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World Trade (Doha Development Agenda)

We have one last chance to save the talks before the US President’s trade promotion authority runs out. The window of opportunity will come after the mid-term elections, and frankly it will last weeks rather than months. Unless a draft deal goes back to Congress very early in the new year, the trade promotion authority will have ended before there is an opportunity to approve the deal. If there is no trade promotion authority, there is no deal. Whatever the US President or the US Administration via their trade representative might negotiate, it would be torn to shreds in a protectionist Congress—everybody involved in the talks knows that. I urge the Minister and the Government to press the European Union vocally to make the most of this last opportunity. I simply ask: is the EU preparing a new offer to be publicly presented after the mid-term elections? We will not reach a deal in the WTO as a whole unless there is substantial movement both by the EU on the common agricultural policy and by the US on farm subsidies and on other agricultural protection measures, particularly in relation to cotton. There is no point having timid talks unless there is a bold offer to break the deadlock—it needs to be bold and to happen very quickly. Deep in my heart I am pessimistic, although I hope I am wrong. Hon. Members need to ask and debate what the contingency is if the talks grind to a halt and fail or remain in deep freeze for several years to come. First, we need to learn the lesson that the stricture for this round that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed has been a recipe for failure. When the Committee was in Washington DC and met the US trade representative, that formulation was used to justify the lack of movement by the US. The US said that it had made an offer, and until others responded in a way that was acceptable to it, progress would not be made, and that progress could not be banked in one part of the negotiations while discussions continued in another, because nothing would be agreed until everything was agreed. Anybody who has been involved in any kind of negotiation knows that a deal is built up incrementally. I spent a number of years as a full-time trade union official negotiating deals on pay and conditions for a range of health service staff. A deal was not created by a flash of inspiration on both sides of the negotiating table at a single point in time: a deal was put together in parts. In order to encourage and put together a WTO deal in obviously difficult negotiations, involving 130 parties, success needs be announced part by part. I do not see any reason why a deal cannot be reached and banked on agriculture when further deals have been made in other parts of the negotiations, for example on non-agricultural market access. If, as I suspect, the talks remain dormant for two or three years until, to be blunt, there is a new President of the US and a new President of France who are not out to sabotage them, we need to use the time between now and then to ditch the doctrine that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. If we do not do that, the talks will have little more chance of success in two or three years’ time than in the past two or three years. Within the EU, the British Government have taken a position against conditionality with offers. We have taken the view that reducing tariffs and quotas, and increasing market access, is not something that harms the country or group of countries that do it; it is put into the negotiations because it benefits us and our trade partners. It is unfortunate that a clear majority in the EU does not accept that non-mercantilist approach to trade negotiations, but what we are arguing is right. Yes, of course transitional arrangements need to be provided for developing countries with fragile economies as they liberalise. A big bang is not helpful to the least developed countries, but the principle is right. If we sincerely believe that trade liberalisation will help to raise the incomes of poor people in poor countries because they are able to sell the product of their labour internationally in places in which they were hitherto unable to do so, we must use the time between now and whenever a global deal is made to put that principle into practice by changing the policies of the European Union. We cannot unilaterally change the trade policies of the United States or Japan. I wish that we could, but we cannot. That is the problem with these negotiations, but we, as a leading country in the European Union, can press for and, I hope, achieve changes in our European Union policy. That has been done before. The ““Everything but Arms”” agreement was introduced before we got to this round of trade negotiations. It was introduced for the right reason: it increased opportunities for poor people from poor countries to sell their goods—primarily agricultural products—to a European market. We need to go further unilaterally by tearing down the barriers. To use the words of my hon. Friend the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment when he was the Minister for Trade and gave evidence to our Committee, we need to ““kick open the door”” that keeps the goods of poor people from poor countries out, and we can do that in the EU by ourselves. We have a package agreed in the EU to phase out export subsidies by 2013, conditional on reaching an agreement in the Doha trade round. It is the right thing for the EU to do, and I am sure that it is the right thing to do for the countries where we have been dumping subsidised agricultural produce and undermining local markets and the livelihoods of local farmers. It is possible for us to ensure that we unilaterally phase out export subsidies by 2013, or by an earlier date, if that is feasible, simply because we choose to do so. It would be to our benefit to do so and it would be to the benefit of some poor farmers in poor countries if we did so. We can unilaterally, if we choose to do so, make further progress in modifying the nature of subsidies under the common agricultural policy and reducing subsidy levels overall under that policy, so that farmers who are producing unsubsidised agricultural produce in Africa who have open access to our markets will be competing more nearly on a level playing field; in other words, competing with less highly subsidised agricultural produce produced in Europe. Those are things that we can do by ourselves. I hope desperately that this window of opportunity can be used to achieve progress in the round as initially intended, but if that is not possible, the greatest betrayal would be for us simply to walk away from the trade agenda and not to do what it is in our power to do unilaterally within the European Union to promote development and the attainment of the millennium development goals. I am talking about achieving that through our own unilateral actions on trade. Let us remember why this kind of trade round was launched at Doha. It came just a couple of months after 9/11, when there was a feeling throughout the world of global solidarity and a recognition in the rich world that if we do not promote development and create opportunities for economic development in poor countries, we create, at least in some poor countries, failed states within which terrorism can thrive and terrorists can find sanctuary, rest and recuperation for their operatives and money laundering facilities from a poor but compliant Government. It was because of that recognition that the big power blocs of the western world agreed that the priority of this trade round should be to deliver a development agenda for the poor. However, that has been forgotten. The round so far has failed and may fail in the short term, although I think that in the long term an agreement will be made. However, that is not an excuse for us in Britain and for the EU to forget that we can reform trade to benefit the poor unilaterally, and we must do so. That is in their interests, but it is also in ours.