Trade Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 11th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, not least because I did find occasion to agree with him on certain points. I was particularly pleased that he reiterated the metaphor used by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, because those of us who are gathered here at the moment are all giving up our three-course dinners for the purpose of Brexit.

I join with others in congratulating my noble friend Lady Meyer on her maiden speech. The character of what she had to say, her heritage, experience and proven values all demonstrate what a valuable addition she will be to our debates and to the House. I should like to add from my own point of view that this is the first occasion on which I have spoken this year. My medical treatment made it very difficult for me to participate in debates until now, so I am particularly grateful to colleagues for their many kindnesses over that period. I want to put on the record that this House is a very good place for looking after people. Lastly, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests, in this instance my co-chairmanship of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group. Six parliamentarians from this House and the other place were in Japan the weekend before last for the annual conference of the group, so perhaps I may return to the issue of Japan. I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Trenchard had to say; he understands Japan extremely well.

My noble friend Lady Fairhead gave us an excellent introduction to the Bill, and she spoke very well back in December in our previous debate on trade policy. I agree with her that the Bill is necessary to ensure continuity. There is a frustration, made perfectly clear by the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, at the effort that is having to be expended to maintain the status quo. This is part of that effort. However, in this instance, if we go down the path of Brexit—especially if we do not have a withdrawal agreement in place at the end of March next year—the need to have this Bill in place is obvious to all.

Few noble Lords have mentioned the Trade Remedies Authority. It is important that a shadow TRA is in place, even if there is an implementation period and the European Commission continues to exercise those responsibilities during that period. Many years ago, I was responsible for the generalised scheme of preferences in the chemical industry at the DTI and anti-dumping cases. I know that the degree of knowledge one has to acquire of not only the trade environment but the industry to which those remedies are to be applied—internationally, too—is not acquired quickly. It is the product of long and sometimes exhausting work. Getting a Trade Remedies Authority up and running is a priority for us, even if it takes the best part of two years before it is imposing remedies.

My main point concerns the customs union. I will not repeat what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard— he said it better than I could and I agree substantially with him—but I want to come back to the customs union, which I voted for in the withdrawal agreement legislation. My noble friend Lord Tugendhat said that we asked the Commons to think again and it did, but answered that it did not endorse this point. Of course, the other place was not strong-armed into it, as I think somebody said. I know colleagues there who supported this matter, a significant number of whom did not support that amendment because they supported the Chequers deal and wanted it to go ahead. In a nutshell, if we could get everything that the Government are looking for in the Chequers deal, including no rules of origin, frictionless trade and diagonal cumulation—meaning that in the free trade agreements, local content in the UK is treated as EU content and vice versa—we would be pretty close to what we genuinely need. That is the beauty of the Chequers deal. If the EU sign up to it, all will be well and good. But it may not, and the point at which it may not because it regards the deal as trespassing on too many of its red lines is the point at which colleagues in the other place will have to reconsider whether we should be in the customs union or out, on a no-deal basis. That is a different question, on which they should be asked to think again. Frankly, I suspect that during the passage of this legislation we will have the opportunity and occasion to reconsider the issue in broadly those terms.

As my noble friend Lord Trenchard said on Japan, it is very clear that we should be moving through a sequence and grandfathering the EU-Japan agreement. People are asking whether Japan will do it; the answer is yes, because it does not think that the agreement is long term. It is very pleased about and supportive of us joining the CPTPP, which offers us some advantages. For example, the e-commerce provisions in the TPP 11 agreement significantly benefit our strong digital market offer, relative to what is in the EU-Japan agreement, so there is a reason to transition to that multilateral agreement. As part of talking about our future trade policy, we should look for such opportunities, specifically multilateral trade arrangements. There is a reason why President Trump likes bilateral agreements: in a world of purely bilateral agreements, might is right, and more often than not, he will win on a straight bilateral trade negotiation because of the sheer weight of his economy. Frankly, that is why we are in the EU: to give us the weight in trade negotiations to counterbalance the United States, and now China. He fights those battles thinking that he still has the weight to do so. We should not allow him to go down the path of bilateralism and dismantling WTO machinery, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. That is what he aims to do and we must frustrate him by being advocates of multilateral agreements across the globe.

I have two final points. First, supporting the WTO also means reforming it, which we have not talked about. Perhaps we will be able to introduce some of these issues in debating the Bill. We should be very clear: the WTO should do more on e-commerce, mutual recognition of standards on an international basis—as President Obama set out to do in 2012, although he did not get very far—and developing the General Agreement on Trade in Services, which it is in our interest to push through in that forum. As my noble friend Lord Tugendhat said, we should make sure that the dispute settlement works because at the moment, that is the one bit of the WTO that everybody has to rely on more than anything else and the Americans are trying to dismantle it.

Secondly, I will not reiterate everything that has been said about trade promotion and export support, but FTAs are only as good as the use we make of them.

Many points have been made by my noble friends Lord Lilley, Lord Horam and Lord Cavendish, and others, about the necessity of supporting export promotion. It is not just about government; it is about industry’s capacity to do it. When I was deputy director-general at the British Chambers of Commerce, we introduced the active exporting scheme and ran the Export Marketing Research Scheme. The trade bodies and the chamber of commerce movement could—and should—come in and support the Government internationally. Look at the Handelskammern in Germany and what they are able to do in support of German industries. I encourage us also, in debating this important and necessary Bill, to talk about how we can develop our international trade policy and export promotion effort.