Lords to hear from Department for International Trade on CPTPP accession and UK-Australia trade agreement
Friday 16 July 2021
The House of Lords International Agreements Committee will next week hear from Lord Grimstone, Minister for Investment jointly at the Department for International Trade and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, on both the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) accession and the UK-Australia trade agreement in principle. The Minister will be joined by James Clarke, the Deputy Chief Negotiator for the Australia agreement and Graham Zebedee, Director for Indo-Pacific Negotiations and Development.
The session will take place virtually on Monday 19 July at 11.30am and can be followed on Parliament TV.
Questions the committee is likely to ask Lord Grimstone on CPTPP include:
- Members of the Trans-Pacific Agreement have signed side letters to agree carveouts and conditions. Will the UK be able to negotiate carveouts, or does it need to accept the terms of the agreement as they are?
- How will the Government ensure that the digital trade provisions under the Trans-Pacific Agreement, particularly on cross-border data flows, do not limit the UK’s ability to protect the personal data of UK citizens?
• What is the status of CPTPP members who have not yet ratified the agreement, in particular, Malaysia?
Questions the committee is likely to ask Lord Grimstone on the UK-Australia agreement in principle include:
- How will the Government respond to countries who might think that the deal with Australia has set a precedent for the UK’s future market access offers?
- What assurances can you provide that the UK will not accept Australian meat products that do not meet the UK’s high animal welfare standards?
- What is your assessment of the impact of the immediate and phased tariff elimination on British farmers?
- Could you set out the process for finalising the trade agreement with Australia over the coming months, as well as the parliamentary scrutiny processes including up to laying the agreement in Parliament under CRAG?
