Republic of Cameroon: Economic Partnership Agreement

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to participate briefly in this debate, and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Indeed, all the contributions show a great deal of expertise, to which I do not aspire to in relation to Cameroon or Ghana, but which has been fascinating to listen to, not least that of my noble friend, Lord Bellingham, from his ministerial experience there and otherwise.

In my first point, I echo that we do want to operationalise the Ghana agreement; we want to develop our trade with Ghana. Indeed, part of the SDG approach is to use our overseas development assistance to Ghana to help it increase the diversity of its economy, not least in terms of the value chain, so it is not wholly dependent on tourism and commodity exports.

I am grateful to noble Lords for enabling these debates to take place. The International Agreements Committee, of which I am a member, did not report these agreements for the special attention of the House, but for information, so it is by virtue of these Motions that we can debate them.

Where Cameroon is concerned, the agreement highlights that we are in a developing situation with our trade policy. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, is right: we do need to understand, set out clearly and make more predictable, our human rights approach in relation to trade policy. I would, however, advise caution. I do not think that because the American Government withdrew unilateral preferences from Cameroon that means that we should not have entered into an economic partnership agreement with Cameroon. It is in our interest to build the overall scope of trade with Cameroon. Unilateral preferences are a different thing. I am looking forward to being able to look at the Government’s consultation on a review of the generalised scheme of preferences because there we can take a somewhat more direct approach to those who are the beneficiaries of unilateral preferences and withdraw those preferences where there are systematic abuses of human rights and labour rights and in a number of other circumstances.

We then also need to understand how we are using our influence in economic partnership agreements to improve human rights. The Minister’s letter, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred, said that the Minister for Africa was in Cameroon and talked to the President on 2 March. The agreement was signed on 9 March, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, just said. Perhaps the Minister can tell us a bit more about the nature of that discussion and negotiation.