The UK’s Relationship with the Pacific Alliance (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My Lords, like others, I wish to thank my noble friend Lord Howell for securing this debate. He will find that his committee is not the only one in similar circumstances. Eighteen months ago, I served on the committee dealing with bribery and investigating the Bribery Act; our report is going to come up for debate later this week. While it is a long time delayed, it is nevertheless significant.

Reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, to the TTIP and relations with North America. I served on the all-party group. We went on a trip to the United States to meet representatives of various trading organisations representing farmers—pig people, cattle people and grain people—and see how things work in Washington. The noble Lord is right: for anybody who thinks that it is going to be easy, irrespective of the political colour of the President, we must remember that Congress is one of the key decision-makers, and it will decide on the interests of its members. I recall one representative saying that they had X number—I think it was something like 40 Congress people—in their pocket, and there would be no agreement unless they said so. That might have been bombast, but it illustrates that if we put too much hope and emphasis on trying to reach an agreement with the United States to the exclusion of other areas of the world, we will be making a mistake.

I warmly welcome the interest in the Pacific region. We already had contacts there through the Commonwealth; I think that we grossly underplay the importance of that body, given its spread around the world. One thing that we need to look at closely is the attitude of government and Whitehall generally to doing trade around the world. As members of the European Union, I suppose that we became lazy in that we left a lot of this to the European Union to do on our behalf. It is only natural that, with our geographical location, we are always going to have a very significant part to play with our European colleagues; that is quite right. However, Europe as a whole and the EU in particular has been diminishing as a slice of international trade, and growth is very much in the Pacific region. It is important that we pursue that; I congratulate the committee members on their work.

I want to drill down to small business. As the Trade Minister for Northern Ireland, I had the opportunity to lead a number around the world, including in the Asian region. We depended extremely heavily on the local embassies and consulates giving support. I do not believe in giving freebies to companies because we found that if we did that, they did not value them as much, but you can give help, not only financial but also in good back-up in the local embassy or consulate. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can assure us that that is being rolled out right across our diplomatic footprint. It is important to look at all areas, particularly areas of potential growth that are going to be found in this region.

I also believe that the trade envoy movement, to which a number of noble Lords have referred, is a very welcome development and needs to be expanded. We have lots of people who have connections with a professional career, or political or even academic connections, which should also be pursued, because academia can be a parallel area of promotion and building relationships between this and other countries. I have seen that at first hand in Kuala Lumpur and other places where our local university has opened links with those universities—and businesses will follow. In those circumstances, an entirely more outward-looking attitude is required from Whitehall and government generally. It is improving but we must accelerate it.