Economic Partnership Agreement: Kenya

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the committee for its Motion allowing us to debate this agreement and for its work under the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. I am also grateful for the opportunity to have heard the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, who gave evidence to the committee that I sat on in this House. He should feel fully liberated after 38 years. We have the evidence of his two amigos as former Permanent Secretaries who are hardly inhibited in providing their views to the House—so we look forward to the noble Lord doing exactly the same, because he will have much to offer. He will find, as I have over the seven years I have been here, that this House is great for making you feel perpetually young.

I welcome this first application of the Grimstone rule—that we will not ratify agreements before they have been debated if a committee has asked for that debate to take place. I welcome the fact that the Government has ensured that this debate has indeed taken place, as my noble friend Lord Oates highlighted in his remarks. He also referred to the tension there now is within the EAC over the moves to have a bilateral agreement, and I will refer to that.

We know that the European EPA has not yet been ratified by all members of the EAC, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said. But, importantly, he highlighted that there are other elements of preferential relationships, and the partnership mechanisms of Aid for Trade and economic development in that EPA, for which we have not provided any continuity with Kenya. Now that this is the mechanism which the Government have said that other countries will be invited to accede to, they will not be acceding to any continuity that had been in existence in the European agreement.

So what is the Government’s intention? Is this an agreement which other countries will be invited to accede to? Or, if a country chooses to enter into an agreement with the UK, within the aegis of the EAC, will we reopen negotiations with those other countries to afford them all of the different partnership and trade for development policies? The MoU that accompanies the agreement will give Kenya and the UK a much greater say than other countries in the EAC acceding to this agreement. It is almost insulting to other members of that community to say that if they wish to have the same arrangements with the UK that they had previously within the EU, they will have to join this agreement. Why was the previously discussed bridging mechanism for Kenya rejected? This was not clear in the Government’s evidence to the committee.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, I am pleased that the final agreement for Ghana has now been agreed, after two months of applying tariffs to Ghanaian products. As we have heard, the concern of farmers and the rural community in Kenya, who are now seeking legal remedy from their own Government over this agreement, shows that there are deep consequences of our arrangements with these two countries.

With regard to the Kenya agreement, the wider partnership elements are the essence of these agreements. EPAs are not simply tariff agreements or FTAs; they are genuinely partnership agreements—that is the essence of them. Therefore, we need to look at the wider, non-tariff areas of relationships, deliberately framed not to be purely about tariff measures for middle-income countries, or codifying the Everything But Arms approach for other countries in the different categories.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, said in her very informed and powerful contribution on development support, this is not a continuity agreement. In Annexe 3A of the EU’s Aid for Trade agreement there is a matrix of 23 pages of costed, specified projects for increasing trade, competition and finance from the European Union through its European Development Fund and the members of the EAC and Kenya.

This annexe has been removed from the UK agreement, with no replacement. Indeed, the section on development co-operation in the Government’s report has two paragraphs and leads with what I find are chilling words. Paragraph 57 starts—the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, will have to forgive me, but this is perfect Civil Service speak—with the words:

“In line with the different approaches of Britain and the EU to programming for development cooperation”.


What does that mean? What are “different approaches” to programming for development co-operation? It means, by the last sentence, that while parts of this agreement reflect the ambitions of the parties, they

“do not create any obligations on us to provide financial or non-financial support in specific areas.”

So aid for trade and development support have been stripped out entirely from this agreement.

None of the commitments is binding in Parts III to V. In Part V, the 27 articles have the rider, of course, that there will be no financial commitment or obligations. Technically, under this agreement, which we are being asked to ratify, there is no commitment for a single pound in facilitating aid for trade or trade for development support. Can the Minister clarify what is the aid for trade development support with this agreement? Let me be clear what it is. It relates to food standards and upgrading laboratories. It is connected to all of the areas where we would seek to facilitate UK trade to develop even further. This is sending a very strong negative message.

This leads me to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, mentioned with regards to TradeMark East Africa, which has been highlighted by respective Governments over the past decade as a very significant success for the UK. Our support for TradeMark East Africa facilitates $100 million to the benefit of UK businesses, making trade easier and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, highlighted, tackling corruption and bureaucracy, reducing trade costs by 30%, increasing competition, improving transport corridors for trade, and increasing jobs and prosperity. But TradeMark East Africa now has a sword hanging over it. It has already been asked to make 20% cuts last year by the FCDO, reducing its staff to a four-day week, and now it could see a cut of 50% of its work, which in effect would make it inoperable. You can only cut programmes so far before they are unable to be delivered. This is a flagship project. Such a cut could create significant long-term reputational damage for the UK, putting at risk longer-term projects that we have secured with our partners.

The final point I would like to make to the Minister is that it is not too late to reverse the trajectory. If we are to have better digitisation, anti-corruption measures, better procedures, better standards, policy development and support for women traders, which should be the essence of these EPAs, we cannot see cuts to TradeMark for East Africa. It would be inconsistent with the wider approach and inconsistent with what we are told should be an Africa strategy in the fastest growing, and what is likely to be the biggest, trading area in the world. It is not too late. I hope the Government will persuade the Secretary of State to change course.