Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. In fact, the Department for Business and Trade, being ahead of the game as always, is already thinking about how to get utilisation of this trade deal done, to get through to all the regions and nations of the United Kingdom, to make sure in particular that all of our SME community has access to this deal—for example, Malaysia is a country we have never had a trade deal with before, and we now have tariff-free trade with Malaysia. A particular focus of mine, as the export Minister, will be to increase the level of access to our SMEs, because these are real companies, employing real people in real places,

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that there is a geostrategic aspect to this agreement? By almost every measure—investment and everything—the UK has more involvement in that region than any other EU country. We also run global shipping from the UK. In that sense, there is a geostrategic aspect, which is to be welcomed. Does the Minister agree?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The noble Lord will be able to comment much more on the geopolitical aspect than I can, because I come to this looking at it very much as a trade deal. When I was introduced to the deal, I looked at the map and could see that we were nowhere near the Indo-Pacific. The fact that we have come into that deal must surely be because we have such extensive reach in the region, and therefore in addition to trade there will be a knock-on effect for our geopolitical security, I am sure.