Future Free Trade Agreements — House of Commons, 2019-02-21
Topic: Foreign Trade
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Absolutely. My hon. Friend is correct about that. This whole area needs to be fully assessed, as the impacts are as yet unclear. If the Government are looking for trade agreements in our time, we might wake up some while after we have concluded these agreements with whole areas of the economy that we currently rely on being devastated and with the shock of having to realign, which would take a number of years to do. This would have huge impacts on people’s lives, as we saw in New Zealand. There may have been an idea that with New Zealand agriculture an easy and seamless change could be made, but that certainly was not the case Before entering into any free trade agreements, the Government must be clear about the relative weight they intend to give to different sectors in the UK economy and about the geographical spread. I could say a number of other things about the UK-US agreement, but I recommend to you our report on it as bedtime reading one of these fine evenings, Mr Deputy Speaker. Of all the reports that any Committee has produced, the International Trade Committee’s reports are the best, and the UK-US one is one of the better of the best, so I am sure you would enjoy reading it from cover to cover. I can see nodding and I am very pleased To keep the bedtime reading going, my Committee is currently working on an inquiry on trade with Australia and New Zealand. This is a keen inquiry and, since its launch, we have received 46 pieces of written evidence and heard from 10 witnesses, over two evidence sessions. We have focused on wine and agriculture to start with. Something interesting came up about wine exports from Australia and New Zealand to the EU. A number of these exports come to the UK in bulk, where they then get bottled in England and are exported on to the EU. Of course, the problem might be that if the UK is outside the customs union and single market, the wine that is coming from Australia and New Zealand, and currently providing jobs in England, might have to be re-routed elsewhere in the EU to enable it to be bottled without picking up tariffs as it crosses the border into the EU member states. The dairy industry in the UK felt that such an agreement might not be a huge priority for it, but Fronterra, a New Zealand-based dairy company, said: "We see a New Zealand-UK FTA as a great example for setting a benchmark for a high-quality, ambitious FTA for the UK." We are also fortunate that George Brandis, the Australian high commissioner, has been paying attention to this, at least he was when he was here earlier. Australia is very keen to have a fairly simple FTA with the UK that has few carve-outs. Agriculture is said by the Australians not to be a major interest for them, as they have so much else of the world to service. Perhaps therefore we might, just like the Americans did with them, carve out a number of areas, and so agriculture might not be part of it. Australians say that it is not such a huge concern for them, but it is a concern for us. When they dealt with America, over 14 months, a number of carve-outs were made by the Americans, on pharmaceuticals, on the investor-state dispute settlement and on sugar access. So people will pursue their own interests and needs in trade agreements You will be upset to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Committee has not looked very much at the CPTPP. We have not had time to do that, but we will be addressing it. It will certainly be discussed with the Secretary of State, who is due to appear before us again on 6 March. There are a number of areas where trade is being altered by the political choice made by two of the nations of the UK to take the whole United Kingdom out of the EU. This is seen, by all sides, as being damaging to the economy. The one thing that gives me hope is that even Brexiteers nearly all agree that the option of a hard Brexit on 29 March is damaging to the economy. The Secretary of State himself said it would damage the economy. Others have said it would be catastrophic, and a number of other adjectives have been used to express the same fear. At least Brexiteers are starting to see that some Brexit options are bad. When we give them the hard percentages, they see also that the upsides of trade deals and trade policies are not quite the same as trade. I hope and pray, and appeal to them even at this late stage, that the thing they really want to do, to save the upheaval and damage to the economy, is simply revoke article 50. An amendment to that end will be tabled next week. I appeal to Liberals, Greens and those who have talked about the people’s vote or extending article 50: it is too late, the damage is under way. They are all agreed that economic damage is coming. The revocation of article 50 could be done in an afternoon and it would save us all. So, Mr Deputy Speaker, 21 minutes after starting my speech, I am finished.