Future Free Trade Agreements

David Linden Excerpts

Thursday 21st February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I will make some progress. I will give way again shortly.

New opportunities are clearly available to the United Kingdom, and seeking them will demand some of the agility that is required to respond to the potentially seismic shifts that are taking place in the world economy. The United Kingdom will have to be ready to compete for emerging sources of growth. While our established partners—such as the European Union—will continue to be vital, the locus of economic power is none the less shifting rapidly. It is estimated that 90% of global economic growth in the next five years will occur outside the EU. A centre of gravity that rested in North America in 1990 will have shifted to China and the far east by 2050, and we are already seeing the effects of some of that in the global economy. Those changes in economic development, global trade patterns and population growth in emerging and developing economies will fundamentally alter the opportunities that developed economies will have in the years to come.

Overall, the global population is projected to rise from 7 billion in 2010 to 9.8 billion by 2050, with the increase stemming mainly from Asia and Africa. The world is becoming increasingly well educated, wealthier and more urbanised. It is expected that by 2030, 60% of the world’s population—5 billion people—will be middle-class. In 2009, the figure was only 1.8 billion. In the intervening time, middle-class spending will more than double to $6.38 trillion. The rise of the middle class in Asia means that there is an enormous potential demand for the high-quality products and services in which the UK specialises. By 2030, China alone will have 220 cities with a population of more than 1 million, while the whole of Europe will have only 35.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State is right to refer to the emerging middle class in growing economies—India is one example—but can he give me a cast-iron guarantee that when he is negotiating these trade agreements, human rights and issues such as freedom of religion and belief will be at the forefront of his mind? I am concerned about the possibility that, as we go around negotiating these wonderful free trade agreements, we will start to ignore human rights, particularly in the case of India.

[Dr Fox]

The importance that the UK ascribes to human rights is extremely well documented in the range of Departments that are involved. The Government do not intend to seek any watering down of concepts of human rights, although it is very reasonable for us to have different provisions in countries such as Canada and the United States, whose legal remedies and legal systems are similar to ours, from those that we would have in some other countries. We will want to be flexible on that, and it is one of the issues that I want to see built into real-time parliamentary scrutiny of our trade agreements so that the House can determine whether the values represented by the United Kingdom are reflected in those agreements.