Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 28
Eighth Report - Tilting horizons: the Integrated Review and the Indo-Pacific
Published 30 Aug 2023
Paragraph 92
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Implementing the Integrated Review: Tilt to the Indo-Pacific All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government should publish, by December 2023, an assessment of progress made to date in the development of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), for example to what extent it might serve UK interests and objectives in the Indo-Pacific and how it interacts with other multilateral initiatives such as the CPTPP and the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. At the same time, the Government should publish an assessment of the role of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in the Indo-Pacific with a view to considering seeking to join it, including an evaluation of its effect on UK interests in the region, an independent estimate of its potential to increase trade and incomes in the Indo-Pacific, and an assessment of its advantages and disadvantages, particularly vis-à-vis the CPTPP. It is our view that to compete with the PRC’s efforts to create mirror or standalone economic organisations, the UK can—but only when it is strictly necessary—play a role through participation, to prevent these organisations overly creating economic reliance on the PRC and its approach to international standards.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Eighth Report - Tilting horizons: the Integrated Review and the Indo-Pacific (HC 172), paragraph 92, 30 August 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 22 March 2024 (deadline 30 October 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's recognition of the Indo-Pacific's strategic importance and agrees on many points, but disagrees on a China Strategy, assessments of IPEF and RCEP, and the Committee's human rights criticisms.
- It agrees the Indo-Pacific must be a "long term and enduring aspect" of UK policy, but disagrees that it has not set out its long-term objectives clearly.
- On China, it disagrees with the recommendation to publish an unclassified China Strategy, stating it "does not intend to publish an additional China Strategy" while maintaining "as much transparency as possible".
- It "partially agrees" on funding and posts, citing doubled British High Commissions in the Pacific, and says CSSF funding "is adjusted annually" given the fiscal situation.
- It disagrees that it should publish assessments of IPEF while negotiations are ongoing or of RCEP, and says it does not "currently envisage" seeking to join RCEP.