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

Lord Lansley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was required in other meetings for much of the afternoon; I look forward to reading many of the contributions. I did have the pleasure of hearing my noble friend the Foreign Secretary and the opening speeches. It is 34 years since he and I first worked together, and I look forward to resuming the pleasure of working with him in this House.

One of his actions as Prime Minister was to nominate me to chair the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, so I declare my registered interest as co-chair. While I was listening to my noble friend Lord Lamont, I thought, happily, that I could reduce the scope of my speech by simply saying that I agree with him about the benefits that accrue to this country from free trade agreements, of which this is one, and the particular benefits associated with the opportunities in such a fast-growing part of the world in terms of services trade and digital trade. The CPTPP is the most advanced regional agreement on digital trade, but countries within it with which we have bilateral agreements, such as Singapore, give us hope that CPTPP will be, once more, a leader in developing digital trade. I very much look forward to that. That will, no doubt, be even more advanced if we bring Korea into the CPTPP in future. With the President of the Republic of Korea here today, I am sure that will have featured in our discussions.

I will not detain the House very long, and there is a risk of me repeating what has been said by others, but I want to say a number of things about the process, and the technical characteristics of the Bill, which I hope we will return to at subsequent stages.

First, on the process, I was rather heartened by the discussions we had last week; I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for those discussions and his subsequent letter. It is important for us—I speak as a former member of the International Agreements Committee and following the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who was also a member of that committee—to recognise that we had an opportunity to report in preparation for the negotiations on the negotiating mandate. That led, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, rightly said, to some steps in the negotiating process that managed to deal with one or two of the problems that would otherwise have been in the document—the treaty itself—and that is rather important for us. I must confess that I have to depart from the noble Lord; I think the fact that we are not seeking to derogate from the investor-state dispute settlement provisions is a very good thing. We are a country that invests very widely, and is invested in very widely. My Japanese friends invest substantially here and around the world, and our accession to the CPTPP would have been much more difficult if we had sought to depart from ISDS provisions. As a country, we have never been successfully challenged on an investor-state dispute settlement, but I think many British companies that invest around the world would wish us to be participating in and promoting ISDS.

On the ratification process, we are still getting used to this after we left the European Union; part of the structure of that is waiting for the Trade and Agriculture Commission to report. On the assumption that it does so in the next few weeks and the Government respond relatively promptly, that should then—after a delay of maybe up to 10 days—permit the Government to notify the accession to CRaG under the legislation and give an opportunity for the International Agreements Committee, the chair of which I can see in his place, what it expects, which is an opportunity to report on the treaty and to ask the House either to consider it or to have a debate. That might reasonably all be completed before 16 July 2024, which is one year after the signature and, therefore, within the timeframe to which we have committed ourselves to complete the ratification process.

It is not easy to work out how these things work, but I think it is quite helpful for both Houses to decide whether they support ratification at a point when they have heard from the Trade and Agriculture Commission and their relevant Select Committees, and when the House has decided whether it is happy to put the necessary domestic legislation in place. That is what this Bill is about: putting the necessary domestic legislation in place. In that respect, when we come to debate it on Report and particularly in Committee, I hope we can explore a few issues.

First, as my noble friend knows, the provisions on procurement in Schedule 2 go wider than what is presently in the Procurement Act. Noble Lords who were involved in that Act will think it was not very long ago that we wrote all that stuff, and now we are having to change it. I think we will need to know why we are changing it and appear to be widening it. I am not concerned with the timing because, if that Act does not come into force until October 2024, we already have amendments to the Public Contracts Regulations that allow the necessary steps to have been taken. I think that is a legitimate question for us to debate on this Bill, because the language is different.

Secondly, noble Lords involved in these negotiations will be aware that we secured commitments on the part of Japan and Australia to enable us to have geographical indicators accepted in those countries. In this legislation we are extending what is in effect geographical indicator status to other CPTPP countries. I hope this will be an opportunity for us to ensure that we are making progress in a reciprocal fashion, because geographical indicators are very important, whether it is Lincolnshire sausages or any other product.

The final issue I want to mention is copyright. It is a difficult area, but I hope noble Lords who are perhaps more expert in it than I am will be able to explore why we again seem to be extending a power for Ministers to enable a country to be treated as the qualifying country, which will then allow rights holders to access what is called equitable remuneration in this country as though they were UK rights holders, in a way that appears to be wider than necessary for CPTPP countries and rather wider than has been the case in the past.

Those are simply issues that I hope we will have the opportunity to turn to in Committee, but I do not want any of them to detract from the fact that I very much welcome the CPTPP accession and all that goes with it, and the potential it offers. I am very glad that the Government have brought this legislation forward for that purpose.