Brexit: World Trade Organization Rules

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Price]

My Lords, the Government have set out their position: we do not wish to apply tariffs; we wish to be a free trading nation, and that is what we will work towards. We will try to ensure continuity of approach for our businesses, for the EU and for third-party countries. That is what we are trying to achieve right now.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the proportion of total UK exports going to the EU has fallen from over 50% 10 years ago to around 40% now, should not our continuing strategy, both as a Government and as an industrial nation, be to continue to increase the proportion of our exports that go to areas of the global economy that have better growth prospects than, unfortunately, the EU does? Has the Minister noticed the noises coming recently from the United States of America, Australia and South Korea encouraging us to do precisely that?

[Lord Price]

I agree with the noble Lord that our ambition should be to increase our exports. At the moment the UK, regrettably, bats below where it should. We are sixth in the league table, below France and Germany, and we hope to rise above that through a number of initiatives. Pursuing all trade options with all countries should be the Government’s approach, to make it easy and straightforward for businesses to export and to make sure that we are equally open to other businesses, both in the EU and elsewhere, which want to export into the United Kingdom.