Examination of Witnesses (Questions 70-79)
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP, MR
EDMUND HOSKER
AND MR
PIERS HARRISON
18 OCTOBER 2007
Q70 Chairman: Good afternoon to you Minister
and your colleagues. Thank you for coming in. It is certainly
no reflection on you personally but for the record I should say
that this is our fourth attempt to get the Trade Minister in front
of the Committee to answer questions, but on none of the other
occasions were you the Minister in question. I have to say that
it has been a point of frustration for the Committee. I am grateful
that we have now finally managed to arrive at that, although since
we requested the meeting obviously the circumstances have changed
so we are covering both the new arrangements plus the issues of
bribery and corruption which were our initial concern for securing
this meeting. Could you perhaps introduce your team for the record
and then we can take it from there?
Mr Thomas: The
officials with me are Edmund Hosker, who is the head of the joint
Trade Policy Unit across the Department for International Development
and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform,
and on my left Piers Harrison, who is the head of the Anti-Corruption
Team in the Department for International Development.
Q71 Chairman: Thank you for that.
Starting first of all with the new arrangements which, to be honest,
we are still trying to get to grips with. As a committee we welcome
the fact that the lead Minister on trade is the Secretary of State
for International Development; that clearly is something we believe
should be of benefit to development policy. One presumes that
is the reason for it, but it is not entirely clear exactly who
leads on what. Could you first of all indicate why you think the
Prime Minister made these changes in the way that they have been
done? Was it because there were problems with the previous arrangement
in terms of coherence and the development priority? Was that the
prime reason or was it for some other reason?
Mr Thomas: You are right to focus
on the issue of coherence. Bringing together the trade and the
development briefs will lead to much better coherence across Government.
Perhaps the other thing to draw to the Committee's attention is
that the Trade Minister brief has been split into two. There has
always been a trade promotion side of trade and work in Government
as well as a trade policy dimension. Lord Jones of Birmingham
is the Trade Promotion Minister selling British business. My job
is to focus in on the trade policy work, reporting to the Secretary
of State for International Development, who chairs the Cabinet
committee and indeed the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise
and Regulatory Reform. You asked specifically about the division
of labour; I assume you mean between the two Secretaries of State.
The Secretary of State for International Development will chair
the Cabinet committee and obviously has the overall lead as a
result and will lead on issues such as the Doha Round, Economic
Partnership Agreements, where there is a very clear and very strong
development dimension. The Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise
and Regulatory Reform will lead on issues such as trade defence
measures and indeed issues such as regional trade agreements where
the development dimension, whilst perhaps there, is not there
in quite the same way as it is with, say, EPAs[1]
or indeed the Doha Round.
Q72 Chairman: So, for example, the Doha
Round in day-to-day terms will be your responsibility.
Mr Thomas: Indeed; yes. However,
one of the reasons for establishing a Cabinet committee is to
bring around the table all the different interests across the
UK, across the Government. There are many, many different departments
which have a stake in wanting a good outcome from the Doha Round
of talks and many other ministers across Government, apart from
those I have just named, will have opportunities to have the conversations,
to do the lobbying work necessary to make progress on the Doha
Round, and indeed on EPAs, that we want to see. Having a Cabinet
committee brings together all those different interests to agree
not only coordinated policy but also then to think through the
lobbying and influencing strategy to try to achieve our objectives.
Chairman: As the questioning develops
there are aspects of that we shall want to explore a little more.
Q73 John Bercow: What exactly is
your title?
Mr Thomas: My title is the Minister
for Trade and Development.
Q74 John Bercow: I am heartened by
the straightforwardness and clarity of that reply, which I confess
is in stark contrast to some of the published sources which we
have consulted to try to establish the same points. Specifically,
I have seen you referred to not only as Parliamentary Under Secretary
of State for Trade and Consumer Affairs, indeed I have seen you
referred to as Minister for Trade and Development. I have seen
you also referred to as Minister for Trade Policy. Would you not
agree with me—this is no cavil and it is certainly not in
any sense nitpicking—that it is terribly important, particularly
when there is a change, to be clear and that we need to know your
identity and therefore to be reminded constantly of that title
and that it should be one title and not a whole series of different
titles apparently all emanating from official sources and reproduced
in different ways. For example, you yourself wrote a letter to
the Guardian on the ninth of this month in which you did
indeed use the title Minister for Trade and Development, but on
other occasions the title has been given differently. Is there
not a need for some sort of central edict to go out so that departmentally,
as between DFID and BERR, for example, there is clarity, the better
to promote the chance of clarity amongst the media and others?
Mr Thomas: I hope the opportunity
to appear before the Committee now will help to clarify that.
As well as the brief for trade policy, I hold other responsibilities
still at the Department for International Development and indeed
hold other responsibilities at the Department for Business, Enterprise
and Regulatory Reform which is perhaps where the initial confusion
may have come from. I am clear that my prime responsibilities
are in the trade and development area; that is not to downgrade
the other areas of work I have which are also important and which
I am seeking to take forward too.
Q75 John Bercow: That is very candid
and thank you for that. You do, as you say, have a broad range
of responsibilities: the Doha Round, Economic Partnership Agreements,
of which more in the course of the afternoon, and other trade
agreements, not to mention responsibilities in two departments,
including consumer affairs in BERR and work in DFID on both climate
change and water. This is a very, very substantial portfolio and
it does raise the question of whether it is feasible for one minister,
who is presumably expected to give a much higher priority to trade,
as reflected in the overall change in the Secretary of State's
overall responsibility, still somehow to manage to deal with a
miscellany of other pretty important matters. How, in practical
terms, notwithstanding your industry and your talents, are you
going to manage the competing priorities of such a broad portfolio
across two government departments?
Mr Thomas: It is important to
note that the Prime Minister increased the number of ministers
at the Department for International Development, in part as a
reflection of both the increasing budget for development and the
increasing need for the Department for International Development's
expertise to be deployed in a variety of other fora. I work very
closely with my other ministerial colleagues under the leadership
of Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State, and we share out
responsibilities. My colleagues at ministerial level, Baroness
Vadera and Shahid Malik have specific country responsibilities
where issues of water, sanitation and climate change play out
in a whole variety of ways and impacts. They will also contribute
to those areas of work inevitably. My colleague Baroness Vadera
is leading work on economic growth, for example, which has a close
bearing on the ability of developing countries to take advantage
of trading opportunities. I come back to the point that there
is a shared responsibility for what is a cross-government agenda
and other colleagues will be contributing to the work I do in
the same way that I hope I shall be able to contribute on occasions
to the areas of work they do.
Q76 John Bercow: Let me put a couple
of quite specific points to you. The DFID submission states that
there is to be a new single but dually located Trade Policy Unit
of DFID and BERR officials. CBI[2]
evidence says that this is to be headed by the former DTI[3]
trade policy lead official. As at 11 October, 106 days after the
Prime Minister took up his post, there was only one mention of
the Trade Policy Unit on the BERR website—there was a contact
address—and no mention on the DFID website[4].
What is going on?
Mr Thomas: I will go back and
seek to make sure that the omissions, if indeed there are any,
are remedied. The joint Trade Policy Unit is established and it
is doing an awful lot of work helping the Prime Minister in his
conversations around the Doha Round and indeed mine and both Secretaries
of State similarly on the Doha Round and on Economic Partnership
Agreements. I hope you will forgive the website omissions in the
light of the considerable amount of work which is being done,
but I will take that back.
Q77 John Bercow: It may well be that
they can be forgiven, but they cannot lightly be forgotten and
they will of course be recorded in the evidence. It does seem
to me that it would be the height of cheekiness to expect you
to be sorting out the website physically yourself. I am sure others
can do that, but it does seem to be peculiarly unfortunate that
the mention is on the BERR website, not on trade promotion but
on trade policy, when we are being told that on trade policy DFID
is in the lead. I am not saying that you should be doing it, but
the matter needs to be sorted. It would be very unsatisfactory
if we were still meeting as a select committee next week and the
matter had not been addressed. You will not be surprised to know
that it is my personal intention to check the website very soon
after this session. One might allow 24 hours, but it would be
trespassing on the generosity of members of this Committee to
expect us to wait any longer than that. What has changed as a
result of the dual location of the Trade Policy Unit? Specifically,
have any former DTI staff moved to DFID as a result?
Mr Thomas: Yes, staff have moved
across to DFID. A specific issue in terms of the benefits of the
Trade Policy Unit is linked to having a separate minister for
trade policy. What it has done is to free up ministerial time
to concentrate on what needs to be done to try to help unlock
progress in the Doha Round and indeed to address the concerns
and needs in terms of Economic Partnership Agreements too.
Q78 Chairman: A specific and unrelated
concern. Does the transfer of staff into DFID have any implication
for DFID's overall headcount?
Mr Thomas: They remain as Department
for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform staff, albeit working
within the Trade Policy Unit. May I bring in Edmund Hosker, who
is the head of that Trade Policy Unit? Do you want to comment
in any way on the staff location arrangements?
Mr Hosker: There are some people
from BERR who will be spending most of their time in DFID and
a few people from DFID who will be spending most of their time
in BERR. The net effect is more people working in DFID than was
previously the case and the precise working arrangements will
be for the teams themselves to sort out in terms of what makes
operational sense for them.
Q79 John Bercow: Yes, but you are
not just an official. You are the Director of the Trade Policy
Unit and that leads me to the fairly obvious question: where is
your office?
Mr Hosker: I am intending to spend
one day a week working in DFID and indeed I have already started
spending some time there; we hold meetings sometimes in DFID,
sometimes in BERR.
1 Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) Back
2
Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Back
3
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Back
4
The information is available on the Trade Policy Unit website:
http://www.dti.gov.uk/europeandtrade/Trade%20 Policy%20Unit/page41941.html Back
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