Negotiating Objectives for a Free Trade Agreement with India

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, both on securing the debate and on the excellent report that has formed the basis of it.

One omission in the agreement that I was slightly surprised by—perhaps I have missed it—is to do with commercial aviation aircraft. The leisure sector is one out of which the UK would stand to do extremely well. It seems slightly odd that, as an area that might be very much in the interests of the UK, it is not on the table. I would be interested to hear where we are in that regard.

I fear that this agreement generally falls into the basket of the other agreements that we have debated in this very Room before, where there is a certain lack of symmetry in what the agreement proposes to do for the two parties. To me, that is a matter of great regret. This was an opportunity where we could be seen to remove the barriers—and not just tariff barriers, as one of my noble friends said. As my noble friend Lord Caithness said so eloquently, it is the non-tariff barriers in these free trade agreements that often lie at the root of the problem.

I want to give a couple of examples in this regard, if I may. This issue was picked up by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, who was of course not privy to our long debates on both the Trade Act and the internal market Act, as they now are. We want to see opportunities. I declare my interest as a non-practising Scottish advocate; I had wonderful opportunities to work in the European Union and have, I hope, benefited from that in my work in this House. It is interesting to note that paragraph 51 of the report clearly states that

“the Law Society of Scotland called for changes to the Indian visa system to open up the Indian market for legal services and stated that an FTA should build on mobility commitments made by India under the ASEAN-India FTA.”

I would very much like to know what the Government’s response to that is. My noble friend the Minister will remember those debates because he was privy to them and sat patiently through them. Having had the door to the European Union closed in many respects, there is potentially an opportunity here for legal practitioners on both sides of the border between Scotland and England to benefit. What was concluded in the committee’s report is very powerful.

I was taken by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said at the outset: that the test will be whether it is easier to do business with India afterwards. Again, I would like to see that on the basis of reciprocity, which brings me to my key point. The NFU is on the record as saying as far back as January this year that a trade deal with India

“could offer huge opportunities for UK farmers to export more quality UK food abroad”.

In its view, however, it is absolutely “vital” that any deals maintain the

“principles of high animal welfare and environmental protection and ensure these are upheld for imports too.”

I was slightly concerned by my noble friend Lord Frost’s comments. I may have misheard him but I think he said “even if it makes life tougher for existing businesses”. I welcome him to this place with open arms but I sometimes think that it would have done him enormous good to have gone out there, fought an election campaign and found out what is acceptable on the doorstep and what is not. In the last election, under the outgoing Prime Minister, what was acceptable on the doorstep was that we would have the highest possible animal welfare and environmental standards in our food production. To me, the corollary of that is what is good enough for producers in this country. A million people signed the petition organised by, I think, the NFU. What is good for home production and what consumers want to see in this country is our imports also meeting those highest possible standards.

I know it is of concern to other noble Lords, such as my noble friend Lord Caithness—I think the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, referred to this as well—that pesticides which are not legal for production in this country are widely used in India. I have no doubt that the concerns expressed to the committee by the Welsh and Scottish Governments will be heard, but I would like to hear from my noble friend the Minister in his summing up how their concerns will be acted upon.

In conclusion, I want to draw attention to the aspects of the report which relate to the complex sanitary and phytosanitary rules which India applies to imports. Witnesses told the committee that these act as a trade barrier. The British Standards Institution went on to say that

“only 30% of Indian standards were harmonised with international standards and regulations … traditionally used by the Indian government … favour domestic producers and self-sufficiency”,

and argued against

“recognising Indian goods standards as equivalent or compliant.”

That lies at the core of my concerns. If we have achieved excellent production at very high expense in this country, we must not undercut our farmers in that regard.

I pay tribute to the committee for the work it has done, particularly on the aspects I have referred to relating to more lawyers having access to India and more food from this country going to India, but also ensuring that all Indian food and produce which comes into this country, of whatever kind, meets the highest standards that we exact here. I hope my noble friend will respond to the concerns raised by me, the NFU and the Scottish and Welsh Governments in this regard.