Those critics and sceptics who doubt a comprehensive European Union-United States trade deal is deliverable must grasp the momentum behind it. The second round of talks was sunk by the US government shutdown but the negotiators met three weeks later to make up for lost time, and next week’s third round is back on schedule in Washington.
These are the biggest and best-prepared bilateral trade negotiations in history. ‘Biggest’ because, together, the EU and US account for around 30 per cent of global trade and almost half the world’s output, with two-way investment flows worth $3.5tn a year. And the most reliable studies suggest that a comprehensive deal could add £4-10bn a year to UK output, boost our exports by 1-3 per cent, create thousands of jobs and drive up wages. ‘Best-prepared’ because serious work on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership has been going on for two years since the high-level working group on jobs and growth was set up by Presidents Obama, Barroso and Van Rompuy.
But, while the level of political commitment on both sides of the Atlantic is high, public awareness is still unacceptably low. This cannot just be a backroom deal done by the elites in Brussels and Washington. Any legitimate agreement must command a broadly based confidence that it will bring benefits to consumers, workers and businesses, and, at the moment, this is absent.
This demands a greater effort be made to open up the debate. Despite these talks being heralded as the most open and transparent trade negotiations ever, the bar is low. And so far our UK government has done little to help. Our embassy in Washington part-sponsored a state-by-state study of the impact on US jobs, but ministers in the UK have yet to commission a similar assessment for the UK. In parliament the only Commons debate on TTIP was called and led by the new all-party parliamentary group I chair on behalf of backbenchers rather than the government.
Without an open debate we risk both an advocacy vacuum which allows fears to flourish unchallenged and bad policy to remain unchanged.
Typifying these risks are protections for foreign investors, including plans for investor-state dispute settlements. ISDS are provisions in investment agreements and trade treaties that allow companies to bring legal action against a government under an international arbitration system rather than through domestic courts. Their defenders point to the protection that investors get in countries where respect for property rights are less secure and legal systems less developed.
But there is increasing criticism of ISDS and I can see no case for the blanket provision proposed in the EU’s TTIP negotiating mandate, which research commissioned by the coalition concludes will have no benefits for the UK.
First, because investor protection of this kind favours foreign multinationals over domestic firms by allowing only the former access to a slimline arbitration system, without the public due process provide by national courts.
Second, ISDS put at risk sovereign control of policy in essential public services or industries. In principle, there is support on both sides for allowing governments to meet core public policy objectives, but there is growing concern in the UK about the future of the NHS if ISDS tie the hands of democratically elected ministers, as those in the Slovak Republic found in 2006 when they tried to roll back a previous government’s liberalisation of the health insurance market. I’ve repeatedly questioned ministers who can’t or won’t confirm that the NHS will be protected from the competition provisions in the trade deal and, without this reassurance, fears will grow that a government who passed the Health and Social Care Act in England is unlikely to stick up for public health services in Brussels.
Third, it is not clear that ISDS are justified at all when the agreement will be struck between countries with some of the most advanced and stable legal systems in the world.
The only safeguard against such concerns is for the parties to the trade talks, including EU member states, to debate the dimensions of any potential deal in full and in the open. And where widespread concerns are legitimate, then the negotiators must adapt their approach.
Like justice, good trade policy must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. If David Cameron really wants a new, reformed UK relationship within the EU, he can start by making transparency, domestic debate and accountability the watchwords of the EU-US trade deal negotiations.
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John Healey MP is member of parliament for Wentworth and Dearne and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on EU-US trade and investment. He tweets @JohnHealey_MP
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