Trade Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Mark Prisk and Tom Pursglove

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Prisk]

I think we are familiar with that!

Nick Ashton-Hart: You are familiar with how that dynamic works. It is no different in trade negotiations.

What I have described is pretty much a common process everywhere in the world, and it is not accidental; it is because the political economy demands that you have the backing, as a negotiator, at home when you are sitting across the table from your counterparties and that they know that you have that. They can watch your processes of consent and agreement and evaluate where your weaknesses are—where there are buttons they can push, but also where you are likely to need support. People know that you have to get to a sustainable deal also, and sometimes you have to do a concession at the right time to solve a problem in a domestic constituency for your counterparty, provided that it is in your interest to do so.

[Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)]

Q As Mr Dearden will know, this Bill is not concerned with the making of future trade deals. However, of the 40 trade deals that we are seeking to transition, could you set out for the Committee which you supported at the time and which you opposed?

Nick Dearden: I do not have a complete list of all of them, but I do know that we have very serious concerns about the economic partnership agreements with African countries, for example, because of some of the conditions that are placed on those countries. We have particular concerns, because we worked on it, with the CETA agreement with Canada, again related to the so-called non-tariff barriers in that agreement.

One problem is that no matter what we thought about the agreements when they were originally negotiated, they are going to look different when it comes to being translated into or replaced by a UK-Canada or UK-African country agreement; they are just going to be different deals. Given that, I think it only right that there be some degree of scrutiny. It says in the Bill, “Well, we aim for these deals to be as similar as possible.” I understand that, but it may well be that some of the deals will be more similar than others.

For the deals that are more similar, I think it would be right and proper for Parliament to say, “Okay, fine. We will wave that one through. We understand that that is continuity.” But for other deals—what a substantial amendment or change in the deal would look like is not defined—we believe that Parliament should have proper scrutiny and proper ratification powers. That is particularly important for deals that have not even been through the proper ratification process in the European Union—examples involve Singapore, Japan and Vietnam. Those deals may all be replaced by UK deals, but they have not been through the proper process as yet in the European Union, and we do not want to see a situation in which they are taken on just because we are so rushed that we do not have time to really think about the consequences of the deals.