UK Parliament / Open data

Future Free Trade Agreements

Proceeding contribution from Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party) in the House of Commons on Thursday, 21 February 2019. It occurred during Debate on Future Free Trade Agreements.

I start by agreeing with what the Secretary of State said about looking to have trade deals with developing, emerging and growing markets. That is absolutely right, whether the UK or the EU does it. He made big play of Australia and New Zealand, which we just heard about from the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). Australia takes about 1% of the UK’s exported goods—half of what we sell to Turkey. New Zealand takes 0.1%—about the same as we sell to Algeria—so however important Australia and New Zealand are, they are not developing growth markets. They are mature, established markets.

The Secretary of State also spoke about being dictated to by the EU—I much prefer the language of “working together with our European partners”—and even that language tells us a great deal about where some of this is driven from. Of course, he made big play of a potential deal with the US. I visited the US last year with the Treasury Committee. We were told in no uncertain terms by anyone who spoke to us about trade that the UK would be required to put everything on the table and that the US would be required to put nothing on the table.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
654 c1648 
Session
2017-19
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Back to top