UK-Canada Trade Deal: Suspension of Negotiations

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

Cheese is now a pawn in the game, and that has now become the focus of attention. When we were in the EU, we had 2,000 out of 14,000 tonnes of cheese allocated to us. That has now been taken away and allocated to Europe—France and Germany, mostly. We are now allocated 6,000 for the rest of the world. Canada knew that we had a right to roll that over to 2,000 within the WTO trade agreement. We do not have that now. That is £18 million of trade. Out of £26 billion, one might say that is a small number, but we know that the farms in Somerset and Wales in particular, which produce incredible quality cheese, have built up a superior market share in Canada. The Canadian consumer wants this cheese and has been buying and stockpiling it for six months in advance of this happening. This has only happened because the Canadian farmers want to send hormone beef to the UK and we refuse to drop our standards, as some people said we would do when we left the EU.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, among the letters I received from Ministers after every trade negotiating round with Canada, saying everything was on track, the letter telling me that things had gone off the rails—sorry, “paused”—must have gone astray. That information that the Minister gave is not new information. I warned the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, last summer, after I led a CPA delegation on trade to Ottawa and Toronto, of the difficulties—but he ignored them. That is compounded by the fact that businesses are now paying £100,000 more per business for trade with Europe and new checks will be coming into place tomorrow. So when does the Minister forecast that we will have frictionless trade with Europe?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

With Europe, as the noble Lord knows, when we agreed to join what was then the European Common Market, Europe accounted for one-third of global trade. We all know that, when we left in 2019, that was 16% of global trade. In 2050, the OECD says it will be 9% of global trade. So the UK has tilted to where the market is. The market is in the Indo-Pacific, which is why we joined the CPTPP. The last time I looked at the map, Britain was not anywhere near the Pacific. We managed to get America’s place in the CPTPP, which is 40% of the world’s fastest-growing consumers. As we sign those trade deals and go around with Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea and Japan, we are building out a trade base for our farmers and manufacturers which is far greater than they had in Europe.