs but staff of the House of Commons—do not know whether they will have to come to work next week. The Prime Minister wanted to ensure that everybody had certainty as to the rules about visiting loved ones at Christmas, but Members and staff of the House of Commons do not know for certain whether they will have to be at work at the start of that period. Parliament is not in control of the process, and the Government are not in control of the process, and it is difficult to see whether anyone is in control of the process I fully understand that we now need to get this legislation through in a hurry. I was unhappy about some details of the coronavirus legislation, which the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) mentioned earlier, but I fully understood the need to get it on the statute book as quickly as possible. The emergency we face now is not of the same type; this emergency is entirely of the Government’s making. It is not the fault of those who voted in the referendum four and a half years ago. Those who voted to leave had a reasonable right to expect that the Government would have delivered on their wishes before the last minute, as is happening now. Not only are the Government not delivering on time; they are not delivering at all. They promised to deliver a free trade agreement with Europe—that was in the manifesto and was mentioned several times—but they have not delivered that The explanatory notes to the Bill indicate that parts of it would have been needed even if we had that free trade agreement with the European Union, but the vast majority of it would not have been, and we certainly would not have been under this exceptional time pressure if the process had been managed by a Government who were competent had some idea of where they wanted to get to, instead of being continually obsessed with where they were trying to get away from As the Minister said, and as others have alluded to, the Bill simply extracts a few clauses from a Bill that has already been through a detailed scrutiny process, and that eases the concern a bit, but the wider problem is still there. What other emergency legislation will the Government have to bring through, possibly before 31 December, if not very early in the new year, that we do not know about and that has not been through the full scrutiny process as part of another piece of legislation? This process is supposed to be about Parliament taking back control, but I have never seen so much legislation having to be rushed through Parliament, with little time for scrutiny and with some of that legislation possibly having a profound effect on the lives of people and on the way the economy gets back on its feet when the covid pandemic is finally brought under control As for the detailed content of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who speaks from the Front Bench, referred to some of the issues. I think the Minister gave assurances in his opening comments that all the requests the Scottish Government made in relation to this Bill and the main Trade Bill have been picked up. In effect, this Bill picks up parts of the Trade Bill as amended with the agreement of the Scottish Government. As my hon. Friend mentioned, the fact that the negotiation of international trade treaties is reserved to Westminster does not mean that the devolved Administrations have little or no responsibility for making trade work for their countries, their communities and their businesses. A lot of the decisions taken by the United Kingdom in the negotiation of trade agreements can be made to work only with the full involvement of the devolved Administrations I understand that there have been discussions—I do not know whether at Minister level, officer level or both —over the past few days about this Bill, and I would certainly commend that if it has taken place, but there needs to be much closer and much more co-operative working across the four nations than there has been until now on Brexit. Otherwise, we will find that legislation and trade agreements that are passed purely at the will of Government Ministers in London will have little relevance, or sometimes a negative effect, for Governments, Administrations and citizens in other parts of the United Kingdom When we, presumably, agree to the Bill later, I hope that those comments will be borne in mind. I would also appreciate it if the Minister could tell us in his closing remarks what other emergency legislation he is aware of that the Government expect to bring before the House between now and 31 December.