Brexit: World Trade Organization Rules

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Price]

I agree with the noble Lord that our ambition should be to increase our exports. At the moment the UK, regrettably, bats below where it should. We are sixth in the league table, below France and Germany, and we hope to rise above that through a number of initiatives. Pursuing all trade options with all countries should be the Government’s approach, to make it easy and straightforward for businesses to export and to make sure that we are equally open to other businesses, both in the EU and elsewhere, which want to export into the United Kingdom.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend Lord Spicer’s question, as we are now told that more than half the total earnings of world exports come from services, intellectual property, information products, digital transfer and shared processes and not from traditional goods transfer, are we not reaching the point where the WTO rules—let alone the more outdated rules of the former single market and the customs union, which belong to past trade patterns—are of decreasing relevance to our trade prospects?

[Lord Price]

The noble Lord is certainly right that services are an increasingly important part of the UK economy, representing 80% of our GDP and 40% of our exports to the EU. However, I would not want to diminish the importance of goods transfer. The north-east of England is the second largest exporter of cars in the EU—it exports more cars than Italy. It is important for us to hold on to the fact that we produce goods in the UK and export goods from the UK. That must not be diminished as we pursue our agenda to increase our services around the world.