Africa: Commercial Opportunities and Exports

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the president of the Institute for Free Trade. I will begin where the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, finished. We need to see Africa as an opportunity rather than an obligation. There is often a perception lag in international affairs. If someone is my sort of age, they will have grown up with images of Africa on the news—always either a civil war or an appeal. On some deep level, we think of children with swollen bellies and flies crawling across them.

Africa’s growth rate this century has outstripped almost every other continent, and the figures that we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and my noble friend Lord Popat are all the more extraordinary when we think of the two-way links between this country and that vast and beautiful continent. I cannot be the only person who has experience of wandering around Lagos, bumping into someone and starting to chat, and their saying, “I’m from Peckham”, or, in Accra, “I’m from Stratford”. A lot of people are moving both ways, and that should create exactly the channels for commerce that a wise country exploits.

When I was Accra, I visited the headquarters of the African Continental Free Trade Area, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, referred. It is a small, young organisation and there is an awful lot for it to do, but there was an unequivocal belief in the power of commerce and the dismantling of barriers as an instrument of poverty alleviation and social justice which you do not hear in Washington or Brussels, and certainly not in Beijing. The question is: do we still believe in those things here, in the country of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Cobden and Bright? Do we still believe in these opportunities?

I put this in the form of one specific question, which I have raised before in the Chamber and will put to the Minister. It is the question of Moroccan tomatoes. It may seem trivial, but for precisely that reason it stands for a great deal of our attitudes. To give a bit of context, this country imports 80% of its tomatoes and our single biggest supplier is the Kingdom of Morocco. When we left the European Union, we inherited a tariff and quota regime that had been designed to protect largely Spanish but also, to a degree, Italian, Portuguese and French tomato growers from international competition.

Even from a protectionist point of view, whom do we think we are protecting in this country? Yes, we have a short tomato season; the Isle of Wight used to be in my constituency when I was a Euro MP. It runs roughly from June to September and even then, we still have to import. The Moroccan growing season runs from October to April, so even from the most dunderheaded Trumpy or Corbynite protectionist point of view, whom do we imagine we are protecting from those crimson globes coming from north Africa?

I had this argument many times as a former member of the Board of Trade, and on more than one occasion with my noble friend Lord Benyon when he was the Minister. I admit that we would sometimes prearrange it: I would say, “Do you mind if I ask you about Morocco?” He would say, “Yes, please do, because I want to get it in Hansard. My officials keep telling me that they’re on the point of removing this ridiculous measure. Why are we imposing tariffs and quotas when we had a shortage of tomatoes in this country last year?” So the little play would be acted out: I would say, “Will my noble friend confirm that we are doing this?”, and he would say, “Yes, and I reassure my noble friend that I’ve got the assurance of officials that it will happen”. As of this morning, when I checked, those quotas and tariffs are still in place.

I have a very high regard for the new Business and Trade Minister. I am sure I will say disobliging things about some of his Cabinet colleagues over the next few years but, so far, Jonathan Reynolds has not put a foot wrong in what he has done on the Swiss trade agreement and on the CPTPP, or in what he has said about trade more widely. As a test case, will the Minister please see whether we can repeal this utterly self-defeating measure, not as a favour to our friends in Morocco but as a favour to ourselves that will incidentally also help the great continent of Africa?