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Trade Bill

My Lords, my first point on these amendments is that I am fundamentally in favour of trade. It is a huge part of our history as a nation and is certainly part of our ambitions for our future outside the EU. Being in favour of trade does not mean that I am against human rights, but I believe that a mature trading nation has to be able to balance competing interests; for example, the desire for all nations to uphold the highest standards of behaviour towards their citizens against the economic well-being of our own nation.

Human rights abuses are not a black and white issue. At one extreme, there is appalling abuse, such as the treatment of the Uighurs in China—though we must not forget that China contests the facts. At the other extreme, there might be a nation state that has never committed a human rights abuse, but I am not sure one exists. The UK, for example, has been founding wanting by the European Court of Human Rights on several occasions, and our own courts have found the same. Importantly, there is a spectrum of grey where the difficult task of responsible government arises.

Both Amendments 8 and 10 envisage using the courts to decide whether a human rights abuse is one that could, in effect, override or cancel the free trade agreement. In the case of Amendment 10 in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, this is explicit, but in the case of Amendment 8, the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury—I think that I am quoting him correctly—said that the Government’s determinations under his new clause could be challenged by the courts. The courts in the UK may be good at determining whether human rights abuses have been committed in this country, but I do not believe that they are well placed to make any such determination in relation to overseas territories.

Furthermore, both amendments open our courts to vexatious claims by human rights activists of all kinds. I have a vision of our hard-pressed judicial system being swamped by the kind of litigation that is bound to follow if these amendments become law. It is not wise to invite our courts into the territory that is properly the domain of the Government’s foreign and trade policy; that would be a very poor outcome.

Amendment 8, unlike Amendment 10, does try to restrict itself to “serious violations”, but it defines them widely in subsection (5)(d) as

“other major violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

I do not know what that means and I do not want our courts getting sucked into these sorts of issues, which are, inevitably, political judgments at the end of the day.

I have one fundamental objection to these amendments: they attack free trade agreements only. They do nothing about trade that carries on on WTO terms. We do not have a free trade agreement with China but we certainly trade with it. If noble Lords think that passing either of these amendments, or Amendment 9 in the next group, will do anything for the Uighurs in China, they are not being honest with themselves. We should be wary of using our power to legislate to do no more than virtue-signal.