WIREDGOV

The International Trade Committee yesterday sets out the key measures MPs must consider when assessing the UK’s accession to the Pacific trading bloc, the CPTPP.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a free trade agreement comprising Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The Government reached an agreement in principle to join CPTPP last month.

• Read the full report (HTML)
• Read the full report (PDF 508KB)
• Read the report summary
• Find all publications related to this inquiry, including oral and written evidence

In a new report, the cross-party Committee of MPs notes that there are important areas where the CPTPP goes further than some existing agreements, including generous rules of origin, and prohibition of the requirement to maintain a local presence to deliver services.

However, there are many unanswered questions on the environmental impact of accession to the CPTPP, particularly on the welfare and production standards applied to products entering the UK market.

The MPs argue it is essential that the impact assessment considers how further tariff liberalisation could affect sectors already aggrieved by the UK’s negotiations with Australia and New Zealand. The Government must also publish an environmental impact assessment.

The Committee states the agreement needs to deliver tangible opportunities for businesses which go above and beyond those which already exist through the UK's bilateral agreements with individual CPTPP members. The MPs also call on the Government to outline exactly how it will ensure that businesses are best placed to make use of the agreement.

The CPTPP’s capacity to change and expand could bring both benefits and challenges. The Government must have a clear understanding of what it wants to achieve through the UK's membership of the agreement.

While it should look for opportunities to further liberalise tariffs and align regulations, it also needs to consider where its policy leadership could strengthen the rules-based trading system to deliver for British businesses.

The MPs also reiterate their call for the Government to produce a single, comprehensive trade strategy, arguing it is not well placed to make an assessment on the accession of new countries until it has produced such a strategy.

Chair comment

Commenting on the report, Angus Brendan MacNeil MP, Chair of the International Trade Committee, said:

“The Government’s race to join the CPTPP trading bloc has the potential to bring both benefits and challenges to the UK. There are unanswered questions over the degree of new goods and services trade that membership of CPTPP will bring, and concerns remain over the environmental impact of the agreement. However, membership places the UK in a dynamic bloc which is shaping international trading rules and norms. The key question for the Government is how it will ensure that membership delivers benefits for British businesses and consumers.

“As our Committee is being wound up, we do not have time to conclude our scrutiny of this important deal. Instead, we have set out key points MPs must consider when assessing whether to ratify the UK’s accession to CPTPP. A longstanding demand from our Committee has been for the Government to produce an overarching trade strategy, setting out what the Government wants to achieve from its multiple trade negotiations. This must not be forgotten as the Business and Trade Committee takes up this vital scrutiny.”

Following changes to the machinery of Government, which saw the abolition of the Department for International Trade and the establishment of the Department for Business and Trade, the International Trade Committee is to be disbanded on Wednesday 26 April, to be replaced by the Business and Trade Committee.

Further information

• Inquiry: UK trade negotiations: CPTPP accession
• International Trade Committee