GovWire

In September 2020, the then Secretary of State for International Trade asked the RPC to provide independent scrutiny of the Governments impact assessments of international free trade agreements (FTAs). As with our opinions on regulatory impact assessments, we offer commentary on the quality and robustness of the evidence and analysis, and provide our opinion on whether the FTA impact assessments are fit for purpose to inform parliamentary review. We have previously provided opinions on the impact assessments of FTAs between the UK and Japan, the UK and Australia, and the UK and New Zealand.

The RPC considers the final impact assessment for the UKs accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to be fit for purpose. The final FTA impact assessment published on 17th July contains some additional illustrative modelling scenarios for the future potential expansion of CPTPP which was not in the impact assessment submitted to the RPC for scrutiny on 10th July. Therefore, our opinion only covers the departments core modelling available at the time of our scrutiny.

Our independent scrutiny role is an important part of the Government review process, and we look forward to reviewing future free trade agreements.

The corresponding impact assessment can be found here.