Trade Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-13
Topic: Foreign Trade
Jeremy Purvis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for moving this amendment. It has allowed us to generate a very high degree of cross-party support, and it is to be commended for that. I will try to respond to a valid point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, with regard to how reports are put together and where they best fit. I hope she does not mind me saying from these Benches that she made a good point, and that she can accept that, but maybe we need to just tweak it. If we tweak it, we may generate overwhelming consensus on this point I preface my remarks by referring to the work of the new all-party parliamentary group, which was so well laid out by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. I declare that I too am an office bearer for that group. I commend the noble Lord, other members, and the International Chamber of Commerce on their energy and direction in getting this group established. The noble Lord will forgive me if I ask that he does not invite me to any 4 am calls with the group, but I will be glad for him to send me the minutes of any discussions. In a moment I will touch on why that might be important I have been involved in politics since before I was elected as a Member of the Scottish Parliament representing the Borders constituency, an area extremely rich in textile heritage and industry. Having been born and brought up in that region, I have an enormous admiration for exporters. They are in many respects unsung heroes and the work that they do in supporting the UK economy can never be overestimated. They are not only men and women who trade, but pioneers searching out competitive new markets. They have to overcome many barriers, from languages to what can be very bad behaviour by companies in other countries, often on very low margins. They are at the front end. We can perhaps help them with getting cross-party support in our new trading relationships going forward from next January. I hope that the all-party group will focus on that I hope the Minister knows that I am sincere when I say that I will look at the Japan agreement. I will be looking at whether we are securing better market access for our textile exporters as well as guaranteeing Japanese market access to ours. As for myself and many friends of mine in the Borders, we are still stung by the multifibre agreement and the "cashmere wars", and we know some of the challenges. This has been a long preface, but I am passionate about this In many respects, the support that we need to give our exporters as we go forward will be meaningfully different from what it has been in the past. I want to reflect on the different profile of trade. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned this; I want to add some figures that I have seen from the WTO, which are quite stark. Between 1995 and 2015, the overall global most-favoured-nation tariff rate had declined from 6% to 4%; the tariff reductions had been very good. However, over a fairly comparable period from mid-2000 to 2015, non-tariff measures had grown from just over 1,000 to 2,500 as recognised by the WTO. By and large, that is because countries that are becoming more prosperous regulate their own domestic markets, introducing more standards—this links with the debate on the previous groups. On the one hand it is harder to export to those markets; on the other, those countries are operating on a basis comparable to us. In many respects, the support that we give to our businesses allows them to understand some of these markets much more and to navigate their way around the non-tariff measures that those countries have put in place. Our whisky industry has become expert at this. In many respects, the Government learn as much from our whisky industry as many other businesses can learn from government about how to operate in the competitive global market; as we go into the "new world", this will be important. As much as we want to advance and support our exporters, our competitor countries are doing that as well if not better.