Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 82, which is consequential upon Amendment 80. As the Minister referred to before, Amendment 80 had attracted some flattering imitation yesterday, but nevertheless I hope that we might be able to see progress on what I would consider to be a serious proposal to address some of the concerns that have been raised very sincerely. As the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said earlier, we have a lot of history to make good, and I agree. This has been an unusual Committee stage of a Bill in many respects. Perhaps it is because this legislation and the treaty that it is connected to will have, unlike some other legislation that we often might consider to be indirect, a direct impact on people’s lives. They are a defined but diverse group of individuals who have been in touch with many noble Lords. Therefore, I believe that we have an obligation to treat this seriously. In Committee, there have been many passionate, but also proper and probing, questions on how the terms of the treaty will operate and how UK interests will also continue to be represented. We have just heard that from the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and we heard it earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. Amendment 80 in my name is a proposition for an ongoing inter-parliamentary committee for the duration of the treaty. The Minister mentioned before that she felt it was perhaps a novel response. It is not entirely novel; there are precedents which I have based this on. There have been quite frequently free trade agreements that had parliamentary committees associated with them. There is the EFTA agreement, which the UK had been part of. There was the AWEPA for our African partners in parliaments, which we had been part of. There is doubt from many about how critical parts of the treaty negotiated by this Government will be handled, both by the UK and the Mauritian Governments, and operate through the commission. We have heard many references today to the deeply flawed Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. It was fascinating for me to listen to this debate, because this House in 2021 passed a Motion—it happened to be in my name—about the ability for Parliament to have a straight up-and-down vote on treaties. The House passed an amendment to the then Trade Bill which stated that negotiating objectives or before-treaty negotiations would have to be presented to both Houses, and the House of Commons would have an opportunity to vote on those. I believe that those aspects would have been beneficial for this treaty. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, forgot that he voted against that, so I am happy to remind him, just for the record, that on the latter part—on the first part, he was not in the House—in one of his very first votes in this House, he was against what he has been arguing so passionately for today.