Forget Brexit pain and back our Pacific trade deal, urges minister

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch on Friday urged people to stop talking about the vote for Brexit as she defended a new Indo-Pacific trade deal forecast to boost the UK economy by less than one per cent.

Britain’s acceptance into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a bloc of 11 countries including Australia, Canada and Japan, is being hailed by ministers as one of the UK’s biggest post-Brexit wins. But hours after signing the deal, Ms Badenoch had to fend off questions over how membership would soften the blow of leaving the EU, set to deliver a four per cent hit to the UK’s GDP.

By comparison, Department of Trade figures suggest the CPTPP could deliver a 0.08 per cent boost to Britain’s economic output in the coming years.

“We’ve left the EU so we need to look at what to do in order to grow the UK economy and not keep talking about a vote from seven years ago,” Ms Badenoch said on Times Radio, referring to the 2016 EU referendum.

“It would be quite ridiculous to suggest that we shouldn’t carry out any free trade deals now that we have left the EU.”

The minister played down the significance of the 0.08 per cent growth figure and said: “It’s a deal about the future.”

On LBC she said the full potential was not yet known but it could be bigger than the EU single market if other major economies such as China joined. Britain is the first new member, and first European nation, to join the CPTPP, as part of a post-Brexit tilt to the east started by Boris Johnson.

Officials said 99 per cent of UK exports to the bloc will now be eligible for zero tariffs. Labour gave a “cautious welcome” but said it will look closely at details, as critics said it will add just £1.8 billion a year to the economy after 10 years.

Meanwhile Ms Badenoch insisted the Conservatives were “managing the economy well” even as revised GDP figures for the end of last year, out this morning, showed growth of just 0.1 per cent between October and December. But Ruth Gregory from Capital Economics warned that the UK economy will still “slip into recession” this year.