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3.37 pm
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): It is a great pleasure for the House to hear a voice from the past. From the fascinating speech of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), we understand how far we have moved in trying to face up to the fundamental question to which Harold Macmillan was addressing himself: how, in a global economy, do we implement mechanisms to ensure that the world works for the benefit of all rather than merely for those who are strong enough to impose themselves on it?
The World Trade Organisation ought to be such a mechanism. Indeed, it has been a failure of it that we have not ensured on a global scale the introduction of standards and attitudes that we at home have already sought to introduce. That is very hard to achieve; we cannot expect to achieve it quickly, but it is essential. Globalisation is not something to be proved or disproved; it is to be accepted as a fact. Then, we must decide how we try to turn it to the advantage of all.
I ought to declare an interest. As chairman of the Marine Stewardship Council, I felt it right to ensure that those of us who are concerned with sustainable development and the proper labelling of goods, so that people may make a choice, were heard in the WTO discussions. There was the opportunity to create the mechanism through which such global control could be partly achieved.
I thank the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry not only for what he had to say, but for the courtesy that he and his team of Ministers extended to the non-governmental organisations and others who were in Seattle. We were very well briefed and able at all times to make the points that we wanted to put. That does not mean that I always agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Indeed, on a number of issues, I do not. However, such openness might be contrasted with the WTO itself.
The first thing that we must establish in the WTO is a degree of openness and transparency. For example, it is not acceptable that a world organisation should make decisions affecting people's livelihoods and deal with appeals, without any knowledge of the relevant facts and papers. That is a closed, secret system. It ought to be an open system, so that we all know where we are.
Secondly, it is not acceptable that democratically elected Parliaments should not have a voice in such an organisation. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) did not welcome, as I hope she will in the future, the proposition that comes not from the Government, but from the Opposition originally, that there should be some means for the Parliaments of the member nations to express their views, as is the case in the Western European Union and other organisations. My hon. Friend said that she would examine the details with care, and I am sure that she will. When she does, she will see how valuable that could be. It is part of the openness that we need.
A world organisation should listen to the views of all the countries that are involved. When I represented the European Union as the chairman of the Agriculture Council at the WTO meeting in the Uruguay round, it became clear to me that decisions were made between two organisations--the United States and the European Union. Thank goodness we are a member of the EU, or we would not have that important role to play. Outside the EU, we would have the same role as all the other countries, which would be much less important than our role as a key constituent of one of the two principal negotiating organisations.
The reason is not that that has been ordained, or that it is considered the best way. It is because the two strongest trading organisations in the world are the European Union and the United States. I do not think much of the fact that the US internal elections are so important to the WTO, but that is a fact of life. Unless we make the EU strong enough to counterbalance the US, or to support the US when that is the right course, no meaningful negotiation will be possible in the WTO.
One of our problems is that we have not been prepared to recognise the only means of achieving the balance necessary to ensure that the most powerful nation in the world should not insist that the chairman of the WTO should also be its chief negotiator. Who could stop that happening? It is a disgrace, but because of that power, such decisions go unquestioned.
It is important for us to recognise that if the WTO is to be legitimate, it must be transparent, and if it is to be transparent, the poorest nations of the world must have their say. We have our say. Sometimes we do not do so as effectively as we should, but we have the opportunity. The poorest nations do not have the money to back up their views with research and the day to day opportunity to lobby that is available in Geneva.
A representative working in a back office with a half-working telephone and an old duplicating machine is in no position to put the same pressure on the WTO as the representatives of the rich countries can. We therefore support the Government's view that we should extend the opportunities given to poorer countries by the WTO. It must enable countries to play a proper part in an organisation that affects their future to such an extent.
It is essential for the WTO to recognise legitimate concerns about the way in which trade is conducted, which do not relate solely to trade. Those concerns are so closely linked to trade that they cannot be separated, but they cannot be summed up simply by demanding free trade. I have always been a supporter of free trade and I continue to fight for it; no hon. Member could suggest otherwise. That does not mean that democratically elected
Governments, and groups of Governments, as in the EU, do not have the right to concern themselves with matters such as hormones in beef and genetically modified foods. Those are real issues, and we must find proper forums in which they can be ventilated.
It was quite inappropriate for the US to demand that the issue of GM foods should be discussed in the WTO. It was the US which, with four, and only four, allies, destroyed the biosafety meeting at Cartagena. Such a use of international muscle was wholly inappropriate. We must insist that those issues are discussed and decided in the forums designed for them, and not hijacked into the WTO.
The WTO must therefore accept that there is a parity of respect--a point that I tried to make to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield--for international decisions made at the biodiversity convention, the biosafety convention, the conference on sustainable development, the issues that we decide following Kyoto or Montreal, and all the development decisions that have been internationally accepted.
We should also respect the decisions of the International Labour Organisation on some of those issues, about which people rightly feel strongly. The attempt to make the WTO the sole arbiter was what brought people out on to the streets. I should tell the right hon. Member for Chesterfield that I witnessed those protests, initially from among those who were protesting and later, when the teargas and so on were used, from a vantage point that enabled me to see everything.
The policing was not wicked; it was totally incompetent. The police tried to stop the protesters getting into the conference hall, but that is not what the protesters were trying to do. They wanted to stop the delegates getting into the conference hall, so the protesters joined the police on their barricades to make sure that the exclusion was democratically universal, rather than partial. It was bad policing, badly carried out, and did not set a good example to the rest of the world, but it was not malicious.
Those who were on the streets were in large measure trying to make a reasonable point--in the wrong way, but a reasonable point none the less: that they did not believe that free trade is the only good. For most of us, it is a good, but it is not the only good. We all need a market economy, but none of us can be content with a market society. There is more to life than mere free trade, but free trade is the means whereby those who have limited lives can be given richer lives. The WTO must provide the terms for that to be achieved.
We should recognise what an enormous restriction on our sovereignty the WTO is. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield is right about that. I sometimes find it difficult to understand some of my colleagues, who are worried about the restrictions placed on them in the EU, where they can ensure that things are done properly, whereas we have given to the WTO powers that no democratic Government have ever given up in the past--the powers of controlling excise duties and the like, the way in which trade operates and so on--which we do happily because we see the benefit, just as we should see the benefit in the EU.
Clare Short:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Is it not the case that because of the speed with which
Mr. Gummer:
The Secretary of State is absolutely right. We gain sovereignty by doing that. If we do not do that, we have no control over world capital flows, the way in which speculators affect currency or multinationals, which are larger and more powerful than many countries. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield proposes that we should give up all control over such matters and let those forces ride roughshod over us. We propose--and there is some synergy across the Chamber--a global society that is capable of drawing up the rules whereby those powerful forces can operate. The European Union does that in a regional way. For example, we acknowledge that we cannot deal with fishing on a national basis because fish do not have flags on their backsides. They swim around and need to be dealt with on a European level. Similarly, we cannot tackle the environment nationally when half our pollution comes from Europe and we export half the pollution that we produce to the rest of Europe.
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