Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [HL]

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith. I welcome the scrutiny he is bringing to trade policy and look forward to his report being presented to the House; it is a very good example of why this House does such good non-partisan and detailed work behind the scenes that informs government policy.

I am here for a specific reason, but it is a welcome coincidence that I am here at the same time as my noble friend Lord Cameron has made his maiden speech in the House. It was a great pleasure to serve under him when he was Prime Minister. I was in fact his longest-serving Minister, because I was the last “Cameroon” to be sacked by Theresa May—I think that somebody had to remind her that I was still a Minister. When I heard the news that my noble friend was joining your Lordships’ House, I had a bitter-sweet reaction: I was overjoyed that he was joining our House, but I was then fed up with the endless WhatsApps from people asking why Rishi Sunak had not asked me to join his Government. Normally, this House sits out the heady 24 hours of a reshuffle.

My noble friend is joining an absolutely first-class Front Bench. I said to my noble friend Lord Ahmad yesterday that I was amazed that he could still get into the House given the praise that was heaped on him in the foreign affairs debate last week. My noble friend Lord Johnson is proving to be a fantastic and very creative Trade Minister, full of original and exciting ideas. I had a ditty about him, which has unfortunately been overtaken by events: he was introduced on a Monday, made his maiden speech on a Wednesday and was sacked on a Friday, by accident. He is the first comeback kid of the Front Bench; he was reinstated by the Prime Minister, and we are thankful for that.

I think that I am right in saying that my noble friend the Foreign Secretary was the first Prime Minister —or maybe the first Prime Minister for many decades—to visit Vietnam. That was a very big occasion, because, at the time, I became the trade envoy to Vietnam and had not realised quite what an economic powerhouse it is; it is representative of the south-east Asian nations. The CPTPP, which we are debating as part of this enabling Bill, is very important; it is very important that the UK has joined it. It represents part of a continuing strategic pivot—the latest, if you like—to the most dynamic and fastest-growing region in the world, the Indo-Pacific. It puts us in a place where we can have some kind of influence on the future trade policy of that region.

At the heart of the Indo-Pacific is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The big reveal is that I am the chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, so I am tremendously excited about the prospects the CPTPP brings to ASEAN and the wider region. We have an ambassador to the ASEAN region, now Sarah Tiffin, as well as a trade commissioner for the region and, as the Foreign Secretary pointed out, we are a strategic dialogue partner of ASEAN.

To pick up on the excellent points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, one reason why the UK-ASEAN Business Council is important, although it is a small organisation, is that it is an opportunity to hear from businesses about what is happening on the ground in the region, and indeed sometimes to hear their frustrations with how opaque some of the guidance and regulations from government are. For example, I was told by one member that the department of trade has a kind of artificial intelligence tool which it has purchased and paid for that would allow individual small businesses to search for their products and which, thanks to artificial intelligence, would throw up the easiest countries in the world with which to trade based on their product and a reading of those treaties.

There is a huge amount of work that can be done to make it easier for businesses to navigate the trade agreements that government puts in place. I know you cannot have an ambassador to a treaty, but it is certainly important for the Foreign Secretary to take from this debate that there is an opportunity to look hard at how we engage on the back of the opportunities that the CPTPP gives us. As he pointed out, it covers some 580 million people in 12 countries, with a combined GDP of £12 trillion. Four of them are members of ASEAN—Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam—while the Philippines and Thailand, also ASEAN nations, have both expressed an interest in joining, and they have seen how others have benefited.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, talked about what economic growth this might bring to us, and he is quite right to say that the estimates are always impossible to hold on to. One estimate was 0.08% over 15 years. Obviously, as a die-hard remainer before I became chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, I might have derided this and said to the Brexiteers, “Well, this is what you’ve given us in return for leaving the EU”. However, I am now a wiser person. The UK already has free trade agreements with most of the CPTPP members. It is important to note that the CPTPP will grow and expand, regardless of the issue of China, and our being the first non-Pacific country to join encourages economies looking to be a part of a free and open trading club. In that sense, the UK genuinely has led the way.

In this digital world, the connectivity infrastructure already exists which allows British businesses to provide services to anywhere in the world. Therefore, as part of the CPTPP, we can enable our trade infrastructure to connect our businesses to CPTPP members. Our services trade to CPTPP members last year was 43% of our total services trade. We do not need to establish local or regional offices to supply CPTPP countries, and it is very exciting to see companies anywhere in the UK now able to access markets such as Malaysia and Vietnam. In addition, many of those countries look to the UK for guidance and support in terms of digital trade; the agreement we signed with Singapore is ground-breaking. We are seen as a leader in this field, and we should certainly use our influence.

The CPTPP will also bring additional benefits over and above our free trade agreements. For example, we have a free trade agreement with Vietnam, which was the original EU agreement rolled over. That means that, as part of the CPTPP, our tariffs on engines, for example, will come down quicker. I know that the Foreign Secretary will be pleased to hear that the tariffs on chocolate and port will also be lowered at a faster rate, as well as duties on beef—duties will be eliminated. People travelling to do business in Vietnam will now be able to stay for six months instead of three months.

We now have a free trade agreement, thanks to the CPTPP, with Malaysia and Brunei as well. Brunei is an important ally and home to the largest UK military presence in the Asia-Pacific. Although our bilateral trade with Brunei is small, our relationship with Brunei is an excellent example of how we can work with some of the smaller economies in large trading blocs and shape the future of the region.

The real value is also strategic. Last week, our Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Kemi Badenoch, was in San Francisco for the first CPTPP meeting since July. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting, discussing free trade in the Asia-Pacific. Being part of the CPTPP therefore allows the UK to be there on the sidelines of the APEC meeting. One thing I have learned since I became chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council is that there is something called the APEC business travel card. I do not want to upset any noble Lords, but it effectively allows free movement within the region; it allows short-term business travel, streamlines the entry process and fast-tracks visitors. You can use an APEC business travel card lane at airports in APEC economies. This is the kind of opportunity that presents itself to the Government to push for now that they have a seat at this table.

The real benefit of joining the CPTPP is just that: being part of a club, if you like, that the UK has not been part of before. By being a part of the CPTPP, the UK has a seat at the table of some of the world’s most dynamic countries, committed—as most of us are—to free and fair trade. The work to shape our future begins now.