EU: United States Free Trade Agreement

Debate between Lord Anderson of Swansea and Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint)]

My Lords, the European Union-United States high-level working group on jobs and growth, which is tasked with examining the options for enhancing the transatlantic economic relationship, is expected to release its report in the coming weeks. The UK Government look forward to receiving the conclusions of this report and to working with other EU member states and the European Commission to take forward this important agenda and achieve—if at all possible—an EU-US free trade agreement.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, following the failure of the Doha round of global trade negotiations, does the Minister agree that the focus will increasingly be on regional arrangements and where better than the EU-US following the EU summit with the US last year, which accounts for half of the total GNP of the world and one third of world trade? Will he give an assurance that the conclusions of this working group will be speedily worked upon? What steps does he see following that?

[Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint]

I agree with the noble Lord that this is an extremely important negotiation. It is indeed the case that in the wake of the stalling of the Doha round, regional arrangements of this kind is the inevitable way forward in practice for free trade. The EU has a heavy agenda; a couple of weeks ago, it agreed a mandate for negotiating with Japan—obviously another major economy. The EU-US deal will be the most important one for the reasons that the noble Lord has indicated—the importance of the two blocks in world trade—and I assure him that the British Government will pursue every avenue that we can to encourage, support and cajole others into working to get this deal done.