The International Trade Committee today sets out the key measures
MPs must consider when assessing the UK’s accession to the
Pacific trading bloc, the CPTPP.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific
Partnership (CPTPP) is a free trade agreement comprising
Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia,
Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The Government
reached an agreement in principle to join CPTPP last month.
In a new report, the
cross-party Committee of MPs notes that there are important areas
where the CPTPP goes further than some existing agreements,
including generous rules of origin, and prohibition of the
requirement to maintain a local presence to deliver services.
However, there are many unanswered questions on the environmental
impact of accession to the CPTPP, particularly on the welfare and
production standards applied to products entering the UK market.
The MPs argue it is essential that the impact assessment
considers how further tariff liberalisation could affect sectors
already aggrieved by the UK’s negotiations with Australia and New
Zealand. The Government must also publish an environmental impact
assessment.
The Committee states the agreement needs to deliver tangible
opportunities for businesses which go above and beyond those
which already exist through the UK's bilateral agreements with
individual CPTPP members. The MPs also call on the Government to
outline exactly how it will ensure that businesses are best
placed to make use of the agreement.
The CPTPP’s capacity to change and expand could bring both
benefits and challenges. The Government must have a clear
understanding of what it wants to achieve through the UK's
membership of the agreement.
While it should look for opportunities to further liberalise
tariffs and align regulations, it also needs to consider where
its policy leadership could strengthen the rules-based trading
system to deliver for British businesses.
The MPs also reiterate their call for the Government to produce a
single, comprehensive trade strategy, arguing it is not well
placed to make an assessment on the accession of new countries
until it has produced such a strategy.
Commenting on the report, , Chair of the
International Trade Committee, said:
“The Government’s race to join the CPTPP trading bloc has the
potential to bring both benefits and challenges to the UK. There
are unanswered questions over the degree of new goods and
services trade that membership of CPTPP will bring, and concerns
remain over the environmental impact of the agreement. However,
membership places the UK in a dynamic bloc which is shaping
international trading rules and norms. The key question for the
Government is how it will ensure that membership delivers
benefits for British businesses and consumers.
“As our Committee is being wound up, we do not have time to
conclude our scrutiny of this important deal. Instead, we have
set out key points MPs must consider when assessing whether to
ratify the UK’s accession to CPTPP. A longstanding demand from
our Committee has been for the Government to produce an
overarching trade strategy, setting out what the Government wants
to achieve from its multiple trade negotiations. This must not be
forgotten as the Business and Trade Committee takes up this vital
scrutiny.”
The International Trade Committee will be dissolved on 26 April
and replaced with the Business and Trade Committee.
