European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Agreements concluded under Article XXI GATS) Order 2009

The Government’s view is that there will be no impact on the UK in effect from bringing these agreements into line. As someone who has suffered in my previous incarnation sitting through the Doha round and the Singapore round—I do not think I made it back to 1947 and the Cuba round, when the first meeting of GATS was in Havana—believe you me if you think we sometimes have difficulties in the British Parliament, trying to get things moving in the WTO makes even our Parliament at its slowest look like a well-oiled machine working at maximum speed. For member states entering the European Union, there was a period in each case for a number of years prior to that where those states were anxious to meet their obligations to qualify for membership of the European Union. Only then can you turn to the international obligations. Each state would have different obligations, depending on what most-favoured-nation status agreements that they had with other members of the WTO. The WTO is seeking to bring about a liberalisation of trade and a level playing field; I think we all support this. One of the things that makes the WTO so slow is that, effectively, any single member state can veto the rest. When you have a discussion such as this one, it is not limited to the European Union states and the 17, but other interested states, which would involve Commonwealth states—certainly major Commonwealth states such as India would be part of those discussions. In my experience, nothing happens at the WTO where there is not hawk-like attention on any member state from every member state. So we have a long, drawn-out but fairly thorough process, where the Commission and the Community speak as one. We have got to that point, but in each legal competence, including ours, you have to pass it into law. I do not have a kind of ratification timetable, as we had with other European agreements; I do not know whether my officials have one. I do not know whether we can give a date. We can confirm the longevity, because it took 19 years to get to where we got to in September 2006. As I said, that was because of the consensus requirement under Article XXI of GATS. Those things are outside our control until everyone agrees. Unfortunately, so is the ratification process, but clearly the Community wants its member states to ratify as quickly as possible. We may have a better record than some in Europe of moving fairly speedily on these issues, so there is no reason why we would hold this up. Our passing this into UK law without there being any practical impact on our industry would be one step towards bringing this into reality. The noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, asked a series of questions about the Commonwealth as a trading entity. It is not a trading entity; it is a commonwealth that occupies a unique position in our world. Commonwealth nations that are members of the WTO—not every one is, but the vast majority are—develop and press their views in that corner as do other member states. There are alliances in the WTO that are either regional blocks or alliances between nations that are developing quite well, although one would not consider them to be OECD candidates. I am more than happy to look into this and provide answers so far as I can, but, unless anything is given to me that tells me something different, I do not think that there is a Commonwealth flavour—or flag—that we can put on this. A note has been passed to me that Commonwealth countries are also covered by economic partnership agreements, which are negotiated with the European Union and more widely. If noble Lords have any more points that they wish to raise or which I have not answered, I am happy to write to them. If their points are urgent, I ask them to ask me further.