ALEX BRUMMER: The UK’s new trade deal with booming nations is an invaluable boost 

The ‘Indo-Pacific CPTPP’ is a complex acronym. Yet its significance is simple. This trade deal – the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership – gives the UK a foothold in the world’s fastest-growing economic region.

It is precisely the kind of breakthrough deal made possible by Brexit. The UK no longer has to wait for sclerotic Brussels bureaucracy, with its protectionist tendencies, to forge deals on our behalf.

Established in 2018, the CPTPP includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

It offers the immediate opportunity to sweep aside tariff restrictions among the countries involved, providing easier access to a market of 500million people and £12trillion of income.

Whereas growth rates in Europe are stalling, output in the CPTPP region is thriving with the Asia-Pacific region forecast to account for 50 per cent of global expansion between now and 2035.

Critics of the deal, signed by Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch in New Zealand at the weekend, were quick to point out that the estimated 0.08 per cent boost to Britain’s gross domestic product will make little short-term impact on trade losses from leaving the EU.

However, the reality is that being part of a vibrant bloc which currently accounts for 13 per cent of the world’s income is invaluable.

The biggest prospective gains come from opening the UK’s booming services sector to the CPTPP. The City of London rivals New York as the world’s largest generator of financial, legal and professional services.

Critics of the deal, signed by Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch in New Zealand at the weekend, were quick to point out that the estimated 0.08 per cent boost to Britain’s gross domestic product will make little short-term impact on trade losses from leaving the EU

The biggest prospective gains come from opening the UK’s booming services sector to the CPTPP

In addition, being part of the CPTPP should encourage further inward investment to the UK from businesses and funds based in the Asia-Pacific region. Countries in the bloc already directly employ some 400,000 people in Britain’s workforce.

For example, Malaysian investors are responsible for the multi-billion pound investment into South London’s iconic Battersea Power Station while Singapore has been buying up great swathes of commercial property in Britain.

Canadian investors, meanwhile, already own a chunk of Heathrow and a trading delegation was in the UK last week looking at early opportunities to buy English and Welsh lamb.

Among the products immediately expected to benefit from a more open trading regime in the Pacific are farm goods, motor vehicles, gin and whisky as well as luxury goods.

It may prove to be a slow burn. But being part of the fastest-growing regional trade grouping in the world will, over the longer haul, boost efforts to raise UK growth and prosperity.