This is a House of Commons Committee report, with recommendations to government. The Government has two months to respond.
UK accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership
Date Published: 19 February 2024
This is the report summary, read the full report.
The UK applied to accede to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2021; and the UK and the CPTPP member states signed an Accession Protocol in July 2023.
We looked at the benefits of CPTPP accession, including access to fast-growing markets, potential increase in UK GDP, the impact on UK goods and services producers, and geostrategic benefits to the UK. We also considered the Trade and Agriculture Commission’s advice to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade on the impact of CPTPP accession regarding statutory protections for UK agri-food standards, including the Commission’s examination of concerns around growth promoters in beef and pork production, pesticide use and deforestation linked to palm oil. Lastly, we took evidence on the provisions in CPTPP on investor-state dispute settlement, including their possible impact on the UK Government’s ability to regulate, or to take into public ownership, the English water industry.
We found that the terms of UK accession raise contentious issues. Accordingly, 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.
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. 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 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.