Oral Answers to Questions

Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mark Garnier)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the very good trading relationship we have, and hope to continue to have, with Israel. The Prime Minister announced the trade working group when the Israeli Prime Minister visited earlier this week, but it is worth bearing it in mind that the EU already has a trade arrangement with Israel, and this is something that, in the first instance, we would look to continue. I am sure, however, that there will be many opportunities to improve on that, given that that trade deal was done between one country and 28 countries, whereas a bilateral deal will be easier to negotiate.

[Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State promised that Parliament would have the opportunity to debate the important comprehensive economic and trade agreement between the EU and Canada on the Floor of the House. Unfortunately, he broke that promise and the debate was sidelined to an obscure Committee of the House earlier this week. Given that the UK will soon be responsible for negotiating its own international trade deals following Brexit, what assurances can the Minister give the House that parliamentarians will have an opportunity to scrutinise such trade deals fully in the future, and not be afforded the discourtesy we unfortunately were in relation to CETA?

[The Minister for Trade and Investment (Greg Hands)]

It was not an obscure Committee; it was a two-and-a-half hour debate in Committee Room 10 following the proper procedures laid out by the House. I remind the hon. Lady that, at the end of the debate, she failed to oppose CETA, yet the Scottish National party in yesterday’s deferred Division voted en masse against it. Like the official Opposition, it changed its position on something that has been debated for eight years now within the space of merely 24 hours.