Trade Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is exciting to be on the speakers’ list twice—once physically and once virtually—but I will trouble noble Lords with my thoughts only once. I start by giving a warm welcome to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn. I was glad to hear him mention the contrasting miracles of graphene and “Strictly Come Dancing”. He will be a great addition to our House.

This Bill is not very different from the Bill introduced in this House in 2018 on which I spoke at some length. It provides for the continuity of EU trade agreements where possible on a bilateral basis and sets up the UK-only arrangements for procurement and an independent trade remedies authority. Not much has changed, although some of the Lords amendments have been stripped out.

However, the context is very different. Boris Johnson has become Prime Minister—a welcome change—and won a decisive election victory. We have left the EU and the nature of any FTA with the EU makes our international trading arrangements even more important. Continuity arrangements have been agreed and scrutinised effectively by the EU Committee of this House. We have produced 22 reports on 50 different Brexit-related agreements, and I thank our brilliant clerks.

Trade negotiations with Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the US are very active and the Department for International Trade has been strengthened enormously, most recently with the addition of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whom I had the pleasure of meeting on an earlier visit to the UK. I am now chairman of the UK-ASEAN Business Council—one of my interests in the register—and can assure noble Lords that in the ASEAN region, which is dynamic and growing, he is well regarded for the important trade agreements he concluded in Asia.

We have also welcomed my noble friend the Minister, with his global business experience, to his role, and at last today we heard his maiden speech. He has an amazing record and network, but for me the most important qualities he highlighted were clear thinking and decisiveness. These should be much valued in our Government today.

I welcome the return of this Bill and the Minister’s clear introduction and look forward to supporting its rapid passage through our House. I have a particular interest in data and intellectual property and thank the Alliance for IP for its usual briefing. I know that these areas are important to the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones, and I look forward to working with them on the usual cross-party basis.

I sympathise with many of the points made about parliamentary scrutiny and hope to bring to our debates my experience on trade issues within the EU in the European Parliament and on the European Union Committee. I also endorse everything my noble friend Lord Naseby said, his practical ideas on export promotion and the intriguing ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on rail rolling stock. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, I care a lot about the role of small business in trade.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The next speaker is the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg. I am sorry but we cannot hear him at all. We may have to move on to the next speaker and return to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, afterwards. I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.