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  • Andrew Bowie – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Andrew Bowie – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Andrew Bowie, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to have had the opportunity to listen to this debate, to contribute to it and, indeed, to close it on behalf of the Government, especially as I am doing so as the first Scottish Conservative Minister outside the Scotland Office for some 25 years, since the noble Lord Lang of Monkton, who served as Secretary of State for Trade in John Major’s Government.

    May I start by thanking all Members for their contributions? It is clear from today’s on the whole positive debate that, on the whole, Members agree that the UK’s trading relationships with Australia and New Zealand are good for this country and for the world. In particular, the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) was right: trade has enabled the development of civilisation and human progress, and we need to make the case for it much more strongly. As the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) said, the trade deals that we are debating will bring positive benefits to our respective countries and economies. We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who is a walking example of the positive benefits that antipodean trade can bring to this country.

    The agreements will remove tariffs, make it easier for British businesses to invest in Australia and New Zealand and deliver growth to every part of our country. They will also address trade barriers faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, such as lengthy costs and procedures, and allow our citizens to work more freely in both countries, thanks to new environmental commitments for businesses and travel. In short, the deals provide real benefits to real businesses and our respective countries at large.

    Before I address the points about scrutiny and environmental protections on which most of the contributions have been focused, let me turn to the contribution by my friend on the Scottish National party Benches, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). Time and again, SNP Members turn up to debates on trade deals and ask questions in the Chamber and elsewhere, professing to be friends of Scotland’s farmers and to be standing up for Scottish agriculture as champions of rural Scotland. There is just one problem: the record shows that, sadly, contrary to the rhetoric, the SNP are no friends of rural Scotland and Scotland’s farmers.

    Drew Hendry

    Is the Minister able to name one single amendment that the Government have accepted from the SNP on any trade deal?

    Andrew Bowie

    I would like, instead, to run through how the SNP are failing Scotland’s farmers, given how strongly the hon. Gentleman professes to be championing them. If they were friends of Scotland’s farmers, they would have voted with us, as the National Farmers Union of Scotland wanted them to do, on the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill. If they were true friends of Scottish farmers, they would have listened to the National Farmers Union of Scotland, which has accused the SNP Government of operating in an “information void” due to the lack of information and slow progress of Scotland’s post-Brexit agriculture Bill. They say that they are friends of Scottish farmers, but when did the Scottish Government’s own agriculture and rural development board last meet? It was 10 months ago. That is absolutely shameful.

    In only the last two months, the SNP has been criticised by Scotland’s rural bodies for having no plan for rural economic growth and no plan to support Scotland’s pig farmers. Its policies threaten thousands of hectares of good agricultural land. Let us remember, too, that it would take Scotland’s farmers back into the common agricultural policy. I suppose that without Westminster to blame, they would need to join the EU in order to have somebody to point the finger at.

    Drew Hendry

    Will the Minister give way?

    Andrew Bowie

    I will not.

    The SNP are not champions for Scotland’s farmers. They are political opportunists who think that they can still get away with professing one thing in this place and practising another in Scotland, tied as they are to their Luddite partners in Government, the Green party. The SNP is not pro-farming; it is anti-business, anti-growth and, as we know too well, anti-trade.

    Deidre Brock

    Could the Minister explain, in this middle of his diatribe, exactly what he will say to his constituents in his rural constituency about the contribution of the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), which contained startling revelations that will not please them?

    Andrew Bowie

    In my 1,900 square mile rural constituency I have regular interactions with farmers—probably far more than the hon. Lady has in her Edinburgh North and Leith constituency. I will turn to the comments by the former EFRA Secretary in due course, but we will hear no more from the SNP on what is in the best interests of Scotland’s farmers.

    Our trade deals balance open and free trade with protections for our farmers. As I have said, I have immense respect for my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for EFRA. I listened intently to his concerns about the trade deals, but I have to take issue with him and defend officials in the Department for International Trade, all of whom, without exception, are dedicated to bettering the trading relationships for this country. They all, without exception, have this country’s best interests at heart and are working day and night for this country.

    I also point out that Australian and New Zealand beef and lamb suppliers are already working hard to satisfy demand from the booming Asia-Pacific markets on their doorstep. New Zealand already has a significant volume of tariff-free access for lamb to the UK market, but used less than half that quota in 2020. None the less, our deals include a range of protections that collectively allow us to apply higher tariffs to protect UK farmers for up to 20 years.

    George Eustice

    The Minister is absolutely right that, at the moment, New Zealand uses only about half the tariff rate quota available to it. That being the case, why would it have been such a big deal to require an enduring TRQ of Australia and New Zealand that was generous but within a fixed envelope?

    Andrew Bowie

    My right hon. Friend has an incredible amount of experience in this field. I would be happy to take up the issue with him outside the Chamber following the debate.

    Our deals include a range of protections that allow us to apply higher tariffs to protect UK farmers, including tariff rate quotas for a number of sensitive agricultural products; specific additional protective measures for beef and lamb products, which will provide further tariff protections to our farmers; and a general bilateral safeguard mechanism that will allow the UK to increase tariffs or suspend their liberalisation for up to four years in the unlikely situation that the farming industry faces serious loss from increased agricultural imports. On top of all that, there is still the option of global safeguards under the WTO.

    I will now turn to the points raised about environmental, animal welfare and food standards. I stress that we will never compromise on these critical protections—

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    You have!

    Andrew Bowie

    No, we have not. That is why our trade deals include specific measures to uphold them.

    Before I go on, I must quickly correct the record. Earlier, the Minister for Trade Policy, who unfortunately has a prior engagement in his constituency, said in response to an intervention from the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) that the climate change agreement in the deal was Australia’s first. It is not; it is actually Australia’s second. It also has an environmental chapter in its agreement to the CPTPP. In addition, the Trade and Agriculture Commission has separately confirmed that our free trade agreements do not require the UK to change our existing levels of statutory protection in relation to any areas.

    I now briefly turn to scrutiny, which is incredibly important. Contrary to the description of the right hon. Member for Warley of the scrutiny process, and always remembering that CRaG was introduced by Labour, the Government have made extensive commitments to support robust scrutiny of all new free trade agreements. These commitments greatly exceed our statutory requirements and we have met every single one.

    I hear and understand the concerns of the hon. Member for Rochdale and I accept the challenge to go further and do better, but the Australian FTA was examined by Parliament for more than seven months and the scrutiny period featured reports from three Select Committees. I praise the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) and it is sad that the Chair of the International Trade Committee, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), is not in attendance today.

    Drew Hendry

    It is important to make it clear that there have been substantial travel disruption and difficulties from Scotland today, so it is unfair to single out an hon. Member who has been hit by that.

    Andrew Bowie

    I thank the hon. Gentleman; I was about to reference the travel requirements. I was not blaming the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar for not coming, but it is sad. I am genuinely disappointed that he is not here to intervene on me at the Dispatch Box today.

    By the end of the New Zealand CRaG period, hon. Members will have had the opportunity to examine the detail of the New Zealand deal for eight months. Of course, His Majesty’s Government also welcome the fact that we have a debate on both trade deals today.

    It has been a privilege to speak in today’s debate. Our free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand are game-changing deals. They demonstrate that the UK is a confident, outward-looking, free-trading country that is ready to grab the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, and that we are a nation that is using the power of free trade to the benefit of great British businesses and the wider world—and as the right hon. Member for Warley said, to the benefit of all our people.

  • Gareth Thomas – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Gareth Thomas – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    After a decade of economic mismanagement, with the chaos at the top of the Conservative party and the kamikaze Budget backed so enthusiastically by so many Government Members, and with so many entrepreneurs worried for the future of their businesses, millions facing rising energy bills, weekly shops shooting up in price and rocketing mortgage costs, it was striking that there was not one word of apology in the opening speech from the Minister on the Front Bench, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands).

    This has none the less been a fascinating debate, not least for the contribution of the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), who made a powerful and devastating speech that blew away the bluster and complacency that has characterised Ministers’ descriptions of the benefits of the Australia free trade agreement. He said that it was

    “not actually a very good deal for the UK”,

    and that Ministers had given away

    “far too much for far too little”.

    He underlined those criticisms by going on to point out that unless we recognise the failures of the Department for International Trade, we will not learn the lessons necessary for negotiations with other countries over other free trade agreements, such as, importantly, the CPTPP accession discussions. He rightly noted, as many others did—I will come back to the contributions of others—the weaknesses of the scrutiny process and crucially how it weakens the hand of British negotiators, which is a point we made during the passage of the Trade Bill back in 2020.

    We on the Opposition Benches will table amendments on Report of the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill to reflect some of those concerns and to give the House the opportunity to begin to put right some of the weaknesses in the CRaG process.

    George Eustice

    In my contribution, I also pointed out that article 32.8 was a very strong clause in the agreement. It gives any British Government the unbridled right to terminate and renegotiate this agreement at any future point. Can the hon. Member say whether it is his party’s position to trigger article 32.8 and renegotiate the agreement?

    Gareth Thomas

    We will always want to get a better deal and to seek better trading links between our country and Australia, and I will come on to that point a little further on in my speech.

    Let me reiterate that this debate is happening only because all sides of the House have voiced consistent frustration with the failure to have proper scrutiny of the Australia free trade agreement in particular. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), as well as by the hon. Members for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord).

    Back in 2020, the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham, who is not in his place, effectively said “Watch my lips” in the Trade Bill Committee as he opposed more robust scrutiny rules. His approach was one of effectively saying, “You can trust us to give Parliament proper opportunities for scrutiny.” Not surprisingly, his assurances quickly turned to dust. The previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), ducked scrutiny by the International Trade Committee eight separate times. The Government, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) set out in his opening remarks, triggered the scrutiny period of 21 sitting days for the Australia FTA before the International Trade Committee had even had the chance to publish its assessment, and despite Ministers regularly assuring us that this would not happen.

    We know, too, that the last Secretary of State was not alone in wanting to avoid tough questions. The architect of the deal, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), cancelled meetings with farmers during her leadership campaign to avoid feeling their wrath about the deal she had negotiated. Let me reiterate that we support increasing trade with Australia and New Zealand. With two progressive Labour Governments, who would not want to support stronger ties with both? They are crucial allies and our ties have always been deep. We share security interests, and our culture and values are similar—enhancing our partnerships with both is only to be welcomed.

    As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley underlined, free trade agreements carefully negotiated can open up new opportunities for British business, creating jobs for our constituents and generating vital tax revenues to fund our public services. Well-negotiated FTAs open new routes for supply chains, create better access to crucial raw materials and encourage innovation, but they are not zero-sum games. Time after time, Minister have failed to be open and honest about which parts of the economy will benefit under their negotiating priorities and which will not.

    Under the previous Labour government, trade grew by 10% and exports almost doubled. After 12 years of the Conservatives, trade has grown by just 3% and growth in UK exports is lagging behind virtually every other major nation. We and, given the widespread concern, the country expected better than Ministers delivered on these FTAs. Ministers do not get a free pass. These deals have gradually exposed a Department for International Trade whose Ministers have lost sight of what is best for Britain.

    Exports are fundamental to delivering economic growth and the good jobs that are crucial to tackling the cost of living crisis, yet Ministers pushed through cuts to business groups that support British exporters and prioritised Instagram photos on trade missions over meeting British businesses. We on the Opposition Benches hear time and again the frustration of British businesses, which note the greater help that other Governments give their businesses to export—a point that the former Exports Minister, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), made this summer. During the recent evidence sessions of the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill Committee, business bodies repeatedly raised their concerns. To underline those concerns, figures for Germany, one of our biggest export markets, from January to September this year, compared with the same period in 2019, show a 27% increase in US exports to Germany, a 23% increase in EU exports, and just a 2% increase in British exports.

    Instead of addressing those concerns and others about the FTAs, Ministers were busy attacking each other. Even for a Conservative party as disunited as this one, it was a new low when the previous Secretary of State for International Trade toured the TV studios accusing the then Minister of State for International Trade, the right hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), of being lazy and not up to the job. We can only hope that the new ministerial team is willing to learn lessons from how these recent trade deals have been negotiated.

    I have to say, however, that the opening speech was not encouraging. It was a speech that Arthur Daley would have been proud of at his best. Apparently the greatest deal in Britain’s trading history has been secured against all the odds, yet the reality is that the New Zealand FTA will increase our GDP by just 0.03% and the Australian one by just 0.08%. Given the Conservative Government’s disastrous handling of the economy, any help to improve our chances of economic growth is welcome. In particular, progress on digital trade, locking in customs and trade facilitation arrangements that minimise paperwork and the somewhat easier rules of origin for manufacturing goods, notably car parts, are welcome.

    The sad truth, however, is that in the rush to get a deal—any deal—signed with Australia, Ministers did not push crucial British interests. Once again, the interests of the Conservative party took priority over the needs of the British people. The National Farmers Union said that the deal does “little for farmers” and

    “simply opens up UK markets for Australian produce, whether or not produced to the same standards that are legally required of UK farmers”,

    and that

    “the UK government has missed the opportunity to reach a genuinely innovative and world-class FTA with Australia”.

    The huge giveaway to Australian farmers led Australian negotiators to boast of their success. It is as if Ministers have turned their backs on rural communities and decided that farmers did not matter in these negotiations. There is little on labour rights, even less on human rights and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen, the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and others have pointed out, little on climate change.

    The Opposition have been struggling to find things to praise the new Prime Minister for. After all, his is far from an impressive record: billions of pounds-worth of fraud on his watch as Chancellor, and huge tax rises and cuts to public services coming. However, his argument that the Australia deal was one-sided might briefly risk some consensus across the House.

    There were other points of detail that Ministers did not bother to prioritise getting right. There is nothing substantive on securing protection for great British brands such as Whitstable oysters, Scotch whisky and Cornish pasties. On steel, the rules of origin that Ministers agreed mean that unlike most modern FTAs, Britain cannot import semi-finished project, roll it in the UK and export it tariff-free to Australia, making it harder for steel made in Britain to be sold to Australia. All the while, there are no similar restrictions on Australian steel entering our markets.

    As we heard from the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth and many other Members across the House, this deal could have been much better and Ministers need to learn the lessons from these FTA negotiations.

  • Richard Foord – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Richard Foord – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Honiton, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    Farmers across the UK, but particularly in my part of Devon, are deeply concerned by how the Government have approached these new trade deals. Let us cast our minds back to 2016, when we were told that a veritable land of milk and honey awaited us and that new trade deals would be easy to sign. Since 2016, the Government have signed a number of trade deals, but let us look at the detail of that apparent success. Almost all those deals have been roll-overs aiming to maintain the terms we already had. Only four of the trade deals are new, including the Australia and New Zealand deals that we are discussing today—hardly the boom in export trade we were promised.

    The Government’s approach during negotiations with Australia and New Zealand seems to have been to sell out British farmers left and right—and then some—to try to clinch a deal. These trade deals are more about attempting to garner positive headlines than supporting our world-leading agriculture and fishing industries. Both deals will see farmers across the west country undercut as produce made to lower standards will be allowed to flow into the UK.

    The Government claim they will not water down our food and animal welfare standards—and on paper they may well not—but where does that leave farmers in reality? It will be almost impossible for our farmers to continue to compete on such an unequal playing field, particularly given the increased costs that are making everyone cut back. It is frankly ludicrous to suggest that UK farmers will benefit from these deals when they tie not one, but two hands behind their backs. Add to that the Government’s botched implementation of the payments with the new environmental land management scheme, which is already pushing many farmers to the brink with cuts to the basic payments, and we have a recipe for disaster for our farmers.

    The upside in exchange for all this pain and misery set to be inflicted on rural communities by both these trade deals is a whopping 0.11% increase to our GDP. That is a drop in the ocean compared with the turmoil it will cause here at home. Many farmers across Devon are already struggling to make ends meet, yet with these deals, this Conservative Government have shown that they either do not get it, or simply do not care. More than 64,000 people across the south-west work in agriculture, and many are seeing their future put at risk owing to botched trade deals such as this. The New Zealand free trade agreement gives the opportunity for tariff-free import volumes to rise to 165,000 tonnes by year 15. That, combined with 125,000 tonnes from Australia, is almost the entire volume of lamb consumed annually in Britain. As the chief executive of the National Sheep Association said earlier this year,

    “neither does it win on our aspiration for high standards, climate change targets, or reliable food security.”

    Farmers across my part of the world will never forgive this Government if they continue down this deeply destructive path. As mentioned by Members previously, this debate today is not even a full debate. We are not discussing a substantive motion, as requested by the International Trade Committee, so everything we say here will not prevent the Government barrelling ahead with these plans anyway. We must ensure that this House and its Members have the final say on the trade deals we are discussing, and we must ensure that our aim is always to negotiate deals that protect and support UK farming and fishing, rather than bartering away those arrangements.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    The first thing to say about international trade deals nowadays is that they are not just trade deals. They are comprehensive agreements on how countries will co-operate and how they will grow together. They are dynamic deals that will set the future course of the respective countries. They are, of course, very similar to the deals we had with the European Union in many respects, but with less scrutiny, less oversight and less public participation.

    That can be more acutely demonstrated when we compare these trade deals with the deals the European Union is busy getting on with now. We can see that the European Union’s deal is much more advantageous to the European side than this deal is to our side. Why is that?

    Anthony Mangnall

    Speak up for this country!

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    My colleague on the International Trade Committee says I should speak up for this country, as if I should be some ambassador for the Government, ignore how they are running down this country and only talk about the good things. I am afraid that is not the role of the Opposition and of Opposition parties. What we do is lay out how we would benefit our country if we were in power, and what we would do better for our country where the Government have failed.

    Let us talk about things that could have been included in this deal, but were missed—first, food standards. In this deal, animal and food standards are frozen in Australia, because this deal gives Australian producers a competitive advantage. While they will not go backwards, why on earth should they desire to improve their standards above ours? That gives them no advantage. Rather than saying, “We will slowly reduce barriers as you meet the standards that we are getting to,” it says, “You have absolute access to our markets, and don’t worry, you don’t need to change your standards either”—that is, apart from some wishy-washy wording about some long-term desire; mañana, mañana. We all know what those clauses mean: nothing. The only thing that matters is hard trade law, hard tariffs and quotas, and on that, we have been let down.

    In fact, when we asked the Australian negotiating teams what they thought of this, they said, “All our red lines were met; we compromised on almost nothing. It is a fantastic deal.” Well, yes, it is a fantastic deal for Australia. If one side has all of its red lines met and the other does not, it is clear who the winners and losers are.

    We could have gone further on free movement of people. The extension of our current visa arrangements for the free movement of students from two years to three years is pretty pathetic. Free movement should be afforded to countries that are of a similar economic situation to us—that is why we had free movement with Europe—and that have similar flows. We have similar numbers of people going to Australia and of Australians coming to us. The expansion by only one year is pretty pathetic and will not make much difference for most young people, who already had the right to two years and could extend it in Australia if they worked on a farm. It is pretty miserable and unambitious.

    The same can be said for climate change. In the Australia deal, the wording is weaker than, and does not go beyond, the Paris agreement. Australia is a country of similar economic and legal profile, and it now even has a Labour Government—unlike us, but not for much longer, I hope—so why can we not negotiate something better? The clauses on climate change are the kinds of things that we would expect from negotiations with countries that are much harder to negotiate with, such as China or India—countries that are much more problematic on climate change.

    Drew Hendry

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about climate change. Does he not find it incredible that all the concerns that might have been raised about climate change and the Paris agreement were scrubbed in the haste to get the Australia deal through so the Government could meet some arbitrary deadline?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Exactly. I must wrap up— [Interruption.] Oh, I will continue, then. I thought you were giving me the eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    That is exactly the problem. If we have higher climate change standards, workers’ rights or environmental standards, and we have free trade with another country that has lower standards, all we are doing is exporting British jobs, opening the door and saying to companies, “Don’t worry about our climate change rules, our carbon trading or the standards we expect you to meet. Go and set up your companies in that other country, and we will still import all the goods and services.” That is an unemployment note for British workers, and the Government are signing it constantly, with country after country, because they are obsessed with getting deals over the line rather than with the quality of those deals.

    Tony Lloyd

    The environment chapter ought to have been capable of actually changing the climate change debate in Australia, so it is disappointing that it has, quite frankly, no teeth whatever. What does that say to countries with which we might want to negotiate to stop deforestation, mining coal and so on?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Exactly. Australia is a deep friend of ours. I spent hours outside the Australian embassy for the last elections, canvassing and campaigning for the Australian Labour party, which is now in government—although I do not think that success is all down to me. I regularly meet our counterparts in the Australian Labour party, and I am proud to say that not only are they friends, but my senior researcher is from that party and now works for me. There are strong links between our systems and our people. If, with friends, we cannot negotiate a deal that has teeth on environment and climate, we have no hope whatever when dealing with much more difficult countries.

    This is partly because of the Government’s refusal to have proper parliamentary scrutiny. First, there was no need for them to trigger CRaG, because the agreement cannot be put in place until we have passed the enacting legislation, which has not even come back for Third Reading. The Government forcing through CRaG without parliamentary scrutiny was just arrogance on the part of Ministers and the Government—there was no other reason for it. They show the same arrogance to the International Trade Committee, which, time and again, they refuse to come and speak to. I cannot ascertain whether it is the arrogance of Ministers or the arrogance of senior civil servants—maybe it is a bit of both—but it is clear that the Department for International Trade has shown in this process that it is not fit for purpose and needs a real overhaul.

    I am quite in favour of some of the ideas that the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) set out. We should have a Department of trade, of foreign negotiations, or probably of foreign affairs—a Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one might say—that co-ordinates expertise in other Departments, such as the former Department for International Development. I was in DFID negotiations on the environment and on the Rio process year in, year out, all through our European period, and our colleagues in DFID led many of the discussions on the oceans and biodiversity. It had real expertise in those negotiations. We should have been using it. We have failed in the environmental chapters of this agreement because we did not leverage the fantastic negotiators as well enough as we have in other Departments.

    The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth was also right to say that proper scrutiny in this place can help the Government’s hand. I remember when I was a trade unionist, and we would want our members to lay out strong, hard lines to us so that when we went into negotiations with the employer, we were able to say, “Look, I am the reasonable one here—I am trying to get to an agreement—but my members are livid; they are angry; they are fuming. You need to give me a bit more so we can strike this deal and avoid any action.” It is the same process in trade deals, but the Government’s refusal to use us means that they have sold this deal short.

    Finally, I will touch on procurement. In the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill Committee, we heard that some of the wording on procurement puts British companies in a worse position than they are currently, and I will briefly explain why. There is already a global agreement on procurement under which British companies already have the right to bid for procurement contracts in Australia. Those agreements require that if a company has worked up a credible bid that is then rejected, the company can claim certain costs. This trade agreement excludes those particular words. Of course, a company will probably go to the Australian courts or to our courts, where they will be able to argue their case, but the insecurity of different wording in different agreements now means that although a French company would have a 100% cast-iron guarantee of protection, because it is part of the same global agreement on procurement, a British company would be insecure in that protection.

    In some areas, the agreement not only falls short of what we want, but actively sells our country short. That is why the agreement is such a shame; that is why we should have gone further; and that is why, if we had had earlier debates, none of this mess from the bungling lot on the Government Benches would have happened.

  • Sarah Green – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Sarah Green – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Sarah Green, the Liberal Democrat MP for Chesham and Amersham, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    It is a shame that this is not the substantive debate, culminating in a vote on a substantive motion, that many have called for, because in the recommendations made and questions posed so far in this debate, hon. Members on both sides of the House have demonstrated the value of proper parliamentary scrutiny of major treaties.

    According to the impact assessment of the New Zealand deal, it will have a limited but positive impact on the UK’s economy. Understandably, businesses are keen to capitalise on the new opportunities. The Federation of Small Businesses is right to say that for our small exporters—and those wishing to start exporting—to take full advantage of new opportunities, the Government must ensure they are supported with the practical changes that will allow them to succeed. I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to provide “practical advice and support” and dedicated websites for small businesses.

    I would, however, like to ask for more detail about the nature of that support. Adapting to changes in exporting to the EU post Brexit is an issue that several local small business owners in Chesham and Amersham have raised with me. They have pointed directly to the inadequacy of Government support services, with one local business telling me at length how it understood the system better than the so-called experts advising it. I hope lessons have been learned and that the support on offer in relation to these new agreements will be of higher quality than previous efforts.

    The impact assessment of the New Zealand deal states that the marginal net gains come at the price of a reallocation of resources away from agriculture, forestry, fishing and semi-processed foods. Of course it is unrealistic to expect that every sector will be a winner in every trade agreement, but it is important that we pay attention to those who will not benefit and will potentially even lose out, so that we can support them and the communities that rely on them.

    In order to do so, I support the International Trade Committee’s call for the Government to alter their economic modelling to provide a more detailed assessment of how deals will impact different sectors of our economy and the diverse regions and nations that make up the United Kingdom. In Wales, for example, the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand may have a devastating impact on its world-class lamb industry. The impact would not be limited to the industry itself, but would also affect the communities underpinned by the lamb industry, including many Welsh-speaking communities.

    Indeed, if we are to judge UK trade policy by the two new agreements we have signed so far, it appears that farmers are set to lose out the most. The National Farmers Union warned us that the Australia deal set a “dangerous precedent” for future free trade agreements as far as farming is concerned. The New Zealand deal only furthers those concerns: with the cost of producing lamb 63% lower in New Zealand than in the UK, it is little wonder that our Welsh lamb farmers are concerned about this agreement and the tariffs it eliminates. Taken together, the impact of both deals on UK farmers, who already face rising production and labour costs, will be stark.

    One way the Government could provide reassurance is by outlining an overarching trade strategy, as the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) said. Agreements do not exist in a vacuum and nor do their impacts. A clear, overarching trade policy should include a vision of the opportunities that new UK trade deals will bring to all sectors and regions of the country. It must outline our economic ambitions while also including minimum standards on human rights as well as environmental, labour and safety standards.

    Importantly, that strategy must also act as a guide for negotiators, setting out a clear benchmark for success in negotiations. We cannot continue selling out entire industries for marginal overall economic gain, nor should we continue negotiating agreements in the absence of a strategic goal, and we must not allow agreements to come into effect in the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny.

  • Tony Lloyd – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Tony Lloyd – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Tony Lloyd, the Labour MP for Rochdale, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to see the newly branded hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) in his place. His language is a degree more restrained than I am used to. Perhaps I can speak a bit for him in making the points about scrutiny. Let us be honest about this: parliamentary scrutiny of these two trade agreements has been woefully inadequate. That is because of a lack of commitment by senior Ministers throughout the process to expose themselves to the Select Committee and, more generally, to scrutiny. That matters enormously. It is also a matter of fact that the process itself is inadequate not simply because of the lack of political commitment, but because there is not the capacity to hold Ministers to account, to hold the Government to account and to hold the negotiators to account.

    The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) made some telling comments. I do not wish to put him in a difficult position but he was forthright in what he said today. He talked about the process and its failure to adequately reflect inter-departmental concerns and the fact that there was some failure in the political process, as proper account was not taken of the multiple needs that a trade agreement should address. That is the source of the concern over how we have operated scrutiny. We know that, post Brexit, the Government were in a hurry to establish that the UK was a nation that could negotiate trade agreements. That is not of itself anything to criticise the Government for. What we can criticise them for is the haste and recklessness with which that process went ahead, and their determination to say, almost irrespective of what trade agreements emerged, that those trade agreements were optimal; clearly, in no sense could anyone put that view forward.

    In introducing the debate, the Minister talked about our being at the forefront of international trade policy. That rings very hollow when we know that the protections that the EU gained in terms of its relationship with New Zealand—the trade agreement and so on—were better for the UK agricultural position than those that we obtained as the UK. The idea that we are at the forefront of trade policy is, therefore, bogus and ridiculous. We have to learn the lessons from that. We have to learn we can do better.

    One thing that Ministers have to take away from this debate is the need for a genuine trade strategy. On the basis of these two trade deals, it is impossible to see what the UK’s trade strategy is all about. I agree with those who said that every trade deal is going to have its own specific characteristics. That is inevitable. Even the New Zealand and Australia trade deals are not the same. It will be very different when we come to the CPTPP negotiations and when we come to negotiate with Mercosur and Brazil—the frameworks within which we operate are bound to be very different.

    However, it is possible for the Government to share their overall strategy with the House. Some of the things such a strategy would address are obvious. Earlier, an hon. Member intervened to make a point about food security. In a world that is changing and where climate change is devastating the capacity to produce the food that the world needs, food security for our nation has to be fundamental, yet that is not written into any trade strategy that the Government have come up with. There is a need to balance the advantages and disadvantages not simply for the nation as a whole, but for different parts of the nation. That has to be fundamental. The agricultural parts of this country have very different needs from, say, the service sector of the City of London. It may be that we make great gains for the City and, objectively, nobody can be against that concept, but we will be concerned about the impact on communities if we see disruption of the employment base and of the capacity of our agricultural areas to operate in the way that we need as a nation.

    Where is the strategy that allows us to see the Government’s ambitions for regional distribution? We know that there is very little reference in these two trade deals to the impact on Northern Ireland. That is such a serious matter when we are debating—whatever our different views are—the validity of the Northern Ireland protocol. How is the protocol going to be affected by these two trade deals? That is a matter of fundamental importance. But it is simply not there—it is not in these two agreements, or even in the way the Government are prepared to discuss trade policy. Across the piece, we need an international trading strategy that allows us to establish what our basic national interests are, and they are not there in either of these trade agreements.

    If we look beyond these agreements, we will hopefully sign over the coming years many different and beneficial trade agreements, but they must be set against the objective standards of how we balance national interests. What is the national interest? Who are the winners and who are the losers? What do we do when there are losers, as there always will be in any deal that changes the terms of trade? On that basis, what do we do to protect the communities that are detrimentally affected by such changes?

    Getting into the specifics of the two agreements, one remarkable thing is how much the Government have been prepared to trade away in a way that we did not see from the European Union. We know that the protections that the EU demanded, particularly for its own agricultural base, were very different from those that the UK obtained. Other hon. Members have already gone through the details of the tonnage that would be allowed, but we have ceded control in ways that the European Union simply did not.

    I do not want to re-run the Brexit argument, but clearly Britain would have been better off within the European Union and with the EU’s negotiating position than with our own. That has to be a fundamental critique of and challenge to the capacity and competence of this Government. A simple conclusion would be, “If we cannot do better, why not?”. Ministers have not answered, or even attempted to answer, that in this debate.

    Across the piece, we have gained relatively minimal benefits. Nobody can be against the concept of trade deals, but the benefits are minimal compared with what we have given away and what we could have negotiated better. My challenge to Ministers in this case is to own up. They have not done the work they should have done; politics and the need to gain political advantage by seeming to come up with rapid agreements have been put ahead of careful and skilful negotiation.

    We need to get back to the fundamentals, because the way these two trade deals have been done cannot possibly be the template for the future. The real challenge is the fact that we need to do so much better in future. If this new grouping in the Department for International Trade are the Ministers we really want there, and are better than their predecessors, the question for them is why they cannot do better, because better they could have done, and better this nation of ours should demand.

  • Anthony Mangnall – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Anthony Mangnall – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Anthony Mangnall, the Conservative MP for Totnes, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar). I did battle against him in 2017, and he sent me running. I am pleased to be in the Chamber with him to discuss something on which we are of one heart and one mind.

    I am partly here as a member of the International Trade Committee. Our Chair appears to have thrown his toys out of the pram and has not come to debate the very thing that he has asked about for the last 18 months. The Committee has done a huge amount of work over the two and a half years in which I have been a member. We have produced reports on scrutiny, on the New Zealand and Australia agreements, on UK Export Finance, on inward foreign direct investment and on digital trade and data. The reason for these reports is because we are signing trade deals at a rapid rate of knots, not too fast, as the Opposition might paint the picture, but steady progress. We are signing deals that will be of huge benefit to the UK service economy, to our producers, to British consumers and to the British public, and we should talk more about that.

    The International Trade Committee is attempting to keep up with the Government’s ambitious programme to ensure that we are able to produce reports for this House. I agree with every point raised by the right hon. Gentleman on scrutiny. We have to have a conversation in this Chamber about scrutiny, which is not to be feared. If anything, the expertise in this House would be of huge benefit to both the Government and the Department for International Trade. The whole point of the International Trade Committee’s work is to be a critical friend by considering what works and what does not work, to try to strengthen the Government’s position through our reports and engagement sessions, and by consulting widely with experts across the United Kingdom.

    We all wish to see the United Kingdom strike the most effective trade deals, although that might not be the case for SNP Members, who do not seem to support any trade deals at any time. I was accused of having ample dexterity in saying that I want to see scrutiny, but the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), who is no longer in his place, started his speech by saying he is pro-free trade. I have never before heard the SNP give us such a line, because it is clearly not the case. The SNP says it wants to be part of the EU, but leaving the Union of the United Kingdom is the only thing that will cause an economic catastrophe for Scotland.

    I welcome the opportunity of this debate to talk about the Australia and New Zealand trade deals. So often in this country we talk about import impacts rather than export opportunities, of which I believe there are many. We must talk them up. We hear the Opposition highlight that Members and Ministers of the Australian Parliament have saluted their trade deal, suggesting that we have got the wrong end of the stick and that Australia has got the best side of this deal. If the Opposition started promoting the positive elements of this trade agreement, we might find that people have a little faith in it. Scratch the surface of the trade agreement, and we will find there are huge benefits.

    The International Trade Committee’s most recent report made five recommendations. I asked the shadow Minister about the role of CRaG, which was introduced by the Labour Government in 2010. We need to have an open and frank cross-party discussion about what new system we might be able to put in place. If we are not going to use the mechanism that has been promised, we might as well consider an alternative measure. I ask the Government, with the greatest respect, if we are to ignore having a votable motion, could we at least have general debates during the CRaG process so that we can talk about it before the deal is ratified? That would send a positive message to all of us who return to our constituencies to talk to farmers and businesses that might be concerned. That, at least, would be a simple thing to put forward.

    We must also ensure that there is scrutiny and that Ministers turn up on time to the Trade Committee. We have had problems. However, as has been said, the Front-Bench team we have in the Department for International Trade is truly excellent. I have worked with a number of them on a number of occasions and it is reassuring to know that they take these points seriously. I have those conversations with them both in public and in private.

    There is a valid point to be made on ensuring that Departments are joined up when it comes to trade deals. That was not always the case. The Committee certainly did not feel it was during the Australia negotiations. It was, however, better on the New Zealand negotiations. On the point about having a joined-up negotiating objective as a one-size-fits-all, I am less than persuaded by that. We have to be flexible in looking at the needs of each and every trade deal we end up signing.

    We need to look at where the Australia trade agreement benefits us. As the Minister for Trade Policy, who is no longer in his place, said, 82% of our workforce and 80% of GDP are in financial services. That is where this deal strikes incredibly well and effectively. We will have greater access—more than ever before—to Australian markets. From architecture to law to financial services, we will be on an equal footing. That could increase UK service exports to Australia by £5 billion. Additionally, it cuts the bureaucracy that so many small businesses have been frustrated about.

    Mobility offers the opportunity to support economic growth and recovery, and opportunities for people in Australia and people in the UK. It is worth noting that, under the new travel arrangements, which are based on reciprocity, there will be a youth mobility scheme; an innovation and early careers scheme; an exchange pilot; and a working holidaymaker initiative. I go back to what the right hon. Member for Warley said: the purpose is that there will be side initiatives where we can look at how to expand this. Trade deals, once signed, are not static; they evolve over time. We must remind ourselves that what was signed recently does not necessarily have to be the trade deal that we live with for the rest of our lives. We can steadily improve the deals and must look to do so. We should certainly be heading in that direction when it comes to the visa arrangement and shared professional qualifications.

    Deidre Brock

    Does the hon. Gentleman seriously think that that is in any way compensation for the loss of freedom of movement, and of the workers that we were getting from Europe, as a result of the disastrous Brexit deal his Government have negotiated?

    Anthony Mangnall

    We have a trade and co-operation agreement, a free trade agreement, with the EU, which is important to note—and which the hon. Member voted against. We also have a significant amount of opportunity to welcome people. The whole point is about having control. If we are going to sign up to new relationships with countries around the world, we want to be able to do so through the Commonwealth and through countries that have shared ideas and views about the world, and we should welcome that.

    A point was made by a Member from Wales, whose constituency I cannot remember off the top of my head, about our inability to bid into Australian government contracts. I am afraid to say that that is incorrect. Within the terms of the Australian trade agreement, businesses in the UK will be able to bid into Australian government contracts worth up to £10 billion a year. That is the most extensive expansion the Australians have ever agreed in any free trade agreement in the world.

    On the point about farming, I bow to the knowledge and experience of the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), but I was surprised that we did not hear more about the Trade and Agriculture Commission that we set up. I hope that that might be the vehicle by which we can ensure better scrutiny, and better enhancements and support for farming. We need to look at that issue. We have certainly had extensive negotiations in the Trade Committee about how we can use that.

    George Eustice

    Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we were to try to strengthen the Trade and Agriculture Commission, the right thing to do would be to move it within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and away from the Department for International Trade, so that it could have access to the technical knowledge and expertise that it said was denied it in the first assessment?

    Anthony Mangnall

    I will be in such dangerous territory if I give a straight answer to that—I am looking to see whether the Whip is behind me. I might say that there is significant expertise on the Trade and Agriculture Commission already and it is not for me to discuss how it is structured and in which Department. However, the issue was rightly raised by the former Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and it gave a lot of hope to many Members with rural constituencies. We should use that Committee, and I know the Government take it seriously when it produces its reports.

    We talk at great length about the flow of people, ideas and goods when it comes to the CPTPP. In these fractured and difficult times, it offers huge benefits: a significant opportunity to ensure that we can strengthen our relations in the Asia-Pacific, encourage the diversification of supply chains away from China and encourage greater trading between those countries that share like-minded ideas.

    I could go on for a lot longer about the New Zealand agreement, but I will touch on just a couple of things briefly. Not many Members in this debate have mentioned the huge benefits that have been secured in digital trade. If we want to see where the United Kingdom has really led the world, just look at the benchmarking of what has happened in the UK-Singapore digital trade agreement. The terms in the New Zealand agreement are truly extensive. They will make an enormous difference to countries around the world, and perhaps an enormous difference to CPTPP, which may end up using those terms.

    On the environment, some Members have said that perhaps Australia has lower standards. I do not look forward to the moment when Nicola Sturgeon goes on one of her ridiculous trade missions to Australia, after hearing the comments of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey about Australia and its standards. The New Zealand trade agreement is the first environmentally ground-breaking agreement in a free trade deal anywhere in the world, yet not a single Opposition Member has mentioned that.

    Drew Hendry

    Is the hon. Gentleman denying, for example, the animal welfare issues—how animals are treated differently, how they are raised and how they are transported—and the additions that are used in pesticides and the antibiotics? Is he saying that is not the case?

    Anthony Mangnall

    I am saying that when the hon. Gentleman compares the standards of Australia with those of Brazil, that is a massive insult to Australian markets and farmers. I do not think we should do that. When we compare other countries, we must not talk down our Australian counterparts. We must work with them.

    Drew Hendry

    The hon. Gentleman might want to withdraw that comment because I have not compared Australia with Brazil at any point in the debate or previously.

    Anthony Mangnall

    As I heard it, the hon. Gentleman used other countries as a reference and said that Australia was one of the worst. I am happy to go through the record in Hansard to look at that and I will certainly do so tomorrow.

    It was also said—the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said this as well—that we are tying ourselves in knots in having paper documentation in relation to our trade deals. This is exactly the reason the Government are introducing the Electronic Trade Documents Bill, which small and medium-sized enterprises across this country have welcomed.

    I have taken up far too much of your time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the purpose is to state we must look at our trade deals in the round. We must look at them as opportunities to expand. We must ensure that we talk them up, not down, and, above all, we must ensure that all the businesses in our constituencies are aware of how they can use the support from the Department for International Trade to reach new markets. Businesses that go further afield are more resilient in all times—good and bad.

  • John Spellar – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    John Spellar – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by John Spellar, the Labour MP for Warley, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    Trade is one of the issues that, from time to time, erupt in British politics. Indeed, in some areas it has dominated political discussion, and it has twice split—torn apart—the Conservative party. After all, that is why we had free trade halls in many of the great cities of the industrial north and midlands.

    There is a strong case to be made for open trade, and I sometimes wish the Government would make it more strongly, both in general and in detail, and particularly in relation to the opportunities it presents. We have heard a great deal about some of the possible problems, and I shall come on to those shortly, but there are also opportunities for our industries and services, which were mentioned a moment ago by the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford).

    We have to recognise, and we should be making the argument, that trade has been a major engine of human progress for millennia, and has driven prosperity, innovation and a flow of ideas. It has enabled the development of civilisation. When people advance arguments against trade, one almost wonders whether they consider that the industrial revolution was desirable and right and a great advance in human progress, but although there were considerable and well-documented costs to that development, fundamentally humanity benefited and moved forward. We need to be advancing those arguments, not the arguments of people who want to return to some idyllic pastoral age, which was actually never much of an idyll at all, because we have certainly made great progress as a result; and if we are going to do that, we have to say, “Who better to do such deals with than Australia and New Zealand?”

    These are countries with which we share huge affinities, connected with families and relatives, and with which we have shared service and security and intelligence relationships over several centuries. They are countries with similar legal systems and similar values that work together in the wider world. There may be some difficulties, and I am pleased about—well, not pleased; in fact I am slightly dismayed, but I suppose I could also take some partisan pleasure in them—the revelations of the utter inadequacies of at least one of the Ministers involved in the trade deals, who made the fundamental error in negotiations—any negotiations—of believing that getting a deal is more important than the contents of the deal. That is a recipe for failure in business, and it is a recipe for failure in government as well. I therefore hope that Ministers may now learn the lessons from that period. It was not even the deal, but the photo opportunity it presented, that seems to have been most important, and we definitely need to move beyond that.

    Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)

    Does the right hon. Gentleman think that this may also reflect the fact that for many years the UK has not needed negotiating teams to go into the negotiating rooms on behalf of the UK to make trade deals, and that that naivety may in part—along with Ministers’ overenthusiasm—have resulted in poor terms in this trade deal?

    John Spellar

    I take the hon. Lady’s point about the shortfall in technical skills. The hon. Member for Mole Valley identified certain failings in at least one individual. I am not qualified to comment on that, but I am perfectly prepared to believe it. There was certainly a technical deficit—because trade deals have been undertaken by the European Commission on behalf of all member states—but that was exaggerated, and indeed made far worse, by the obsessive and indeed utterly irresponsible attitude of the Trade Secretary at the time. Unfortunately, the Conservative party then saw fit to put that same individual in as Prime Minister, where those same negative qualities completely imploded the Government and demonstrated why the description of her as a “human hand grenade” was so apt.

    There was a discussion earlier about several of the common factors between our countries, and they include labour standards. The developments in Australia are enormously encouraging, because some of the reductions in labour standards that were brought in by the previous conservative Government there are now being rolled back and trade unionism is being encouraged. I am sorry that the Minister for Trade Policy has just left the Chamber. When he was describing the talks with the United States, I thought he missed an opportunity to say that the UK and US trade union movements were involved in those talks in Baltimore and Scotland. I know that was at the insistence of President Biden and the American trade team, but I hope that this Government will have learned the positive advantages of having representatives of the trade union movement involved in those discussions and that they will include them in future discussions with countries that have comparable effective and free trade unions, because that has enormous value in getting the right sort of deal.

    The fact that we need trade deals, that we need to have trade, and that Australia and New Zealand will be excellent partners does not exonerate the Government from their inadequate performance, which has been described in several previous debates and again here today. Also, it is not just about getting the deals; it is also about enforcing them. Another area where this Government and others have failed considerably is in allowing China into the World Trade Organisation, with the various qualifications that that required, and then allowing it time and again to breach the conditions under which it joined up, until it became much more difficult to take action because it had grown its economy, quite often by violating those deals as well as by using industrial espionage to steal intellectual property.

    I want to touch on scrutiny. I fail to understand the Government’s reluctance to face scrutiny on this. They have a big majority, and the farming influence is not so dominant on their Back Benches, but in some of these deals they have a case to make. Given that we are not exactly overburdened with parliamentary business from the Government, because they do not seem to have got their act together, I do not understand why they are having these debates now and not at an earlier stage in order to defend their position—for example, to talk about some of the other benefits of the deals.

    Visas for professionally qualified people have been mentioned. I have said in a previous debate that, where there is enough commonality in training, we ought to be asking the professional bodies what additional training an individual might need. They would not need to fully requalify; they would need only to undertake the necessary training to deal with any differences. This would encourage the movement backwards and forwards of professionally qualified people and encourage training in all our countries.

    I fully accept that Ministers have a difficult task in remedying some of the deficiencies from the Truss era, but I hope that they will learn the lessons from these agreements and take them forward in future discussions, to ensure that they improve both the process and the substance as they focus on the deals.

    Notwithstanding that, I hope both sides of the House—the new shadow International Trade team, as I said back in September, is a great improvement on some of our previous shadow International Trade teams, in having a generally favourable view of trade but a critical view of the detail—can then go forward and, bluntly, not follow those in the Chamber whose only answer is to go back to the EU, which has many of the problems associated with these trade deals. Trade deals are not easy, whoever we do them with. Can we just dump the ideology a bit and focus on the practicalities, for the benefit of our people not just in rural areas, very important though they are, but in our great towns and cities across the country?

  • Paul Beresford – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Paul Beresford – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Sir Paul Beresford, the Conservative MP for Mole Valley, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    That was a really disappointing speech from the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). I was interested to hear the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), who is obviously deeply into the debate—much more so than I am. I thank the Minister for his quick and enthusiastic cruise through it, which was a present for us on his birthday.

    The UK’s trade with New Zealand is particularly long-standing. It took off with the first refrigerated shipment of meat in a boat that set sail in 1882, loaded with sheep. It was called the Dunedin, as I hope the Scots with us will have noticed. Sadly, it disappeared at sea with all crew in 1890.

    I may not have the same knowledge as some other speakers, but I have a personal interest, as my accent shows. I hold a passport from both countries—New Zealand and this country—and many people think from my accent that I am Australian, so I guess I can add that in as well.

    New Zealand and Australia were and are huge agricultural producers. There used to be a huge market in the UK for lamb and milk products, but now the spread is very much broader. I have just been to New Zealand, where many farmers are looking to this country to help to fill their portfolio for the EU, so I have no fear. Before the UK entered the Common Market, as it then was, Australia and New Zealand provided the UK with huge trade in lamb and milk products—Anchor is one of my favourite butters. In return, the UK sold manufactured products to New Zealand and Australia. British manufacturing, particularly of cars and household goods, dominated. That was the norm, and I see the opportunities in these deals as a return to the norm.

    The kith and kin links and the support that Australia and New Zealand gave to the UK in the two world wars may help us to understand why both Commonwealth nations are sympathetic to us. When the UK went into the Common Market, the loss or diminution of the UK market was sorely felt. They did not like it—they were aggrieved—but when there was a reduction in both countries’ trade, they did not just sit on their hands; they went out and got other deals. More than 100 nations are now on their trading list and they are key members of the TPP, which has been mentioned several times today. That could be important to us, because our links could help us to get in on the partnership.

    The new agreement will give UK manufacturing, tech and services companies access to the antipodean markets and, importantly, open access for UK professionals to live and work in Australia and New Zealand. Equally, it will open the door to Australasian professionals, including medical and dental professionals and accountants—and dare I suggest rugby coaches for Wales and Scotland? I thought I might get a bite there.

    My Mole Valley farmers were deeply concerned that opening the doors to tariff-free imports would swamp the UK agricultural sector, particularly for dairy products and to some degree for beef and sheepmeat. Fortunately, as the Minister has pointed out, the agreement includes staggered phasing of tariff reductions, which is particularly welcome. Having just been to New Zealand, I can say that it is quite apparent that it will want support from our products to fill its quotas for the EU.

    The UK needs to push its goods in both countries. For example, New Zealand and Australia’s roads are currently dominated by Asian-manufactured vehicles. I have asked people there why they are not buying British. The answer is “We will when the prices come down and the tariffs come down.” With this tariff reduction, we have a chance to take our share and more, but we have to use it. We have to get out there, and we have to push our products in those two countries. I am willing to offer my services as a translator—because their English is difficult—or even as a trade envoy. The opportunity is there, but we have to go out and get it.

  • Drew Hendry – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Drew Hendry – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Drew Hendry, the SNP spokesperson at Westminster on International Trade, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    May I extend my birthday wishes to the Minister, too? I will not ask him how many candles are on his cake, but I am afraid that I cannot hold a candle for the defence he gave for these deals. It seems that I am not alone. In addition to the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), there seem to be many more Tory critics; I will refer to a few of them in my remarks.

    First, a general debate is no replacement for genuine parliamentary scrutiny. The Government have failed to provide that, even though it was promised. The deals, lumped together in the debate, are one-sided and a betrayal of farmers. They threaten food security and animal welfare, reduce consumer confidence, find climate change expendable and do nothing to mitigate the enormous losses of Brexit. Quite possibly, they are also breaking international law. Yet again, no reason is provided to support this further exercise in UK self-harm. They simply double underscore the increasing risks of the UK and the need for Scotland to become a normal, independent country and to rejoin the world’s most successful trading bloc, the EU.

    Let me cover those points in order and in more detail. When I say that they are one-sided deals, I am, as we have heard, quoting the current Prime Minister. He was right. Of course, given that his party is in power, he was also being generous. These are awful deals. They are unmitigated disasters. That is why the Government are refusing to allow Parliament to vote on them. These deals are the legacy of the previous Prime Minister and make as much sense as the infamous mini-Budget.

    Anthony Mangnall

    The hon. Member is making a point about whether we can vote on the deals. The reality is that having a vote on them would not change anything, as he full well knows. We are leading people down a path without clarifying how, under the CRaG mechanism, the votes would make no changes to the trade deals that we are debating.

    Drew Hendry

    I admire the hon. Member’s dexterity. Having been in the House when he has quite rightly criticised the lack of scrutiny offered by the Government, I understand that he is now in the employ of the Government and must sing a different tune. The fact of the matter is that this is not good enough.

    Anthony Mangnall

    Will the hon. Member give way?

    Drew Hendry

    No, I am going to make some progress.

    Given that his party was in power, the Prime Minister was, as I have said, being generous. These are awful deals. They are unmitigated disasters and that is why Parliament is not getting the chance to scrutinise them properly. They will do similar harm as the mini-Budget to the sectors concerned. The current Prime Minister also said that they

    “shouldn’t be rushing to sign trade deals as quickly as possible”.

    We agree, but wait a minute: he is the Prime Minister! Why, then, is he allowing this to proceed? If he does not agree with it, is not letting it go through just another part of a grubby deal for power? It makes no sense otherwise.

    The Government are keen enough to tear up deals such as the Northern Ireland protocol, yet they will not get around the negotiating table on these deals, even though they can do so. These deals are bad, very bad, for our farmers and food producers. The National Farmers Union president, Minette Batters, says of the Australia deal that

    “this is a one-sided deal. When it comes to agriculture, the Australians have achieved all they asked for and British farmers are left wondering what has been secured for them.”

    And well might they wonder.

    She went on to say of the New Zealand deal:

    “The government is now asking British farmers to go toe-to-toe with some of the most export orientated farmers in the world, without the serious, long-term and properly funded investment in UK agriculture that can enable us to do so. This is the sort of strategic investment in farming and exports that Australian and New Zealand governments have made in recent decades.”

    This has a knock-on effect on our food security. These deals are bad policy at the worst possible time. The laissez-faire, couldn’t care, get it over the line Brexiteer ideology has de-prioritised domestic food production in support of importing cheaper—for now—lower standard food. That is dangerous and should be put on hold immediately. It sets a thumpingly bad precedent. The rest of the world is watching and wants the same one-sided access that has been squandered here.

    Anthony Mangnall

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

    Drew Hendry

    If the hon. Gentleman wants to pick up on that point, I will give way.

    Anthony Mangnall

    I will, on food security. That is exactly why the Government passed, in the Agriculture Act 2020, the need to report back on food security—so that we could review the situation and ensure that this country has a full and complete level of food security. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, actually, that shows that we are taking it seriously, rather than ignoring it?

    Drew Hendry

    It will come as no surprise that I do not agree with the Government Member. These are damaging deals. They are one-sided and other people will want access.

    Talks are ongoing with India, Brazil, Mexico, the Gulf states, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership countries and Canada. Will they now accept less than has been offered here? This might just be the damaging start of the process. No wonder the National Audit Office report says that the UK Department for International Trade is “taking risks” in its haste to sign new deals.

    This is bad for consumers. Research by Which? found that 72% of people across the nations of the UK do not want food that does not meet current standards coming in through trade deals. And boy, do standards differ! In Australia, animal welfare standards are well below what is expected of our producers, particularly on pigs, eggs, sheep and beef, with cramped sow stalls, battery cages, the painful mulesing of sheep, huge herds of cattle in zero-grazing feedlots, and permissible live animal transport times that are twice the length of ours. Australian poultry farmers use 16 times—I repeat, 16 times—more antibiotics per animal than our farmers. The UK Government’s own advisers have voiced concern about the impact on UK farmers of the overuse of pesticides in Australia, including 144 highly hazardous pesticides.

    John Spellar

    But do we not also import chicken from countries with very questionable standards, such as Brazil, from which we also import beef, and Thailand? Are there not, even within the EU framework, considerable variations in animal welfare standards?

    Drew Hendry

    If there are variations in standards, they are certainly nothing like this. The line that the right hon. Gentleman intervened on was 144 highly hazardous pesticides.

    Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise, given that the former Prime Minister who brokered the deal employed the former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, as a trade adviser. Incidentally, I do not think that the Australians will return the favour. Abbott is a notorious climate sceptic. That is why the deal gets worse and worse, leaving aside all the obvious food miles involved in all the imports. He is on record as saying, when he was Australian Prime Minister, that his main role in trade talks was to ensure that his negotiators

    “weren’t sidetracked by peripheral issues such as…environmental standards”.

    It looks like he succeeded on both sides of the world—that is little surprise with this fracking Government, whose Prime Minister had to be shamed into attending COP27. Australian oil and gas production is set to increase substantially until at least 2030, with dozens of new coalmines, yet there is nothing on that on the UK Government’s agenda. It is no wonder that even Tory Lord Deben, the chair of the Climate Change Committee, condemned the Australia deal as “totally offensive”.

    The Scottish Government called on the UK Government to prioritise the Paris agreement commitments, but the UK Government signed this deal with nowt. Indeed, we know that they actively scrubbed all the concerns in haste to get the deal signed, as departmental emails prove. There are no legally binding, enforceable climate change conditions in either deal. As I said, it is no wonder that they do not want the deals to be scrutinised. They may, however, have broken international law through the lack of scrutiny. They will probably just shrug their shoulders, of course, like their Prime Minister and former Prime Minister, because they are getting pretty good at lawbreaking on that side of the House. A formal complaint will, however, be heard by the Aarhus convention compliance committee.

    These tragicomic deals are put into even sharper focus for this Brexit and bust Britain by the deal that the EU has just signed with New Zealand. Yes, you guessed it, Madam Deputy Speaker—it is on better terms than the UK deal, with actual farming safeguards. In the first year of the agreements, the UK will allow 12,000 tonnes of New Zealand beef into the UK, whereas the 27 EU countries will allow only 3,333 tonnes between all of them. By year 15, the UK will allow a whopping 60,000 tonnes, while the EU will have capped imports at 10,000 tonnes and will still apply a 7.5% tariff. The EU has secured a better deal on beef, sheep, cheese, butter and more.

    Let us look at what we have lost through Brexit. In the EU, about half of our trade used to be paperwork-free, but 100% of trade is now bundled up in red tape. For every £490 of damage from the loss of EU trade, the deals combined will realise £3 at best. Scotland’s food industries are being painfully punished for something that Scotland voted against. Fruit and vegetable exports to the EU are down by more than half, and dairy and eggs are down by a quarter. Brexit is a disastrous economic hit that Scotland should not be forced to endure. As for the deals we are debating and those planned, we call on the Department for International Trade to publish an impact assessment of the free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, and the proposed free trade deals with the CPTPP, India and Canada, with a particular focus on food and farming, showing the anticipated effects in all four nations.

    The UK Government must stop gambling with Scottish farming, food production, manufacturing and trade. They have failed to protect our brands. They have gambled with food standards, workers’ rights and protections. They are reckless over the environment and climate change, and, as has been so obvious, they have turbocharged inflation and threatened people’s wellbeing, as well as diminished their household budgets. And yet, they have the brass neck—the utter cheek—to say that we should have supported this place, so often in a race to the bottom, especially in this international lunacy and trading failure.

    People in Scotland can see that the risk is not in being a normal, independent country, but in remaining shackled to Westminster. They see that these one-sided deals do nothing for our farmers, damage our food security, lower standards, fail on animal welfare and climate change, possibly break international law and do nothing to mitigate the eye-watering costs of Brexit. The deals cannot be supported and it is clearer than ever that Scotland must return to the EU as an equal and normal independent country to escape Westminster’s basket-case ideologies.