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Parliament round-up: MPs say there is 'cross-party consensus' about need for scrutiny of trade deals

13 October, 2022
Posted by: Grace Thompson
Trade News

This article was published before we became the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade on 10 July 2024, and this is reflected in references to our old brand and name. For more information about us becoming Chartered, visit our dedicated webpage on the change here.

UK Parliament round-up

A Westminster Hall debate in Parliament yesterday (12 October) discussed parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals, a theme which has dominated trade policy discussions for a few months now.

The debate was formally started by Anthony Mangnall MP, who noted early on that there is “genuine cross-party consensus about the need for scrutiny”.

The Conservative MP for Totnes raised the point that had “due process” been given when the free trade agreement was signed with Australia, “Parliament would have been able to debate this issue at length and we could have rooted out some of the issues before we ratified the agreement”.

Scrutiny

As reported previously by the IOE&IT Daily Update, international trade secretary Kemi Badenoch had committed herself to parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals shortly after taking office, describing it as “vital”.

MPs had complained that there had not been proper debate and scrutiny on post-Brexit trade deals with Australia and New Zealand.

Four demands

Mangnall made a number of key demands:

  1. A long-term strategy for trade negotiations
  2. A standard level of human rights clauses in the UK’s trade agreements
  3. The International Trade Committee should be given the right to publish its report before the start of the 21-day Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (CRaG) period
  4. A guarantee that a secretary of state would appear before the committee to discuss an agreement ahead of their publication of any report on it

Government response

New minister of state for trade policy, Greg Hands, responded for the government and emphasised that he knew “how important” the committee was but defended the UK’s system of scrutinising international agreements and trade deals.

He said that he appreciated that MPs “want to see more scrutiny and more debate” and promised to look specifically at some of the points that Mangnall had made.

The public bill committee scrutinising the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill met for two sittings throughout the day and heard from a range of stakeholders, particularly trade policy specialists and business association groups.