CPTPP Membership

12. What progress her Department has made on securing UK membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

14. What progress her Department has made on securing UK membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

On 18 February, Japan announced that the UK can move to market access negotiations, the next phase of the accession process. We aim to have concluded negotiations by the end of this year.

I thank my right hon. Friend for her response. The CPTPP is a great opportunity to deal with a growing economy, a growing market, and a market that is precisely for the kind of high-quality food and drink products that are produced in Scotland, and in my constituency of Banff and Buchan. Contrary to some reports in recent weeks, will my right hon. Friend provide a firm commitment that in no future or current trade deal will we allow the import of hormone-injected beef or any other foodstuff that would be illegal to produce and sell in the UK?

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to flatten that myth. The UK’s import standards include a ban on using artificial growth hormones in domestic and imported products, and our trade deals do not and will not change that. I hope that he will call out people who are scaremongering about these deals, as the deals are good for our producers and good for driving global standards, and they will be good for our economy and wages in this country.

My right hon. Friend and her Department are to be massively congratulated on having got to the final stages of the CPTPP agreement. It is a market worth £8.4 trillion. Does she agree that it presents an enormous opportunity to propel our exports into a very high growth area of the world in the Pacific Rim and that it will have particular implications for certain sectors such as food and drink and financial services?

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. There are indeed many people across the Department and our network around the world who are to be congratulated on getting us this far. He is right: there are massive benefits in market opportunities, but the deal will also have a disproportionately positive effect on sectors here that have high wages. That will really help in creating jobs with above average wages. We will work very hard to ensure that we can realise those opportunities in the shortest possible time.