PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Market Access to US - 29 June 2023 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

As part of the Atlantic declaration, we launched negotiations on a critical minerals agreement with the US, which will secure market access for a strategically important sector of the UK economy. My Department has secured tariff-free imports of UK steel and aluminium into the US, supporting 80,000 jobs in UK supply chains. We have removed the 25-year US ban on UK lamb, opening the market to 300 million US customers, and have signed five trade and economic development memorandums of understanding with individual US states, which imported £4.6 billion-worth of goods from the UK in 2022, most recently last week with Utah.

In their 2019 election manifesto, the Conservatives declared to the British people:

“Our goals for British trade are… ambitious. We aim to have 80 per cent of UK trade covered by free trade agreements within the next three years, starting with the USA”.

However, there has been abject failure, with a free trade agreement nowhere in sight, and instead of coming clean on their incompetence, laughingly, Tories are now lining up to blame the Biden Administration for the lack of progress. Will the Secretary of State concede that the Government’s failure to negotiate an FTA with the USA has potentially locked out British businesses from vital new markets created by the US Inflation Reduction Act?

I am afraid that is not the case at all. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the detail of the Atlantic declaration, he will see that we are co-operating very closely with the US. On his point about our 2019 manifesto, we did say that that was what we were going to do, because the Administration at the time were willing. This Administration are not. It has nothing to do with the UK. They are not negotiating any FTAs with any countries. That is what the US trade representative has said to me in many meetings, and they have said that to EU counterparts.

If what the hon. Gentleman suggests is true, he is basically saying that every Government should be bound by their predecessor, in which case, should anything happen, he is saying that he agrees with everything this Government are doing and nothing should change. What we have negotiated with the Atlantic declaration is a success, and he should be praising this Government for achieving something so monumental.

I draw the House’s attention to my interest as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to the United States for regional trade and investment. Our programme of MOUs with states in the United States is a major driver of improving market access and trade between the UK and the US. As I embark on a visit to Florida to advance our objectives there, will my right hon. Friend use this opportunity to reaffirm not just that we want to enter into multiple MOUs with states in the United States, but that we want British businesses to step up to the opportunities they create and we want to create the mechanisms to allow business-to-business delivery?

Absolutely, I can affirm that. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about the MOUs. The Opposition would like to present a false story about us not getting along with our US counterparts. The fact that so many states, knowing that their Federal Government are not negotiating an FTA, have decided to step up and negotiate MOUs with us shows that this country is still attracting a large amount of investment and co-operation from our international partners. We want British businesses to be able to take part in that, and we are doing everything we can to help them use the MOUs.