The race to seal deals with Gulf States, India and China is making NGOs — and some Conservative MPs — uneasy.
But while civil society is up in arms, British business is keeping
a close eye on negotiations, eager to access new markets and remove existing barriers to trade |
India questions
Britain's prospective trade deal with India is another now raising human rights concerns, given the serious questions about the treatment of religious minorities on the sub-continent.
The story of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh detained in India under anti-terrorism laws since 2017, has whirred away in the background since negotiations began in January. In May, United Nations investigators said the 35-year-old's detention had no legal basis. He was formally charged in August with conspiracy to commit murder and being a member of a terrorist gang — accusations he denies.
“My brother is the elephant in the room in these talks,” Jagtar’s sibling Gurpreet Singh Johal said. “Are ministers so desperate to strike a deal that they are willing to ignore what India has done to him?”
The human rights group Reprieve claimed British intelligence agencies tipped off Indian authorities about Johal before his abduction and alleged torture by Punjab police. Johal has since lodged a claim in the High Court against the government.
The Scottish National Party’s Martin Docherty-Hughes, Johal’s constituency MP in Westminster, suggested U.K. ministers may have sanctioned the passing of intelligence information to help in efforts to secure a post-Brexit trade agreement. “The issue for me is it seems that the Conservative and Unionist Party has tried to sell its soul to the devil for a trade deal with India, including signing off information which could be as banal as ‘Jagtar Singh Johal will be in India on these dates,’” he said.
“The first thing about human rights issues is not to contribute to them,” added Conservative MP Davis, a longstanding anti-torture campaigner
Pool photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Getty Images
BY SEBASTIAN WHALE
BY SEBASTIAN WHALE
POLITICO UK
AUGUST 31, 2022
LONDON — How far would Liz Truss go to sign a trade deal? The answer, human rights campaigners fear, is almost any distance at all.
As Britain's international trade secretary, Truss made her name among the Tory faithful by signing a flurry of flag-waving, PR-friendly trade deals following Britain's departure from the EU. More are expected to follow if she is confirmed as the U.K.'s new prime minister next week.
But having already secured swift agreements with like-minded democracies in Australia and New Zealand, the U.K. now finds itself talking to partners with more problematic human rights records.
And as negotiations continue, U.K. ministers are quietly stepping away from an EU principle of including human rights clauses in trade deals — leaving campaigners fearing a race to the bottom.
“Loose ethics and a willingness to overlook egregious human rights and labor rights abuses to secure trade deals have been a steadfast feature of the government’s approach to trade,” said Rosa Crawford, trade policy lead at the Trades Union Congress.
The U.K. has been on a negotiating spree in 2022, launching free trade talks with the likes of India and Israel. More controversially still, Britain in August commenced the first round of negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Ruth Bergan from the Trade Justice Movement said that taken together, the GCC contains “some of the most oppressive and politically repressive regimes in the world.”
The notion of Saudi Arabia as a trade partner is already the target of some incredulity. Riyadh’s recent highlights include sentencing a woman to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting activists and dissidents. Qatar, meanwhile, has long been criticized for its treatment of migrant workers, including in the building of stadiums for this year's football world cup.
But while civil society is up in arms, British business is keeping a close eye on negotiations, eager to access new markets and remove existing barriers to trade. And the U.K. is hardly alone in pursuing talks with the GCC. The EU undertook protracted negotiations with the Gulf states, though these ultimately collapsed over Brussels’ policy — introduced in the mid-1990s — of making human rights provisions an "essential element" of trade deals.
Successive U.K. governments have since supported the EU's human rights clauses, but Truss gradually edged away from the principle while negotiating a series of post-Brexit rollover deals. Critics, including Tom Wills from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, feared this precedent would see the U.K. "abandon these basic human rights standards in pursuit of a quick deal” with the Gulf States.
And sure enough, in a recent letter to MPs seen by the Independent, Truss' successor as trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, confirmed that human rights issues would be led by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and kept out of trade talks. FTAs, she insisted, “are not generally the most effective or targeted tool to advance human rights issues.”
Engagement, not isolation
Indeed, the U.K.'s new approach extends beyond FTAs.
Following Brexit, the U.K. inherited an EU scheme offering preferential tariff access to developing countries. And U.K. ministers said this month they will scrap Brussels' requirement for qualifying countries to ratify and implement more than two-dozen international conventions, citing a “lack of evidence” that the approach works. The U.K. will instead retain the power to suspend a country’s favorable tariffs for “serious and systematic violations of human rights."
Nick-Thomas Symonds, shadow international trade secretary for the Labour Party, insisted it is "crucial that human rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights are embedded” in U.K. trade negotiations. “When negotiating for new opportunities in exchange for access to our markets, we must seek to promote high standards,” he added.
AUGUST 31, 2022
LONDON — How far would Liz Truss go to sign a trade deal? The answer, human rights campaigners fear, is almost any distance at all.
As Britain's international trade secretary, Truss made her name among the Tory faithful by signing a flurry of flag-waving, PR-friendly trade deals following Britain's departure from the EU. More are expected to follow if she is confirmed as the U.K.'s new prime minister next week.
But having already secured swift agreements with like-minded democracies in Australia and New Zealand, the U.K. now finds itself talking to partners with more problematic human rights records.
And as negotiations continue, U.K. ministers are quietly stepping away from an EU principle of including human rights clauses in trade deals — leaving campaigners fearing a race to the bottom.
“Loose ethics and a willingness to overlook egregious human rights and labor rights abuses to secure trade deals have been a steadfast feature of the government’s approach to trade,” said Rosa Crawford, trade policy lead at the Trades Union Congress.
The U.K. has been on a negotiating spree in 2022, launching free trade talks with the likes of India and Israel. More controversially still, Britain in August commenced the first round of negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance comprised of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Ruth Bergan from the Trade Justice Movement said that taken together, the GCC contains “some of the most oppressive and politically repressive regimes in the world.”
The notion of Saudi Arabia as a trade partner is already the target of some incredulity. Riyadh’s recent highlights include sentencing a woman to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting activists and dissidents. Qatar, meanwhile, has long been criticized for its treatment of migrant workers, including in the building of stadiums for this year's football world cup.
But while civil society is up in arms, British business is keeping a close eye on negotiations, eager to access new markets and remove existing barriers to trade. And the U.K. is hardly alone in pursuing talks with the GCC. The EU undertook protracted negotiations with the Gulf states, though these ultimately collapsed over Brussels’ policy — introduced in the mid-1990s — of making human rights provisions an "essential element" of trade deals.
Successive U.K. governments have since supported the EU's human rights clauses, but Truss gradually edged away from the principle while negotiating a series of post-Brexit rollover deals. Critics, including Tom Wills from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, feared this precedent would see the U.K. "abandon these basic human rights standards in pursuit of a quick deal” with the Gulf States.
And sure enough, in a recent letter to MPs seen by the Independent, Truss' successor as trade secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, confirmed that human rights issues would be led by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and kept out of trade talks. FTAs, she insisted, “are not generally the most effective or targeted tool to advance human rights issues.”
Engagement, not isolation
Indeed, the U.K.'s new approach extends beyond FTAs.
Following Brexit, the U.K. inherited an EU scheme offering preferential tariff access to developing countries. And U.K. ministers said this month they will scrap Brussels' requirement for qualifying countries to ratify and implement more than two-dozen international conventions, citing a “lack of evidence” that the approach works. The U.K. will instead retain the power to suspend a country’s favorable tariffs for “serious and systematic violations of human rights."
Nick-Thomas Symonds, shadow international trade secretary for the Labour Party, insisted it is "crucial that human rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights are embedded” in U.K. trade negotiations. “When negotiating for new opportunities in exchange for access to our markets, we must seek to promote high standards,” he added.
Lorries queue to embark on a ferry at the entrance of the Port of Dover,
southeast England, the United Kingdom | Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images
For all the criticism, the U.K. is not immune from using trade policy to achieve its wider aims.
Ministers have previously sought chapters on labor rights, climate, and trade and gender equality in its free trade negotiations, and say they hold similar aspirations for the Gulf free trade deal. Yet securing these chapters does not appear to be a red line.
Many Tory MPs believe the U.K. should maintain flexibility, and avoid adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to free trade agreements. Others say human rights provisions simply have no place in FTAs, and that trade liberalization lifts people out of poverty, improving rights along the way.
“We don’t want our trade agreements to be valueless,” said a former Conservative Cabinet minister. “But on the other hand, we don’t want them so restrictive on the political side that trade becomes suffocated and developing markets find it more and more difficult to sell into a big market like the U.K.”
In a document outlining its approach to the GCC negotiations, the U.K. said its policy is to “engage countries whose human rights record falls short, as opposed to isolation and removing our ability to support higher standards,” arguing that by “having strong economic relationships with partners, the government can have more open discussions on a range of issues, including human rights.”
A spokesperson for the Department for International Trade insisted the U.K. is a "leading advocate for human rights around the world," and would continue to encourage all states to "uphold international human rights obligations."
As the government has already found, however, its approach comes under fire when a proposed trading partner finds itself in hot water. “The only time you can do an unfettered free trade deal — i.e. without any limitations in it — is with a respectable democracy," said Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister David Davis.
For all the criticism, the U.K. is not immune from using trade policy to achieve its wider aims.
Ministers have previously sought chapters on labor rights, climate, and trade and gender equality in its free trade negotiations, and say they hold similar aspirations for the Gulf free trade deal. Yet securing these chapters does not appear to be a red line.
Many Tory MPs believe the U.K. should maintain flexibility, and avoid adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to free trade agreements. Others say human rights provisions simply have no place in FTAs, and that trade liberalization lifts people out of poverty, improving rights along the way.
“We don’t want our trade agreements to be valueless,” said a former Conservative Cabinet minister. “But on the other hand, we don’t want them so restrictive on the political side that trade becomes suffocated and developing markets find it more and more difficult to sell into a big market like the U.K.”
In a document outlining its approach to the GCC negotiations, the U.K. said its policy is to “engage countries whose human rights record falls short, as opposed to isolation and removing our ability to support higher standards,” arguing that by “having strong economic relationships with partners, the government can have more open discussions on a range of issues, including human rights.”
A spokesperson for the Department for International Trade insisted the U.K. is a "leading advocate for human rights around the world," and would continue to encourage all states to "uphold international human rights obligations."
As the government has already found, however, its approach comes under fire when a proposed trading partner finds itself in hot water. “The only time you can do an unfettered free trade deal — i.e. without any limitations in it — is with a respectable democracy," said Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister David Davis.
India questions
Britain's prospective trade deal with India is another now raising human rights concerns, given the serious questions about the treatment of religious minorities on the sub-continent.
The story of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh detained in India under anti-terrorism laws since 2017, has whirred away in the background since negotiations began in January. In May, United Nations investigators said the 35-year-old's detention had no legal basis. He was formally charged in August with conspiracy to commit murder and being a member of a terrorist gang — accusations he denies.
“My brother is the elephant in the room in these talks,” Jagtar’s sibling Gurpreet Singh Johal said. “Are ministers so desperate to strike a deal that they are willing to ignore what India has done to him?”
The human rights group Reprieve claimed British intelligence agencies tipped off Indian authorities about Johal before his abduction and alleged torture by Punjab police. Johal has since lodged a claim in the High Court against the government.
The Scottish National Party’s Martin Docherty-Hughes, Johal’s constituency MP in Westminster, suggested U.K. ministers may have sanctioned the passing of intelligence information to help in efforts to secure a post-Brexit trade agreement. “The issue for me is it seems that the Conservative and Unionist Party has tried to sell its soul to the devil for a trade deal with India, including signing off information which could be as banal as ‘Jagtar Singh Johal will be in India on these dates,’” he said.
“The first thing about human rights issues is not to contribute to them,” added Conservative MP Davis, a longstanding anti-torture campaigner
.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi gesture before their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, India |
Pool photo by Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images
An FCDO spokesperson said it would be "inappropriate" to comment "while legal proceedings are active.”
Ministers have also faced calls to put talks on ice after Delhi abstained on United Nations motions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trade Secretary Trevelyan said Britain was “very disappointed” in India — but the U.K. has opted once more for engagement, believing deepening ties can help pull India away from Russia's sphere of influence. Given India's participation in joint military exercises with Russia and China, ministers have their work cut out.
Indeed, the Ukraine invasion has triggered wider calls for countries to be more discerning over who they do business with, with the concept of "friend-shoring" — effectively running supply chains only through close partners — gaining currency in trade policy circles.
“The truth is we actually need a complete redesign of our international trade policy,” said Davis. “Why? Because you get tangled up with states doing things you don’t approve of, on whom you’ve allowed yourself to become dependent. The seriously obvious case of that is Russia.”
China watch
For Conservative MPs concerned about China, too, a rethink is long overdue. Conservative MP Tim Loughton, chair of the party's human rights commission, said MPs are now pushing for quality mark provisions that guarantee goods bought in shops are not produced by slave labor, amid deep concern about China's treatment of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang region.
For many Tory MPs, trade with Beijing is more problematic than with Riyadh. “I think we’ve got concerns about [Saudi Arabia], but I don’t think they’re at the level that we wouldn’t think of negotiating a free trade agreement [with the GCC],” the former Cabinet minister quoted above said. China and Iran, they added, would cross that line, but the "GCC encompasses Oman, the UAE, Bahrain — countries with whom we have no real quarrel.”
Negotiations with the six-member GCC alliance are likely to be challenging in their own right, meaning talks could collapse for other reasons. And Britain could always walk away from the table.
Yet without human rights safeguards underpinning talks, the U.K.’s approach — however forcefully defended — will continue to face scrutiny.
"The U.K. should be using its leverage on the global stage to put pressure on these countries to respect fundamental rights," said the TUC's Crawford, "instead of treating trade deals as publicity tools."
Graham Lanktree contributed reporting.
An FCDO spokesperson said it would be "inappropriate" to comment "while legal proceedings are active.”
Ministers have also faced calls to put talks on ice after Delhi abstained on United Nations motions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trade Secretary Trevelyan said Britain was “very disappointed” in India — but the U.K. has opted once more for engagement, believing deepening ties can help pull India away from Russia's sphere of influence. Given India's participation in joint military exercises with Russia and China, ministers have their work cut out.
Indeed, the Ukraine invasion has triggered wider calls for countries to be more discerning over who they do business with, with the concept of "friend-shoring" — effectively running supply chains only through close partners — gaining currency in trade policy circles.
“The truth is we actually need a complete redesign of our international trade policy,” said Davis. “Why? Because you get tangled up with states doing things you don’t approve of, on whom you’ve allowed yourself to become dependent. The seriously obvious case of that is Russia.”
China watch
For Conservative MPs concerned about China, too, a rethink is long overdue. Conservative MP Tim Loughton, chair of the party's human rights commission, said MPs are now pushing for quality mark provisions that guarantee goods bought in shops are not produced by slave labor, amid deep concern about China's treatment of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang region.
For many Tory MPs, trade with Beijing is more problematic than with Riyadh. “I think we’ve got concerns about [Saudi Arabia], but I don’t think they’re at the level that we wouldn’t think of negotiating a free trade agreement [with the GCC],” the former Cabinet minister quoted above said. China and Iran, they added, would cross that line, but the "GCC encompasses Oman, the UAE, Bahrain — countries with whom we have no real quarrel.”
Negotiations with the six-member GCC alliance are likely to be challenging in their own right, meaning talks could collapse for other reasons. And Britain could always walk away from the table.
Yet without human rights safeguards underpinning talks, the U.K.’s approach — however forcefully defended — will continue to face scrutiny.
"The U.K. should be using its leverage on the global stage to put pressure on these countries to respect fundamental rights," said the TUC's Crawford, "instead of treating trade deals as publicity tools."
Graham Lanktree contributed reporting.
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