The UK government has introduced a bill to help bring into force the UK-Australia and the UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreements (“FTAs“).
The bill is a key step in ratifying the FTAs but before they come into force, Parliament must scrutinise the FTAs, agree the bill and pass secondary legislation to make the changes required to the UK’s procurement regime to meet the terms of the FTAs.
The FTAs will remove tariffs on all goods exported from the UK, provided that they meet the relevant rules of origin. The relevant rules of origin for the UK-Australia FTA are available here and for the UK-New Zealand FTA are available here. These new rules of origin contain product-specific rules and require either that the producer or exporter provides a valid origin declaration or that the importer has knowledge that a product is originating.
The UK government expects that the UK-Australia and UK-New Zealand FTAs will boost the UK economy by £2.3 billion and £800 million respectively.
