Trade Agreements — House of Lords, 2019-02-14
Topic: Foreign Trade
Rona Fairhead (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given to an Urgent Question in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Trade. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, as a member of the EU, the UK currently participates in around 40 free trade agreements with more than 70 countries. In 2018, the trade agreements in force constituted about 11% of our trade. These cover a wide variety of relationships, including: free trade agreements; economic partnership agreements with developing nations; association agreements that cover broader economic and political co-operation; and mutual recognition agreements The Government’s programme for providing continuity and stability for businesses, consumers and investors in our international agreements is of the utmost importance. We are committed to ensuring that those benefits are maintained, providing for a smooth transition as we leave the EU, but the best way to provide that continuity and stability is to ensure that we have a deal with the European Union so that the UK can remain covered by all those agreements during the implementation period We have already signed a number of agreements, including with Switzerland—the largest in terms of our trade flows, representing more than 20% of the value of all our rollover agreements. We have also signed agreements with Chile and the Faroe Islands and an economic partnership agreement with eastern and southern Africa—ESA. The text of these agreements, the explanatory memorandums and the parliamentary reports for them have already been laid in the Libraries of both Houses As we leave the EU, we have no intention of making our developing country partners worse off, as the Opposition would have us do, and it is important for the prosperity of their people that we maintain our trading relationships so that they have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. We have recently reached agreements with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and we intend to sign those agreements shortly. We have also signed mutual recognition agreements with Australia and New Zealand and will be closing two with the United States soon. A number of negotiations are at an advanced stage. All international negotiations—indeed, any negotiations—tend to go down to the wire, and I would expect nothing less from these agreements. That is the way that countries do business To put the economic value of the agreements in perspective, the countries covered by 20 of the smallest agreements account for just 0.8% of the UK’s total trade. For those countries where we may not be able to get a full agreement signed by exit day, it is responsible to ensure that we have contingencies in place should we end up in a no-deal scenario. That is exactly what my department, alongside the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, is doing. We will shortly be updating businesses and the House about progress on these agreements and will continue to inform the House as soon as further agreements are signed".