Alok Sharma welcomes Government efforts to increase trade with Commonwealth countries and calls for discussions to be held with Commonwealth countries alongside any renegotiation of our relationship with the EU.

Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con): My hon. Friend is a great champion of the Commonwealth and those from the Commonwealth who reside in the UK. He talks about the Commonwealth’s great past and future. Does he agree that the Government have done a lot to foster trade links with other Commonwealth countries? We have seen our bilateral trade with India grow significantly. What more does he think this Government or future Governments can do to ensure that that trade increases significantly over the next decade?

Andrew Rosindell: My hon. Friend is completely correct that this Government have done more than any other in my memory to make the Commonwealth more significant and to develop trade and co-operation with it, but we can go only so far because, as he will know, as a nation we can sign up to trade deals with countries only via the EU—again, the EU is a block to us utilising our Commonwealth network for trade and co-operation.

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Alok Sharma: Does my hon. Friend then feel that if we are going to renegotiate our relationship with the EU, we should have similar discussions in parallel with some Commonwealth countries, particularly on trade, to see what sort of relationship we can come up with and what the British people prefer?

Andrew Rosindell: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. As a vice-chairman of the Conservative party, he does good work with Commonwealth countries, and I commend his enthusiasm. We need to decide for ourselves, as a nation, what we want to do not only with Europe but with the rest of the world. Part of that process should perhaps be to consult our Commonwealth friends on how our relationship can be developed in tandem with a renegotiated arrangement with the European Union. They are two sides of the same coin. We all want trade and co-operation with Europe, and good immigration from Europe as well, but sadly we have gone down that road to the exclusion of developing all those things with our Commonwealth friends. A reconfiguration is well overdue.

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