Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I disagree with the premise of the hon. Lady’s question. Now that we have left the EU, we have the opportunity to set our own rules and regulations in tech, and really lead the world in areas like artificial intelligence and blockchain. That is exactly what we are seeking to do with these new free trade agreements. We are also seeking, at the World Trade Organisation, to lead in areas like the joint statement on e-commerce, and looking for new SME-friendly chapters in our trade deals to help exactly these types of tech start-ups to sell their goods around the world.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

14. What recent progress she has made with her non-EU counterparts on negotiations for future trade agreements with those countries.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Trade (Conor Burns)]

As we said earlier, only this week we have launched our negotiating platform for a free trade agreement with the United States. Those for Australia, New Zealand and Japan will follow in due course, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will set those out. My role within the Department is to support her in scoping out and assessing the potential for future free trade agreements around the rest of the world.

[Dr Huq]

In reality, the roll-over deals struck to date amount to just 8% of our existing total trade, yet we were told that all this would be sorted by one minute past midnight on 31 March last year. Are the US negotiations being conducted in tandem with the EU ones, with fully trained teams aware of what each other is doing so that that can be factored into any future relationship? I am sure that other countries will be thinking the same, particularly as our objectives seem to be so divergent from the US’s “America first” aims?

[Conor Burns]

I understand that the hon. Lady attended a briefing yesterday on the negotiations, led by our brilliant chief negotiator. She asks whether we are pursuing concurrent trade negotiations with the EU and the United States. The answer is yes we are, in exactly the same way that the EU is currently negotiating with the United States.