International Agreements Committee
14 April 2026
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International Agreements Committee House of Lords
00:01 - 00:38
Speaker 9
Fabulous. Well, welcome, everyone, and thank you very much indeed to my fellow committee members, obviously, for being here today. But I particularly want to welcome three very, relevant witnesses who will be giving evidence in our inquiry relating to to trade in the turbulent world and how The UK should deploy its trade instruments. With us in the room, is first user Simon Fraser, who is chair of Chatham House. His experience in international affairs as really the leader of the foreign office for many years and his other experiences in diplomacy and trade will be particularly relevant in thinking about how we as a country can respond to the issues.
00:39 - 02:28
Speaker 1
I'm also delighted to welcome Alan Beatty. I'm sure many of us here have read his excellent work in the Financial Times. In fact, one of the reasons why he's here is because I kept forwarding to the Clarks, the articles that he's written saying we must get this guy because we wanna hear what he has to say. Clearly, he knows what he's talking about, and I'm extremely grateful to you for coming and giving your thoughts. And then joining us remotely, we have Alan Wolf, the senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, who has been for, really, I would say, five decades now, one of the leaders in trade policy, advising numerous presidents of The United States, and I think will will be extremely helpful in allowing us to understand how The US looks at trade and how other countries can respond to trade.
We we all have our own questions. Often in these situations, the questions are quite carefully scripted. I think you might have even received a copy of the questions. But I hope since we have such an intellectual pool of talent to dip into, you will allow members to really ask the questions that will follow naturally on from another. And the premise of this inquiry is just to understand how The UK can grow its economy using different types of trade instruments, given the issues that the WTO faces, given the issues that some of the multilateral institutions are facing, and the difficulty of negotiating very significant complex FTAs in themselves.
You know, what what what are the other routes to economic growth through trade instruments? What new should we what new things should we be doing? How differently should we be looking at things? Or maybe should we simply be focusing on what already exists and making sure that those organizations function properly to our benefit? So given that, what would be interesting if maybe if I if I kick off with the first question, I mean, if if if we look back over the last seventy five years or so, what what are your views?
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