Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Pitkeathley and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for putting forward this amendment. We should also be grateful to other colleagues in the Chamber for asking key questions on this.

Bad trade deals produce clear winners and losers. Surely our task is to make sure that British businesses, including those in Northern Ireland, do not lose out in trade agreements and face unnecessary costs. British businesses have faced an incredibly tough year; the pandemic in particular has seriously impacted on UK trade. We have seen big falls in exports and imports in the three months following April 2020; the ONS found that trade exports fell by £33.1 billion in those three months, while imports fell by £29.9 billion. These were the largest three-monthly falls since comparable records began in 1997. Trade will be vital for businesses in the post-Covid recovery period. The Government should make sure that businesses do not face unnecessary costs arising from trade agreements.

I am glad that the Minister has said previously that the Government have committed to publish their negotiating objectives alongside an initial impact assessment. Can he confirm that a full impact assessment for each agreement will be published by the Government at the end of negotiations? Will this full impact assessment be reviewed by an independent body? Will the Government act on any findings that come as a by-product of the review?

There are clearly major problems for Northern Ireland. Does the Minister expect different costs for businesses exporting or importing goods and services to or from Northern Ireland to result from an EU-UK FTA and any rollover agreement for the Japan agreement? Other businesses in the rest of the UK will clearly be affected by this.

The amendment’s explanatory note also refers to additional costs to businesses operating within the UK’s internal market. Labour firmly believes that there is a need for a strong internal market so that businesses can trade freely across the UK’s four nations, which will be vital for our economy and shared prosperity. This will be discussed at length in the Internal Market Bill, which has some important implications for this Bill.

I hope that the Minister is following these debates closely. I hope that we can be reassured that the impact assessments will be transparently conducted and published, and that the Government will take note of their findings. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I accept that there are costs both ways, but we need transparency. That transparency will enable our businesses to trade better, more freely and more competitively.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for International Trade (Lord Grimstone of Boscobel) (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment, put down by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. As I told the House on the first day of Committee, and as we have touched on since, our continuity agreements seek to replicate the effects of EU agreements, and the 21 agreements that we have already signed show that we are not diverging or introducing new obligations. These agreements are continuity by name and continuity by nature. We therefore do not think it proportionate to produce impact assessments for trade deals that only maintain the status quo. I emphasise that point because I will come to other free trade agreements later.

This is not to say that we intend to deny Parliament information on these agreements. That is why the parliamentary reports that we have committed to publish alongside signed agreements contain detailed information about the volume of trade, the composition of imports and exports, and the wider economic impact of those agreements. As I have said, we will continue to lay these parliamentary reports voluntarily, with Explanatory Memoranda, alongside each new continuity agreement. The recently signed new agreement with Ukraine will of course be treated in that way.

New FTAs are not included in the scope of the Bill—neither are the EU arrangements—but we have committed to publishing in advance of opening negotiations initial economic scoping assessments for the new FTAs setting out what impact we believe the agreements might have. At the end of negotiations, we will produce an impact assessment for the final treaty, alongside an Explanatory Memorandum, prior to it being laid before Parliament for scrutiny under CRaG. The Government believe that this strikes the right balance.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, asked what kind of independent assessment will be made of these assessments. I am pleased to say that those assessments will be made by the Regulatory Policy Committee. I can also let the House know that the International Agreements Sub-Committee has already received these assessments in relation to the Japan FTA, which we signed a few weeks ago. These agreements and reports have been made available to the IAC on a confidential basis. We committed that the committee would have these agreements to review in good time before the CRaG process started; I am pleased to say that I had a good meeting with the IAC yesterday where we talked through these processes. I look forward to receiving its report in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked various questions relating to trade with the EU, particularly on customs arrangements and other contingency arrangements, including Northern Ireland matters that will arise at the end of the transition period. If I may, I will write to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness on these matters.

Given these reassurances, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.