Trade Agreements

Baroness Fookes Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has withdrawn, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, when granting the data adequacy decision, the European Commission imposed a four-year sunset clause over fears of UK divergence from GDPR standards, especially in transfers of data to third countries. The Government are none the less forging ahead with international agreements on data transfers such as with the US, the trans-Pacific partnership and Asian countries. Their recent digital policy paper envisaged the Information Commissioner having a key role in communicating the benefits of data sharing—there was me thinking that the Information Commissioner’s role was to safeguard privacy rights. Have the Government done an assessment on the dangers that their data policies could pose to the adequacy decision?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is a little over-pessimistic about where things stand at the moment. The latest trade figures, which came out last week, show that our exports to the EU are now well above the average levels of last year and are almost at the levels of 2019 and 2018. Our business has done a great job in dealing with that. I have never sought to hide the fact that leaving a customs union creates new barriers. I am very happy to see that our businesses are dealing with them very successfully. They are different in nature from barriers within a country, and that is the difference between some of the effects that we are seeing with our exports to the rest of the European Union and the chilling effect on trade within the United Kingdom because of the way that boundaries currently operate.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.