Lord Patten
Main Page: Lord Patten (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Patten (Con)
Two key cogs in the myriad of moving parts involved in these issues are the World Trade Organization and our own government machine.
I start with the WTO. This is, in its purposes, a non-political organisation. The UK has been there since it was first dreamt up at Bretton Woods in 1944. We were there at the foundation of its predecessor body, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948 and then at the start of the WTO itself. We are one of the founding fathers and mothers of the organisation and a driving force. As such, I wish to seek reaffirmation from the Minister that she has already had reassurances in straight terms from the WTO that, as a founder member, after we leave the European Union we will not have to go through any reaccession process whatsoever.
I think the world needs the WTO. The UK certainly needs the WTO, but the WTO also needs the UK, as a forceful member, promoting free trade, rooting out protectionism and standing firm against trade distortions. This was our historic role within that organisation in the past.
Only yesterday, by happy coincidence with the timing of my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley’s debate this morning, the World Trade Organization’s director-general Roberto Azevedo, whom we heard about earlier, told Sky News—the “truth station”, as I think of it—that he does not want to see the UK suffering “disruption” after we leave the UK. He wants, rather, to see a “fast and smooth” transition. I welcome that very much indeed. He goes on to say that,
“The global economy … is not in the best shape for us to be introducing turbulence”.
Mr Azevedo has changed his tune. I hope my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley welcomes that change of tune, because Mr Azevedo is going to be a dominant figure on the world stage—not just as far as the UK is concerned, but as far as the European Union is concerned. The UK can take the lead in helping him work towards offering reciprocal, tariff-free entry to all sorts of goods and services coming from third countries.
Consider, for example, countries such as Germany, which are facing economic headwinds at the moment. Germany has a considerable surplus with us. It is running a surplus not just in Mercedes and Volkswagens, but also in all professional and other services into the United Kingdom—to the surprise of many. In future, we may find that the thought of having tariff-free entry to the UK has its own particular charm, to put it mildly, for economies like those of Germany. However, we need to work much harder to export to Germany, and to Poland and other eastern European countries, in return.
My second point turns to the UK Government. It must be very exhilarating and challenging on the home front for those setting up new or reformed ministries and fettling up our export promotion machine. This is a matter not just of organisation charts and talent searches but of attitude at the centre. Such global promotion is multilayered and certainly not just a matter for the huge FTSE 100 companies and their often very corporatist representative bodies, such as the CBI. Such FTSE 100 companies may often have a welcome UK heritage but generally get a majority of their earnings abroad, so they should have the global structures and intelligence-gathering machines in place not to need much help from trade delegations and the rest.
No, it is the companies of the FTSE 250 size and below, having a much more UK-centric view, that arguably deserve the greatest attention, and even more so the entrepreneurial classes—footloose, high-tech and other developing start-ups—which are characteristically very uncorporate in their attitudes. So I am very glad to learn that the Prime Minister is taking a plane-load of representatives of SMEs to India to kick off what I hope is a totally new trend, rather than having the front of the plane clogged with the CEOs and chairmen of great FTSE 100 companies, who should be able to look after their shareholders’ interests without much help from Prime Ministers.
I also believe that the Government should welcome—I draw this in particular to the attention of my noble friend the Minister—what I am told is a queue of professionals in the legal and professional services who are stepping forward as volunteers, offering themselves on a continuing pro bono, part-time basis to help Her Majesty’s Government in what they are trying to do. We should welcome a “Government of all the talents” in trying to promote international trade, and particularly in helping what one might loosely call the Brexit Ministries as they set themselves up, upskill and get to grips with the new world of post-EU government. These volunteers are part of our national brain reservoir.
We must also welcome—I stress this—top-class immigrant brain power. We need to develop a discerning approach to high-tech, high-medical and high-finance open borders—in other words, a free market in the brain sphere. That is vital to the United Kingdom to help sustain old markets and win new ones, at the same time as we seek, quite rightly, to control our borders in relation to entry-level employment-seekers coming into this country.