Parliamentarians are calling on the government to put the UK’s agreement to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to a debate and vote.
The Business and Trade Committee has concluded that there are “controversial aspects” to joining the bloc and a “lack of clarity over the benefits” of it, according to a press release.
The committee’s statement notes that business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch “has distanced herself” from the statistical modelling by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), which found that membership of bloc would only increase UK GDP by 0.08%.
Serious about sovereignty
Liam Byrne, the chair of the committee, acknowledged the role of free trade agreements in helping the UK achieve its goal of hitting £1trn of exports by 2030, but said MPs needed to have a debate and vote on CPTPP if the UK wants to be “serious about parliamentary sovereignty”.
“But if we want [to] get serious about these debates, we need some hard-headed analysis of the economic benefits of the trade deals ministers propose to sign.
“It is simply not good enough for Secretaries of State to cast aside numbers produced by their own department, without providing their own figures.”
Pacific pact
The UK formally agreed to join CPTPP – which counts Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam among its members – in July 2023, with an initial deal announced in March 2023.
Badenoch said last year that the deal would “help grow the UK economy and build on the hundreds of thousands of jobs CPTPP-owned businesses already support up and down the country.”
Institute of Export & International Trade (IOE&IT) director general, Marco Forgione, said the deal represented “a new gateway to 500 million customers who they can sell to with far fewer barriers” for businesses of all sizes.
Contentious
The committee cited concerns “around food safety standards and the ability of overseas investors to sue the UK government”, according to Bloomberg.
CPTPP member Canada has expressed dissatisfaction with the UK’s reluctance to lower standards to allow hormone-treated meat imports, culminating in the halting of bilateral trade deal talks between the countries.
