HC Deb 21 January 2004 vol 416 cc1289-90W
Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions she has had with the Director General of the World Trade Organisation since 15 December 2003. [149070]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

My right hon. Friend last spoke to Dr. Supachai himself at the CBI Conference on 17 November 2003, but we are in regular contact with his officials in Geneva.

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what general tariff reduction formula is supported by her Department. [149077]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

To stimulate the expansion of trade and economic growth, the Government wants formulae that, consistent with the Doha Declaration, would substantially increase market access for all goods in all WTO member countries.

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will identify technical barriers to trade which harm(a) the United Kingdom and (b) developing countries. [149078]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. A major element of Government policy is the creation of fair and open markets at home and aboard. Using the provisions of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the European Community's Technical Barriers Regulation, we therefore work closely with UK industry, the European Commission and others in seeking to ensure that individual technical regulations are not unnecessarily trade restrictive and, in particular, to secure the removal or amelioration of those that harm UK exports.

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the EU's stance at the Geneva trade talks on(a) industrial market access and (b) special and differential treatment. [149135]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

The UK fully supports the EU's objective of securing an ambitious and comprehensive agreement on non-agricultural market access delivering benefits to all Members and an overall result of the Doha Development Agenda which reflects the needs of different WTO Members through appropriate Special and Differential Treatment.

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether it is her policy to seek greater use of(a) mediation and (b) resolution of trade disputes prior to formal recourse to the World Trade Organisation dispute settlement understanding procedures. [149145]

Mr. Mike O'Brien

The Government sees the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), with a binding mechanism for resolving disputes, as one of the key pillars of the WTO and one of the great achievements of the Uruguay Round. We obviously welcome it when parties resolve a dispute without formal recourse to the DSU. We support the Communication issued by the Director-General of the WTO to the WTO membership in 2001 outlining his views on how to make better use of his power to use Good Offices, Conciliation and Mediation. We welcome in particular the use of mediation to resolve a potential dispute between the EU on the one hand and Thailand and the Philippines on the other regarding imports of canned tuna.

Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions she had with Commissioners Lamy and Fischer before the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Cancun about the advisability of introducing new issues for which the developing countries would be unprepared to the conference agenda. [149130]

Hilary Benn

I have been asked to reply. Ministers at the fourth WTO Ministerial Meeting in Doha agreed that negotiations on the four Singapore (i.e. New) Issues would take place after the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference at Cancun. However this was subject to the condition of a decision being taken, by explicit consensus, on the framework of these negotiations. Such a consensus was not reached by Ministers at the Cancun conference and so negotiations have not started on the Singapore Issues.

Although I did not have any discussions directly with Commissioners Lamy or Fischler about this, since the Cancun ministerial predated my appointment as Secretary of State for International Development, UK Ministers repeatedly made clear that the New Issues were not development priorities. Therefore I welcome the fact that EU Trade Ministers agreed on 2 December that the European Community should "unbundle" the four issues and explore alternative, more flexible approaches, including the possibility of removing some, or all, of the New Issues from the Doha Round.