Trade and Agriculture Commission and Trade Remedies Authority Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
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Trade and Agriculture Commission and Trade Remedies Authority
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the budget for (1) the Trade and Agriculture Commission, and (2) the Trade Remedies Authority.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for International Trade (Lord Grimstone of Boscobel) (Con)
My Lords, the commission members are unpaid and are reimbursed for reasonable travel costs. They are supported by a secretariat run by DIT, made up of officials from various government departments and paid for out of their respective departmental budgets. We estimate the cost of the commission’s secretariat to be £770,000 over the duration of its term. The 2020-21 financial year budget for the Trade Remedies Investigations Directorate is £12,210,307. Once established, provisions will be made in accordance with usual procedures to fund the TRA.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer. It confirms that the Trade and Agriculture Commission is not independent but run entirely by the Department for International Trade. Will my noble friend concede that there is a widely held view that the commission should become a permanent body or, as suggested by his adviser, Henry Dimbleby, replaced by an independent, permanent body to make sure that the commission and its standards are statutory, and that it has its own budget, resources and staff. Otherwise, it is a sham, an empty vessel, and is not able to do the work that it has been charged by the Government to do.
Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid that I do not agree with my noble friend. The commission is an independent body and is made up of independent-minded representatives from across the agriculture, retail, consumer, hospitality, animal health and environmental sectors. It questions their integrity to think that they are other than completely independent.