Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices (EUC Report)

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Let me first put on record my thanks to the three chairs for producing these reports, which have given us an excuse and a reason to debate where we go from here.

I welcome the government response to the Constitution Committee report on the parliamentary scrutiny of treaties, because it brings out into the open what the Government are really up to. On page 5, it states:

“The Government welcomes the Committee’s recognition of the fundamental right of the Executive to negotiate for the UK on the international plane.”


In other words, returning power is returning power to Whitehall and not to Parliament. It continues:

“At the start of negotiations, the Government will publish its Outline Approach … Parliament will have a role in scrutinising these documents … The committee(s) could have access to sensitive information … and could receive private briefings … the committee(s) would have the power to produce a detailed report”—


but it does not say how long we might spend doing it.

I must say that I find this whole procedure depressing; no one has ever doubted where I have stood on this exercise. I am convinced that multilateralism is the only way forward in the modern world. Only in Moscow and Washington are there other Governments who believe that they can repudiate inconvenient parts of international agreements. I spent 25 years in Brussels in the European Parliament and have spent 15 years since then doing odd jobs for it and the Commission, and I can tell noble Lords that the only way forward is negotiation. You have to work with your colleagues; you do not win all the battles, but we are a big a country and we had a record of winning most of them. We won far more battles than we ever lost in the European Parliament.

We are losing sight not only of treaties as they retreat into the Foreign Office but of what is happening in Brussels. We are losing sight of the Lisbon process, and the inevitable end will be what happened when I was on a delegation to Vietnam last year. We interviewed the Trade Minister and he said, “Yes, of course we will be looking forward to a full, comprehensive trade agreement with you.” Then there was a pause of about five seconds before he said, “Of course, we couldn’t put anything in it that Brussels objected to because they are quite big, you know, in our trade arrangements.” This is the reality of where we are going. I hope that we get a treaty scrutiny committee. I am not sure whether it should be a Joint Committee of the two Houses, because the way in which the Commons treats the Lords is not always conducive to equality, but we certainly need something. We need to be informed and to be taken into consideration by the Government.

The European Union has many faults; it also has many strengths. One of its strengths is the system of rapporteurs, who are independent individuals appointed to look at specific trade and other agreements, and who have expertise in those countries. I had 20 years on the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. I knew everyone from the President down to the Ministers, and I could get in to see them. If we could look at a way of combining the trade envoys and the rapporteurs, it would be a good way forward. There is a lot to be gained in the future, but I would not in any way want to be where we are today. We are making the best of a bad job.