The UK’s new International Development White Paper contains some positive steps for trade - but fails to address the big issues.
In response to the UK Government’s Development White Paper published this week, our CEO Charlotte Timson outlines Transform Trade’s take on the paper, from a people-centred trade perspective. She outlines some of the positive attributes, and unpacks other areas where further week is needed.
The Government’s consultation on the White Paper recognised the need to look beyond aid at systemic change to reduce extreme poverty and climate breakdown. This combined with the focus of the Integrated Review of Foreign Policy, meant we were expecting trade to be a key focus.
This week, we discovered that trade is indeed included, but from a trade justice lens, it’s a mixed picture.
It is welcome to see the UK supporting ”free, fair and inclusive trade” but there is little to explain what is meant by ‘fair’ and ‘inclusive’. For too many of the communities we work with, free trade has been anything but.
They state that “growing export sectors create jobs, stimulate investment, attract technology and incentivise the domestic private sector to be more competitive.” But what’s missing is anything to steer UK policy towards decent work or sustainable and locally-driven investment. Of course, job creation is a welcome priority, but only when those jobs pay living wages and support workers’ rights, which is often not the case in international supply chains.
We wholeheartedly agree with the statement that “Trade arrangements and value chains must be sustainable, legal, and not involve the degradation and depletion of natural assets and ecosystems”. This should be a bare minimum. To achieve this goal, the white paper says the UK will “deliver targeted campaigns to improve responsible and inclusive business practices in supply chains in low- and middle-income countries” but there is no mention of a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act. This would create a ‘failure to prevent’ mechanism to incentivise business to take action to stop abuse from happening in the first place. It would also ensure that workers and communities that are negatively impacted by business practices would be able to seek redress. We already know that anything less than this just won’t deliver for workers.
The White Paper highlights the Bangladesh garment sector as a case study showing how the UK’s Developing Country Trading Scheme makes it easier for least developed countries (LDCs) to export to the UK. The DCTS contained some positive innovations, particularly to make it easier for LDCs to use inputs from other developing countries in their production.
However, this year marks a decade since the collapse of the Rana plaza factory, in which more than one thousand workers died, and there are ongoing worker demands for better conditions in Bangladesh, none of which is acknowledged in the White Paper. Again, this suggests that too little attention is being paid to the reality for workers in the supply chains that provide us with essentials like clothes. Bangladesh will also soon graduate from least developing country status, which means it will receive less beneficial access to the UK market, with likely knock-on effects for the 4 million workers in the garment sector.
On climate change there are significant gaps. There is a recognition that trade needs to be part of the solution to the climate crisis. What is concerning however is the failure to acknowledge that trade is also a significant driver of the climate crisis. The UK’s second permanent secretary to the Department for Business and Trade, Crawford Falconer, has acknowledged that the current trade system is not fit for purpose for dealing with climate change, yet the White Paper is silent on this point.
It is great to see a commitment to strengthening regional trade, particularly Intra-African: this is something Transform Trade has advocated for many years. The most useful thing the UK could do here is go back to the negotiating table with African countries to develop a new trading relationship that supports this commitment. Amongst other things, this will require moving away from Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The White Paper only commits to ‘deepening’ EPAs, something that developing countries have long resisted.
Overall, there are some welcome commitments in the White Paper that could enable the trade system to become fairer and more inclusive, if the government gets serious about implementation. But there are also some real omissions. Until these are faced head on, it’s difficult to feel optimistic that trade will ever become truly fair and sustainable.
Charlotte Timson, Transform Trade