Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (EUC Report)

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, it is good to follow the insightful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and I most sincerely congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, on his wise and thoughtful introductory speech. I remember his high competence as a Minister in another place, but that was a generation ago. We are older now and parked in your Lordships’ House most patiently. The challenges for British industry today are ever greater as China, India and other nations waken and assert themselves in highly competitive global trade. Indeed, the emerging superpowers may elbow us aside.

I noted the quite deliberate deployment in the report of the words “strategic”, “ambitious” and “template”, and from my own particular point of view the key words “employment” and “prosperity”. Yes, I believe that the member states are losing it, and yes, that vehement opposition might always be expected from the United States concerning finance. Recent publications about the historic Bretton Woods conference illustrate the predisposition of the United States to insist on its own way. Indeed, the late, great Maynard Keynes, ill and isolated as he was, found the going at Bretton Woods more than tough. Let us hope that this trade agreement will be easier, but the great republic is somewhat imperial now, and the chairman of the committee who brought forward this report has given us a shrewd assessment that is far from sanguine when looking at the issues ahead.

Surely the committee was right to emphasise the word “geopolitical”. With luck, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will help to rebalance the relationship between the United States and Europe. Referring to Dr Hamilton’s evidence, the old link of NATO is perhaps a little wobbly. In the list of witnesses, one can see the name of Edward Barker, the head of the Transatlantic and International Unit at BIS. He is surely an able civil servant who can assist Ministers in realising our objectives.

It is heartening to see that the report champions our motor industry. In industrial Deeside in north-east Wales, we have a Toyota engine plant of considerable size, great excellence, and with even further potential. It is well managed, and it would be advantageous to it if the proposed partnership could prosper. But I would posit the question: what of our great aerospace industry and its place in the report? Will the Government make a commitment to championing the British aerospace industry and ensuring a level playing field on which it can compete? Last November, Washington State announced that Boeing would receive a record $8.7 billion package of tax breaks. There must be a risk that an intervention on that scale will severely distort the market in Boeing’s favour and thus limit the ability of others to compete effectively. What assurances can the Minister give that this issue is being addressed by the European Commission and the WTO? Do the Government agree that our aerospace sector needs a level playing field on which to compete? How will the Minister help?

The signals I have had so far from the Secretary of State, Mr Cable, have been helpful. The champion of British interests in the Toulouse headquarters of the giant company Airbus, the great and successful rival to Boeing, is the highly respected and successful Mr Tom Williams, the executive vice-president of programmes, who may well be known to the Minister; he may well have met the Minister and had positive talks.

I would like to think that this report will help Tom Williams in his and Airbus’s strategic objectives because I know that in this nation Airbus employs directly some 14,000 people in two great plants and tens of thousands of other workers are engaged in work related to Airbus. Successive Prime Ministers—Mr Blair, Mr Brown and Mr Cameron—have gone to one of the greatest aerospace centres in the world, the Broughton plant in north-east Wales, where some 7,000 people are directly employed. This is a reservoir of great skills and great achievement. The industry in Britain now earns in excess of £8 billion a year. It is a colossal contributor to prosperity and employment and I hope very much that in his thoughtful consideration of this debate the Minister will be able to give me some assurances.