Free Trade Agreement: New Zealand

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I will do my best to answer the right hon. Lady’s questions. We are really pleased. The deal is really balanced and brings lots of exciting opportunities for our businesses and our consumers. We will see customs duties on 100% of tariff lines for originating products removed. The UK will eliminate tariffs on 96.7% of tariff lines on the day the FTA comes into force, and New Zealand will eliminate 100% on the day the FTA comes into force.

On beef, the UK will remove duties after 10 years, and the quota volume will increase in equal annual instalments to ensure that the markets can stabilise and grow as required. To the right hon. Lady’s point about the increase in sheepmeat capacity, the interesting thing with New Zealand is that it already has a much larger World Trade Organisation quota that it does not use with the UK because, as we discussed earlier, it has the opportunity to sell many of its meat products into the Asian markets, where it gets high prices. We are therefore not expecting New Zealand to use these quotas in these early years, but we look to the opportunity for us to work for mutual benefit. For butter, full liberalisation will be over a five-year period, and it is similar for cheese.

This is a really exciting deal, and not only for the food and agriculture sector. There is a huge amount of opportunity for our businesses, looking at the digital space in particular and service provision. I reiterate—we will keep saying it until the Opposition are willing to be comfortable with it, if required—that we will never compromise standards for food coming into the UK. I had an interesting conversation with a farmer just last week, who was perhaps more forward-thinking than some Opposition Members. As we have different pests and different soil types, the sorts of products used in other countries may be different, but that does not mean that the quality, standard or welfare is lower. We will always be clear that we will not accept the lowering of standards. We appreciate that different countries have to manage their climatic and environmental situations in different ways, so that will continue to be the case.

I am pleased that the right hon. Lady has seen the written ministerial statement just put out by the Department on the TAC response and the launch of the new Trade and Agriculture Commission, which will be independent. It will have the opportunity to scrutinise all those free trade deals as they come forward, including, in the first instance, the New Zealand and Australia deals, once we have brought them to a full signed conclusion.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, in particular her reference to encouraging small businesses and the opportunities that the deal provides for them. Will she ensure that her Department focuses on small and medium-sized businesses and encourages them to enter the export market? On a wider point, prior to our misguided decision to join the European Community, we had good trading relationships with New Zealand, Australia and the wider Commonwealth. Will she assure that House that she will do everything possible to extend deals with our Commonwealth friends?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his encouragement of the work that we are doing. In order to support and assist small and medium-sized enterprises, we want to champion their great products and services more widely than in the UK. Only a small proportion of businesses that could export, do so, and we are keen to ramp that up and give them support.

The export support service that was launched on 1 October supports businesses that are thinking about or are already exporting to the EU. We look to grow that as the service embeds. We also have the Open Doors campaign, which is an opportunity to help champion some of the fantastic UK goods and services that exist. We will continue to grow that too.

I charge all Members to come and talk to us about businesses in their constituencies and issues that they want us to champion as we go around the world and have the opportunity. In Commonwealth countries, there is much potential for mutual bilateral trade, so Members should help us to make sure that we are opening those doors for them.