UK Trade Arrangements: Scotland’s Role

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 25 September 2018.

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Photo of Patrick Harvie Patrick Harvie Green

We are three speeches in and I have already heard something from everyone that I can agree with: Jackie Baillie’s excoriating demolition of the chaos of Brexit could not be more accurate; I could not agree more with the minister, who very clearly made the case for the devolved countries of these islands having meaningful input to future trade agreements; and Adam Tomkins expressed his regret that Parliament does not have the opportunity to debate my excellently worded amendment, which is something on which we agree.

We have political and ideological differences, from left to right of the spectrum and from a more to a less-concerned attitude about environmental and green issues, so consequently there are differences in the trade policies that we would like to pursue. There are those who have a free-trade mantra and assume that free trade is always a good thing in every aspect. Just as Greens often criticise a single-minded and myopic obsession with growth in gross domestic product, which measures only one thing and tells us nothing about the diversity of the impacts of economic activity, we also critique the idea that ever-growing volumes of ever-freer trade are an objective good. There are benefits that will come from such activity, but there will also be social and economic harm.

We would like a trade policy that recognises that our responsibility is not merely to achieve short-term economic benefit for our own citizens or a fair share of those benefits in the different countries of these islands. Rather, we would like a trade policy that recognises a mutual interest of people around the world, as well as the need to live within the limits that our ecosystem lays down for us.

That might mean increasing the value, rather than the volume, of trade. It might mean trading things that are different from things that we have traded in the past. It certainly means recognising the importance of trade justice, rather than merely the desire of those pursuing trade opportunities to benefit their own businesses. The need to achieve trade justice is about the relationship with those with whom we are trading, not merely the interests of those in our country who wish to increase their exports.

When we debate trade and the future of trade in our economy, there is a range of philosophical, political and ideological objectives. That difference of views is exactly why the process of agreeing trading arrangements needs to be transparent and democratically accountable.

I want to make a contrast. I am not talking about the contrast between deciding trading arrangements in the future on a multilateral basis within these islands or merely deciding them at UK level; I am talking about the contrast between how such things are decided at EU level and how they might be decided in the future. There are people who are implacably hostile to everything that the European Union represents, but I do not think that such people are in the majority in this Parliament. When the transatlantic trade and investment partnership was being debated at European Union level, and when member states, including the UK, were supporting TTIP, a great wave of concern grew up in this country and many others across the EU about TTIP’s impact and the lack of accountability in the legal decisions that would be made when, in essence, panels of corporate laws would decide, behind closed doors, on dispute mechanisms. There was a need to have such ideas challenged, and the European Parliament was able to do that. People were able to campaign and to take their concerns to political parties, to their domestic representatives and to their MEPs. On that occasion, the European Parliament won the case on behalf of the public interest.

Of course, that kind of public concern does not always win out, but it is, at least, a possibility. In the UK Government’s proposals for the Trade Bill there was an absolute absence of that kind of democratic accountability mechanism, and the proposals have changed little—they have certainly not changed enough.

Adam Tomkins and others might make the case that trade policy is a reserved matter—end of story. That is not the end of the story: the making of trade agreements might well be a reserved matter, but the content of such agreements steps heavily into devolved areas of responsibility, which is why—as I think that Jackie Baillie said at the end of her speech—we need to ensure that there is not only dialogue between Governments but a formalised mechanism so that Parliaments can challenge the decisions that Governments make on these matters. That has to mean not just the Westminster Parliament but all Parliaments and Assemblies in these islands.

Let me finish by flagging up what some of the ardent Brexiteers are looking to do. In preparing for the visit of Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to the Finance and Constitution Committee this week, I read a speech that she made recently at the far-right, libertarian Cato Institute. I had to choke back my incredulity at some of her absurd speech. The Cato Institute is deeply implicated with the people who made a killing when they kicked off the climate denial industry and who have argued against sensible environmental measures to protect the public interest—the free-market ideologues who genuinely want a ripping up of regulations. Liz Truss’s speech, in which she complained about a thicket of regulations—regulations that protect people—is an absolute dire warning of what some people want to do if we do not have an accountable, democratic means of debating trade policy in future.