Progress with Trade negotiations - Which? submission to the Public Accounts Committee

Summary:

1. Which? welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence ahead of the Committee’s evidence session with officials from the Department for International Trade (DIT) and Defra progress in trade negotiations, in light of the recent National Audit Office (NAO) report. Which? supports the key conclusions and recommendations made by the NAO and in particular the need for:

• the DIT to set out an overarching trade strategy so that it is clear how its trade policy supports wider policy objectives and how it will use trade negotiations, alongside other levers to achieve its objectives,
• improved engagement with stakeholders, including consumer organisations on the detailed aspects of negotiations to ensure the DIT can make well informed trade-offs during negotiations,
• improvements to the robustness and effectiveness of Parliamentary scrutiny.

2. The success of the UK’s trade negotiations will ultimately be judged by what they deliver for consumers in their everyday lives. Which? has conducted a series of unique and comprehensive public dialogues with people across the UK to understand what they consider the government’s priorities to be when the breadth of issues that could be included within trade deals, as well as potential trade-offs, are explained. It is important that the government’s approach is focused on delivering on these priorities.

3. While opening up markets to ensure more choice for consumers is seen as an opportunity, the overwhelming priorities that people expect the government to address as part of trade deal negotiations are:

• upholding food and consumer product safety standards;
• upholding data protection and digital rights;
• ensuring trade deals support environmental protection; and
• ensuring regional equity, so that all parts of the country can benefit.

4. Which? published an assessment of the government’s progress against these priorities inDecember1, as well as considering how consumer interests were being reflected more generally within trade deals. We have called for a specific consumer chapter, akin to chapters included for other interest groups, such as small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) to be included within all new UK trade deals. We were pleased to see that a precedent-setting Consumer Protection Chapter has been included within the Agreement in Principle with New Zealand. This is a world-first and now needs to be built upon in other trade deals.

5. We have welcomed broad commitments from the government to uphold standards, including food standards and data protection, to promote environmental protection with trade deals and to ensure trade deals deliver for people across the UK. But there remains a lack of clarity about how provisions within the trade agreements that have been agreed to date (Japan and Australia) will deliver on this, given divergent approaches in some key policy areas, including data protection and food standards. As the government now progresses a wider range of negotiations with countries that have very different regulatory and policy frameworks to the UK (including the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership or CPTPP, India and the Gulf Cooperation Council for example), it is essential that it ensures that there is no undermining of consumer or environmental protections – and that ideally trade agreements can be used to enhance them. The NAO recommendation for a trade strategy to be set out in one place, explaining how international trade will support UK domestic and wider policy objectives is therefore crucial.