I say simply to my hon. Friend that given the potential huge benefits of the TTIP, it seems odd that important industries such as the financial and professional services are not included in it. Clearly we are in a state of flux about a lot of international and national regulation of financial services, but it seems
that this would be a good place for us to make a robust case for open markets, particularly in an industry that will clearly develop in many other parts of the globe beyond the EU and US.
It is important that those who are proposing the TTIP show just what it can add to people’s lives in terms of trading opportunities, jobs and a better variety of consumer products. If there is a perception that the deal is being engineered in an opaque way, it is likely to fall apart and we shall lose an enormous opportunity. Crucially, the United States must do the same. In that nation, protectionist sentiment and economic nationalism are now fast replacing the wave of enthusiasm on which the TTIP initially rode.
Needless to say, progress in this field of influence will resonate strongly in the UK Government’s negotiations for reforms within the European Union. It was, of course, the wily German statesman, Bismarck, who observed that
“politics is the art of the possible.”
Although I believe it is sensible that the UK Government do not raise excessive expectations as to what might be achieved in negotiations with our EU fellow members, it is at least worth observing that in the aftermath of last autumn’s EU budget settlement there appears to be a new mood towards some level of reform. One hopes that some of the UK’s traditional European allies such as Poland, Finland and the Czech Republic, will not feel encumbered by a resurgent Russia from making the case for some fundamental institutional reform in the EU. Time will tell, I think.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to say a few words. This debate on the TTIP shows once again that the UK Government’s goal should be that we remain the most outward looking trading nation. We have every reason to have been proud of that in centuries gone by, and hopefully we will be in the years and decades to come.
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