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World Trade (Doha Development Agenda)

I find the hon. Gentleman’s comment interesting. There is a case to be argued that business tends to be parochial in using its incredibly powerful lobbying influence. In a debate earlier today the House discussed Heathrow, and it strikes me as incredible what the business community can achieve despite the feelings of local residents. It ought therefore to be able to take on the farming community with relative ease. With a few honourable exceptions, it is a matter on which the business community could do a great deal more. I had intended not to move on to economic partnership agreements and ignore everything else but to say that we need to use every lever available to at least demonstrate our intentions to the developing world, whether those intentions are for unilateral action by the EU or otherwise. The context of EPAs is interesting because they present an opportunity to create template agreements that would open up markets without constraint and deal with the fascinating point made by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). He said that about 330 items that are key to the developing world are excluded from the basic duty-free, quota-free access for the least developed countries. Moreover, countries that have moved into the middle range should be able to sell, tariff-free, not just raw agricultural products, such as cocoa, but those such as refined chocolate or instant coffee. I do not consider Brazil, China and India to be in that range; they are off on their own and can fight their own battles successfully. If such opportunities are grasped in the EPA negotiations, it could start to create genuine templates and provide the opportunity to build on the fundamental aid for trade strategy that we have discussed. I am most concerned that aid for trade should not be allowed to fall into a pit as have other development strategies or be a fad and fashion that comes and goes. The arena in question is incredibly fashionista: the strategy of one year seems to disappear and be replaced with something else the next, which is no way to achieve development. I am also conscious that discussions on aid for trade have so far been narrowly focused. I have spoken to representatives of the Windward Islands, who said that aid for trade will help the promotion of urban opportunities, but that there is no attempt to understand the need for stability in the rural communities where the banana industry will largely disappear and rural substitutes and new agricultural opportunities are needed. Aid for trade has tended to be narrowly defined, but as the hon. Member for Glasgow, North, pointed out, infrastructure is needed. I have also had the opportunity to go with Christian Aid to India, a country that is always held up as an example of what trade and development will do. We are told to go to India and see the benefits flowing to the population. That is true for about 15 per cent. of the population, and some benefit has flowed to about another 30 per cent. Nobody would deny the importance and momentum of that, but about 50 per cent. of the population has not benefited. It has either missed altogether the benefits of expanding trade and development, or it has lost out. The subsistence farmer who used to be able to feed his family—not well, but at least he could provide a living—has now become the casual labourer living in an oilcloth tent by the side of the road. Such people are living in the most dire and desperate circumstances. It is crucial that aid for trade does not come out of the rest of the aid budget, but is additional to it. We must also ensure that aid strategies are focused on the people who would otherwise be left out. No matter how brilliant our trading strategies or the attempts of domestic Governments to get the economic direction of their countries right, there will be serious losers. They and their suffering give much of trade and liberalisation a bad name and we have the opportunity to use trade to tackle that problem. The developing countries were promised that Doha would be their round and their opportunity, but they have been disappointed. Hon. Members have mentioned the importance of the disillusionment that will follow. I find it hard to understand how a set of promises made by almost every major wealthy Government and institution has been allowed to fail. The G8 was supposedly on board, along with Blair and Brown here, as well as the UN, the IMF and the World Bank. It is hard to argue for the credibility of international agencies and institutions, or for the good intent of the developed countries of the world, when something quite as obvious and straightforward as creating a development round is not achieved. Others have talked about the social turmoil that has occurred as a consequence of that failure, but the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) made one of the most telling points about the context in which it has taken place. We have been through a benign economic period, but one now sees markers that suggest that that might be coming to an end. One hopes that it is not, but if we cannot achieve a sharing of the pie when the pie is large and growing, it is hard to understand how we will achieve a sharing of the pie if we enter a period of recession and the pie begins to shrink.