Barry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent West)Department Debates - View all Barry Gardiner's debates with the Cabinet Office
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Mr Alexander
If the hon. Gentleman has an appetite for trade realism, let us get real: the Prime Minister for whom he worked failed to do a US-UK trade deal. Let us also get real about the fact that the central underpinnings of the party of which he is a member at the time of the Brexit referendum—that we were in a less protectionist world, that we would have a functioning World Trade Organisation system and, indeed, that we would have major trading blocs seeking to take barriers down rather than put barriers up—have all been misplaced. His leader, the now Leader of the Opposition, generously conceded a couple of weeks ago that there was no growth plan following the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. It is for this Government to clean up the mess that his Government left.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
Under WTO rules, any country can impose tariffs when it believes there is unfair subsidy of the exports presented by the other country, but so far I have not heard America put forward any argument that there is unfair subsidy of our steel industry. What discussions is the Minister having with the WTO about this?
Mr Alexander
I can assure my hon. Friend that we are in regular dialogue with the WTO. I was in touch only this morning with Simon Manley, our exemplary British ambassador in Geneva. We were also very clear at an early stage—since July—that we were backing Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the next director general of the WTO. I had the great privilege of working with Ngozi when I was the UK governor of the World Bank during a previous era of Labour Government. The UK is committed to standing behind her exemplary leadership of the WTO at an admittedly very challenging time for global trade.