Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.
17:09 Geraint Davies
If we sign up to CETA and existing investors’ rights continue for 20 years, a fracking company that comes from the United States via a Canadian subsidiary could be subject to the capital tax concessions of 75% now in place for frackers, and to loose planning restrictions that meant that frackers could frack under your house, Sir Edward. Does the Minister agree that if a future Government decided that the planning constraints and tax concessions were too lenient, and wanted to focus on renewables, in line with the Paris agreement, the frackers could sue the Government, within a 20-year timeframe, for lost profit under ICS?
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17:47 Geraint Davies
More than an irony—a tragedy. The view of some, apparently, is that we should move out of the orbit of the European Court of Human Rights, which supports the fundamental values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and into the orbit of arbitration courts whose basic remit relates to the interests of the investor, as opposed to the wider interests of the environment. If the Minister has looked at the detail of the chapters of CETA, he will have observed that the investor chapter is armed with arbitration courts that trump national and international law, but that there are no such teeth in the environment chapter, for instance. There is no enforceability of the Paris agreement that we have all signed up to in order to save the planet. Nor, for that matter, is there any enforceability of labour rights.
We need a debate, because ICS is down the road—I accept that it has not yet come in and we can do the other bits first, but there is a concern that that is an unnecessary and dangerous prospect. I do not want to run through hundreds of cases, but there was a famous case in which Obama said to TransCanada, “We don’t want this sand oil pipeline coming in from Canada to the US, because it is a breach of the Paris agreement.” As I understand it, the case has now been dropped because Donald Trump has taken over the presidency, but TransCanada was going to sue the US for $15 billion. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North mentioned ratcheting and reassurances about health services; there was a case in which Slovakia attempted to renationalise part of its health service and was penalised in court with fines. Hon. Members may remember that at the last election the Labour party stood up and said that it wanted to freeze energy prices; one may or may not like that idea, but Argentina was sued for $1 billion under ISDS by energy companies from America and Europe for doing exactly that. Philip Morris, famously, has been pursuing a case against Australia and Uruguay to stop plain tobacco packaging, which was introduced to reduce deaths from cancer.
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17:55 Geraint Davies
The issue of transparency and scrutiny needs to be talked about as this agreement will be the forerunner to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, if it is ever revived, which depends on Donald, of course. This agreement could be a blueprint for global trade. If it is to be, it needs to embrace not only the best in trade, transparency and harmonisation, but the best in ensuring that trade is compatible with our environmental imperatives to deliver the Paris agreement and human rights as well.
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