UK–Commonwealth Trading Relationship

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Commonwealth of 54 countries is a voluntary organisation of 2.4 billion people and GDP estimated at $3 trillion. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting has said that it wants to increase trade between the Commonwealth countries to $2 trillion by 2030. This was at the CHOGM held in London in 2018. We, as the UK Government, are pursuing free trade agreements with Commonwealth partners. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who is a true and constant champion of the Commonwealth. It makes up a third of the world’s population, 60% of Commonwealth citizens are under the age of 30 and it has recently celebrated its 70th anniversary.

As president of the CBI, I had the privilege of chairing the B7, which fed into the G7. One of our speakers was the impressive Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is the new head of the WTO and was head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, before that—what serendipity. She highlighted that 17% of the world’s population is in Africa yet Africa has only 0.15% of the world’s vaccine-manufacturing capability. India, a country with a population equivalent to the whole African continent— 1.4 billion people—has the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, the Serum Institute of India, owned by my friend Cyrus Poonawalla. Two-thirds of children vaccinated have been vaccinated by the Serum Institute of India, and it has just announced it is increasing its AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine production from 100 million to 200 million doses a month.

Digital connectivity and enabling member nations to benefit from it was spoken about at CHOGM. At the B7, we thanked God for digitisation in this pandemic, yet the more digitisation we have the more vulnerable we are, so cybersecurity is something the Commonwealth has to work on.

A stark fact is this: trade with all 54 Commonwealth countries amounts to less than 10% of the UK’s trade. Five countries—Australia, Canada, India, Singapore and South Africa—accounted for almost three-quarters of this, yet the EU is 45% of our trade and the United States is 15%. We have heard about Liz Truss and her Department for International Trade and the fantastic job they have done rolling over 67 trade agreements with the EU. We are now making them bespoke. Canada is an example of one we have started to enhance.

George Brandis, the Australian high commissioner, recently spoke of the brand new Australian deal, which took just 365 days. That will be a stepping-stone for us, as Australia will be an ambassador for us entering the CPTPP, worth £110 billion to us. On top of that, we have New Zealand coming on and have announced an enhanced trade partnership with India, working towards a free trade agreement and an ambition to double our trade of £24 billion by 2030. The potential is enormous and we must make much more of the potential of the Commonwealth.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea.