UK–Commonwealth Trading Relationship

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and to associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, particularly on the question of animal welfare. The operation to which he referred is called mulesing and it is barbaric. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this debate and commend the call by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for the UK to get behind the New Zealand Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability.

In my three minutes, I have three points to make. First, in 2018 CHOGM, in the Declaration on the Commonwealth Connectivity Agenda for Trade and Investment, agreed to make trade more

“inclusive by encouraging the participation of women and youth in business activities, by taking a gender responsive approach to the development of trade policy, increasing opportunities for women to trade internationally, and breaking down gender barriers”.

What measures are the Government taking to promote that agenda? In the same year, the Commonwealth announced a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. What is the UK doing to promote that?

My second issue is also about approaching trade through a fair-trade lens rather than a free-trade one, building on the concerns expressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Saint Albans. Given the global problem of the low levels of corporation tax being paid, we have heard in the last couple of days the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying that the US will be pushing to raise the 15% floor agreed as a minimum corporation tax rate by 130 countries last week. One member of the Commonwealth that stands out here particularly is Mauritius, a middle-income country and in many ways a success story but also a tax haven that has allowed global companies to siphon millions of tax dollars away from low-income African nations, including other Commonwealth members. Are the Government going to seek to encourage the Commonwealth to be a positive actor for tax justice, stopping the parasitism of multinational companies that afflicts the whole world but particularly the world’s poorest nations?

Thirdly, on plastics, I draw the minister’s attention to an excellent international trade working paper entitled Plastic Production and Trade in Small States and SIDS: The Shift Towards a Circular Economy. It is a Commonwealth international trade working paper that talks about how plastics, mostly produced and consumed in the global north, are having huge negative impacts on ocean-based sectors and on small nations, including many Commonwealth members, in areas such as tourism and fisheries. The report says that there need to be coherent trade policies to ensure that those countries can protect themselves and be part of the solution rather than simply suffering from the problem. What are the Government doing to promote that agenda?