Liam Fox announced a Trade Bill this morning, the day after a consultation on proposals to be included in the bill closed.

What is most vital is what is missing from the bill – the absence of anything to ensure that trade policy is accountable to the public and parliament.

Trade deals today have profound effects across the full range of domestic policy – health, environment, jobs, inequality, and climate. There is a crucial need for a democratic and transparent process for negotiating and agreeing trade deals after Brexit, with parliamentary oversight at its heart.

People understand this. Around 11,500 people wrote to the consultation to ask for trade policy to be accountable to parliament, while over 50,000 more fed in through a petition.

The government’s proposals on trade sought to assure us that none of this is needed because the Dept of International Trade will engage regularly with stakeholders – effectively just asking us to trust them.

Yet today shows how empty that is – when the trade ministry makes a mockery of consultation by bringing the bill to parliament before they’ve even had a chance to read the feedback they have received, how can we believe that they would behave any better when it comes to trade deals. This is why there needs to be a legal requirement and clear procedure to consult the public and get parliamentary approval of trade deals.

The Trade Bill intends to give the government powers to replicate existing EU trade deals. These are already extensive and far reaching deals, and the process of recreating them for the UK is unlikely to be straightforward. Fox admitted last week that there is no agreement with the sixty plus countries involved in the various deals, to use the same texts as the existing EU deals. Such negotiations should be subject to scrutiny by parliament. Yet the Trade Bill will seek to allow the government to introduce them through secondary legislation and executive powers.

The bill doesn’t even tackle the new trade deals that Liam Fox has talked up, such as ones with the US, India or Saudi Arabia. All of these proposed deals need an open and transparent approach – they should only be embarked upon with the agreement of parliament, be open to scrutiny and must be voted on by parliament before signing. Yet at present parliament has no voice in these deals.

That’s why over a hundred MPs have signed an EDM calling for the:

• right of Parliament to set a thorough mandate to govern each trade negotiation, with a remit for the devolved administrations
• right of the public to be consulted as part of setting that mandate
• a presumption of full transparency in negotiations
• right of Parliament to amend and to reject trade deals, with full debates and scrutiny guaranteed and a remit for the devolved administrations, and
• right of Parliament to review trade deals and withdraw from them in a timely manner

This is what needs to be at the heart of the Trade Bill.

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This past few weeks have been full of the politics of hope, a growing reminder that change is possible. It’s a vital reminder because a key source of power for corporate driven neoliberalism over the past four decades has been to insist that it is the only answer.

Trade deals have been one of the most insidious contributors to those blinkers on our view of the world. They are written in secret and then imposed upon us as though they are the rules of the game – simply the way things have to be. But this isn’t true. The choice of how we do trade is highly political and it can be different.

Everything about the Queen’s Speech is up in the air at the moment, and we have no idea what May will omit to give herself the best chance of getting it passed. However, whether in this parliament or the next, the government is going to have to pass a bill on trade to set out its approach when we leave the EU. The UK has not had its own trade policy for decades and so the government is faced with a blank slate. But if we do not seek to fill it with trade policy from a perspective of justice and rights, it will be filled by others.

Trade has a profound effect on almost all aspects of daily life.

Yet at the moment trade rules are undermining the things we value – decent jobs, the planet, ending poverty, building a more equal society.

Instead they act as a tool for powerful corporate interests.

Those of us who believe in a more just and equal world need to start building an alternative vision for trade policy. So what would this look like?

1) Trade deals are not necessarily the right thing to do

For a start, we need to acknowledge that while there may always be benefits from trade, embarking on a trade deal is not always the right thing to do, for two reasons.

Firstly, when there are serious concerns about human rights abuses, environmental destruction, arms sales or similar, then we should not enter into a trade agreement.

Secondly, between rich and poor countries we should offer trading access to UK markets without asking anything in return. Giving this type of access is often called ‘duty-free, quota-free’ and at the moment, as part of the EU, the UK provides this to least developed countries. It is essential that, as a minimum, this is improved. The UK should extend the number of countries to which this offered and simplify the rules.

2) Trade is not more important than people and planet

Trade has always been part of society and always will be. But it is only one aspect, not the most important thing in our lives. Trade needs to be put back into its place as one component of the whole and we need to set clear priorities.

It needs to be explicitly written into trade agreements that the rules must comply with human rights law, labour standards, environmental standards and climate commitments, and that if there is a conflict, the trade rules are subordinate. This ‘override’ or ‘supremacy’ clause needs to apply to the entire text of the trade deal.

Nowadays a whole range of issues that are only peripherally related to trade being added into trade deals leading to massive controversy. Secretive, remote trade negotiations have rewritten other aspects of law and policymaking without any democratic accountability – and also sometimes simply without expertise in these other areas.

We need to focus trade deals back in on the core issues of trade and tariffs – shedding all the accreted fat and getting back to the original purpose of trade agreements. Issues such as patents, government buying standards, domestic regulation, migration, food security, investment or data privacy do not belong in trade agreements. Any international rules on these sorts of issues should be debated in existing specialist intergovernmental organisations.

It is also essential to include watertight exclusion or shield clauses for public services. Existing exemptions for security and military concerns can be used as a model to provide a strong, meaningful exemption that goes beyond rhetoric.

3)Trade should work in the public interest

To work in the public interest, trade rules need to help counteract inequality and power imbalances. They certainly should not make them worse.

Yet at the moment trade deals include the notorious ‘corporate courts’ (ISDS or ICS). These give special rights to transnational corporations who are already among the most powerful organisations in the world, and do not even impose any obligations on them in return. They allow corporations to sue governments over anything they can claim could affect their profits – environmental protection, financial regulation, renationalising public services, anti-smoking policies – you name it.

Corporate courts should be excluded from trade deals. Instead, trade agreements should include mechanisms for individuals, groups and communities to bring grievances over the harm caused by trade agreements. If anyone needs international rules to protect their rights it’s the victims of corporate exploitation, not the perpetrators.

Trade policy also needs to be seen as part of a package, alongside industrial policy, agricultural policy, development policy, regional policy, welfare policy and others. These need to be in balance, complementing each other in ensuring that as many people as possible can benefit from trade deals and those who lose out are provided for.

4) Trade should do good

At the moment, trade rules tend to not only be blind to the environmental and social costs of things being traded, but actually prohibit favouring more socially and environmentally responsible products and practices. Instead, trade agreements should ensure tariffs and trade preferences take social and environmental considerations into account, so that goods with less environmental impact and higher social welfare receive greater preference.

For instance, the rules could allow for a sliding scale of tariffs based upon a product’s climate impact, including assessing negative effects from production and transport, and positive ones from use of renewable technologies.

Trade agreements should explicitly specify that nothing in the rules can be interpreted to justify lowering standards and the agreements should only be completed if all the countries involved are able to reach the highest common denominator.

5) Trade should be democratic

Given the broad scope of trade policy, people have a right to know about, and be part of shaping it. This should not be a ‘concession’ – trade policy would actually be improved by robust debate and contributions from a broad range of knowledge and expertise.

Trade policy also needs to be accountable to parliamentary sovereignty. However, as things stand, our elected representatives in the UK have virtually no say over trade deals. MPs can’t set a mandate to guide government negotiations, they have no right to see details of the negotiations, they can’t amend deals and they can’t stop them.

In other words, we have no real democratic control over these vitally important deals. This needs to change.

What kind of trade we want for the world we want to build is a vitally important conversation. Global Justice Now’s ideas are explored more in this discussion paper. We are interested to hear what others think.

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In the wake of Brexit our agricultural policy is suddenly up for grabs. This could be a chance for a ‘new deal’ for our food system – helping struggling small-scale farmers, restoring the environment, revitalising local economies and creating new jobs. Yet at the moment it appears that the agriculture and environment minister, Andrea Leadsom, prefers a ‘get big or get out’ approach that will continue to damage the planet.

Since 1973, the UK farming sector has been shaped by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its subsidies, but the original postwar purpose of CAP has long since been played out and there is a broad consensus that it has become a disaster on many fronts.

One of the biggest criticisms is that it hands wealthy landowners millions of pounds from public funds, while smaller farmers receive little or nothing. There are also strong environment criticisms, and attempts to bring environmental factors into CAP have been grossly inadequate. As a result, a system of large-scale industrial agriculture is rewarded while small-scale ecological methods are largely ignored.

Instead, a progressive subsidy system would ensure that public money is used for public goods. A report by Global Justice Now and the New Economics Foundation proposes a system that would:

1) Give each active farmer with at least one hectare of land a universal payment of £5,000

The payment would be conditional on a meaningful active farmer requirement, basic environmental stewardship such as prevention of soil erosion, animal welfare standards and some other minimum standards on a ‘do no harm’ basis. The amount is slightly higher than most farmers currently receive, and would be a significant redistribution, levelling the playing field. However this would actually save the taxpayer money because much less would go to large landowners.

2) Offer grants for medium-scale, regional infrastructure, including processing facilities and local business development programmes

This would allow local supply chains to be strengthened and maintained, while supporting new business models and small-scale producers.

3) Offer subsidies for the provision of specific public goods

Public goods could include environmental benefits around climate change, soil quality, landscape, wildlife and agricultural biodiversity. They could also include social benefits such as job creation and support for small-scale farmers, healthy good food, resilience, democratic accountability and support for local economies.

While the first element above incorporates ‘do no harm’ standards, this element would be for things that make an active, positive contribution. It could include restoring natural habitats, creating natural flood protection, preserving and passing on skills or knowledge that are important to our heritage, reducing local unemployment, increasing healthy eating, along with many other areas.

Decisions on which public goods to prioritise and how to allocate budget would be devolved to regions, thus also helping to support local democracy.

In contrast to this a recent speech by Leadsom made no firm commitment to continuing significant funding for agriculture beyond 2020. Instead, in the name of cutting red tape, she wants to cut the standards and regulations that help to protect our environment, food safety and public health – public goods that we should instead be strengthening.

In the past Leadsom has supported phasing out most support for farmers, something that New Zealand did in the 1980s. The effect there was a polarisation and emptying out of viable small and medium sized farming. The big players were able to compete but others either left farming or scaled down and took other jobs to support continued farming as a side enterprise. Loss of agricultural jobs was exacerbated. Faced with a drive to cut costs environmental concerns were dropped and the country is now facing increased problems with soil degradation and pollution from farming.

It is important to ensure that a new system of agricultural subsidies in the UK does not have unintended damaging impacts on the global south. Subsidies have long been controversial and particularly when linked to exports can undermine livelihoods in the global south. However complete removal of subsidies is unlikely to benefit small-scale family farmers in the global south – the experience of New Zealand illustrates how agribusiness moves in to take up any slack arising from loss of subsidies. More fundamentally, the majority of food that feeds the world is produced by small-scale farmers and is traded in local, regional and national markets, and there is widespread recognition of the importance of supporting domestic agriculture, both here and in the global south. Farming subsidies have a role to play, in a carefully designed, progressive system, although they cannot solve all problems on their own. A progressive subsidy system needs to be dovetailed with wider trade rules and aid policies. These are currently driving production towards a large-scale, intensive agribusiness model dependent on expensive technologies, chemicals, poor environmental practices and low wages for employees. We cannot simply use subsidies to correct that model – we need to change it.

The choices made at this point about the policies for the UK to follow, will be vital – for farmers, the environment and the public.

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