Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Tapadh leibh, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I also thank the Secretary of State for the debate. It is good to see the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the former Secretary of State, in his place. The International Trade Committee had many interactions with him in his old role.

Dominic Cummings was right, or at least partially right, in some of his utterances this week. In particular, he was correct when he said that politicians have been obsessed with trade deals that are not that significant when it comes to economic growth and drawing lines on maps. I am not sure what other howitzers he will be sending the way of the UK Government, but I do not think that will be the last.

When we come to trade deals, trade, the issue of Brexit and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, the important things are numbers. When we look beyond the flowery language, we see that even the Government’s own figures show we are talking about 0.08% of GDP—that is £1.8 billion. We have to take that in the context of Brexit, which is a 4.9% damage event to the UK economy. It is like saying, “I had £4.90 and I threw it over my shoulder, and now I’m scrabbling around on the other side of the world for 8p”. That is the ratio difference we are talking about. The Australian deal is worth 2p, and an American deal would be worth 20p. A New Zealand deal might give us another penny and the Canadian deal is worth about 3p, so all in all, we have thrown away about £4.90 and are hoping to get back, with what I have talked about there, 30-odd pence.

[Emily Thornberry]

The points that the hon. Gentleman is making are very important, and Government Members ought to listen to them carefully. Quite a lot has been made of the statistic of a 65% increase in trade projected for this region by 2030, but on close examination of the document, is it not right that that projected increase in trade is one that Government figures show would happen irrespective of whether the UK joins the CPTPP?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The right hon. Lady makes that point in her own way, and I do not want to go into it too much given that the clock is still ticking.

The comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership is not actually as comprehensive as it seems. Only seven out of the 11 countries have actually ratified it. Malaysia, Chile, Peru and Brunei have not. When we take out their GDP contributions, the figure goes down to 0.5% of GDP, or 5p that is available from the CPTPP to recover the £4.90 that has been lost by Brexit.

That is as far as we can go with the good news. I am now going to have to give the House some bad news. This morning, Neale Richmond, the Irish TD, who is never off our screens and is a fantastic representative of Ireland, brought to my attention in a tweet that the Republic of Ireland now has, for the first time ever, a trade surplus with the UK, as UK exports to the Republic of Ireland are down 47.6%. That is £2 billion of trade gone. Remember that the UK was talking about a £1.8 billion increase from the CPTPP. With Ireland alone, the damage of Brexit has wiped out what could be gained from the CPTPP.

There may be some good news in Ireland, depending on people’s constitutional stance. North-south exports are certainly up and are making for a far more integrated economy, with a 22.4% increase in exports to Northern Ireland from the Republic and a 44.2% increase in imports to the Republic from the north. That is against the background that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) pointed out of the 33% fall in trade that has been truly damaging the economy. The Secretary of State said earlier that we were putting our eggs in one trade basket. It looks as though we do not have any eggs in any trade basket, the way it is going at the moment. Certainly, from my talks with the British Egg Industry Council and the British Poultry Council, it is very much a real-life chicken-and-egg situation as to which way this is going.

I also want to point out some privacy issues. I have had correspondence from constituents that I want to bring to the Government’s attention, and I am sure that they know what I am talking about—making sure that people’s data is actually safe and is not traded around to second, third and fourth parties in a global context.

I also want to raise the issue of patent attorneys. UK patent attorneys are a fifth of the number of patent attorneys in the European patent convention, and they do a third of the work at a value of about £746 million. Let us take that away from what is left of the CPTPP—the 0.5%, or £1.1 billion. If this damages the UK patent attorneys’ relationship with the European patent convention, it would just about negate everything from the CPTPP, and there is a very real possibility that this could happen. UK patent attorneys are flagging this up constantly. The Government should be well aware that we are now talking about not a 0.8% or a 0.5% gain from GDP, but perhaps only a 0.2% gain. So we are down to 2p after throwing away the £4.90 that I referred to earlier.

What are we left with? We have thrown away £2 billion with Ireland, and might gain a few hundred million with the CPTPP. We are risking our farming and crofting trade with Australia and much else. We have walked away from our partners next door, as my hon. Friend pointed out. It might be strategic, but what do we say to people who are losing their jobs and to the businesses that do not grow because of this economic damage? I do not think the Government have an answer. This appears to be a Government wanting to come back waving bits of paper, much like Neville Chamberlain, and shouting “Trade deals in our time”. It is not good enough for anybody who is trying to make a living up and down the nations of the current UK.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With a time limit of three minutes, I call Craig Williams.

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I shall speak ever quicker, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a great pleasure to follow the Chairman of the International Trade Committee, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I serve on that Committee and I look forward to scrutinising the detail of this, both in private and in public sessions, with him. It is also a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who set out his vision and made some important points, which Members on both sides of this Chamber should reflect on, about the developing world and how we can help it through trade and liberalisation. His point struck home about how hollow the international aid debate is when we do not help our partners and fellow democracies around the world on the back of trade.

It is important again to look at the strategic context for this CPTPP. I am proud to have got that out in one go, as I have been practising—the International Trade Committee helps with that. The context is a £9 trillion market. In 2030, it will represent 65% of the middle-class consumers of the world, in places where meat consumption and meat imports are going up, which is important for a rural constituency such as mine. The demand for the fifth quarter—I will not go into details about that part of the carcass, which we do not consume and do not want in this country—is over there.

I am struck by the fact that this partnership will be good for the premium products that the farmers in my constituency produce—the dairy, Welsh lamb and beef. The demand and consumption is increasing in the part of the world we are talking about, not decreasing as it is in the European markets, and that is where we need this country to be. This is where I would like Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy, who will be responding to this debate, to be focusing for our agricultural communities. It is worth again stressing the strategic context of this deal; these are the growing markets where we want to be sat around the table. This is where I want Welsh lamb to be promoted very vigorously by Her Majesty’s Government. This is where we want Scottish whisky to be promoted and sold. This is the access we want.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Scottish lamb.

[Craig Williams]

I will discuss that with the Chairman in many debates, no doubt. However, my last 30 seconds are coming to an end, so all I will do is wish the Front-Bench team well in progressing this partnership. My Welsh farmers want access to this market. I wish him well in scrutinising it as it goes forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart). Five years ago yesterday, I voted to leave the European Union. Newcastle-under-Lyme voted to leave the European Union, and so did the whole of Britain, so eventually we did, no thanks to some Opposition Members. It was never about retreating into an island fortress, as some people like to suggest, and it was never about retreating from free trade. In fact, as the famous Spectator cover had it, for many of us it was about getting out and then into the world.

CPTPP is the sort of organisation that British people thought they were joining in 1973 and that they voted to join in 1975: the common market, as it was back then, where countries enforced their own laws, but there was not enforced harmonisation. Unlike the EU, by joining the CPTPP—I hope we will do, and I welcome what the Secretary of State said in her speech about the progress we are making—we will retain control of our borders, our money and our laws, and we will secure the growing opportunities, including: increased trade and investment opportunities; the opportunity to diversify our trading links and our supply chains to increase our domestic security, especially in the wake of what we have seen with the pandemic and other threats around the world; and, the opportunity to turn the UK into a global hub for free trade. That is a vision I hope we can all get behind.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about free trade. I mentioned in my speech the damage to trade with neighbours in Ireland, for instance, but we used to trade very freely—with no paperwork, no hurdles and no hassle—with the 27 other member states of the European Union. How many countries across the world can we now trade with in the same way?

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I think he would accept the point that I have made that exiting the EU was not about wanting to retreat from free trade. I would rather we had been able to get a better deal with the European Union, but it was not interested. A lot of the time, it seemed that the EU wanted to punish us for Brexit to put other people off from doing the same. I am afraid it was aided and abetted by Opposition Members who met the EU when we were negotiating, so I will not take any lessons from the Opposition today about negotiating this agreement.

As the Secretary of State said, some of the richest opportunities will come from the Asia-Pacific area, with £9 trillion-worth of a growing middle class for our exporters. These include exporters in Staffordshire and Newcastle-under-Lyme such as global British icons like JCB, companies in my constituency like Doulton, which sells water filters to the growing markets in developing countries, and niche smaller start-up companies like the Staffordshire Gin Company. We have heard a lot about whisky today; let us talk about gin. The Staffordshire Gin Company is already exporting to Singapore. and this trade deal will reduce its tariffs. I invite the Minister and the Secretary of State to come up with me for some quality assurance of the Staffordshire Gin Company’s products. I am sure we could have a very good session there.

But I do not just want to talk about the benefits for our exporters and our producers, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said so eloquently, free trade is a win-win, but the true benefit is to consumers. Companies and producers are not there for consumers to service; they are there to service the consumers. It should be up to people to make their own choices to have lower prices, whether the goods are supplied from Newcastle or New Zealand. That is the true prize of free trade—the true sense of comparison of markets and also the benefits for developing countries that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) spoke about. We must not lose sight of the benefits to consumers. They may be more diffuse—perhaps a few pence off the weekly shop—but that adds up in a community like Newcastle-under-Lyme. That is the real, true benefit of this. We should obviously focus on the benefits for our exporters and the potential jobs that will be supported, but whenever we talk about free trade we must not lose sight of the real reason for it, and that is to make people’s lives better—consumers both at home and abroad.