Free Trade Agreements: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: First Report of the International Trade Committee, UK trade negotiations: Scrutiny of Agreement with Australia, HC 444; Second Report of the International Trade Committee, UK trade negotiations: Agreement with Australia, HC 117; Third Report of the International Trade Committee, UK trade negotiations: Agreement with New Zealand, HC 78; Fourth Report of the International Trade Committee, UK trade negotiations: Parliamentary scrutiny of free trade agreements, HC 815; First Special Report of the International Trade Committee, UK trade negotiations: Scrutiny of Agreement with Australia and Agreement with Australia: Government Response to the Committee’s First and Second Reports, HC 704.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now come to the Select Committee statement. Angus Brendan MacNeil, representing the International Trade Committee, will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions can be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement, and call him to respond to these in turn. Can I emphasise that questions should be directed to Mr MacNeil, not the relevant Government Minister? Contributions should be questions and should be brief, and those on the Front Benches may take part in the questioning. I call Angus Brendan MacNeil.

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[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

As a member of the International Trade Committee I endorse much of what the Chair has said, although he never loses an opportunity to attack Brexit, so we cannot entirely agree on everything.

Does he acknowledge that there is a cross-party majority on the Committee who acknowledge that the relationship between the Committee and the previous Secretary of State caused problems? There is now an opportunity to reset that. Does he agree that a majority on the Committee want more free trade deals, and we want to do all we can to facilitate that while being a critical friend?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I used to be Angus’s vice-chair, and it is good to hear that nothing has changed as far as his views.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I remember many a ding-dong that we had on Brexit, as you may recall. I thank the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for what he said. He is right—I point out the facts and numbers around Brexit, and they are not good. I compare Brexit to going to the horse-racing with £500 and coming back with trade deals worth £2 or £8 or whatever—we are still £490-odd down, but I will leave that there in deference to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Gentleman is right that a majority of the Committee want to reset that, and under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we want to see trade deals. The question is about the terms of those trade deals, and that is where the House should be involved. That is why we look at trade deals that the European Union might achieve with New Zealand or Australia, versus what we have achieved, and we must also remember the words of the Prime Minister, who said that those deals are “one-sided”.

I was speaking to a member of the Trade and Agriculture Commission who said that—I had better phrase it this way—the Australia trade deal was the biggest giveaway of agricultural liberalisation that has been seen in any trade agreement. We should remember that free trade agreements are not about free trade; they are about bureaucratic trade, and they usually replace tariffs with bits of paper. There is nowhere where trade occurs as freely—to return to that word—as it did with the European Union before Brexit.

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[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his fair comments about empowering the House on trade deals. That should be welcomed, particularly by Government Members given that they are in the majority. It might also help better trade deals come into existence and be signed—trade deals that people can unite behind, rather than giveaway trade deals or, in the words of the Prime Minister, “one-sided” trade deals. I am not sure whether having revolving doors, with Secretaries of State or other Ministers going from position to position, really helps. It is good to see a retread, if I may be so gentle, because I think this is the Minister’s second or third time back—[Interruption.] The third time, with, I trust, a body of institutional knowledge coming back to the Department. There is a concern, however, that these things gain a momentum of their own. A previous Prime Minister—but which one? The one from Uxbridge—was desperate to see bits of paper being signed. There was that going on.

I understand why the hon. Member’s constituents are frustrated. The House should have a say and have input. There are people out there who will be affected by trade deals, and they should have those concerns reflected in the House of Commons so that the negotiators can know, before they start to negotiate, what the difficulties are for certain parts of the UK and, when trade-offs are made, if the damage is to Welsh hill farmers for the benefit of City types in London, that is recognised in future fiscal transfers.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank Mr MacNeil for his statement.