India and Southeast Asia: Free Trade Agreements

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Bilimoria and his focus on India, reflecting the huge amount of work that he does promoting UK-Indian relations. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay on securing this debate—she obviously has a distinguished record, having served as a Minister in the Foreign Office covering south-east Asia, and knows of what she speaks.

I speak as the chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, a post I have been proud to hold for the last two years, having also been the trade envoy to Vietnam under the premiership of Theresa May. It is a region that I have got to know very well, and it remains a huge source of opportunity for the UK. Trade between ASEAN and the UK stands at around £50 billion a year. The UK is slightly ahead on exports against imports. On goods and services, there is roughly a 50-50 split in what we export.

If we go through the members of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, it will give a flavour of where those opportunities lie, with professional service companies, financial services companies, universities and education companies. We recently had the Premier League join us, which reflects, as it were, the new economy and the new businesses, especially the tech businesses, that can make huge inroads in this area.

Noble Lords do not need reminding that we have fantastic ties in the region. Malaysia and Singapore are both Commonwealth nations, with very visible investment in the UK—you have only to look across the river to see the incredible regeneration of Battersea Power Station. Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are also huge and growing economies where we do a lot of business. There is prominent investment from Thailand. My noble friend Lady Anelay mentioned her visit to Indonesia. I was lucky to sit down with the President of Indonesia when he visited the UK recently as well as the Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was also in the country recently. We are constantly visited by high-level politicians from all those countries, all of whom want to engage with us.

We are very lucky to have some first-class officials based in the region, not least Martin Kent, our trade commissioner, and Sarah Tiffin, our ASEAN ambassador. There is everything to play for. We have a free trade deal with Singapore, as well as a digital economy agreement. We have a free trade deal with Vietnam; we piggybacked on the EU deal. Minister Alexander negotiated an enhanced trade partnership with Thailand, which we signed in September. We have an economic growth partnership with Indonesia. They are not very sexy names, but they are important agreements.

We are the first dialogue partner with ASEAN for 25 years. Of course, we are members of the CPTPP, which includes four ASEAN members, with three more knocking on the door. The CPTPP is already delivering significant benefits—we can now of course export chocolate to Malaysia without paying any tariffs. The CPTPP has given us, in effect, a free trade agreement with Malaysia by the back door.

I conclude simply with two to-do points for the Minister. First, Malaysia is currently the chair of ASEAN. I cannot emphasise enough how engaged Malaysia is with the digital agenda and how much it seeks to engage with the UK on digital, not least on artificial intelligence. Many new institutions have been established in Malaysia which quite openly mimic ours, with imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. They look to us for guidance—not in a patronising sense—on how they should develop their tech policy and tech infrastructure. Secondly, I was flattered to be asked to the Indonesian embassy to meet the Minister for Eurasian affairs, who simply put his cards on the table and said: “We are very keen to have a free trade agreement with the UK”. It is sitting on the table. I do not know if it is quite oven ready, but we have an enthusiastic partner in Indonesia. We recognise that the Government have priorities in terms of their free trade deals, not least with India, but Indonesia is a very willing partner.