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

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate; in doing so I declare my financial services and technology interest in Boston Ltd and Ecospend Ltd respectively.

It is more than a pleasure to welcome my noble friend the Foreign Secretary to the Front Bench in his new role. I was fortunate enough to work with the then Prime Minister in the run-up to and during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He was incredibly supportive, to the extent that on International Paralympic Day and with a year to go to the opening ceremony of the Games, he agreed to play in the centre of Trafalgar Square a game of tennis against the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. I will not trouble the House with who was the victor of that sporting clash of titans but, due to the sotto voce classical cursing which was taking place, I feared that at any point either player might pull their Achilles. My noble friend’s support, particularly for the Paralympic Games, enabled us in the summer of 2012 to put on not just such a golden summer of sport but to do something which fundamentally changed attitudes and created opportunities for disabled people in a way that has not been rivalled since. That was so much to do with his leadership as Prime Minister at that stage.

I will touch on four areas: inward investment, the role of our regulators, how we look at the IP issues, and the broader geopolitical elements of this agreement. First, to take a step back, there could barely be a more appropriate time than the year of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith to look at this agreement. We need to review and reconsider the “wealth of nations” and how we take a broad and deep view of wealth to ensure that we have a group of trading nations which truly delivers economic, social and psychological benefits for all citizens.

We have never been more connected. We are seldom off our screens, with so-called social media taking up so much of our time, yet we see so many issues of retreatism, populism and nationalism rather than the pressing need to come together to get after so many of the existential challenges which we now face. In essence, all the significant challenges are global in nature. If we wanted to recast ESG, we should see it as “existential, seismic and global”. This agreement comes at the right time and has so much potentially to offer in bringing nations together to solve some of the greatest challenges of any time, never mind just our time.

When the Minister comes to respond, can he say something on the Government’s approach to inward investment? We really need to consider the welcome mat that we need to lay down. When people seek to invest in this nation, they need to know so much about the intricacies and the details of many multiple factors. Does he agree that it would make sense if we had a specific team in the department to deal with that issue so that we could enable such a welcome mat in real time, with all our information, to ensure that we optimise the inward investment that we can pull in?

I come to the role of our regulators—not just financial service regulators but all relevant regulators associated with this agreement. Will my noble friend the Minister agree that they have a role to connect internationally to do everything they can to potentially increase trade between all the nations within this agreement as currently set out?

The agreement talks about prioritising digital services, as rightly it should. The great potential of so much in digital is that barriers to entry for new entrants are so low. You can potentially run a global business from your bedroom with a laptop and a decent broadband connection. Would my noble friend say something about how the Government seek to progress what we were able to push through with the Electronic Trade Documents Act? It was a small Act. I was fortunate enough to be a member of the Special Bill Committee, and I have often described it as the most significant law that no one has ever heard of.

It is the most significant law because I think it is the first time that the UK Parliament—or any Parliament—has legislated for the opportunities of these new technologies, tied with our financial services ecosystem and the extraordinary good fortune of English common law, used in so many jurisdictions around the world because of its certainty, flexibility and ability to develop through precedent and case law. Passing the law was significant, but can my noble friend in concluding say something on how we can connect with all the nations in this agreement to enable all our learnings from passing the ETDA to be shared so other jurisdictions can pass similar legislation—because, as we know, it takes two to trade?

To enable physical documents to be held in electronic format and to have the physical goods, having all the customs and legal documentation and all the financials combined in real time is nothing short of transformational when it comes to international trade. Enabling transfer of title to melt from between 10 to 14 days into mere moments: that is a way to transform trade. I believe this agreement is a good opportunity to parlay with those nations to convey the benefits of passing similar electronic trade document legislation in their jurisdictions.

There is a lot in the agreement concerning IP and copyright. I specifically ask the Minister: as currently drafted, does the agreement offer equal rights for UK performers to assert their copyright and other IP rights in other nations as it does for internationals to assert such rights in the UK? I am not sure it is entirely clear in the current draft.

In conclusion, I support this agreement. In terms of international agreements, it certainly makes the heaviest use of the letter “P”, but it is none the worse for that. As other noble Lords have mentioned, we have had extraordinarily impactful international agreements in the past and they have served us well, but many of them are well in the past in their formulation and construction. It seems an opportune moment to review all these agreements to see how we can achieve the optimum for nations and for all citizens around the world, because the challenges are global and we can solve them only if we work together collaboratively, truly connected, using all our good offices and all that we have learned in the UK, connecting with all our global friends so we can all move forward and truly deliver on wealth, in the deepest, broadest sense, for all nations.