Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what progress her Department has made on developing economic relations with the Indo-Pacific region.

We are putting the UK at the centre of a network of modern relationships in the Indo-Pacific, including through the negotiation and implementation of Free Trade Agreements (such as the UK’s recent accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership). In addition to joining CPTPP, we are breaking down market access barriers for UK businesses which will help to increase exports from UK companies into the Indo-Pacific, and encouraging investment from the Indo-Pacific into the UK that will boost science and technology, clean energy and levelling up objectives. We also introduced the Developing Countries Trading Scheme to provide lower tariffs and simpler rules of origin requirements for exporting to the UK.