International Agreements Committee
28 April 2026
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International Agreements Committee House of Lords
00:04 - 01:38
Speaker 1
Okay. Well, welcome, everyone. Thank you very much again for coming together for what I think is turning out to be a very interesting inquiry into how The UK can adapt its trade policy using different trade instruments in what is clearly a very turbulent world, not just with the macro situation, but also with specific interventions on principles such as tariffs and free trade. And running alongside that, the dialogue around recent ministerial meetings of the WTO and pressures on other multilateral organizations. So it couldn't be a more interesting time for us to welcome our three witnesses today.
So John Cook, thank you very much for joining us from The City UK. Sabrina Kwafu from Tech UK, and we're joined online by William Bain, who's head of trade policy for the British Chambers of Commerce. And I hope you've had a chance to read some of the transcripts of the last few meetings we've had. And we're we're really starting to sort of navigate our way through, I think, a a very interesting picture that demonstrates the opportunities that present themselves for maybe the in less traditional mechanisms for creating trade deals. Now we we have a number of questions allocated to the committee.
And for those committee members who haven't got a question allocated to them, please feel free to follow-up with supplementaries. And we've designed this meeting to have a few fewer specific questions so that we can have a more general discussion. So don't feel you're left out by not having a question allocated to you, please. And if I may ask the first question, and just to remind everyone, this is a recorded public meeting and so on, just so you're aware of that. My first question is a pretty general question.
01:39 - 02:24
Speaker 6
The government have said, and I think the last government was was pretty clear on this as well, that using sectoral agreements and nonbinding agreements alongside and sometimes actually instead of comprehensive FTAs are a useful way to sort of navigate for the future. I mean, I think that that we shouldn't forget we're here for businesses. This is about trying to create wealth for The UK and economic security. And I'd like to sort of hear your thoughts on how the departure from a traditional FTA will affect these businesses in terms of being able to plan and being able to utilize these FTAs. And I'm also interested in in what you think could be the best mechanism for helping businesses flourish in international trade given what's going on at the moment.
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