Commonwealth: Trade

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) on securing the debate. I want to use the example of one country to illustrate some of the points that he and other Members have made. The country is Nigeria, where I am the Prime Minister’s trade envoy. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I thank hon. Members for that endorsement of my role. My appointment was a pre-Brexit one, although admittedly it has relevance in a post-Brexit world, which goes to show how much this country values the relationship it would like to have with Nigeria. Trade is of mutual benefit—it benefits not just one but both of the countries concerned. We can do enormous good when we operate in a country if, as well as ensuring that our own markets are fulfilled there, we ensure that that country’s markets are also developed.

Nigeria’s size is significant in that respect—with 170 million people it is, I think, the most populous Commonwealth country in Africa—but it also has enormous regional importance. At a dinner organised for me in Lagos recently, the common theme around the table of Nigerian and British businessmen was that it was impossible to see sub-Saharan Africa taking off without the development of Nigeria. Anything we can do to help Nigeria to develop will bring stability to that part of the world. We need to show that we are doing that, as a good member of the Commonwealth family. It is an important part of the message we want to give.

I am trying to do something about the status of our trade relations with Nigeria, which are currently abysmal because they are based on one factor—oil and gas—that has seen an enormous drop. We and the President of Nigeria are determined to diversify the economy to ensure that British companies across the board have a role to play in the Nigerian market.

In terms of the way of doing business, there is a tremendous amount of low-hanging fruit. I am happy to gather that low-hanging fruit as I go, but I am more interested in the long-term business relationships that will cement the UK-Nigerian way forward.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Howell]

I will not. We are too pressured for time.

I know from my experience in central and eastern Europe that those business relationships take a tremendous amount of management time to get right.

There is a way of doing business that depends on getting people together to hunt as a pack, to ensure that all views are known and that we do not act for just one company. I have gathered those companies together in an advisory group that I have set up, with PwC as the secretariat. That group is just about to have its first meeting, and will take forward the approach of operating as a UK group in Nigeria, as our French and German colleagues do with their companies.

I echo the comments made about the diaspora. We have the second largest Nigerian diaspora in the world in this country and I recommend that we make the best use of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) on securing this really important debate. I hope we can continue the debate over the next two years in the main Chamber of the House of Commons, because it is really important, particularly in the light of statements that were made in advance of the EU referendum about how strong our links with the Commonwealth are going to be.

Coming to debates on any issue surrounding Brexit, it is particularly interesting to hear about the wonderful fantasy world in which some people live. I obviously campaigned for remain, and I believe we are economically, as well as culturally, better off as part of the European Union. I do not believe in the wonderful land of milk and honey and beautiful free trade arrangements that is being proffered to us for a number of really good reasons. The European Union has free trade agreements with 32 of 51 Commonwealth countries, so we are going to have to renegotiate those 32 trade agreements. It is not as though we will be suddenly free to negotiate with the Commonwealth; we will lose those trade agreements when we leave the EU. Why would those countries choose to give a better deal to the UK, which has a population of 65 million, than they give to the EU, which has a population of 500 million?

We will also be negotiating under time constraints, because we will be desperate to ensure we can export. We will have a time imperative that the EU did not have when it was negotiating its deals, so for us to get a good deal will be more difficult .

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I voted the same way as the hon. Lady in the referendum, but I am sure she accepts that the EU sometimes made trade deals with Commonwealth countries on terms that were not always favourable to the United Kingdom, such as on the free movement of medical professionals. For example, medical professionals from Australia and New Zealand, nurses in particular, were prevented from coming to the UK by prohibitory EU rules on training requirements. There will be advantages to Britain being able to negotiate its own trade agreements with some countries.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree that some small areas for some industries in some sectors have been disadvantaged by some of those EU trade deals. Some companies talk about how disadvantaged they have been, such as Tate & Lyle because it imports cane sugar, but it is important to note that in any trade deal with another country we might still have to cede some of our sovereignty, because that is how trade deals work—we have to concede some things and to compromise when we make a trade deal. That is what such deals are about—a level of compromise—so we will lose some of the ability to make our own decisions, because it will be wrapped up in the trade deals.

I tried to intervene on the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) to mention this, but I have a huge Nigerian population in my constituency because so many people have come to Aberdeen North to get involved in the oil and gas industry. If the Government are truly keen to create better links with such Commonwealth countries, however, they need to have better relationships now, because in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, the UK Government refused 33% of visitor visas from Nigeria. If the UK Government want better relationships, they need to up such numbers—they only approved 57% of visitor visa applications from Ghana and 50% from Pakistan. Members were talking about special Commonwealth lines at airports and so on, but we need to change the high levels of visitor visa refusals, which are continuing and getting worse, if we want to have a better relationship with those countries and eventually to make free trade agreements with them.

The other point about free trade agreements was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) and was in connection with the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin). The Double Taxation Treaties (Developing Countries) Bill sought to look at the tax treaties we have historically signed with countries to their disadvantage. A number of Commonwealth countries are affected. If we want to pave the way for smooth, positive trade deals, we need to look at the ways in which we have created disadvantage for those countries. A good way to generate some positive feeling would be for the UK Government to look at things such as tax treaties, because that would encourage those countries and increase the likelihood of a favourable trade deal.

The World Trade Organisation has requirements for what should be included in a free trade arrangement in order for it to be a free trade arrangement and not simply something that falls into the most favoured nation category. A free trade arrangement cannot be made for only one type of good or service—that is not acceptable to the WTO—but needs to be much wider. We will not easily be able to make agreements with New Zealand on lamb, for example, or on any such specific; we will need to make much more wide-ranging free trade agreements in order for them to be acceptable and not challenged in the WTO. Furthermore, the WTO is not dissimilar to the European Union in that, for schedules to be approved and so on, the WTO members need to agree them. The WTO road is not smooth, but bumpy, and a huge number of problems will be in our way, not least the cliff edge we are likely to fall off.

Finally, I want to talk about the historical links with the Commonwealth. For people my age or younger, in many ways our only link with the Commonwealth is the Commonwealth games. That is pretty much the only thing. I do not know whether this is generational, but some people believe that the empire was a sort of wonderful, historical panacea and an amazing relationship, but people of my age do not think that. We do not hark back to those days of empire; we look back to the subjugation that we—

[Sir Hugo Swire]

The hon. Lady must know enough to know that some countries in the Commonwealth were never part of the British empire.

[Kirsty Blackman]

That is the case, but most countries in the Commonwealth were. My point is that we will be trying to make trade deals with countries with which we have not necessarily always had a positive relationship. Fair enough, we have the Queen as a figurehead, but that is not necessarily enough for us to give them a positive trade deal, or for them to give us one, and it is not enough for the WTO to agree that we should give preferential agreements to each of those countries. The WTO will not agree to that unless we have given them to all countries.