The CPTPP is focused on promoting market-driven economies and the elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers for manufactured goods, agricultural commodities, and services. It also establishes rules for investment and protection for investors, intellectual property, and communications, as well as transparency in government procurement. The CPTPP requires its members to establish a committee to identify ways to assist SMEs in taking advantage of the commercial opportunities in the CPTPP and to help them grow their exports.

The CPTPP trade agreement has a chapter on the Environment, and it sensibly concentrates on achievable goals: protecting the oceans from ship pollution; overfishing and illegal fishing; protection of wild flora and fauna, endangered species and their habitats; control of toxic chemicals; discharge of pollutants and environmental contaminants; and protecting the ozone layer. These protections must be in each member's legislation and be enforced by the members’ governments.

Unlike the EU, the CPTPP has no desire to be a “regulatory superpower”

The CPTPP has rules that are important for trade, but it is not interested in ‘ever closer union’, nor is it trying to become a federal superstate. The CPTPP does not see itself as a regulatory superpower – yes, this is how the EU proudly describes itself, as a champion exporter of expensive bureaucracy.

Unlike the EU, the CPTPP does not impose an additional layer of government, a Court, a Parliament, a Commission and officials with bloated salaries, accommodation, pensions and chauffeur-driven limousines.

Most importantly, the CPTPP does not impose tariffs on its members should they choose to import goods from outside the group. Sure, there are advantages to trading with other CPTPP members but there are no penalties if you don’t. This is quite unlike the EU, which imposes tariffs on non-EU imports.

Joining the CPTPP and having a trade deal with the EU are not mutually exclusive events. The CPTPP does not restrict, tax, or prohibit trade outside the group. Several of its members have trade deals with the EU – Canada, Mexico and Japan, for example. Anyone claiming that the UK has given up access to the EU’s markets to join the CPTPP is lying.

Benefits of joining the CPTPP for UK consumers and manufacturers

The CPTPP includes some of the world’s fastest growing and affluent markets. The CPTPP members mostly export machinery, electronics, oil and gas, minerals, and chemicals. The UK’s export mix is very similar to those of most of the other CPTPP countries except for Australia and New Zealand – where the UK’s vehicle manufacturers will find a market with no local producers, little public transport relative to their land area, and populations dependent on imported cars, trucks, and mining vehicles.

What is ‘accumulation’ and why are the CPTPP’s rules so much better for the UK than the EU’s?

Another advantage of CPTPP membership for UK manufacturers is the CPTPP’s process of accumulation. This means that if your exports are made with materials, parts or semi-finished goods imported from other CPTPP members, then these inputs count as originating material when a product is exported to another CPTPP member.

CPTPP accumulation is important. For example, under the CPTPP rules, if a UK fashion company uses wool or cotton produced in Australia, or cloth made in Malaysia, or manufactures their goods in a Vietnamese factory, these inputs count towards originating material under CPTPP rules so the finished products can be sold in say, Japan or Canada, at the CPTPP preferential tariff rate.

Improved access to world markets for British business

The UK’s manufacturers will have improved access to - for example - semiconductors and circuit boards from Singapore and Vietnam, to Vietnam’s and Malaysia’s clothing and footwear factories and to Malaysian palm oil, to Canada’s wheat and soybeans, to New Zealand’s honey and dairy products, to Australian beef and sheep meat, to avocados from Mexico, to fruit and vegetables from Peru, to apples and pears from Chile, to filleted fish and shelled prawns from Vietnam, and to wine from Chile, New Zealand and Australia.

Many of these items are already imported by the UK from CPTPP countries but joining the CPTPP will simply remove the tariffs and quotas left over from our EU membership or the rolled-over EU trade deals.

UK food safety standards maintained

UK retailers cannot sell food that does not meet UK standards regardless of whether it was produced in the UK or imported – as we have seen with the imported EU horse-meat and other scandals. Joining the CPTPP does not change this.

There have been scare stories on social media claiming that the UK will need to import hormone-treated beef if we join the CPTPP but this isn’t true. Chile, for example, does not allow cattle to be treated with hormones and it produces enough beef to fill the UK’s very small CPTPP beef quota.

Yes, very depressingly, the UK has put quotas on any CPTPP food that competes with UK products, even though the UK is not self-sufficient in any of them.

• The UK has limited beef imports from the CPTPP to 13,000 tonnes per year even though the UK imports about 250,000 tonnes of beef each year.
• The UK has limited CPTPP pork imports to only 55,000 tonnes a year even though the UK imports over 330,000 tonnes of pork each year.
• The UK has limited CPTPP sugar imports to just 25,000 tonnes a year even though the UK imports over a million tonnes of sugar each year.
• Incredibly the UK has limited long-grain rice imports from the CPTPP to just 27,000 tonnes per year even though the UK doesn’t grow rice and imports 750,000 tonnes of rice each year.

So fears of UK farmers being driven out of business by imported food from the CPTPP are simply made up by people who haven’t even bothered to read the publicly available trade document. For example, both Australia and New Zealand have been limited to the quotas they received in their bilateral trade agreements with the UK so they will not be eligible to use the CPTPP quotas.

And finally, food grows at different times in different climates

The largest food exporters in the CPTPP are either in the southern hemisphere and so produce food in the opposite season to the UK or they are in the tropics and produce foods that can never be grown in the UK climate.

We have all become used to eating summer fruit and vegetables in the winter and many of them will come from Peru, Chile, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand or Australia – all CPTPP members. This benefits UK consumers by lowering prices, without undercutting UK producers because they all have to be imported anyway.