Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of seeking a comprehensive trade agreement between Commonwealth member states.

There is already a strong 'Commonwealth advantage'. Members on average benefit from a 21 per cent reduction in trading costs, and 27 per cent higher bilateral investment within the Commonwealth. The UK has taken a range of actions to strengthen this. We have agreed trade deals with 33 Commonwealth countries and introduced the Developing Countries Trading scheme (DCTS) in 2022 - which benefits 18 Commonwealth countries. Our assessment is that a Commonwealth-wide Free Trade Agreement would be extremely hard to achieve; we will instead continue to prioritise practical steps which will benefit intra-Commonwealth trade and investment.