UK-EU Trade: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

There is a huge amount of effort going on in the department to break down these trade barriers. We have already removed 178 trade barriers—48 of those are worth £6.5 billion alone. Within all our country embassies we have a team working directly with our SMEs to remove these barriers. This will ease the process.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, the trade and co-operation agreement has a structure of 24 committees, trade specialised committees included, which are meant to work together to produce mutually beneficial improvements in the process of trade. The snappily named Trade Specialised Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade looks into this area, I assume. That committee met only once last year. I realise that committees can work when they do not meet, but will the Minister comment on the fact that it met only once? Can he assure the House that all of the mechanics of the trade and co-operation agreement are sweating hard to try to improve the situation?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl. Yes, indeed, there are many committees in Europe—it is one of the reasons we decided to come out. Where we are working most effectively is country by country, and we are finding that, for example, when we deal with Belgium we can solve the problem with British lawyers working in Belgium. We can do the same in Luxembourg. With Sweden we work hard directly with its team on our chilled and frozen food. With Austria we are working on training permits for our staff to move there. We are much more effective on a country-by-country basis than at the higher committee level.