(6 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Christopher Howarth: Trade agreements do traditionally take a very long time. In this case, they are already in force and we already have texts. Small amendments may need to be made around quotas—in some of the agreements we need to agree with the European Union and the counterparty how to split the quotas up—but the texts by and large have been agreed. In the future we may wish to come back to them to improve them or to fit them more to UK interests, but these agreements do exist. Trade agreements traditionally take a long time. I refer you to Parkinson’s law: that trade agreements tend to expand to the amount of time available to negotiate them. If you give trade negotiators 10 years to negotiate an agreement, it will probably take 10 years. In this case we have a fixed deadline, and I assume both sides will want to fit the negotiations and the necessary functions to that.
Q
Christopher Howarth: I think it is true to say that the agreements the European Union made were fitted around European Union interests and that if the UK were starting from scratch, we may have had other interests. The EU interests would protect French farmers and the French audio-visual industry. You would get a price on the other side, say with Canadian agriculture. If the UK was doing it, we might do it differently. That is probably a discussion that would take longer and we would come back to later, and these agreements would probably stay exactly as they are. On the scrutiny side, we had a sort of mirror of this debate in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill negotiation and discussions in Parliament. There may be some—
Q
James Ashton-Bell: My organisation does not have a defined position on that blank sheet of paper you have just described, but to follow your rationale, and consistent with what I have said so far, bigger organisations do not have a monopoly on understanding how trade impacts the economy. In anything where you are making choices about trade and how it will impact the wider economy, you should have a wide and balanced group of people advising Government, or an independent authority, about how to make those choices. That means, indeed, that small business are very much equal to big business, and workers also, because workers are just as impacted as the businesses themselves.
Chris Southworth: I just want to clarify my point. It is exactly the same: the representation is a critical point. An independent body, yes, but there must be representation within that independent body to represent all the important voices, which includes all those here, but I would also include NGOs and civil society, who have equal interest in the implications of trade. They must be at the table and that has to be in everyone’s interest, including business—big, small and medium.
Martin McTague: Barry, it will not come as a massive surprise to you that, yes, I do agree that small business should be a serious voice on this. It is nice to know that James supports me. That is a welcome change. [Interruption.] It is something that we have clearly got unanimity on.
Q
Chris Southworth: Ultimately, it is about having a rounded decision made by an independent body. That political oversight is critical—James is completely right. Ultimately, it is going to come down to a political decision whether a decision is made one way or the other. If you operate in an organisation like the World Trade Organisation, then all these voices come into play. It is incredibly important that the decisions prior to any engagement in a global environment are made in a good way that is inclusive. The role of Parliament is critical in that too.