Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

1. What estimate he has made of the number of trade agreements that the UK is party to as a result of its membership of the EU that would be rolled over on exit day in the event that the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

6. Which countries that the EU has a trade agreement with have notified his Department of restrictions on their ability to offer the same terms in a future trade agreement with the UK.

[The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)]

We will replicate existing EU free trade agreements and their preferential effects with partner countries as far as possible, while making the technical changes needed to ensure that agreements can operate in a bilateral context. We will inform Parliament and the public when agreements have been signed.

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. It has been extremely useful to have been able to raise, across the House, the understanding of complex trade issues that have not always been within the UK Government’s remit in recent years.

As the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, there are a number of agreements. My Department is responsible for some of them, some are the responsibility of the Department for International Development, and some are the responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—they cut right across the whole Government. We are making very good progress across a whole range of them. Of course, we have now initialled the first of those major trade agreements, with Switzerland, which is responsible for almost a fifth of the total trade within those agreements. Others will follow. The discussions are very often commercially quite sensitive, so we will inform the House when we have signed agreements, and not before.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Mr Speaker, like the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), I wish you, the staff, Ministers and everybody else a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Have any countries indicated a preference for the UK delaying Brexit without a deal?

[Dr Fox]

Not directly in the discussions that I have had with other countries, but there is clearly a desire to have an agreement, so that there is time during the transition of these agreements before they become a more bespoke relationship. The two-year implementation period set out in the Government’s proposals would enable that, so that is clearly preferable for both sides.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. Carers do a huge amount and are often unsung heroes. Both they and other economically inactive women may be entitled to support of up to 85% of their eligible childcare costs, through universal credit. That is in addition to the Government’s 15 hours’ free childcare entitlement for three and four-year-olds and disadvantaged two-year-olds. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is currently running a campaign to raise awareness of tax-free childcare, including through a new marketing strategy launched in September this year.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

T2. Will the Minister for Women and Equalities speak to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about how they can mitigate the difficulties and hardship that women who were born in the early 1950s are experiencing?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Justin Tomlinson)]

Fear not, Mr Speaker: I will not sing my answer and ruin the festive spirit.

The subject raised by the hon. Gentleman has been debated extensively and we have already put in place an additional £1.1 billion-worth of transitional arrangements. Despite the fact that a retired female would expect to get the state pension for 22 years, which is two years more than a retired male, thanks to our reforms more than 3 million more women will receive an average of £550 per year more by 2030.