My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their input on this group of amendments; I will try to cover them in thematic order. As always, we are looking to have a good debate here and reach sensible conclusions, so I would be delighted to follow up with any noble Lord who wishes to do so. Actually, I think it would be helpful if, in the new year, we celebrated 2024 by noble Lords making sure that their first meeting is with me to cover specific areas of the CPTPP.
We can refer to the CPTPP as the FTA, if noble Lords wish to. I like “CPTPP” because, of course, it is relevant—especially in terms of all the aspects being covered today, such as the importance of ensuring that the effects of the trade agreement align with our commercial interests and our values. As noble Lords will remember, it was originally called the TPP—the Trans-Pacific Partnership—but Canada added the concept of it being both comprehensive and progressive. Noble Lords should be delighted that I am facing that now, because it is precisely what they are discussing; they should be reassured that the principles of comprehensiveness and progressiveness are very much embedded in the title itself.
I am glad that my view of a two-year minimum window for an impact assessment has now been broadly accepted. I have always wanted something to be named after me, rather like the “Grimstone principle”. Can this be called the “Johnson term”? I am not quite sure whether we are allowed to do that. Just because the impact assessment amendment line has two years in it does not necessarily mean that we would accept it—but I will briefly cover the crucial first point, which is about the principle of understanding the impact of these free trade agreements.
In our last debate on a trade treaty, many noble Lords looked at it in some detail and some Dispatch Box commitments were made. I do not have them in front of me, but I would be happy to come back to noble Lords on them at the next stage. I want to be clear about which areas the Government would look to review. There is some reluctance for there to be a codified, formalised, legislated-for, mandatory impact assessment because, as we have discussed in the past, these can be unadaptable and may not necessarily fulfil the requirement that this Committee is looking for, which is a true impact study in the key areas. Also, things will change, of course. So it is better that there is a flexible approach to this, where we get the right information.
From the point of view of this Government, who believe passionately in free trade and the benefits of this agreement, an impact assessment is something that we want to do in order to show the country the
power of these free trade agreements and what they will result in. We will certainly look at the trade in goods and services, investment flows, the effects on the nations and regions of the UK, the effects on consumers and the effects on businesses. We will certainly establish the effects on border activity and, importantly, we will look at the effects on agriculture and the environment. I can say that those will not be areas to which the impact review will be limited; as I said, I would be comfortable to have further discussions around this.
Like other noble Lords, my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond rightly referred to the opportunities of the CPTPP. I am not going to grandstand and dwell on the opportunities just for the sake of it, because this is an important debate that covers some of the risk mitigation around these free trade agreements and I am comfortable making those points the focus of parliamentary scrutiny, as they should be. However, it is also worth looking more positively at the opportunities that we have, how we manage our relationships going forward with CPTPP countries, the value we think we can add as a result of that and where we can make further gains.
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For me and many of my colleagues, the opportunity to join the CPTPP is not simply about the trade opportunities that it presents today. There are some specific opportunities relating to the recognition of qualifications, tariff reductions, the ease of high-level intercompany mobility, protections on copyright and so on, and those are relevant—but we have many such agreements already with many of the CPTPP countries. The key point is that it allows us to confirm our relationships in many of these areas and set them on a regulatory discussion path that allows us to do more. That is the point about trade; hopefully, this is the ratchet that will allow us to have freer trade and closer collaboration.
The one area that I have always thought was particularly relevant is the list of committees related to the CPTPP Commission. I think there are 19 such committees—forgive me if I have got the number wrong. There are a large number of committees that cover a range of areas. Clearly, there are areas that are goods-related, but some are services-related and they cover professional services, financial services, temporary entry for business persons and telecommunications, for example. There are other committees on e-commerce, competitiveness, business facilitation, SMEs, co-operation and regulatory coherence, all of which were raised by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond regarding the importance of doing more to utilise the opportunities that the FTA presents to us.
It is important for us to have an opportunity to report back on the effectiveness of those committees, and one of the joys of joining this organisation will be our participation in them. As an applicant country, as I understand it, we already attend some of these committees. What level we are participating at I am not quite sure, but the fact is that we are now starting to engage, which is extremely important.
The second section that I will move on to relates to standards. This is an important discussion. It was a cornerstone element of the debate that we had over
the Australia and New Zealand trade deal. I want to set out a few important principles around these FTAs, which not all noble Lords or commentators necessarily see from the first instance. Undertaking a free trade agreement with another country, or joining a multiparty FTA as in this case, does not change in any way our standards in how we manage our country. Today is Thursday. If we joined any FTA with any country—in the way that we negotiate them currently—and it came into effect at midnight tonight, there would be no noticeable difference in how product standards and safety measures were brought to bear.
It is important to note that we already trade with all these countries. We have trade agreements with most of them already. So, to suggest that there will be some sudden and unmanageable increase in trade activity is, frankly, unreasonable. We look forward to trying to reduce pricing for our consumers in certain areas. Other countries have different production standards, some of which are right for those countries in terms of what they may employ or deploy, but that does not change how we manage our borders and controls.
I refer to the commentaries from the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Willis, around some of the risks of pesticides and so on. I share the view that we do not want dangerous pesticides used on foods in our food chain. There seems to be a view that somehow the British Government want to encourage low standards. That certainly does not seem to be the case, so I would be very careful about misconstruing FTAs as having to do with standards changes. I have never really understood why that seems to have taken root in people’s minds.
A separate discussion can be had about how we police our borders, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh and I have had good discussions about this. I believe that the FSA said, in the report she quoted from, that we have continued to meet our requirements when it comes to policing our borders. I take the very firm view that it is absolutely right to take a risk-based approach to how we monitor our borders. I visited one of our ports a few weeks ago and saw the very effective work undertaken by the authorities. It would be completely impractical to test every single grain of wheat that came into the country, but it is very important that we do not use scare tactics to give people the impression that somehow we have porous borders. Our borders are well controlled.
I will refer to the Trade and Agriculture Commission report. I will just quote again, as I may have done in the first section, the answers to these two questions. I would be very grateful for noble Lords to hear carefully this point, rather than to believe that somehow there is an attempt to derogate the quality of safety that we offer our consumers. This is not the case; we are looking for higher consumer quality, better standards and closer trading relationships. The first question is as follows:
“Does CPTPP require the UK to change its levels of statutory protection in relation to … animal or plant life or health, … animal welfare, … and environmental protection?
The answer is:
“No”.
The second question is as follows:
“Does CPTPP reinforce the UK’s levels of statutory protection in these areas?
The answer is:
“Yes”.
That is very important.
I am very open to being tested on the quality of border control and resourcing. That is a very healthy debate that this Government are absolutely comfortable having. We believe that the resourcing is at the right levels, but clearly these are sensitive and complex issues, technology is changing continually, and threats are changing too, as new products and developments require us to be adaptable and versatile. I am not unwelcoming in terms of the principle of ensuring that we have the level of resourcing to ensure that we have the right controls, but there is no issue in terms of changes to our safety measures on account of our FTAs.