UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Last year’s impact assessment was obviously a snapshot at the time. As the deal has continued to evolve from the agreement in principle back in June 2021, which was 12 pages of broad-brush direction of travel, the team has genuinely worked tirelessly. Working with a country in a different time zone, the team has worked through the night for many months to make sure that we drew this deal together. The continued development of all these areas has enabled us to review the original assessment. I am very happy for my officials to sit down with the hon. Lady to talk her through in more detail how we have reached this point. All these things are a moment in time, and we now have an assessment that I very much hope will be an underestimate as we see new business—we have been working on the basis of the existing businesses. We look to new businesses taking up the opportunities that this trade deal affords, so that we can grow our bilateral trade even further.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement on this very encouraging agreement. She says that more than 15,000 companies already export to Australia and that she wants to encourage small family businesses to do so, too. I urge her to build on the excellent support that the Department gives to such businesses, as we need to encourage more businesses, particularly small businesses, into the export market. What will the Department do to enhance the existing service in that respect?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is an active and effective trade envoy to the Balkans. He raises an important point, and we have a great opportunity to help small businesses, which have fantastic goods and services, to take up the opportunities that these free trade deals will afford them and to find new export markets. The Minister for Exports, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), has taken on that challenge with gusto.

With the export support service and a number of other tools, we are driving forward the opportunities that organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses and the CBI provide to encourage businesses that have not yet tested the opportunity to export, so that we can share the amazing goods and services they produce with the rest of the world.