Future Free Trade Agreements

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 21st February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Fysh]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I want to point out that my hon. Friend is not the only one left on the Government Benches, although I really came to listen—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. May I just say that there are no more Government Members on my list, which includes people who were here at the beginning, but we will have interventions.

[Mr Bacon]

I really came to listen to my hon. Friend, because it is such a privilege to listen to a genuine expert on this subject. He has forgotten more about it than most people know. I am just wondering how he accounts for the fact that we have had palpably inaccurate statements from Ministers. Is it possibly because our esteemed Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), was not involved in making those statements?

[Mr Fysh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am quite sure that the Minister present was not involved in the decision making around such Government mistakes. He is an eminently sensible fellow whom I know well. He used to be my Whip, and I would trust him explicitly. I cast no aspersions on the current occupant of the Government Front Bench.

The Government’s sabotage of the people’s desire for an independent trade policy has to stop. Having an independent trade policy is a mainstream Conservative manifesto promise and desire. People want to take advantage of the new opportunities for free trade agreements around the world. They do not think that there will be a gap in or loss of EU trade, just as long as we execute on the things we need to execute, and the measures that HMRC could implement right now would go a long way to ensuring that that is not the case.

We also need to deal with the fallacy that the UK is somehow a small player that will get completely taken to the cleaners in any negotiation. The reality is that many players around the world are excited about the return of the UK to the global trading environment and are keen to do business with us. They see some of our leading markets, such as pharmaceuticals or financial services, as regulatory environments in which it makes sense for them to do more business, and we can help to develop the rules-based trading system around the world in a way that helps them, too.

That is particularly true in the US context, and our service businesses have a lot to gain from potential deals with places such as the US and Japan, where being part of the EU has really restricted our ability to do the sorts of deals that would advantage those service industries because, by and large, the European industry is not services based. For example, America has a $700 billion market in insurance in which our insurers, which are only currently selling about £2 billion into the US, could raise their market share. By comparison, sales of insurance into the EU are about £1.5 billion, so the US represents a much bigger market opportunity than the EU—even under single market strictures.

By way of conclusion, because I want to allow other people to get a look in—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I appreciate the House’s time. It is nice to have a bit of time for once on a Thursday to speak in detail about something about which I know, rather than be limited to four or five minutes, which is more often the case in the big debates.

The Department for International Trade has some brilliant civil servants and officials who have been doing incredible work. Even though it is a small market, the roll-over of the Chilean free trade agreement is a benchmark, because the officials have provided for diagonal accumulation between the UK and the EU and Chile. That really should be a benchmark for how we treat our future trade arrangements, which will be the successor arrangements to those that we currently have with the EU. I want to see International Trade Department officials more involved in the thinking about what we are doing with the EU, because that would be of great benefit to the Government and the country.

In conclusion, we need to trust in business and in the ability of businesses to adapt, to innovate and to lift their eyes beyond the current horizons. We need to trade with both the EU and the rest of the world. We need to say no to protectionism, because free trade has driven global growth around the world over the past 150 years, and it is misguided to think that there are not tremendous consumer advantages as a result. We need to be there for our farmers. We need to make the most of the derogations from normal restrictions on subsidy for items such as marketing to ensure that our farmers and producers can get the best prices around the world for their high-quality produce. We must not hang them out to dry. We also need to focus on the tremendous opportunity that leaving the EU gives us to make our way in the world in a different way. We can be best of friends with the EU and best of friends with the rest of the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

The hon. Lady will know that the vast majority of nations represented in the WTO accepted the deposit of our schedules. Some did not and we are entering article 28 negotiations with them, as is completely normal. We can trade on those schedules as deposited until then—the European Union has been trading on uncertified schedules since 1995, so it should not impede our trade. Yes, negotiations will continue to agree those tariff rate quotas.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

You have had a bit of a week, Mr Speaker—we all have. May I take this opportunity to wish you a very restful Christmas and a happy new year?

Does the Department for International Trade accept that what one needs for international trade is willing buyers and sellers? Has the Department made any estimate of how much lower food prices will be to British consumers if we leave the European Union without the withdrawal agreement?

[George Hollingbery]

The situation after a hard Brexit— a no-deal Brexit—is a complex one and will rely on a large number of factors. Some Government policies have yet to be absolutely finalised. The pricing of goods in the UK market, particularly for food, is regarded as extremely sensitive, as indeed are the incomes and livelihoods of farmers throughout the UK who rely on selling those products.

Royal Yacht Britannia: International Trade

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock]

The public say they are not supportive of the recommissioning of the yacht. That does not take into the account the running costs, which it has been suggested will come from several Departments, including the Department for International Trade. If the intent is to take the capital spend and running costs from elsewhere in the public purse, where will that blow fall? Given the austerity fetish that the former Chancellor inflicted on all of us and the reported comments of the current Chancellor that he intends to deliver on all of the already planned cuts, where exactly is the spare cash to come from? And how exactly does anyone square the fact that benefit sanctions mean that the poorest, weakest and most disadvantaged people are left to go cold and hungry, but we will all be paying for what must seem to them a new pleasure cruiser for the royal family? This is just a wistful throwback to the days of the Raj, a pleading with history to run backwards and ignore the dodgy bits on the way. This is a rosy-tinted fiction of a time that never was, a fond imagining that empire was a good thing and that fine gentlemen rise to the occasion upon demand.

It is reminiscent of John Major’s thoughts when he said,

“Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and—as George Orwell said—‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’ and if we get our way—Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials.”

He was actually talking about why the UK should remain in the European Union. The current fantasy is a fairy story from the imagination of Brexiteers who imagine the UK has only to denounce the EU to rise again to great heights.

The sad and sorry Britannia plan sounds like the regrets of someone who has missed their chance drawing the tattered remnants of their dreams around them for whatever warmth they can offer while the world rushes by uncaringly. Flash-boat democracy has no place in the modern world, which has changed utterly from the day in 1997 that Britannia was decommissioned. We have emails, electronic trading, smartphones with more computing power than the moon landing craft, and entire businesses that exist only online. This is a different world from the world in which the yacht was decommissioned, never mind the world in which it was commissioned in the first place.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is obviously having a lot of fun with her caricature. She may have noticed that both Mr Letts and Mr Hope are scribbling down furiously everything she says. None the less, did she not hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) said about the possibilities of the new royal yacht for creating more business opportunities, more revenue, ultimately more tax revenue and therefore more money for the Government for nurses and teachers?

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I also heard that Blair Force One is still current. I cannot see why that is not being used, as apparently it should be, for trade throughout the world.