My Lords, I declare my interests, past and present, on Commonwealth matters as in the register: I am a former Minister for the Commonwealth and former president of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to discuss Commonwealth developments with your Lordships. Now that we are told that the Commonwealth has moved to the centre of UK trade plans, it is clearly obvious that we should focus hard on these issues. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, to the Opposition Front Bench, as I understand it is her first appearance in this role. It will not be a joy-ride of course, but she will certainly find it different from her very high-profile roles in the other place and her prominent position in her party. We wish her well.
It is impossible to comprehend the Commonwealth today, or its future direction and prospects, without understanding how it has evolved and is still evolving as a result of the worldwide communications revolution and its fundamental impact on all global networks, of which the Commonwealth happens to be the largest. Whether we are looking at public or private network systems or those that operate between the two spheres, the incredible potency of instant and continuous communication and exchange has changed the way that nations relate on all issues, the way that groups and interests relate and, indeed, the way that people relate.
The plain and obvious fact of existence now is that technology has enormously empowered network structures of all kinds as against traditional hierarchies of governance, with their inevitable centralising traits. The tendency of Commonwealth critics today—of whom there are a few, including not a few academics who dismiss the Commonwealth—springs from what these learned folk think they see through the lens of officialdom and government, as well as the lens of the past. To take a recent example, the modern Commonwealth was recently called
“an irrelevant institution afflicted by imperialist amnesia”,
by someone who, frankly, should have known much better.
However, in the age of networking and digital connectivity, the binding ties of a voluntary, non-treaty, global organisation such as the Commonwealth are sealed as much by enterprise and trade, civil society concerns and common everyday life and work interests as through government channels—indeed, even more so. This is of course what gives the Commonwealth today its vibrancy and brings it alive as never before. The Library briefing for this debate is a bit wrong in this respect when it says that three intergovernmental organisations are at the core of the Commonwealth association. It is not so; in fact, it is the nexus of non-governmental organisations, professions, business interests, education at all levels, science, law and hundreds of informal links, not to mention sports connections and the enormous and expanding range of arts and cultural links of every kind, that are increasingly at the core of the Commonwealth. They are all areas where, nowadays, soft power is at its most telling and effective.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his welcoming me to the Front Bench; it is most gracious of him and is appreciated. His passion for the Commonwealth can be felt on this side of the Chamber and is to be respected and applauded.
This debate is an excellent opportunity to consider the complex challenges and multiple opportunities that we now face as a country in forming our own independent trading policy in the post-Brexit era. We have the chance to apply our own priorities and strike our own trade deals with our Commonwealth cousins. We therefore have a responsibility to make sure that those priorities reflect our values. Closer trade allows us to strengthen our modern relationships with those nations to which we are tied by history, common traditions and the shared sacrifice of two world wars.
Of course, when we contemplate preferential trade deals with our Commonwealth cousins, the exact same questions arise that we must answer for every other potential trade partner around the world. Labour will never agree a trade deal that is not in the interests of British industries’ workers or our NHS, but we have to ask ourselves some important questions. For instance, are we willing to give trade deals to countries that attack the human rights of their people, allow the exploitation of their workers and deny their citizens essential democratic and personal freedoms? Are we willing to give trade deals to countries whose export trade actively relies on deforestation and other practices that make it harder for us to achieve our own global climate goals? Are we willing to give trade deals to countries that allow farming practices that are illegal in the UK and whose agricultural corporations will therefore be able to undercut our domestic producers? The Government have yet to make clear where they stand in response to all these important questions.
We all share the objectives of deeper trade with the Commonwealth, but none of those objectives can be achieved while the majority of our fellow Commonwealth countries remain in the grip of this pandemic and while half of them have barely begun their vaccine programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley.
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Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, “Networks never sleep”—those are pragmatic words from the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and they are particularly applicable to the Commonwealth. However, for self-serving reasons, the UK nevertheless turned its back on the Commonwealth in favour of the EU experiment. The consequences of that were drilled into me this week by a Commonwealth trading partner, who said this: “The Commonwealth is not now the defining organisation for many countries, as many have opted in the meanwhile to strengthen linkages with geopolitical proximity”. However, intra-Commonwealth trade is a key aspiration, particularly east-west. Nevertheless, this is a cautionary tale, which, when combined with the pending quandary by way of a referendum in Barbados, indicates that we must not take the Commonwealth for granted and must never forget the tribute, gratitude and legacy of Her Majesty.
Trade agreements with Commonwealth members, including Singapore, India, Australia, New Zealand and Commonwealth CPTPP members, provide opportunities for us to strengthen Commonwealth trade and assist in meeting targets to double intra-Commonwealth trade to $2 trillion by 2030. However, some suggest that the Government’s current approach is fragmented across departments and unclear about how Commonwealth trade priorities fit into DIT’s priorities. There is no mention, for example, of the $2 trillion goal in DIT messaging, or that Commonwealth FTAs should be underpinning that target and so enabling us to achieve that goal.
Four fundamental goals are being presented to Ministers at CHOGM, via the B2B cluster of the business policy forum for the Commonwealth Connectivity Agenda, that could assist in this regard. Three are centred around digitalisation, given that the costs of trade transactions can be halved by reducing the reliance on paper-based systems and the need to redouble our efforts to digitise cross-border customs arrangements on trading goods. A focus on Covid eradication Commonwealth-wide is the fourth. Tackling Covid is the foundation stone to recovery for all; of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, was spot on in that regard.
With all this in mind, as co-chair of the APPG for Trade and Export Promotion, and recognising the importance that parliamentarians in Westminster and around the Commonwealth be kept abreast, I have requested International Economics Ltd of Mauritius, an advisory operation to Governments on trade agreements, to create a trade insight dashboard on the UK’s trading arrangements since Brexit. UK trade agreements with the Commonwealth—as with all FTAs globally, wherever they be—will be analysed pre and post Brexit, with insights on the trade flows and sector and product-level market access conditions for Commonwealth firms on the UK market and UK firms in Commonwealth markets. Additionally, there will be analysis on the number of agreements, trade flows and tariff preferences under each and every agreement that will offer interactive summary analytics, serving as a comparator with pre and post-Brexit trade with the European Union.
My Lords, I warmly applaud my noble friend Lord Howell for initiating this debate and for so constantly bringing our attention to the Commonwealth over many years. I think it would not be unreasonable to say that much of the energy and focus of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the past perhaps arose out of our membership of the European Union. While we of course want to have excellent relationships with our European neighbours, the long-standing and prescient call by my noble friend to embrace the Commonwealth clearly needs to be answered now, without hesitation. I also applaud the work of my noble friend Lord Marland, who chairs the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, the mandate of which is to promote trade and investment across the Commonwealth.
We should capitalise on the Commonwealth advantage. It is a gateway to trading with nations with whom we share legislative practices based on the rule of law, with whom we overwhelmingly share common ideals and values through the commercial charter, and which is strengthened by commercial links and the Commonwealth legal framework.
Each morning, I look at newspapers from across the channel. There is considerable debate, not always harmonious, about links between Francophone countries. Quite simply, our Commonwealth structure has no remote equal and is widely admired.
In the extensive list of countries with whom we have signed trade deals, digital connectivity and stimulating digital trade is at the heart of a number of these agreements. Thus, the Commonwealth is an area for this country to develop and share targeted digital commercial activity.
Young people abroad remain very attracted by our technological and cultural offer and our forms of soft power, often through the English language. I greatly welcome the changed visa regime, with students from the Commonwealth now able to study and work here much more freely.
My Lords, I welcome Her Majesty’s Government’s intent to strengthen ties with the Commonwealth as we transition to our new reality outside the European Union. When we entered the European Common Market, we severed many tight economic ties with some of our Commonwealth partners. It is because of that that I am particularly pleased at the announcement of the economic partnership agreement with CARIFORUM, which covers many countries with whom we continue to share a head of state.
My diocese is linked with the Windward Islands, and we are glad to have a large community of Vincentians living in Luton. They have told me of the extraordinary economic disruption that occurred to them when we joined the EEC. Although many of these Commonwealth realm territories contained within the CARIFORUM agreement are small in GDP terms, there is a symbolic importance to this agreement, and I hope it will be a platform to further invest and engage culturally with these territories to strengthen our existing ties.
While any future agreements with Commonwealth countries have the potential to create prosperity, it is vital that this prosperity is truly mutual, delivers material improvements to the ordinary citizens of those countries and does not constitute the sort of extractive relations of the past. However, as we know, the Commonwealth is primarily an organisation that affirms our commitment to shared values—democracy, human rights and freedom of religion, to name a few—and it is important that future economic agreements promote these values. We cannot presume that free trade and market liberalisation alone will naturally deliver liberal and tolerant societies, and I hope that our continued engagement with the Commonwealth does not devolve into a quid pro quo economic relationship stemming from our need to sign trade agreements. We should not shy away from the fact that some Commonwealth members do not have the sort of record on our shared values that one might expect or hope. As part of the Government’s vision of global Britain, I hope that we will explore seriously the ways we can embed positive social consequences into trade deals and truly be that force for good in the world that the Foreign Secretary has spoken of so powerfully in the past.
My Lords, I too declare my interest as a former Commonwealth Minister, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for initiating this debate. It is also a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans.
I start by wishing all of us well, here and in the Commonwealth, in our trade relationships. I do not think you could create the Commonwealth today; it is a unique organisation, and it has deepened its relationships with all its members in so many ways. I also want to say that the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, is a very fine ambassador for trade.
But our optimism about it needs to be tempered by some realism, particularly as we want to see global developments in trade. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, used the term “geopolitical proximity”, and that is always a genuine issue. I just want to make the point that distances cannot be dismissed lightly. According to the Library briefing, the average distance by air from London of our top 10 trading nations in the Commonwealth is 9,601 kilometres. The average for the top 10 of our former EU partners is 1,020 kilometres—and that is by road, which means that the delivery of goods is significant. We are looking at 9.4 times the distances we have traditionally looked at. That is significant because our trade is largely in goods, not so much in services. We use shipping. We have seen that even one ship in the Suez Canal can create considerable difficulties. Most shipping is using bunker fuel and emitting huge amounts of sulphur into the atmosphere. These are all important factors we need to overcome.
The interconnectivity the noble Lord, Lord Howell, refers to is of course absolutely real, but it is universal. The interconnectivity is not just with the Commonwealth but with all other countries, none of which sleep in the world of this interconnectivity. But even interconnectivity is not unproblematic. It is a huge source of business, of course, but we know now that it is an even greater source of fraud—not insurmountable, but a real factor.
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Networks never sleep. The future pattern of international relations will be—and is already—far more through interest groups, professions, twinning of cities and dialogue between them, business conferences and initiatives, universities, research and discovery, shared technology and innovation, and a thousand other connections than through any formal governmental or official channels or agreements. It is precisely this quality which makes the Commonwealth, in Her Majesty the Queen’s own words,
“in many ways the face of the future”,
and why some more far-seeing commentators cite it as a model for international co-operation on issues large and small in the world we are moving into. This is a pattern of fluidity and resilience that no old-style hierarchies or alliances, burdened with their heavy furniture of top tables, pecking orders and costly central secretariats, can ever match.
The detailed, unfolding Commonwealth trade and investment prospect will, I am sure, be explained later in this debate by my noble friend Lord Marland, who chairs so ably the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council and deals with some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing consumer markets, especially in Asia, which the Commonwealth now embraces.
I should say a word to your Lordships about the Brexit effect on Commonwealth economies, about which there were initially some fears. Most, if not all of these, were addressed fairly thoroughly in the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement and most countries that have partnership agreements with the EU have been covered by free trade agreements with the United Kingdom—or at least bridged by the generalised scheme of preferences.
Meanwhile, the immensely effective work of the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone—we call him our own—and the International Trade Secretary, Liz Truss, is opening up deals and opportunities with Australia, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Ghana and a dozen other countries, and we hope, in due course, with the giant of all, India, although frankly that will not be easy. There is also the African Continental Free Trade Area, which will create the largest single free trade area in the world and is heavily Commonwealth-weighted. Then there is our application to join the rather clumsily named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Half its membership just happens to be from Commonwealth countries and it opens access to massive new markets for us, including the world’s biggest markets—as long as we meet the common rules and standard required, of course. We also have to remember that there is a leading Commonwealth figure—the wonderful Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala—at the helm of the World Trade Organization, so we are very well placed in this system.
The Zoom experience, which has mushroomed in the past year of the pandemic tragedy, has greatly increased the value of the key characteristics of the Commonwealth system and opened doors to multiple new initiatives. The new technology now swiftly gathers into one “room” hundreds of participants from across the planet where a mere handful could be assembled before. Of course, the cost of travel and accommodation in coming together are no longer the constraint that they were. This means that bodies such as the Commonwealth of Learning, based in Vancouver—already one of the largest distance-learning organisations in the world—can have continuous meetings and contacts with new levels of frequency. It means that, through bodies such as the Association of Commonwealth Universities, scholarly exchange, tutorship, and discussion on trade can be lifted from the cold text to friendly conversation in an instant. It means that business conferences and seminars can be organised on a global scale with new speed and ease. It means that intimate co-operation on areas far outside trade and culture—such as energy, properly tailored climate assistance, security, defence and intelligence—can be, and is being, built up like never before.
With the English language as the protocol of the planet, and with the soft power of influence and persuasion being the prime currency of international exchange, these new worldwide conditions fit the open hand of the Commonwealth system like the proverbial glove, frankly. I think it is the professors and the regular Commonwealth decriers, as well as some of our dismissive foreign policy and trade gurus, who are the real amnesia sufferers. They stare into the past and forget to study how the world has radically changed, how the Commonwealth has grown and changed totally since its 1949 inception, and how new forces of cohesion and co-operation are now at work within the world wide web that embraces us all.
I should add that, while we are rightly talking about trade, business growth, prosperity and poverty escape, we must remember that trade depends absolutely on peace and security. Here, too, the Commonwealth’s significance is growing, both in conventional forms through joint naval co-operation and in the new defence and security areas of cyber defence, intelligence, unmanned weaponry, aerial and marine, artificial intelligence and, of course, co-operation on terrorism prevention in all forms.
An effective and common front in containing China in Asia is going to depend on Commonwealth-dominated organisations such as Five Eyes, which need to be kept in tip-top condition, and on close defence co-operation at all levels with Commonwealth members. The new move to counter China’s belt and road initiative as it advances across the world is by the so-called Blue Dot Network initiative, combining public and private investment projects. That also depends heavily on commitment from Commonwealth countries and on Japan, a nation that has always taken a shrewd and close interest in the networking potential of Commonwealth—rather more than interest than has sometimes been shown right here in the UK.
World markets are changing fast, both geographically and in their nature, as services and technology transform trade flows. Distance matters less and less. All the modelling now suggests substantial scope for increased intra-Commonwealth trade. For one thing, we can obviously offer in this country a trade regime that is less heavy than the European Union pattern, although we need to keep close, good and sensible relations with the EU. Straightaway, we can be less protectionist where some industries and interests, which the EU strongly protects, are ones that we simply do not have and do not need to protect. Someone pointed out the other day that we do not need to check every lemon that comes into the United Kingdom because we do not grow lemons, as far as I know. That is just one small example of a different approach we can take.
My overall conclusion is the same as the one that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, reached three years ago in the excellent inquiry by the All-Party Group on Trade Out of Poverty, which he chaired; I think we shall hear from him towards the end of this debate. We need a new mandate from Commonwealth leaders for trade and investment developments of all kinds, and that mandate is needed not to pave the way but to catch up with the amazing developments occurring at great speed. They open our own access to the expansion of vast new consumer markets where all the growth is going to be in the next 20 years, and address the needs of small and vulnerable states as well.
How good it would be to see this as a major legacy from the United Kingdom. We are just completing three years in office at the Commonwealth. It is all coming to an end. If we could bequeath this legacy and define it, how much this would also help to define our own national role and purpose at a time when old avenues have closed and a new era has begun. I beg to move.
I would like to use this opportunity to address the most urgent issue facing our Commonwealth of nations, one in which the rules and systems of trade play a vital part: the global production and distribution of Covid vaccine. As of 30 June, eight of the 54 Commonwealth countries had vaccinated more than half of their population with at least one dose, but at the other end of that list, 26 Commonwealth countries have vaccination rates below 7%. Of those 26 countries, 15 have full trade agreements in place with the UK, so it is not tariff barriers that are stopping those countries vaccinating their people—it is a lack of healthcare systems, money and, most fundamental of all, vaccines.
As noble Lords will know, the Labour Party has set out a comprehensive plan to address the global shortage in vaccine supplies, which must start with an agreement on the sharing of vaccine patents. But we also need a global plan to build, equip and supply production facilities in key locations all over the world, and a bespoke international trade treaty to manage the supply of raw materials and medical equipment to ensure the safe, efficient and equitable distribution of vaccine and to prevent the practice of hoarding and vaccine nationalism. We need that as a matter of urgency, before more mass outbreaks occur in the poorest countries and before new variants emerge to threaten the effectiveness of the vaccine we have.
There is one structural component of the Commonwealth architecture which begs for modernisation. I happen to be the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Algeria—the biggest country in Africa and, for over 50 years, a reliable supplier to us of liquified natural gas. As I have heard from their president’s lips, they would like to have associate or formal observer status with the Commonwealth. But there is no such status: it is either full membership or nothing. Does my noble friend agree with more flexible linkages to the organisation, which would undoubtedly enhance the Commonwealth’s reach and credibility? If he does, will he strongly take the message to our Government to work assiduously to achieve this? After all, our Prime Minister is currently chair-in-office. Surely the time to put real focus and energy into the Commonwealth has now arisen.
I just want to finish on the Covid point, which has been made so well by my noble friend Lady Chapman. It is a really serious matter. Forty-four million people in the Commonwealth have been infected—130,000 more each day. There have been 700,000 deaths, growing by 1% per day. Vaccines so far have got to about 1% of the population of Africa, and that really does mean that the people are suffering in all the ways we know about medically but also in their ability to construct and reconstruct and build their economies. If we have a serious approach to this, we will deal with it.
Finally, but not as an afterthought, I applaud what the noble Lord, Lord Risby, just said. When I was Minister for the Commonwealth, I also thought associate membership would be very important and that Algeria would be a prime candidate.