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

Lord Fox Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Razzall alluded to, this has been a longer debate than it probably would have been had not the Secretary of State, who has now departed the Chamber, been involved. However, it has been a very interesting debate, and I dare say never have so many “t”s, “p”s and “c”s been used in your Lordships’ House—most of them in the right order, so very well done all of you.

Despite the clumsy branding, this really is an important development in UK international trade. It must have been important because the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, chose it for his charming, graceful and amusing maiden speech, for which he has received universal plaudits, to which I add my name. It is a shame that he had to leave before the denouement of this debate, but I am sure he will be beating a path to Hansard in the morning. We look forward to many opportunities to hear from him and ask him questions in your Lordships’ House.

We heard from the chair of the International Agreements Committee, of which I am also a member, about how we should be scrutinising this treaty, and we heard many other pleas from your Lordships about how we have an opportunity to have meaningful and proper scrutiny. One thing that has not been noted is that the change in the machinery of government, to which the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, referred, has changed the Select Committee structure, which means that we no longer have a designated trade Select Committee, which further dilutes the amount of scrutiny we are getting.

This has been a proxy debate: we have been debating the treaty without any of the proper information we need, and many of us have been somewhat ignoring the actual substance of the debate. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for belatedly pushing our nose to the grindstone while looking at the technical issues in the Bill, which we are supposed to be debating. However, the debate we are having about this Bill is more of a debate than the Commons got on the Australian deal. That was promised and never given, so we have to take the opportunities when we can get them, but we should not be begging Ministers and the Government for Parliament’s right properly to scrutinise this really important trade deal.

I turn to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The name is an indication of the journey it has taken: with every step it has made, another letter has been added to its acronym. We should also note that it is, uniquely, a trade organisation designed by the United States but of which the United States is likely never to be a member. However, it was interesting to hear last week the US Chamber of Commerce—its largest business organisation —berate successive US Governments for not doing trade deals, so you never know; maybe something will turn up.

However, we should bear in mind that design hand that went into this organisation, because there are differences between a bloc with essentially US systems and processes, and us, with essentially EU systems and processes. It was interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Trees, set out the gradient between those two ways of looking at standards. I believe that we will see more of this. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, also referred to those differences and disparities. It is something we should be very concerned about and, if we have the opportunity to scrutinise it, we should get under the skin of it.

We know that the Government’s projected benefits for this treaty are relatively tiny—everybody has mentioned that. Frankly, if they were aiming to meaningfully boost trade the Government would have been better employed reversing our decline in exports to Germany, where we have fallen from number two to number nine. Perhaps, given the dexterity of our Minister, he could even try to do both at once.

With this backdrop of only a small nudge in trade, it is no wonder that so many in your Lordships’ House have emphasised the politics and the new focus on Asia-Pacific. I see this point and recognise its importance; I think we all do. We look forward to further discussions on this and its implications—politically, economically and in security terms.

Going back to the case at hand, during the run-up to the accession to the Australian FTA, there was much concern regarding agriculture. There were and are still significant concerns that in order to get that deal, the UK conceded too much on animal welfare and environmental concerns. As we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord Curry, there are similar concerns that UK farming standards could and would be compromised by this agreement. Additionally, UK pesticide standards could and would be undermined. There are 119 pesticides that are banned in the UK that are allowed to be used in one or more CPTPP member states. We are back to this gradient again—to the differences in the way standards are operated in our respective organisations.

The Australian deal kicked off this spring. What have we learned so far from the Australian experience? Perhaps the Minister could set out how he sees reciprocal opportunities for British farmers, not just in Australia but in the whole of the CPTPP, and what his department and Defra will be doing to organise themselves so that we can take advantage of those opportunities and get some British food on CPTPP plates. As many noble Lords have noted, this will need a bit of export oomph.

Many of us watched with admiration how Australia stood up to the Chinese when China launched politically motivated and punitive tariffs on some of its products. The Aussie response was not to launch tit-for-tat tariffs against the much bigger China; instead, it weathered the storm by getting out and selling its products to other places and other countries. Now China has started to withdraw those tariffs.

Looking beyond agriculture, this country needs to be able to be on the front foot, like Australia was, when it comes to trade. There seems to be a lot of work to do. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, and others about what needs to be done and the inadequacy of where we are now. As we have heard, small and medium-sized companies make up half the economy. When we were taking evidence from their representatives, it was clear that they do not feel they are getting the support and the help they need to get the activation energy they need to export things.

It was hard enough when Brexit happened; indeed, many small businesses have stopped exporting because they have not got over that barrier. But getting their products to Vietnam is a whole order of magnitude harder, and the Government need to be at least one order of magnitude, if not two, better at giving them the help they need. So can the Minister acknowledge that there is a huge amount of work to be done by his and other departments? If he does not, the export opportunities will not be taken up and, frankly, what is the point of a trade deal if you do not trade?

The risks of inadequately exploiting the opportunities extend beyond domestic farmers. The first thing I will point out is the treatment of workers, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Collins. While the Government are flirting with ILO violations with their strikes Bill, these infractions pale in comparison with those seen in countries such as Brunei, Mexico and Vietnam. How do the Government intend to deal with non-ILO-compliant economies and their products?

Meanwhile, there is a real danger to the UK’s commitment to the sustainable development goals, in that they could be undermined by the CPTPP. Since Brexit, the UK has been mindful of developmentally sensitive products, including bananas—here we are in “fruit territory”. We have to be careful to maintain the value of trade preferences when designing unilateral trade policies, including the UK’s global tariff and the recently launched developing countries trading scheme.

In recent bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, however, there has been a less consistent approach. The market access schedules for bananas—I am using bananas as one example of such products—negotiated as part of the UK’s accession to the CPTPP included concerning concessions. As I am sure the noble Earl opposite knows, the UK granted a reduced tariff to both Peru and Mexico, and slightly lowered concessions for other CPTPP members. While at present Peru and Mexico are relatively marginal suppliers to the UK market, the change threatens to set a precedent. The same point was made earlier—if they do it for one, when we are negotiating another deal, perhaps with a central American country that has a much stronger and larger banana export market, we are undermining the market access provided via economic partnership agreements to least developed countries. This jeopardises our sustainable development goals. Will the Minister comment on how that is being addressed and what his department expects to happen in that area?

The UK economy has a much larger service sector, as we have heard, than its manufacturing sector. FTAs traditionally stumble when it comes to the services part of exports and imports; I would like the Minister to reflect a little on that. In particular, I would like to look at where we stand on future mutual recognition of qualifications, because services are driven by things such as mutual recognition of qualifications. It would be good if the Minister could explain where we are. Will that be dealt with through CPTPP or will there need to be bilateral or other ways of actually delivering that?

Another way that services work is through short-term visits by our professionals into those territories. It is not 100% clear to me where we are on short-term visas to facilitate that kind of work.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, set out some issues on data localisation. It is important to have some idea of how far we can take this, because that will be the blood that makes services flow through the system.

My noble friends Lord Razzall and Lord Foster set out really important concerns regarding the IP and GI sections of this Bill. I hope the Minister has been listening and takes on board the concerns we have here.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is also correct on procurement. We spent a lot of time talking about procurement; we suffered more amendments from a Government than I think has ever happened before, yet straight away the Government are turning their backs on some of what we decided. That is not unique, by the way—in the negotiations for the Swiss free trade agreement for mutual recognition of qualifications, they also turned their backs on aspects of the Professional Qualifications Bill that we also worked on. There is a disconnect along the line here sometimes; we spend many hours scrutinising legislation and then a bunch of trade negotiators go off and ignore the legislation. Why and how is this allowed to happen? There is a bigger question, as well as the individual question that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, raised.

I look at the time and I have already talked for too long, so I will sit down. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate and to Committee stage. But, most of all, I look forward to us having meaningful scrutiny of this treaty.