Yes, my apologies. Before I begin, I would like to declare my interests, which are very clearly listed on the Lords’ register. I have interests in limited companies and other companies active in CPTPP countries, but I do not believe there is any conflict of interest in this process today.
I will also say how excited I am about being back here today to cover Report stage of the CPTPP Bill. This incredible collective of millions of people, representing trillions of pounds-worth of trade, coming together will give huge benefit to us, and I am very excited about the opportunity for this great nation to add our trading muscle to what I think will be a phenomenal collective.
Importantly, I give a great deal of thanks to noble Members of this House who have contributed so much to the painstaking work which goes into crafting a Bill of this type and ensuring we come to the right conclusions in the right way. I know there have been a large number of you, many of whom are present today, but I particularly note the noble Lords, Lord McNicol and Lord Purvis, from the Opposition Benches, for their extremely collaborative and constructive input into the debates. My noble friend Lord Lansley, who we have just heard from, brings a wealth of experience, particularly on procurement. I am very grateful for his input. My noble friends Lady McIntosh, Lord Holmes, Lady Lawlor and a number of others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, have engaged with me. We still have one more stage after Report and I will be delighted to continue engaging with any Members of this House, or indeed any groups that noble Lords think it would be useful for me to engage with.
I will also set the scene briefly for the debates we are going to have on many of these respective issues. My noble friend Lady McIntosh is in her usual place, and I apologise, because I have been trying to reach her over the last few hours, but we have not had a chance to have a discussion. I reference this point because what happens today in terms of how we trade, or how we manage our own standards in this country, does not change tomorrow. I think it is important to summarise at the beginning of this debate that acceding to CPTPP in no way derogates our standards or our ability to control our standards and, indeed, our destiny. We have been very careful to ensure that the processes are indeed very separate.
I know that we will have these debates later, but it is worth re-emphasising this important point, which I think is sometimes lost in the excitement of CPTPP—the argument that somehow our standards, import requirements and so on change, when they do not. All food and drink products imported into the UK will still have to meet the respective food safety and biosecurity standards for the UK. We are not having to change any of our food standards as a result of joining CPTPP, and it is important to emphasise on these well-discussed points that hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken are banned in the UK and will not be allowed to enter the UK market.
I am very grateful to various agencies such as the Food Standards Agency, the Trade and Agriculture Commission, the International Agreements Committee and other groups that have been extremely focused on ensuring that these facts are properly reported. I am grateful to them for the backing that they have given me in ensuring that those statements are clear.
It is also worth pointing out that CPTPP preserves the right to regulate to protect human, animal and plant life and health. The TAC report says that the CPTPP does not require the UK to change its levels of statutory protection in relation to animal or plant life or health, animal welfare or environmental protection. I am well aware that noble Lords wish to cover these issues later in this debate, but it is important to set that scene.
There is one area I would like to draw on now, in advance of these discussions, regarding palm oil. I reassure the House that liberalising palm oil tariffs with Malaysia does not undermine the UK’s environmental credentials. We remain committed to supporting the sustainable production of palm oil. In 2021, 72% of UK palm oil imports were certified as sustainable, up from 16% in 2010.
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This brings me to a crucial point, which I hope will run as a theme throughout these debates. It is through free trade—through interlocution with our trading partners, and through sitting around the table with other countries to improve their terms of trade—that we have the legitimacy and the opportunity to align other countries in the world with our values that we hold so high. It is really important that noble Lords bear in mind the relevance of the various structures around CPTPP and look to the future rather than the past and how countries have operated their own standards relating to our own.
I turn to Amendments 1 and 2, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley. We have had a number of discussions within the department about the opportunity to tighten up the language. I am convinced of the need to ensure that there are limited mechanisms for organisations to use partial funding from international organisations to derogate their responsibilities to our own procurement responsibilities. That is very clear. As I work through this process, I am assuming that we are aligned in this great ambition, whereas my officials are very clear that my noble friend’s amendments, while no doubt drafted with the best of intentions, would not achieve this. They are also very clear about any slight changes to our wordings compared with the CPTPP wordings or standard wordings relating to our own procurement legislation, which my noble friend himself worked on. I bow absolutely to his superior knowledge of this section, but Clause 3, which deals with the schedule, clarifies that “funded” means majority funded. This is necessary to ensure that the exemption applies only to contracts under an international organisation’s procedures that are majority funded by that organisation. It is important to point that out.
The amendments would risk creating uncertainty and widening the exemption, taking more contracts out of the scope of the UK’s procurement rules than is
required to fulfil the UK’s obligations under CPTPP. That is our concern. By not being clear that
“funded by an international organisation”
under CPTPP means more than 50% funded, it could be that even if an international organisation was providing a tiny amount—say, 1% of funding—to a contract under its procedures, it could be exempt from following our domestic rules on procurement, which I do not believe any member of this House would wish. We do not consider that this is the intention of the exemption in the government procurement chapter of CPTPP.
I am very comfortable having further conversations outside of this debate and am extremely supportive of the ambitions of my noble friend. However, genuinely, we have worked through this in some detail. I believe that the wording we have will ensure that, as far as possible, procurement contracts will be captured by a procurement regime in the way that we would want them to be, and as noble Lords and this House expect. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw Amendment 1 and not move Amendment 2.