Time was when nothing could be done by the Government or the European Union without a rigorously mapped impact assessment. Almost invariably wielded as a tool by deregulatory zealots to show that workers’ demands would lead to unacceptable burdens on business, I can remember exposing many of the faults in the technique. Too much reliance on…
Yesterday the TUC responded to the European Commission’s consultation on its plans to develop a global version of the notorious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system. ISDS is the court system found in thousands of trade and investment agreements that foreign investors have used to sue governments when they feel their profits have been threatened. Like the Investor-State…
When Prime Minister Theresa May visited newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump in January, Brexit supporters were cock-a-hoop about how post-Brexit Britain would be at the front of the queue for a trade deal with the US Trade Representative (USTR – not that there was one when Mrs May went to Washington – indeed Trump’s pick still hasn’t been confirmed). This…
Last week’s Budget speech by the Chancellor had very little to say about Brexit. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a Brexit angle – you just have to look at what wasn’t there, rather than what was. First, there was very little in the Budget to prepare for the challenges Brexit will pose to the British economy.…
Ahead of Commonwealth Day 2017, Commonwealth trade ministers were in London last week, hosted by the UK international trade minister and leading Leave supporter Liam Fox. The media claimed that several Commonwealth countries were ‘first in the queue’ to do a trade deal with the UK after we leave the EU, described by some as…
The Government’s much-touted negotiating threat that ‘no deal would be better than a bad deal’ risks doing huge damage to the UK economy, our jobs, rights at work and living standards. Last week the all-party Commons Select Committee on International Trade made clear that ‘no deal’ was in fact the worst ‘bad deal’ on offer. Today…
On Tuesday I spoke at a conference held at the OECD in Paris on the costs and benefits of investment protection agreements like Investor-State Dispute Settlement. In the morning conference participants had heard something important – the experts gathered by the OECD had, in all their extensive studies, found no evidence that there were benefits…
Today (8 March) is International Women’s Day (#IWD2017) and the UN’s chosen theme for this year focusses on ‘Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030’. This theme chimes well with the values of the TUC and our sister trade unions around the world who will be joining the global union call…
The Prime Minister has argued that, when it comes to Britain’s relationship with the EU after Brexit, no deal would be better than a bad deal (I’m worried that some Conservative MPs actually think no deal would be better than a good deal, too). It is frequently argued that holding out the prospect that Britain…
We’ve welcomed the Prime Minister’s promise to protect and enhance the rights of working people that the EU has underpinned over the last forty years, but we’ve stressed the need for a cast-iron mechanism to guarantee those rights aren’t watered down, and ensure the rights of working people in Britain don’t fall behind the rights of…