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Investigation into the Workings of UK Export Finance
A Submission to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Corporate Responsibility
The Corner House

22 June 2012

A UK Treasury-financed, off-balance-sheet vehicle may be hiding the extent of the financial liabilities of UK Export Finance (formerly the Export Credit Guarantee Department) and may also be concealing its use of taxpayer funds to cover operational expenses.

In addition, UK Export Finance has failed to put in place procedures that would enable it to comply with its legally-binding obligations (notably with respect to human rights) under Article 21 of the Lisbon Treaty.

These are among the conclusions of a recent Corner House submission to a UK Parliamentary group, one part of a broader questioning by civil society groups of the human rights and sustainability practices of Britain's official export subsidy apparatus.

application/pdf iconUKExportFinance.pdf

UK government's consultation on new trade policy
Evidence from The Corner House
The Corner House

3 December 2010

The Export Credits Guarantee Department should target its support towards small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that contribute to long-term, sustainable job creation and tax revenues in the UK. It should support low-carbon technologies instead of fossil fuel projects, such as oil pipelines and gas fields. It should reinstate immediately its environmental and social screening procedures, which were so significantly weakened in May 2010 that ECGD could now support projects using child and forced labour.

application/pdf iconResponse to Trade White Paper

Uncertainty Markets and Carbon Markets
Variations on Polanyian Themes
Larry Lohmann

16 July 2010

One lesson the financial crisis teaches us is: beware of the new carbon markets that constitute today's main official response to climate change. These markets are startlingly similar to the financial derivatives markets that have thrown banking systems into a tailspin. (German version also available.)

Mercados de incertidumbres y mercados de carbono: variaciones en temas de Polanyi

Una de las lecciones que la crisis financiera nos enseña es a tener cuidado con los nuevos mercados de carbono que constituyen hoy la principal respuesta oficial al cambio climático. Este artículo de la revista New Political Economy argumenta que estos mercados son sorprendentemente similares a los mercados de derivados financieros que arrojaron a los sistemas bancarios al caos en 2008.

application/pdf iconPolyanian Themes
application/pdf iconMercados de incertidumbres

Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?
Political Organising Behind TRIPS
Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite

30 September 2004

32. When TRIPS was signed in 1994, the United States, Europe and Japan dominated the world's software, pharmaceutical, chemical and entertainment industries. The rest of the world had little to gain by agreeing to these terms of trade for intellectual property. They did so because a failure of democratic processes nationally and internationally enabled a small group of men within the United States to capture the US trade-agenda-setting process, to draft intellectual property principles that became the blueprint for TRIPS and to crush resistance through US trade power.

application/pdf icon32.TRIPS

GATS, Privatisation and Health
Sarah Sexton

11 May 2003

The World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) could have a significant effect on human health, and health care services.

The Origins of the Third World
Markets, States and Climate
Mike Davis

30 December 2002

27. A revised understanding of nineteenth cenutry famines illuminates many current challenges of 'development' and questions the wisdom of development policies still pursued today.

application/pdf icon27.Origins

Trading Health Care Away?
GATS, Public Services and Privatisation
Sarah Sexton

31 July 2001

23. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is revising its General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) so as to increase international trade in services. If current proposals are implemented, GATS could be used to overturn almost any legislation governing services. Particularly under threat are public services -- health care, education, energy, water and sanitation. This briefing explores the potential for private companies to capture the most profitable components of publicly-provided and -funded health care services, leaving a reduced public sector to cope with the elderly, chronically sick and the poor who most need health care and who can least afford it.

application/pdf icon23.GATS

The Environment is too important to be left to the Market
Nicholas Hildyard

31 May 1998

A presentation looking at whose interests the free market serves and whose environment is protected by market instruments such as labelling and property rights which concludes that leaving the environment to the market is a recipe for social injustice, authoritarianism, neo-colonialism and ecological suicide.

Who Competes?
Changing Landscapes of Corporate Control
Nicholas Hildyard

1 July 1996

In the drive to become “competitive”, companies are restructuring their operations on a global scale. It is not companies which are competing, however, but workers and communities, pitted against each other as companies relocate from one country to another in search of new markets, the weakest trade unions, the most flexible rules on working conditions and the largest subsidies. It is time to question the notion that export-led growth and enhanced corporate competitiveness is the route to employment and to press instead for an economy that protects people and the commons rather than corporations.

The Globalizers’ Dilemma
Contention and Resistance in Intercultural Space
Larry Lohmann

1 September 1995

Different actors -- transnational corporations, political and technocratic elites, their opponents and others -- contend with and influence what is loosely called “globalization” in different ways. Constructive and engaged understanding of the power struggles between them all and their resources, motivations, dynamics, strategies, effectiveness, and capacities for alliances requires coming to grips with the ways in which they interpret and present their own struggles.

Maastricht: The Protectionism of Free Trade
Nicholas Hildyard

2 February 1993

In 1986, the 12 member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) signed the Single European Act, which committed them to dismantling all legislative barriers to the free movement of goods, services, capital and people between them by 31 December 1992. The resulting Single Market is designed to protect the multinational interests that have long lobbied for its creation and that are now the dominant economic and political force within Europe. The Treaty on European Union -- commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty -- gives those multinational interests the legal powers and administrative apparatus of a full-blown state.