Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Lord Marland Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. I have sat on the International Agreements Committee with her for a number of years. She chaired it magnificently before handing back to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who I think has found her a tough act to follow.

It is also a huge pleasure to see my noble friend the Foreign Secretary here. It is a boost for the House of Lords and for the international community. It is also a boost for those who play tennis with him, because during the fallow period his game has improved and we rather hope it will go back to the status quo. I worked closely with him on trade issues. In a moment of brilliance, he made me his trade envoy in his Government, putting trade at the heart of government. Between us we set up what is now the trade envoy network, which has been a successful cross-party network promoting trade across the world. I have therefore seen at first hand how, internationally, his status is so high. I have seen the energy he puts into international matters and the respect he is held in throughout the world, so we are incredibly lucky that he has chosen to give up an extremely comfortable and enjoyable life to return to public service.

It will be more comfortable here, as has been said by other noble Lords, but less comfortable as a lifestyle none the less. We wish my noble friend all the best—and, for heaven’s sake, this country needs a dynamic and vigorous Foreign Secretary. In my role as chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, I think I have done 45 flights this year—please do not tell the eco lobby this—all in the interest of international trade. Everywhere I go, the Foreign Office’s standing is diminishing. It is therefore critical that we have such a big hitter delivering for us in the world.

I also want to apologise in advance, because another thing that my noble friend made me do when I was working with him was to chair an Armed Forces charity. I am afraid that I am going to have to go to its huge celebration, which has long been in the diary, at the same time as him. I apologise to noble Lords if I have to leave at the same time as he does.

I shall not add to the comments that have been made by the excellent committee members who I have the honour and privilege of working with. I want to enhance the words of our chairman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who said that we are still very much scrutinising this matter and intend to give it a full wind. It would therefore be wrong for me to add anything more to those excellent comments, other than to say that it is a good start. As my noble friend Lord Frost says, it is a step in the right direction. It is a modest treaty but none the less a statement of intent.

Curiously enough, of the 12 countries now in the CPTPP, if we include the United Kingdom, seven are Commonwealth countries. I have told the great Trade Minister, my noble friend Lord Johnson, who is also a vigorous and dynamic man, that it is amazing to me that neither his department nor the Foreign Office has shown leadership in establishing a Commonwealth trade treaty. Why are we sitting on our backsides and not showing leadership in the world where we have an open goal, as my noble friend Lord Howell has said—many others would agree—of 56 English-speaking countries sharing so many interests?

When my noble friend the Foreign Secretary was Prime Minister he attended two CHOGMs, so he has been very much involved with the Commonwealth. Why are we not picking up the baton and showing real leadership in the world of international trade where, as my noble friend Lord Lamont ably put it, people are starting to put up trade barriers? As a parting gesture, and to make my speech as short as I possibly can, I put it to the Foreign Secretary and to the excellent Minister of Trade, my noble friend Lord Johnson, that this should become a priority.

Commonwealth

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell for his kind and generous remarks, as I am to my noble friend Lord Goodlad. I agree with every single word my noble friend Lord Howell said, with one exception: Kigali was not about Heads of Government; it was about a business forum, which I was privileged to chair, a youth forum and a women’s forum. They were very vibrant events.

The business forum is an extraordinary event. Where else, apart perhaps from Davos, can you attract 1,700 businesses from 60 countries, 20 Heads of State, the president of the World Bank, the president of FIFA even and the secretary-general of the World Health Organization? It was an incredibly vibrant event, probably because there was pent-up tension after four years of us sitting with Covid and not meeting each other face to face, but also because it was in Africa. The Commonwealth had not been to an event like this in Africa for well over 10 years and it was a terrific credit to our hosts, the Rwandan Government, that it was such a resounding success.

Rwanda has proven to be a country of formidable leadership. It was safe, secure and clean and has a fast-growing economy lifting its people out of poverty. The statistics for trade in the Commonwealth and business are well known. It is 20% more competitive doing intra-Commonwealth trade because of common law, a common language and common trade agreements, and therefore the British Government should be well set to take benefit from it, but I am afraid to say that they have been asleep on their watch. They have inevitably been encumbered by the post-Brexit situation and subsequently Covid, but they have not taken full advantage of their last four years as chair in office.

That manifested itself in the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the extension of the Secretary-General’s contract where the UK led a campaign to change the Secretary-General, but it failed. The task ahead for the UK Government is to repair those bridges and play catch up. There are signs—I thank the Minister, who has been a stalwart supporter, and the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, who kept us afloat while we needed it by sending provisions down, and I am very grateful to them both—but the opportunity has been missed and we must now turbocharge the relationship.

We must ensure that the Commonwealth takes advantage of the showcases that are available. One of them, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, is the Commonwealth Games. Where I say there are signs of it happening, I am co-chairing with the Department for International Trade a business forum at that event which will involve the noble Lord’s university.

It is important that the UK now starts to prioritise the Commonwealth. It is not an alternative to the European Union, but it is a vast and available market. There are other problems ahead for the Commonwealth because Samoa is the chair in office designate. It will be a difficult place for people to visit—it is a long way from anywhere—but it that in itself is an opportunity. With the Chinese invasion of the Pacific, raised by my noble friend Lord Howell, Samoa could be a pivotal place for the UK and other Commonwealth countries to establish the power of democracy.

The second opportunity that presents itself is Sri Lanka, a country which is now on its knees with financial difficulties. It has sought succour from China for its investment. It gives western democratic countries, led by the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, an opportunity to support it and help it reinvigorate its economy.

Finally, there has never been any mention of empire, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, suggested—there was not for the three or five days in Kigali, I am happy to say. I am happy to say that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales arrived in triumph and left in triumph. That is one of the great advantages this country has, as well as the Minister who has carried out an excellent job on behalf of the Commonwealth for all these years.

Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am afraid that we are in danger of armchair meddling in an ancient tradition that is of benefit to our countryside. This is part of a continued onslaught on rural Britain and its management. It is not as if we are not living in a green and pleasant land. As my noble friend Lord Ridley says, many initiatives are taking place to maintain the ecosystem that is upland moorland.

The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, clearly enunciates the cost if we do not continue this type of activity and what happens to flora and fauna if they are not managed properly by burning. I ask my noble friend the Minister to update the research, which is changing the whole time, and work further with the Moorland Association, which, after all, has greater knowledge of these matters than most in coming up with a pathway for the benefit of all concerned.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord raises important points, all of which we are very much taking into account, I assure him. Indeed, most recently I met Andrew Tuggey of the CPA UK to discuss what shape its plans might take—not only, of course, what deliverables there could be for the event itself, but the participation by CPA UK members more generally in the civil society events.

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. Is not one of the best ways of engaging parliamentarians up to CHOGM to boost the current Prime Minister’s trade envoys network, which is cross-parliamentary and has been very successful? Would not my noble friend the Minister agree that a dedicated Commonwealth trade envoy should be appointed, as suggested by the Maltese chair-in-office of the Commonwealth?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Again, those are important points. On the trade envoys, eight envoys currently cover 10 Commonwealth countries. The programme has been recently reviewed and recommendations on the future direction of the programme, including suggested new markets, are with No 10 for consideration. We will certainly take the proposal for a trade envoy or ambassador into consideration.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who has kept the Commonwealth flame alive for so long for his kind words towards me and the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, which I chair, and other noble Lords who have referenced us.

I declare my interests. As I have already said, I am chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, I chair the Commonwealth Business Forum and I am president of the Commonwealth Youth Orchestra, which has not yet been mentioned.

At the beginning of the Commonwealth Business Forum I asked all the delegates the question: why are we here? It was a good question at the time because to many of us the Commonwealth was in inertia. However, by the end of our three days of conference, there was a clear answer. We had the leadership of the Minister of State, Hugo Swire, who I am delighted to see is attending this debate. We had my noble friend Lord Howell, with his energy for a man of his age, if I may say so, constantly at the forefront of our initiatives. We also had the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, with his health initiative making incredible strides. Put with that the energy of our new chairman, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, who at 42 has excellent drive, along with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who is now engaged fully in the initiatives. The appointment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, has already been referred to, which is great news for us all, while of course the rock of this foundation is Her Majesty the Queen, who has kept the show on the road. There is now an opportunity for renewed optimism and enthusiasm.

In the Business Forum alone, where else could you get 1,200 people from 70 countries, including 25 Ministers, 15 Heads of State, the Lord Mayor of London and the Prince of Wales attending an event on the small island of Malta? That in itself is incredibly powerful for people in the business community. In three minutes I cannot tell noble Lords all about what our organisation is up to on anti-corruption and on developing and helping SMEs, but I am available to Members of the House, and indeed to anyone for that matter, for private meetings to describe what we do.

The key initiative to come out of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was the $1 billion Commonwealth Green Finance Facility. This is the most ambitious thing the Commonwealth has done for a long time. It is being led by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister Muscat, and is supported by the Governments of Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Malaysia and Canada; in other words, the big Commonwealth countries are supporting the island states in their green and blue economies, which is vital. I had the honour to co-chair the facility with the head of the Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit, Justin Mundy. It is going to be a real focus for us over the next 18 months, about which I hope to report more to the House in due course.

International Trade

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I was flattered and surprised to receive a generous letter from the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, asking me to speak in this debate. I regret that I shall not be able to stay until the end—I have written to the noble Lord to inform him—because I have not been able to reschedule some of my activities. This will be a terrific debate. It is a very important debate, as the noble Lord has mentioned, and I congratulate him on securing it. I also understand that I am clearly the warm-up act for the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and I hope that he will say nice rather than nasty things afterwards. He is a very good tennis companion, but not necessarily a good debating companion on the other side of the Chamber.

When we look at the exam question that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has set, the answer is, “Yes, of course”. I have just finished being for two and a half years the Prime Minister’s trade envoy and chairman of his business ambassadors. Throughout that time I have had the great pleasure of working with parliamentarians, including the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who is unique in her tireless work in the Middle East, and with trade envoys who are appointed from all sides of the House. They give of their free time to support the trade initiative. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, who was an unpaid Minister. It has been a pleasure to work with them all, trying to sort out the problems we inherited and galvanising the United Kingdom back into what it was: a great trading nation.

The Prime Minister has rightly put trade at the centre of our economic recovery and, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, it is important, and incumbent on us all, to put our shoulders to the wheel to make sure that that happens. But it has been a significant challenge because businesses and Government had been focusing their activities almost entirely on Europe and the internal market. We had been a prosperous country for the past 15 to 20 years and orders were easy to secure both within our own market and overseas. Moreover, the Government themselves had failed to focus on the emerging markets of the world, instead maintaining strong relationships with those countries that had been our friends for ever. I think that the Government had become complacent about their relationships. Not only has there been a huge overhaul of UKTI and its focus, which was needed, but also an effort to tackle the horrendous fact, in my view, that 60% of small and medium-sized enterprises export only if someone comes and knocks on their door, and 60% of SMEs do not export at all. For a trading nation, those are extraordinary statistics. Repositioning, regalvanising and leading the way have all been very important.

It is easy to say, “The Government should be doing this and should be doing that”, but from my experience since I started my first business in 1982, which went on to become a global international insurance broker, the last people we wanted working with us were Government. They were slow and pedestrian, they taxed us, and they took too long to make decisions. As business people we want to be able to trade on our own. What we do want, when we get into sticky situations, is for the Government to intervene at a senior level and to ease the path for us. There are two or three things that the Government need to do in terms of providing access to markets. We should not expect Government to be the commercial, deal-doing arm of business, but we should expect them to have access at senior levels and to understand the routes to market: knowing who are the reliable partners in market that British businesses can deal with and understanding the rules and regulations within country so that businesses know about and recognise the problems they may face when going to market.

The frustration that I found as a trade envoy and chairman of the business ambassadors was that we could take the horses or businesses to water, but we could not make those horses or businesses drink. We would offer endless opportunities, but getting them to the table was difficult. That is changing, but it is an area where progress still needs to be made. To illustrate the degree of change, when I first went to Angola—I was almost the first government Minister ever to visit the country—I took five businesses with me. The last time I visited, I took 30, and deals are now being done with that country. But we should be taking 60 or even 90 businesses because today Angola is per capita the wealthiest nation in Africa. The oil industry is expanding enormously and there are going to be huge infrastructure changes. The other frustration is: why are we three years behind the Chinese and the Koreans in getting into Angola? It is because businesses have not looked at the potential initiatives there.

The most important thing from the point of view of British business and the Government is that we spend a lot of our time criticising ourselves and this nation but the truth is that in every country I visited we were in the top three countries in the world that that country would want to deal with. That is an extraordinary position to be in. It comes down to three or four things. First, business here is underpinned by the rule of law and we should compliment ourselves on that. The rule of law is fundamental to business practices and we are the leading exponents of it.

Secondly, we are transparent in the way that we do our business. I was very concerned about the Bribery Act when it came through but I now recognise it to be a very important and differentiating plank for British businesses when negotiating in the world. Now we see Governments being overturned for being corrupt by their people at the drop of a Twitter—or whatever it is; I am not going to ask my noble friend Lord Cormack because he does not know either—or the push of a button because they are not transparent. That sets us apart from the rest.

Thirdly, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Harrison: the reason people want to do business with the UK is that we speak English, which is the desired language of all nations now in terms of commerce. Fourthly, London is a place that everyone wants to come to. I do not say this without humility but for this short moment in our lifetime London is the centre of the world to do trade. That makes it a fantastic place for us to do business.

Finally—and this may surprise noble Lords—we have an enormous bandwidth of skills. We lead the world in e-commerce, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has led the world in e-commerce. We lead the world in high-tech. We lead the world in low-tech. Our medical capability is the envy of the world. Most importantly, our education system is the envy of the world. That is the thing that everyone wants to buy because we have a very strong education system and we have this ability to transfer skills.

Therefore, the Minister takes on a momentum that is beginning to happen. I support him and any initiatives that he sets about involving Members of this House which continue putting Britain on track to being what we have always been: a significant trading nation with a strong position in the world.