Extract from Committee
stage (Lords) of the Trade Bill
(CB):...My more significant concern is to do with
how the movers have defined what they see as non-democratic
countries. The four pre-requisites are perfectly clear, and most
of us would agree with them as essential to what we might perhaps
define as western-style liberal democracies. Therein lies my
concern. If Parliament has to approve trade measures with all
those countries we consider non-democratic, we would be in danger
of becoming an autarky. For example, if we apply the definition
of the noble Lord to BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa—they
would all come into that category, bar South Africa. Take, for
example, China, which is the cause of much concern around the
House. So much of what China exports to us could be caught by the
definition of critical infrastructure. I am sure no noble Lord is
proposing that we suspend almost all trade with China—even the
Trump Administration have balked at doing that.
While China is a well-known example, what of
India? This Government are ambitious to do a
great deal with India. They already have
partnerships on critical infrastructure with
Indian companies—take OneWeb as an example,
which is critical infrastructure by any category. If new
opportunities for trade were to arise, India would be on the so-called
watch-list as a non-democratic country for its treatment of
Kashmiri Muslims—in fact, for its treatment of large swathes of
its Muslim minority; some 200 million people—and its treatment of
women overall, or for the caste system and the treatment of
Dalits, and thus would clearly come under categories (c) and (d)
on the list...
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Extract from remaining
stages (Commons) of the United Kingdom Internal Market
Bill
(Stone) (Con):...At the same time, there have been a
number of UK precedents, which I have explained already. I do not
have the time to go into them; I will attempt, as other Members
will have to, not to go into huge detail, but I will give a few
examples. In 1945, a Finance Act passed by the Labour party
overrode international law. The same applied to the
Indian Independence Act 1947 and the Burma
Independence Act 1947. In fact, in the case of
India more than 400 treaties were broken.
