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Select committee: Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee

Second Report - UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

HC 483 Published 19 February 2024

Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Report on parliament.uk ↗

At a glance2 recommendations · Government response published 28 March 2024 (deadline 19 April 2024)

The government's response

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government's response sets out why it declines to guarantee a substantive debate or to prepare a revised impact assessment, and describes the support it is providing to help UK businesses use the agreement.

  • On a substantive debate on ratification, the government will "always seek to accommodate a debate" where a request is made "in a timely manner and subject to Parliamentary time". It says a general debate is the appropriate mechanism.
  • It does not commit to guaranteed substantive debates under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG), saying this would "fundamentally alter the nature of the scrutiny framework, undermine the Royal Prerogative, and remove flexibility".
  • It does not propose to prepare a revised impact assessment, stating that the existing one "continues to be fit for purpose" and that a revised version would not contain "substantially more recent data nor improvements to the methodology".
  • The Department has "committed to publishing a comprehensive ex-post evaluation report for CPTPP accession within 5 years of entry into force" of the CPTPP for the UK.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error

Sources

Recommendations and conclusions 2

  1. 1
    Facilitate House of Commons debate on UK accession to Trans-Pacific Partnership ratification during scrutiny period. Recommendation · paragraph 11 · addressed to Department for Business and Trade Recommendation (the committee's words)
    The terms of UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership raise contentious issues. We recommend that during the 21-day scrutiny period under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, the Government facilitate a debate on the Floor of the House on a substantive motion on the ratification of UK accession to the Agreement. The Secretary of State for Business and Trade should write to the Leader of the House, setting out the case for holding such a debate in Government time.
  2. 2
    Provide revised CPTPP impact assessment and develop independent methods for measuring future trade agreement benefits. Recommendation · paragraph 13 · addressed to Department for Business and Trade Recommendation (the committee's words)
    It is difficult to estimate the potential benefits of CPTPP or its impact on economic growth, not least because the Secretary of State has resiled from the models used by her department to estimate benefits in the published impact assessment. It is, therefore, hard to debate what investment in trade promotion and export support would be appropriate to unlock the full potential of the Agreement. Nor has the Government explained its own ambitions for the future of CPTPP or provided any sort of roadmap for its evolution to include a much bigger proportion of Indo- Pacific markets. This renders speculative much of the commentary about CPTPP’s future advantages. We note that the Secretary of State wants to see the development of better ways to measure the impact of trade agreements but has not yet found a way to achieve this. We recommend that the Government provide a revised impact assessment, setting out its current expectations of the gains from CPTPP; and the Department for Business and Trade should explain what steps it is going to take to help ensure that UK business exploits the treaty to the full. The Government must also say what it will do to develop better ways of measuring the impact of future trade agreements—including the involvement of an independent body, to avoid the Department “marking [its] own homework”, as the Secretary of State put it.