Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (IAC Report)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, with permission, I will speak in the gap. I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the committee on an excellent and timely report and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on presenting it. I will focus on points made by the noble Baroness and others on the parts relating to sanitary and phytosanitary agreements—or, as I would call them, food safety measures. This follows neatly on from what my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister said.

While I welcome this agreement, it is important to realise that the loss of trade since leaving the European Union will have an ongoing cost to our GDP of 4% per annum. That is the background against which we must judge every free trade agreement that we consider.

I will raise with the Minister the implications of this agreement for farming and food security. Clearly, it is in the interests of the UK to accede to this partnership agreement given the current insecurity to food supplies due to hostilities in Ukraine and the Middle East. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements; it is extremely important to say again, as we did when the original international trade arrangements were put in place when we left the European Union, that it is incumbent on our farmers to produce agricultural goods and food to the highest possible levels of animal welfare and food hygiene standards.

There have been recent reports of a pause in the discussions with Canada, which were pulled for reasons which all of us, particularly the farming community, can understand. What is the current position of our relationship with Canada in the context of the CPTPP? I understand that the agreement on our massive exports of cheese to Canada, which is so important to cheese producers in this country, is coming to an end. Can my noble friend outline what will happen when that occurs?

Finally, what is the position on the dispute-resolution mechanism that is available under the agreement? In the circumstances to which my noble friend Lord Udny- Lister referred, where there are differentials between food safety standards in this country, which we are imposing on our producers, and imports from partners under the CPTPP, what can our producers do if there is an eventual conflict? Otherwise, I support this agreement.