My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 211, which is in my name and deals with our rights but in a slightly different way. It would ensure that after withdrawal, our rights and protections remain intact by maintaining the standards at home and at work that we have come to expect in our daily
life as part of our normal existence, and that those standards would not be sacrificed or lowered in any future negotiations.
I tabled this amendment some weeks ago and was pleased to see it reflected in the Prime Minister’s speech last Friday and in her Statement on Monday, when she spoke of maintaining current standards in some sectors. My amendment calls for them to be maintained in all sectors, because we cannot pick and choose where our quality of life is concerned. Even Monsieur Barnier seems to agree, and in his recent draft document he speaks of equivalent standards.
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Like my noble friend Lord Foulkes, I think this amendment is helpful to the Government, because it accords precisely with their own industrial strategy of building on our strengths by racing to the top. Lowering our standards, on the other hand, implies a race to the bottom. Rightly or wrongly, trade agreements are negotiated in secret. Yes, trade deals involve plenty of give and take and bending of the rules, but this amendment ensures that, whatever the outcome, these negotiations will not damage our normal way of life.
On Monday, the Prime Minister spoke of the EU Chemicals Agency, and she was right to do so. Through REACH—the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—we ensure that 9,000 chemicals are proven safe before they are made available to the general public. This is the precautionary principle at work. In some countries, products and services are withdrawn only after they have been shown to do harm. This amendment ensures that we do not give up the precautionary principle and allow ourselves to become a dumping ground for untested products and services.
Some say that these standards are just red tape and nannying, and that if consumers do not want to buy products that are made to lower standards, they will see it on the label and choose not to buy it. I put it to the Minister that this is totally unacceptable. Some say that all this can be delayed to a later stage. I say that it has to be included in this withdrawal Bill, so that from day one, Whitehall, local government and public institutions all know that they cannot make decisions that lower our standards.
We also know that non-tariff barriers are the biggest barriers to trade. Most of these non-tariff barriers relate to standards. Maintaining our standards will ensure the least disruption to trade and the maximum continuing inward investment in technical development. Indeed, it is important that we continue to sit at the table setting these standards—standards which are acceptable in many other countries, including Asia, Africa and elsewhere, not only because they facilitate trade but because they illustrate a shared vision.
Where we do not accept EU standards, this amendment, and my amendment that we will come to later, calls for the Government to set up the institutions to enforce them. These institutions must be independent of government. The importance of independence is illustrated by the fact—