Oral Answers to Questions

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go to the Chair of the International Trade Committee.

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

It is good to be straight and frank about CPTPP—I am sure the Minister will agree—but if we are to be straight and frank, to have gains for jobs, the economy and living standards, would the Government not need 62 CPTPP deals to compensate for the Brexit economic damage? It also means being straight with small and medium-sized enterprises that they will be exporting to faraway CPTPP countries, with lots of bureaucracy and paperwork instead of tariffs. It will not be as easy as it was before Brexit. I am sure the Minister is all over the numbers, so will he confirm that CPTPP will be worth only one sixtieth of the Brexit damage?

[Greg Hands]

It is always good to engage with the Chair of the Select Committee, and in my year of absence at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy I have genuinely missed him and his questioning of me at the Dispatch Box.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Answer the question!

[Greg Hands]

I am certainly going to answer the question, which is about the opportunities from CPTPP: a free trade area of 510 million people and 11 countries across four continents, with amazingly good chapters on date and digital, mode 4, an SME chapter, liberal rules of origin—all those things are great opportunities. Frankly, it is time that SNP Members started, for the first time, to support a trade deal. They opposed the trade deal with the EU; they opposed the trade deals with Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. I am hoping for the day when the SNP will, for the first time ever, support a trade deal.