Lord Lansley
Main Page: Lord Lansley (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I join in thanking my noble friend Lord Howell for enabling this debate. It is most welcome. I am also pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke. She and I serve together on the International Agreements Committee. In that context, we have had the privilege of examining the continuity trade agreements—the rollover agreements—that have enabled us to transition agreements that we had previously with the European Union.
In my tally of the 53 other Commonwealth states, two are member states of the European Union, and with 28 of them we have now in place transition rollover agreements—or, as my noble friend said, sufficient bridging agreements. Many of them are literally rollover agreements with no continuity-plus provisions. I should say first that it is important that we make rapid progress with, for example, Canada, Ghana, Kenya and others in turning those continuity agreements into continuity-plus agreements. In addition, 17 countries are within the generalised scheme of preferences in its various frame- works, which leaves, for those who are calculating, six other countries, with three of which we have negotiations in train—New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. We will have trade relationships with two of those countries—Brunei and Malaysia—by virtue of our accession to CPTPP. The other country is, I think, the Maldives. Therefore, by my calculation, we will have trade relationships with Commonwealth countries, but the point is that we need to make those relationships stronger and fuller.
I wish to make three quick points. First, let us try to make sure that we include the environment in this. New Zealand has taken an initiative on climate change, trade and sustainability to have tariff-free environmental goods, to remove subsidies on fossil fuels and to promote eco-labelling. We could use the Commonwealth, which would be a great place to bring that initiative forward on a more global basis.
Secondly, many of our agreements focus on goods, but we have the capacity, as my noble friend Lord Risby said, to be strong in digital trade and, indeed, to be a services-sector superpower. We should extend many of those agreements into services on a major push to develop those relationships.
Thirdly and finally, I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Marland. The Commonwealth should and can be a powerful instrument through which we promote enterprise and entrepreneurships and scale up businesses, particularly in developing countries. As a consequence, we will expand our trade to those countries dramatically, as well as their exports to us.