The issue with the UK’s fledgling trade policy is a lack of strategic thinking close to home

Prospect General Secretary Mike Clancy blogs about the absence of union representation on the government’s new trade advisory groups.

It may seem hard to remember now, but there was once a time when trade deals were the biggest issue in British politics. How many would there be? How long would they take? Would they really be as great as we were frequently told? But now the days when we were all experts on tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers, rules of origin and the like have faded from memory, overtaken like so much else by the pandemic and the discussions of epidemiology and possible vaccines.

Trade matters

However exhausting the trade debate was, the reality is that these trade deals matter, and they deserve far more attention than they are currently getting. This week the government announced a major shake-up of the UK’s trade team, with former Australian Prime Minister-turned Brexit cheerleader Tony Abbott expected to be appointed as new joint President of the Board of Trade alongside Trade Secretary Liz Truss. Abbott’s role, we are told will be to “beat the drum for Brexit Britain” around the world.

If only it were so simple. The issue with the UK’s fledgling trade policy is not an absence of drum-beating in foreign capitals, but a lack of strategic thinking closer to home.

Once agreed trade deals are hard to unpick

Trade deals always involve trade-offs, relaxing some regulations or giving away some sovereignty in exchange for access to markets. But to make these trade-offs there needs to be a clear understanding of what our priorities are and what is and is not on the table from our end. Given that these deals are hard to disentangle once signed, the process of formulating the UK position should have been as broad as possible and guided by clear-heading long term thinking.

To be fair to the government, they did at least seem to recognise this point initially, setting up a Strategic Trade Advisory Group (STAG) with a broad range of voices and numerous sectoral Expert Trade Advisory Groups (ETAGs). My own union had a voice on the creative industries ETAG through our Bectu sector, and other unions were represented on different groups with the TUC having a seat on the STAG.

However this whole structure was abolished last week, in favour of a new system where business groups get a voice at the table and workers are locked out of the room. This is damaging for a number of reasons.

Firstly, excluding vital alternative perspectives is hardly the way to arrive at a coherent vision of how new trade deals could benefit the whole nation. By listening only to businesses there is a risk that the government agenda will be captured by narrow short-termist business interests and strike bad deals as a result.

Secondly, a key fear throughout the Brexit process has been that hard-won workers’ rights would be watered down as the price of striking new deals. It is hard to see how this move does anything but aggravate the suspicion that, despite the constant denials, employment rights are indeed on the table in future trade deals.

Why no unions?

The decision to exclude unions from the new trade advisory groups is yet more evidence of the inexorable decline of any idea of social partnership in British public life. It used to be that governments, of both colours, understood the need to balance the interests of labour and capital, and to hear multiple perspectives when making decisions.

Now it seems that ministers are unwilling to do the heavy lifting involved in building consensus behind coherent policy positions and would rather hear the views of failed foreign leaders than of their own workforce. The result is that the UK heads into these vital negotiations without a clear strategy. The main objective appears to be to ‘get a deal’ at any cost, the worry is the it is Britain’s workers who will be paying the price for years to come.