PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
DRAFT EUROPEAN UNION (FUTURE RELATIONSHIP) ACT 2020 (REFERENCES TO THE TRADE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT) REGULATIONS 2021 - 19 July 2021 (Commons/General Committees)

The Minister might have seen the media story over the weekend about a suggestion that the UK-Ukraine trade deal, which the Prime Minister signed, contained a series of errors apparently still binding the UK to certain EU rules. I wonder whether she could explain what those mistakes were and how they relate to the statutory instrument, or whether we will have to come back to debate another statutory instrument, given those errors.

On the Minister’s point about the need for coherence and clarity, can she explain to the Committee whether the statutory instrument will in any way reduce the extra red tape that the TCA created for businesses, particularly those businesses, say in England, which want to trade with Northern Ireland?

Let me endorse the fact that it is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, for this debate on the statutory instrument. Certainly, at first glance, the instrument does not appear particularly contentious, and unless something quite shocking crops up during our debate, we will not try to block its passage. It appears at first glance to be a correction of some 20-plus references in the 2020 Act to the trade and cooperation agreement, although it prompts a number of what I hope the Minister recognises are gentle questions and concerns.

If the Government could not even do a technical revision before the agreement came into force and ensure that the implementing legislation was final, how on earth could they expect businesses to understand the deal and adapt to a new trading relationship, especially as the Government themselves had admitted that the document was signed too late to allow the lawyers to take a proper look at it? That raises another gentle concern about the instrument and the manner of its being required. This seems to be another example of the Government not properly checking the deals that they have signed. Sadly, there is a growing number of such examples.

Let us take the freeports blunder, when the Department for International Trade accidentally ruled out some £35 billion-worth of exports from tariff-free trade for England’s eight new freeports because it included the duty drawback prohibition clauses from those roll-over deals. Then there is of course the Prime Minister’s new yacht. He obviously had had the ambition that only British shipbuilders would bid to make it, yet once again, because Ministers at the Department for International Trade failed to exclude the construction of civilian ships from the list of those contracts that must be open to global competition when it signed the World Trade Organisation’s Government procurement agreement last October, there appear to be some concerns. Imagine, Sir Edward, if—God forbid—the French should win the contract to build the Prime Minister’s new super-yacht because of the failure of the Department for International Trade.

I raised earlier the example of the UK-Ukraine trade deal, which is one of the most sensitive post-Brexit agreements; indeed, it is the only roll-over deal signed by the Prime Minister. As I said in my intervention on the Minister, some of the errors apparently bind the UK to EU rules. Given all the Government’s talk of not wanting to be bound by EU rules, you might have thought, Sir Edward, that Ministers would have checked that part of the agreement particularly carefully.

Then there is the Minister’s own boss, who negotiated the Northern Ireland protocol, admitting that some companies in Great Britain have found it “too much trouble” to trade with Northern Ireland and that he had not fully foreseen the “chilling effect” of the punishing new red tape, which has left many smaller firms facing higher costs.

There is, too, the sense that the statutory instrument represents a bit of a missed opportunity. Ministers could have used it to build on the deal that was done so late and so badly. Perhaps the Minister will give us some clue about where negotiations with Brussels are on a veterinary agreement, for example. Is Lord Frost still determined to reject the EU offer on a veterinary agreement, because it would—apparently—prevent Britain from joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership?

I ask that question in the context of the growing concern about the scale of difficulties that British exporters have faced with post-Brexit red tape and disruption at the UK-EU border, particularly around sanitary and phytosanitary controls. That has led to many businesses and their representatives arguing publicly for a veterinary agreement with the EU. Once the Minister has reflected on the debate, I wonder whether she might be willing to acknowledge privately, if not to the Committee now, that some of the other key trade deals that the Government have done are not quite as important as the trade deal that we are discussing today. According to the very best case scenario, the Australia deal will be worth just 0.025% of UK GDP over the next 15 years—and, of course, along the way it will do huge damage to farming, particularly in Scotland and in Wales.

The International Trade Secretary’s top deal, the CPTPP, looks set to yield, at best—again, this is according to independent forecasters—only very marginal economic benefits. Surely, improving the poor deal under discussion, which was so badly negotiated by Ministers, is key to our country’s future economic prospects. How will Ministers help not only musicians and those young people who want to be guides in the ski resorts of our European allies, but, crucially, those in financial service businesses, architects, interpreters, IT installers, management consultants and business traders whose jobs have been made that bit harder and are potentially on the line because Ministers would not do a visa-free trade deal with the European Union?

It is a privilege to have the chance to debate the statutory instrument, but it would not have been necessary if Ministers had negotiated a better deal. Sadly, that reflects a growing pattern of mistakes, particularly by the Department for International Trade in negotiating trade deals. One hopes, for the sake of businesses and jobs in our country, that the Government’s performance improves significantly after the recess. None the less, we will not oppose the instrument.