The Secretary of State for International Trade Thank you, Madam
Deputy Speaker. In a former incarnation, I was indeed in that other
role. I am really delighted to be able to report to the House that,
just before Christmas, the Australian Trade Minister, Dan Tehan,
and I signed a comprehensive free trade agreement between the
United Kingdom and Australia. This agreement deepens our bond of
common values and a shared belief in the combined power of
democracy, free trade...Request free
trial
The Secretary of State for International Trade
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In a former incarnation, I was
indeed in that other role.
I am really delighted to be able to report to the House that,
just before Christmas, the Australian Trade Minister, Dan Tehan,
and I signed a comprehensive free trade agreement between the
United Kingdom and Australia. This agreement deepens our bond of
common values and a shared belief in the combined power of
democracy, free trade and high standards. This is the first new
trade deal the UK has negotiated from scratch since leaving the
European Union. It is truly a world-class partnership, allowing
our businesses to trade and invest more freely.
The deal will uphold high standards and foster collaboration on
challenges such as tackling climate change, unfair trading
practices and growing the low-carbon economy, going further than
ever before in many important areas and showing what we can do as
an independent trading nation. It eliminates tariffs on 100% of
UK exports, and includes flexible rules of origin, meaning that
UK businesses can use some imported parts and ingredients, and
still qualify for the new 0% tariffs when exporting to Australia.
It gives UK firms new legally guaranteed access to bids for over
£10 billion of Australian Government contracts on an equal
footing with Australian firms. It provides unprecedented new
opportunities for young Britons to live and work in Australia,
and it paves the way for the UK to join the comprehensive and
progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, or CPTPP,
which would further open 11 markets worth £8.4 trillion in GDP
for British exporters and investors. Accession to the CPTPP could
see 99.9% of UK exports being eligible for tariff-free trade with
some of the biggest economies of the present and future, from
Japan to Mexico, and from Canada to Indonesia, Malaysia and
Singapore. Unlike EU membership, it would achieve that while
allowing us to continue to keep control over our laws, our
borders and our money.
This deal is expected to increase trade with Australia by more
than 50%. It is expected to add £900 million to household wages,
and to deliver a boost for the economy of over £2 billion by
2035—compared with what we would see if we did not have a
deal—benefiting communities and helping to level up every region
and nation of our United Kingdom.
The agreement that I have signed delivers for the whole of the
Union. The economies of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are
estimated to benefit from a combined boost of £200 million, and
the economic impact assessment that we have published shows that
the west midlands, the north-east, the north-west, the
south-east, the south-west and Wales are set to see the biggest
proportional gains. The deal will benefit Scotland’s financial
services industry, boost innovative aerospace design and
manufacture in the west midlands, provide new opportunities for
Welsh fintech companies, allow Northern Ireland’s manufacturers
to export more competitively, and help car makers to support
thousands of jobs in the north-east.
The agreement means that Australia will remove tariffs from all
its UK imports, making it more competitive for the 15,300 UK
businesses who currently export iconic products such as Jaguar
and Aston Martin cars, Scotch whisky, London gin and UK fashion
to Australia. It will encourage new companies to enter the
market, including small businesses and family-run firms which
will find it easier, cheaper and faster to sell their fantastic
goods and services to Australia for the first time. It also
delivers for consumers. The removal of UK tariffs on Australian
favourites such as Jacob’s Creek and Hardys wines will help to
keep prices down. UK manufacturers will benefit from cheaper
access to important Australian machinery parts, allowing them to
be more competitive and to grow.
The agreement means that investing in Australia will be easier
than ever before. It more than quadruples the threshold that UK
investments need to meet before being subject to review by
Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board, which will help to
save time, save money and cut red tape. The UK’s world-class
services industry will now have unprecedented and legally
guaranteed access to the Australian market, allowing UK legal and
engineering firms to compete on an equal footing with domestic
firms in Australia.
Ambitious tech start-ups, financial services firms and the
creative sectors will benefit from new opportunities to trade
digitally. The agreement secures the free flow of data while
locking in a legal requirement for personal data protection in
both countries, guarantees fair access to Australia for telecoms
companies, and forges greater co-operation on 5G and
cyber-security. It includes the world’s first dedicated
innovation chapter in a free trade agreement, establishing a
strategic innovation dialogue to ensure that the deal keeps up
with technological developments and drives the commercialisation
of new technologies.
Our British businesses will also benefit from unrivalled new
access to business visas, allowing staff to relocate more easily
and travel more freely to work in Australia. It will enable
Britons aged 18 to 35 to travel and work in Australia for up to
three years, and they will no longer have to work on a farm to
obtain a working holiday maker visa. Australian firms will no
longer have to prioritise hiring Australian nationals over a
British national. Additionally, executives and managers who are
transferred to their company locations in Australia will have the
right to stay for four years instead of two. They can also bring
their spouses and dependent children, who will have the same
four-year right to work.
The agreement has been crafted through consultation with UK
businesses and interested parties at all stages of the
negotiations. It offers a suite of arrangements going further
than Australia has ever gone with any other country in a free
trade agreement, which is a testament to the strength of our
relationship and the hard work of my brilliant officials at the
Department for International Trade and their Australian
counterparts. It includes ambitious commitments to work together
in addressing the shared challenges of environmental
conservation, women’s economic empowerment and poverty reduction.
It includes a commitment to maintain high animal welfare
standards.
We have also secured protections relevant to the NHS and
Australia’s health system in the agreement, which keep the NHS
out of scope of the agreement. The NHS is not, and never will be,
for sale to the private sector.
British food and drink is world-renowned for its quality, and
this trade deal will deliver benefits to the industry—from
tariff-free access to the Australian market to faster customs
arrangements. The deal could see a wide range of iconic UK
products, including Scotch whisky, Irish cream and Welsh cider,
given protected geographical indication status in Australia. By
creating new opportunities, this deal will help continue a trend
of booming UK food and drink exports to Australia, which have
more than doubled in the last decade. So we should be unafraid of
fair competition and positive about the export opportunities that
exist.
Let me also take the opportunity to alleviate the concerns of
some colleagues regarding meat imports from Australia. The
reality is that beef imports from Australia account for only a
small fraction of our overall beef imports. Just 0.1% of all
Australian beef exports went to the UK last year. Also, it is
relatively unlikely that large volumes of beef and sheep will be
diverted to the UK from lucrative markets in Asia, which are much
closer to Australia. More than 75% of Australian beef and 70% of
Australian sheepmeat exports last year went to markets in Asia
and the Pacific—markets that we are also keen to grow in through
our membership of the CPTPP.
With regard to animal welfare and food standards, we have been
clear throughout this process that we will not compromise on our
high standards, and we have delivered on that. All imports into
the UK will have to comply with our existing food standards
requirements—including the ban on hormone-treated beef. The deal
also includes a dedicated chapter and non-regression clause on
animal welfare. This will help to ensure that neither country
lowers their animal welfare standards in a manner that impacts
trade.
This agreement also supports the UK’s climate change commitments,
reaffirming both parties’ commitments to all of the Paris
agreement objectives—the first time that Australia has included a
substantive climate change article in any trade deal. It also
sets out areas for future co-operation on emissions reduction,
zero emissions technology, energy efficiency and sustainable
transport. So UK businesses will benefit from zero tariffs on all
low-carbon exports to Australia, including of wind turbine parts
and electric vehicles, creating more opportunities to grow the
low-carbon economy.
The Government are committed to transparency and inclusiveness in
all our future trading arrangements, and the House will now have
substantial opportunity to scrutinise this deal in detail. We
have already presented the full treaty text, a draft explanatory
memorandum and the independently scrutinised impact assessment to
Parliament, and we anticipate that there will now be a period of
several months before the agreement is formally laid before
Parliament for the 21 sitting days of formal scrutiny under the
Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, otherwise known as
CRaG. That will allow ample time for the Trade and Agriculture
Commission to prepare its advice, as well as for the
International Trade Committee and International Agreements
Committee to produce a report on the agreement, should they so
wish. I have already written to the new Trade and Agriculture
Commission to seek its advice on the deal with respect to our
domestic statutory protections for agriculture. That will help me
to inform the Government’s own report on this issue, as required
under section 42 of the Agriculture Act 2020. I also wish to
highlight that any legislative changes required to give effect to
the deal will be scrutinised by Parliament in the usual way ahead
of ratification.
So this is a landmark agreement and will be a feature of the
relationship between our two great countries for many years to
come. As a newly independent trading nation, the UK is reaching
out to seize the opportunities of the future—opportunities that
we are uniquely well placed to take. The deal I have signed with
Australia, one of our closest and most important allies, is just
the latest chapter in our progress towards that brighter future,
forging an open, enterprising economy, enabling us to build back
better from the pandemic, and levelling up every region and
nation of our United Kingdom.
I commend this statement to the House.
6.19pm
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her statement and for
advance sight of it.
I would say at the outset that we on the Labour Benches are in
favour of negotiating trade deals that benefit UK workers and
businesses and promote our values around the world, and we will
not hold the Government to impossible standards, but we will hold
Ministers to what they have promised people they will deliver
from the negotiations. Those promises make it even more important
that Ministers show strength at the negotiating table and defend
UK interests to the utmost. Other countries, in future
negotiations, will look at what was conceded to the Australian
negotiators and take it as a starting point.
We already have a UK-Japan trade deal that benefits Japanese
exporters five times as much as it does UK exporters. A worrying
pattern is emerging of not standing up for UK interests. It is
what makes the Government’s failure in so many aspects of this
deal so costly for the United Kingdom. The Government’s own
impact assessment shows a £94 million hit to our farming,
forestry and fishing sectors and a £225 million hit to our
semi-processed food industry.
The Government claim that they are trying to mitigate that with
tariff-free access being phased in over several years, but what
is being done is totally inadequate. On beef and sheepmeat, the
phasing-in period is 15 years, but the quotas being set by the
Government for imports from Australia are far higher than the
current level of imports. On beef imports, for example, when
Japan negotiated a deal with Australia it limited the tariff-free
increase in the first year to 10% on the previous year. South
Korea achieved something similar and limited the increase to 7%.
But this Government have negotiated a first-year tariff-free
allowance of a 6,000% increase on the amount of beef the UK
currently imports from Australia. On sheepmeat, in the first year
of the deal, the Government have conceded a 67% increase in the
tariff-free quota. Why did Ministers not achieve the same as
Japan and South Korea?
Why have Ministers failed to ensure that Australian agricultural
corporations are not held to the same high standards as our
farmers? The Secretary of State mentioned animal welfare
standards in her statement, but what the Government have agreed
is a non-regression clause. To be clear, that does not mean that
the standards will be the same in both countries. That is not
fair competition. What will actually happen is that meat produced
to far lower animal welfare standards will get tariff-free access
to the UK market. So much for the promise of the Secretary of
State’s predecessor that the Government had no intention of
striking a deal that did not benefit our farmers. Is it any
wonder that Australia’s former negotiator at the WTO said:
“I don’t think we have ever done as well as this”?
On climate change, which the Secretary of State mentioned, the
COP26 president said, on 1 December, that the deal would
reaffirm
“both parties’ commitments to upholding our obligations under the
Paris agreement, including limiting global warming to
1.5°.”—[Official Report, 1 December 2021; Vol. 704, c. 903.]
But an explicit commitment to limiting global warming to 1.5° is
not in the deal. Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us what
went wrong in those final days. Does the Secretary of State also
accept that the failure to include that explicitly in this
important deal damages the UK’s ability to lead on climate change
on the world stage—[Interruption.] Ministers shout at me, but
they told the House on 1 December that it would be included. What
went wrong?
The Secretary of State has confirmed that she has asked the Trade
and Agriculture Commission, as she is required to do, for advice
on the impact of the deal on statutory protections for
agriculture. Will she confirm when the Government’s own report
will be available?
On scrutiny, why are the Government promising a monitoring report
approximately two years after the agreement comes into effect,
and every two years thereafter? Why not every year? In addition,
the Secretary of State spoke about the impact of trade deals on
the whole of the United Kingdom. Can she confirm what steps she
will take to address any concerns raised by the devolved
Administrations, and how she will formally involve them in the
ratification process?
Tariff-free access to our UK market is a prize Ministers should
not give away easily. However, looking at the concessions made by
this Government, are people not right to worry that the
Government are more interested in a quick press release
announcing a completed deal than they are in standing up for UK
jobs and livelihoods?
I am glad the right hon. Gentleman supports international trade,
but I come away slightly less than enthused that he is genuine in
that, and I hope we will be able to persuade him in the months
and years ahead that the Government’s commitment to giving UK
businesses the opportunity to share their incredible goods and
services around the world is absolutely the focus of the work we
are doing. I will try to cover all the points he raised, but if I
miss any, I will be happy to write and confirm them.
On quotas, let us be clear—I highlighted this in my
statement—that the vast majority of beef and sheepmeat being sold
from Australia is going to the Asia-Pacific for the time being,
and the quotas have been brought in on a very clear and slow
trajectory to allow our farmers to consider the markets. Really
importantly, we are looking much more widely, and this is the
first of what I hope will be many deals; indeed, this is about
not only free trade agreements, but the removal of various
barriers to exports—things such as the lamb export ban that has
been in place with the US for over 20 years. Just before
Christmas, we agreed that it would be removed so that our lamb
farmers would be able to export some of the finest lamb in the
world—I speak with a personal interest, from Northumbria farmers’
perspective—into US markets for the first time in two decades. So
there are some really exciting things coming, and the Australia
deal is the first of many deals that will afford our businesses,
including our farmers, many new market opportunities.
On standards, the animal welfare chapter is the first one the
Australians have ever done. Their commitment to moving
forwards—as the right hon. Gentleman says, there is the
non-regression piece—and to working with us is really important.
In the same way that the environmental chapter does, that
commitment shows their very clear policy objective as a nation to
move forwards. The environmental chapter is, again, the first
they have ever committed to, and in it they have committed to the
Paris agreement. As we were in the final throes of the
negotiations—I was very much involved, and it was a great honour,
at COP26 with the President of COP26—Australia brought forward a
net zero commitment, which is something that many have failed to
do in Australian politics. That commitment, alongside this
environmental chapter, shows a very strong commitment by the
Australians to move forward on this issue. We will work together,
not only as mutual friends and allies, but with other countries
to help them meet their net zero commitment. That is a really
important commitment.
This is a broad, liberal agreement; we talk about tariff-free
access to the UK, but we also have tariff-free access to
Australian markets. This is a broad, liberalising, fair and
well-balanced trade deal between partners who want to work
together as closely as possible in the decades ahead.
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her achievement in
this trade deal? She is absolutely right that, despite the fact
that we have signed 70 trade deals, this is the first ab initio
trade deal that we have signed as an independent nation. I hope
there will be many more agreements, including with the Kingdom of
Thailand, for which I am the Prime Minister’s trade envoy.
My right hon. Friend rightly talks about the scrutiny process for
these trade deals, and as a member of the International Trade
Committee I can confirm that it is a fantastically complicated
proposition to try to go through these deals. She mentioned three
items that are incredibly important to the scrutiny process, but
can she give a more specific indication of when we expect the
Trade and Agriculture Commission report and the Government’s
section 42 report and when the CRaG process will be triggered?
Could she also consider publishing the Government’s negotiating
positions in future trade deals, so that we can scrutinise and
compare what is achieved against what was intended?
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a former Minister in the
Department, for all his work and for his continued passion and
commitment in driving forward the UK’s opportunities to find
these fantastic trade deals. He is now doing great work with
Thailand, and it is interesting that we already have nearly £5
billion-worth of bilateral trade with Thailand. So many countries
are knocking at the door saying, “We want to do more. We want to
have better deals with you.” That is a really exciting and strong
message. Now that we are on the global platform, those countries
want to do that trade, because they know that we have the best
businesses in the world and they want to have a close
relationship with us. I think it is very exciting.
In answer to my hon. Friend’s question on parliamentary scrutiny,
he is not wrong. It is a relatively complex journey that we are
about to take with our first deal. We anticipate that there will
be a period probably of several months before we lay everything
before Parliament. We have asked the Trade and Agriculture
Commission to crack on with its review, and once it reports back
to me, I can submit the section 42 measure required by the
legislation, and I hope that his Committee and the Committee in
the other place will submit their own perspectives once they have
had a chance to look through—I apologise for this, but in a way I
do not—what is a very large tome of nearly 2,000 pages.
A good new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to
colleagues.
I, too, am grateful for sight of the statement by the Secretary
of State. Trade deals are the ultimate curate’s egg—there are
things to admire and things to dislike in all of them. There are
things to admire in this deal. I am grateful for that, and I
welcome such progress as has been made. In the European
Parliament, I was in favour of ambitious trade deals, and often
found myself voting against the deals that had been negotiated
because I thought that they could go further on environmental
standards, human rights and climate change. In this deal, there
really is a missed opportunity on climate change. It could have
gone an awful lot further with one of the key countries in the
world in the fight against climate change, and the standards
could have been an awful lot higher.
I am struck, as ever, by the capacity of Government Members to
become giddy with excitement about the upsides and hypothetical
benefits of Brexit while ignoring the real-world consequences in
the cost and heartache of leaving the European Union—in
Scotland’s case, very much against our will. In the best-case
scenario, taking the Government’s figures at their best, this
deal will increase UK GDP by 0.08% by 2035. That is not
nothing—and I welcome it—but the Office for Budget
Responsibility, by contrast, has calculated that we will lose a
full 4% of GDP. We need to look at that in the round, and Members
need to see the deal in context.
This is not the last time that we will discuss this issue, so I
will limit my remarks to agriculture and future scrutiny. I quote
Martin Kennedy, the president of the National Farmers Union of
Scotland:
“The final deal…shows a complete dearth of proper consultation
with farming and food sector interests across the UK. While we
are not against free trade, this deal appears to be very one
sided, with little to no advantage for Scottish farmers”.
I could not have said it better. If covid and Brexit have taught
us anything it is that indigenous food production across these
islands—indeed, across this continent—and short supply chains are
vital to our national security and national resilience, however
we define “national”. Anything that undermines that will be
viewed with extreme scepticism by SNP Members.
On scrutiny, to what extent can anyone influence a deal that has
already been signed? If the Trade and Agriculture Commission
makes a recommendation against part of this deal, what happens?
That is a genuine question. What input will there be for the
Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland
Assembly. If any of them says no to any part of the deal, what
happens?
I am thrilled to hear that the hon. Gentleman is a supporter of
ambitious trade deals, and I look forward to working closely with
him in the months and years ahead as we continue to do many more.
This is the first of many. It is an exciting, broad, liberalising
trade deal for both parties, and I am disappointed that he thinks
differently. Australia has for the first time ever agreed to an
environmental chapter and made climate change commitments to
embed in a treaty with us its commitment to the Paris agreement,
which we all understand very clearly and which was reiterated at
COP26 in Glasgow. The aim to keep 1.5 alive continues to be the
commitment that the world makes. Australia has, as I have just
said, made the commitment for the first time to a net zero
strategy for its own nation. We should commend its effort to do
that and its willingness to embed in a treaty with the UK—a
world-leading nation when it comes to driving the environmental
agenda—the fact that it wants to work closely with us to make
sure that we make progress.
I am disappointed to hear about the views of a few in Scotland. I
hope that as they have had the chance to read the document over
the Christmas holidays, perhaps having a few days off for rest,
because it is a weighty tome, they have discovered the safeguards
that we have built in for farmers, which address some of the
anxieties that were raised with us in extensive consultation with
many partners throughout food and drink supply chains. They will
find that those measures are robust and they should be reassured.
I am incredibly proud of the indigenous food production that
comes out of all parts of the United Kingdom. Scotland should be
proud of its beef and Scotch whisky for instance, and I think
Scottish producers will take great advantage of the tariff
liberalisation on Scotch whisky.
I also welcome this trade deal, because I think democratically it
is of great importance, but of course indigenous food supply and
making sure we maintain our high welfare standards are important
not only to animal welfare but to keeping British farming
competitive. Can the Secretary of State assure me that there is
enough protection for British farming in this trade deal? When
the Trade and Agriculture Commission comes forward with its
findings, will she take heed and go along with them rather than,
dare I say it, override them?
I thank my hon. Friend for his commitment as Chair of the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and also for his
support of the free trade deal and indeed what international
trade affords all of our amazing food and drink producers, who
have some of the finest foods and drinks in the world.
To reassure my hon. Friend on the safeguards, which are as robust
as they come, we have secured three levels of protection. The
first, the tariff rate quota, sets a maximum level for
tariff-free imports in the first 10 years; specific agricultural
products are listed and anything above that would face a much
higher tariff. The second level applies from years 11 to 15 of
the agreement and is known as the product specific safeguard; it
has a broadly similar effect, bringing high tariffs above a
volume threshold. The third is a general bilateral safeguard
mechanism, or temporary safety net, allowing measures to be
imposed in the form of increasing tariffs or the suspension of
tariff liberalisation completely under the agreement for up to
four years, and they can be applied on all products liberalised
under the agreement at any point to protect a particular domestic
industry. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend.
And on the recommendations of the Trade and Agriculture
Commission?
Absolutely. We hope that the TAC review will give us a good
report and we await that; this cohort is there exactly to answer
some of the challenges and anxieties brought to us, and I am very
hopeful that we will pass its examination well. In addition,
going forward, as I mentioned earlier, we are opening up many
other new markets for our farmers, not only because we want our
indigenous food suppliers to thrive, but because we want to make
sure the rest of the world can enjoy their products too.
Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Secretary of State will know that at some point we will need
to have a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU; that
is in the interests of our agricultural community across the
board, and in Northern Ireland in particular. Can she give an
absolute guarantee that there is nothing in this agreement or any
other negotiations she is contemplating that would put that SPS
agreement at risk?
This agreement has a very detailed SPS chapter, and I would be
very happy to sit down with the hon. Gentleman and ask the
officials to talk him through it in more detail and reassure him
accordingly.
I know that the Secretary of State cares a lot about services
trade and the positive impact that that can have not just for
Britain but across the world, and I welcome what she said in her
statement about what is in this particular trade agreement. Will
she set out in detail how she thinks this trade agreement is a
step forward for services, particularly business and professional
services, and commit to working with me and others outside the
House over the next few weeks and months to strengthen our
services offer in trade deals, not just this one per se but other
deals that we are seeking to do in the coming months and
years?
Absolutely. Our services sectors are second only in the world.
They are a fantastic part of our export market, and we want to
make sure that we showcase them in all the trade deals we do and
find the best tools and opportunities to share them across the
world. This particular deal, as I set out in my statement, has a
number of important mobility features to help provide certainty
and longer continuity for those who want to move into these
sectors. There is also a huge amount of opportunity through the
£10 billion of Government procurement that is now available to UK
businesses. This will continue to be a central part of every free
trade deal that we look to arrange, and I am very happy to meet
my hon. Friend to discuss it in more detail.
When we compare the original economic impact assessment of the
Australia deal, which was released back in the summer, with the
Government’s impact assessment published last month, we see that
there has been a 1,000% increase in the estimated boost to UK
GDP, but the small print makes it clear that that is because the
Government have changed the economic model they are using to
analyse the deal to one that produces a higher estimate of GDP.
Can the Trade Secretary present any justification for this
change, or is it simply a case of cooking the books?
Last year’s impact assessment was obviously a snapshot at the
time. As the deal has continued to evolve from the agreement in
principle back in June 2021, which was 12 pages of broad-brush
direction of travel, the team has genuinely worked tirelessly.
Working with a country in a different time zone, the team has
worked through the night for many months to make sure that we
drew this deal together. The continued development of all these
areas has enabled us to review the original assessment. I am very
happy for my officials to sit down with the hon. Lady to talk her
through in more detail how we have reached this point. All these
things are a moment in time, and we now have an assessment that I
very much hope will be an underestimate as we see new business—we
have been working on the basis of the existing businesses. We
look to new businesses taking up the opportunities that this
trade deal affords, so that we can grow our bilateral trade even
further.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement on this very
encouraging agreement. She says that more than 15,000 companies
already export to Australia and that she wants to encourage small
family businesses to do so, too. I urge her to build on the
excellent support that the Department gives to such businesses,
as we need to encourage more businesses, particularly small
businesses, into the export market. What will the Department do
to enhance the existing service in that respect?
I thank my hon. Friend, who is an active and effective trade
envoy to the Balkans. He raises an important point, and we have a
great opportunity to help small businesses, which have fantastic
goods and services, to take up the opportunities that these free
trade deals will afford them and to find new export markets. The
Minister for Exports, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and
Golders Green (), has taken on that challenge
with gusto.
With the export support service and a number of other tools, we
are driving forward the opportunities that organisations such as
the Federation of Small Businesses and the CBI provide to
encourage businesses that have not yet tested the opportunity to
export, so that we can share the amazing goods and services they
produce with the rest of the world.
I welcome a trade deal with our allies, friends and family in
Australia, especially for the motor industry. Along with AUKUS, I
hope it will provide a renewed international democratic dynamic
and closer working for more resilient supply chains in both goods
and raw materials. I am concerned that Ministers may have been
desperate to do any deal, rather than getting the best deal. If
there are concerns about meat imports, will the Secretary of
State press other Departments, the NHS and schools to prioritise
local meat, just as every other country does?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support and enthusiasm
for this important deal with one of our closest allies and
partners. Indeed, the AUKUS relationship is now developing and
will be a very long-standing and close relationship, as we have
had in many other ways. He raises an important point about local
supply chains and the use of local goods, and I will make sure
that that is passed on to my relevant colleagues.
Might the worries of those who are concerned about the increase
in quotas over the next 15 years be assuaged somewhat by the fact
that existing quotas are largely unused?
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. He
highlights the fact that we should be reassured that our farmers
have fantastic products that we will all, as UK consumers, want
to continue to eat, and that indeed our Australian partners are
keen to sell their products into the Asia-Pacific market, where
there is a growing demand. We will also want to take up those
market opportunities. That is why we are working very hard and
very closely with those in the CPTPP to get an accession to that
free trade group, because there we will have the opportunity to
sell our fantastic produce to those Asia-Pacific markets too.
Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Australia is the only country in the developed world on WWF’s
list of global deforestation hotspots, and beef production is the
No. 1 driver of this. In the great barrier reef catchments, 94%
of land clearance is linked to it. It is destroying the habitats
of threatened species, including the koala—and I am sure we would
all want to preserve the koala’s habitats. Can the Secretary of
State assure me that we will not, under this trade agreement,
allow the import of more beef that is linked to deforestation?
This morning we had a debate in Westminster Hall and the
reassurances from the Minister there were pretty weak. Can she
confirm that this will be something the Government try to
uphold?
In this free trade agreement, the UK and Australia have committed
to combat illegal logging and related trades, which, as the hon.
Lady pointed out, is critical to the preservation of our natural
environment and that critical biodiversity—an area that the UK
has led on in the COP26 discussions led by through the nature track in
Glasgow. The environment chapter in this free trade agreement
recognised the importance of sustainable forestry management, and
it strengthens our relationship of co-operation and information
sharing on a bilateral basis. We have also agreed provisions on
promoting and co-operating on the transition towards a circular
economy in reducing waste that goes beyond the CPTPP arrangements
that Australia has with its neighbours, alongside working in
further areas such as air quality and marine litter. There is a
really important starting point for the work that we will do
together with Australia to ensure that deforestation becomes a
thing of the past.
We have had another fantastic trade deal that epitomises the
cornerstone of one of the reasons people voted to leave the
European Union, which was to set our own independent trade
policy. We have heard a lot about agriculture but not a lot about
young people, particularly professional young workers. Will my
right hon. Friend explain the benefits of this deal for those
young professional workers who will now have easier access to the
wonderful lived experience of working down under?
I thank my hon. Friend for his enthusiasm and for highlighting
again just how important this deal is. This is the first deal
that we have negotiated from scratch as an independent trading
nation. It is a broad and deep liberalising trade deal that
affords, among other things, the opportunity for young
Britons—anyone still under 35; sadly, that is not me—to travel
and work in Australia for up to three years. Historically, to be
able to get that, they had to have a commitment to work in an
agricultural environment, but that will no longer be the case, so
our young people will be able to go anywhere in Australia for up
to three years to take their talent and get the opportunities
afforded to them in any area that they want. That is a really
exciting development that will continue to build on the close
relationship that we want to maintain.
Fair play to Canberra, because they have no’ half scored a great
deal with this one. It must be delicious to have scored such a
great trade deal over your former overlords in London. I look
forward to the benefits that this will bring to Scottish
distilling—gin and whisky—but if exports of lamb and sheep meat
from Australia to the United Kingdom are so insignificant to the
Australians, why did you not write them out of the deal, because
it is what you are getting the most heat on—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he does not refer directly
to the Secretary of State.
I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker. Why did the Minister not
seek to write those exports out of the deal, and will she take a
second opportunity to answer the question of my hon. Friend the
Member for Stirling () about what she will do if she
finds herself at odds with the devolved Administrations in the
devolved nations? Will she simply ram through her agenda with the
UK United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020?
I am thrilled that the hon. Gentleman is so pleased for those
Scottish food and drink producers, who I absolutely agree will
have great opportunities. They are very exciting new market
opportunities that those producers will, I have no doubt, take up
with gusto.
Again, I reiterate that I am reassured by the safeguards we have
brought in. The quota levels are built, but the existing quotas
are not being used at all because the markets that Australia
chooses to sell into at the moment—because the prices are
better—are the Asia-Pacific ones, where there continues to be a
growing middle class looking to have good-quality meat as part of
their diet. I am looking forward to our ability to accede to the
CPTPP, through which our farmers will also have opportunities to
access those new markets.
First, I welcome the Secretary of State’s very positive win-win
attitude towards trade negotiations, as opposed to that of some
others in this House. She mentioned visas, specifically for young
people. Could she give the House a little bit more information
about the projected numbers of workers likely to be going
backwards and forwards, and the sectors they are likely to be
involved with?
I will ask the team to write to my hon. Friend about the
technical detail, because I do not have those figures to hand.
However, really importantly, beyond the question of the
opportunities that under-35s on a three-year visa have, being
free to choose what they want to do when they go and work in
Australia, that shift from a two-year visa to a four-year visa
for executives and managers who want to work in any number of
sectors—and, indeed, for their families to be able to work in
Australia as well—is a huge opportunity for our workforce to go
and enjoy Australian opportunities, and also to bring UK
expertise to our great friend and ally.
I wish you a happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. From the
enthusiastic way in which the Secretary of State is selling this
deal, she has clearly been drinking a lot of the Prime Minister’s
Kool-Aid, but no matter how much positive spin she puts on it, it
is a bad deal for County Durham beef and sheep farmers, including
those in my constituency. Those people are already struggling
because of the restrictions that have come about because of
Brexit, so I ask her what discussions she has had with her
counterparts in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs about support for those farmers in years to come. In many
cases, they are marginal anyway, and if they are opened up to
worldwide competition from Australian lamb and beef, that will
make their job 10 times harder.
I cannot speak for my colleagues in DEFRA, but I know that
progress on the environmental land management schemes framework
is developing at pace. That framework will be a really important
tool to help our farmers make the right choices, not only about
the food production that they choose to do, but about managing
the environment that they are stewarding on our behalf as we move
forward and—to the question of the hon. Member for Bristol East
() earlier—make sure that we
look after the biodiversity and the nature that surrounds us.
However, I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman that this deal
is bad for his farmers, because there are great opportunities
coming. As I mentioned earlier, the release of the lamb imports
plan for the US is opening up a whole new series of markets, and
as we continue to do more trade deals and with the opportunities
in Asia-Pacific, our amazing farmers will have opportunities to
move into new markets that they have not had before. However, as
I will continue to say and as the right hon. Gentleman knows,
there is nothing like eating local. Our farmers continue to
advertise and very successfully sell their products to the
British markets too, and I know that my colleagues in DEFRA work
very closely with farming groups to help ensure that happens.
What a great way to start 2022. I commend not only the Secretary
of State and her predecessor, but the Australian high
commissioner, the hon. George Brandis, who has been so passionate
about the relationship between the two nations, and strongly
support all the work that has gone on to make today possible and
have this fantastic trade deal become reality. Is it not
fantastic that this deal has been achieved? We were told that it
would take 10 years to do any trade deal, and this has been done
in a matter of just over a year. Does the Secretary of State
agree that this is a golden opportunity in this year of the
Queen’s platinum jubilee also to extend more trade and more
co-operation to the Commonwealth, and other realms and
territories? Please let us not forget that trade is not just
within the United Kingdom; we have territories and dependencies
for which we are also responsible, so can we make that a priority
in the coming years?
I concur absolutely with my hon. Friend’s comments that the high
commissioner, George Brandis, has been a huge advocate and
supporter of the deal and indeed has assisted in some of the
logistics challenges of carrying out, using mostly virtual
methods, the very complex trade negotiations through different
time zones to make sure that we were able to deliver this in an
incredibly timely manner. That is reflected in the fact that both
countries are very keen to build on their very close and
long-standing relationships with what is one of the most
liberalising trade deals that exists.
I am passionate about free trade, and so are the farmers in
Cumbria and so, I assume, are the farmers in Northumberland. No
free trade is really free if it is not fair. When it comes to
animal welfare, this deal clearly is not fair. I wonder whether
the Secretary of State truly comprehends the astonishing
difference in terms of animal welfare standards between farming,
and livestock farming in particular, in her own community and in
mine compared with Australia. There are staggering and
astonishing differences in scale—the fact that we have close
husbandry in this country and vast areas and no husbandry in
Australia. Moreover, there is the lack of humane standards in
abattoirs and also when it comes to the transportation of
livestock. Surely this deal undermines our farmers, undermines
the standards that we hold dear and throws our agriculture under
a bus in order to get a cheap deal. How will she reply to her own
farmers who will be as shocked and appalled as I am by much of
this deal?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We need slightly briefer questions if we are to get
everybody in. There is a ten-minute rule Bill and then business
after that. If I am to get everybody in, we just need to speed up
a little bit.
I will direct all our farmers who have concerns to the level of
the safeguards that I set out earlier, which should reassure
them, and, importantly, to the continuing growth in new markets
of the opportunities for them to sell our fantastic UK produce to
the rest of the world. The standards are very clear and the
animal welfare chapter has set out, in a way that Australia has
never committed to in any other trade deal, that non-regression
and working together is the way to move forward. We have not
looked at anything in the poultry, pigs and eggs sector precisely
because we did not believe that we could find a level of
compatibility in standards, but we are comfortable with what the
animal welfare chapter sets out and that it will help us all move
forward. Really importantly, our fantastic producers—in the case
of the hon. Gentleman and me they are our sheep farmers who make
some of the finest lamb in the world—should be excited at the
prospect not only of this free trade deal, but of all the free
trade deals and, indeed, the release of the US import ban for
them to find new markets.
The trade deal that the Secretary of State has announced is an
excellent step to doing more business and increasing exports with
Australia. It will be up to UK companies to take advantage of the
new arrangements. Does she agree that, to do so, they will need
first-class sales skills? Are we doing enough to improve those
skills and get better at selling, and what advice, support,
guidance and encouragement will there be to companies wishing to
sell their products in Australia?
As part of our export strategy, which we launched at the end of
last year, we have a number of tools in the toolbox to help those
businesses that are either already exporting or that want to
discover new markets and learn how to move their products into
new markets to do so. I look forward to all colleagues wanting to
work with their businesses and our teams to maximise those
opportunities.
The Secretary of State started her statement by saying that she
had signed a deal and concluded by saying that she had passed it
to the Trade and Agriculture Commission for comment. Will she
take a third opportunity to try to answer what she will do with
the comments from the Trade and Agriculture Commission? Frankly,
it is a bit like listening to the commentary on the Ashes
series—interesting to listen to, but has no impact on the
outcome. We were shafted at cricket and I fear we will be shafted
in agriculture.
The Trade and Agriculture Commission is a group of independent
experts who will review in detail the agricultural elements of
the deal. I look forward to receiving its report, whence I will
draw up my section 42 report and bring it to Parliament.
New free trade deals are incredibly important for securing the
future prosperity of our country, and I congratulate my right
hon. Friend and all involved on securing this one. Agriculture is
enormously important in my constituency, and I know that farmers
will be reassured by her clear statement that all imports from
Australia will have to meet our existing food standards. Although
she gave very low numbers of current imports from Australia, can
she reassure the House that her Department will do everything
humanly possible to bang the drum for British farmers to get more
of our world-class produce to Australia?
We want to see our fantastic British produce sold around the
world, including to Australians. As I mentioned, our teams
working in the UK and around the world are there to help our
farmers and those who want to sell British produce into those
markets.
Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. In the Committee stage of
the Trade Act 2021, I tabled a series of amendments to include
environmental chapters in all future trade agreements. The
Government rejected all our amendments of that nature on the
basis that such chapters would be included on a deal-by-deal
basis, but that was not true, was it? The procurement chapter of
the agreement specifically excludes the environmental chapter. As
my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen () said, the failure to
include 1.5°, added to the exclusion of an environmental chapter,
means that the Government have completely undermined in this
trade agreement any commitment to tackling the climate
crisis.
I am very proud that we have the environmental chapter in the
free trade agreement, which sets out a mutual commitment to the
Paris agreement. As I set out earlier, that was reiterated as
meaning keeping 1.5° alive at COP26, where the Australians and we
led the charge to ensure that we all work together to try to meet
that challenge and maintain our climate.
The new free trade agreement is another step forward in our
commitment to the Indo-Pacific region, and I congratulate the
Secretary of State. What are the next steps in our application to
join the CPTPP and what progress has been made on a new framework
for Government-to-Government contracts which, as she knows, is a
live issue at the moment for at least one deal in the region?
The CPTPP process is in play. We put in our application last year
and we are being vetted. I am not sure how best to describe it—it
is a bit like passing a set of exam questions, and we have to
submit our answers. We are in the final throes of that phase,
which is good, and we hope to be able to move to market
discussions in the very near future. In relation to my hon.
Friend’s question about the new framework for
Government-to-Government contracts, we are looking at those in
detail at the moment and I will report back in due course.
I thank the right hon. Lady for the comprehensive positives in
her statement, but I wish to reflect the concerns and opinions of
the National Farmers Union and the Ulster Farmers Union—I declare
an interest as a member of the latter. Will she outline how we
can encourage our close friends and allies in Australia to
produce meat products using the same high animal welfare
standards that we in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland are proud to stand for?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his continued support of farmers
in his constituency. In the animal welfare chapter, we have
agreed a non-regression clause and a number of co-operation
matters on which we will work with the Australians. We are clear
that our standards are non-negotiable and that food coming into
the UK must meet our food standards and safety levels, and that
will continue.
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