Working Practices (International Agreements Committee Report)

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hayter for her introduction today and her work as chair of the committee. It will save a little bit of time to just say that I agree with every word the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said.

I took part in the debate on Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices in September 2020 when my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lady Taylor presented their three reports. The work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, was also acknowledged for its continuing engagement on this important topic. I mention that because this is a responsibility for the whole of Parliament, not just for one committee.

My noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith quoted Bagehot from 1872:

“Treaties are quite as important as most laws, and to require the elaborate assent of representative assemblies to every word of the law, and not to consult them even as to the essence of the treaty, is prima facie ludicrous.”


My noble and learned friend indicated that

“we lag far behind many countries in our parliamentary scrutiny of international commitments.”

However, he proposed a “pragmatic approach” to testing the new arrangements, rather than proposing amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act—CRaG.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, referred back to the exercise in 2019 when the EU Committee and its sub-committees—I had the privilege of chairing the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee and then the EU Services Sub-Committee, both within the confines of the CRaG Act, it has to be said—published 22 reports on more than 50 agreements, following the model set by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its own work. The noble Earl echoed the Constitution Committee’s statement of 2019 that

“the CRAG Act is poorly designed to facilitate parliamentary scrutiny of treaties.”

In all those reports by the EU committees, the only agreement on which we were able to take evidence was the UK-South Korea deal. Had the Government had a welcome change of heart? No. It was thanks to Mr Johnson advising the Queen to prorogue Parliament in 2019 that there was extra time to take evidence. Most speakers in that debate said that the CRaG Act was not fit for purpose. However, in the interests of balance, I should say that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, defended the Act and referred to

“an insatiable beast lurking in the committees of your Lordships’ House.”

She felt that having more information about treaty activity, because of the House’s dislike of Brexit, would

“recede in importance as we start to live in a post-Brexit world.”—[Official Report, 7/9/20; cols. GC 105-124.]

Well, that is going very well, is it not?

The International Agreements Committee was quite right to adopt a pragmatic approach. It is clear to me that we are going backwards. However, today’s announcement by my noble friend Lady Hayter that the Grimstone rule survives is perhaps again going towards the glass half-full suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. So, there was a Grimstone rule, then there was a government response which went into a lot of detail about why there was no Grimstone rule, and now there is a Grimstone rule. So this is all pretty good.

I accept that the Government will never agree to amend the CRaG Act, but apparently we are not even going to get a concordat. This is pretty thin gruel. In the Government’s response to this report—I am repeating a bit of what my noble friend Lady Hayter said, but it bears repeating—they said that they would

“caution against referring to non-legally binding arrangements as ‘agreements’ as the Committee does in the Report, such terminology being more appropriate to describe a treaty.”

The response went on to say:

“It is established Government practice that non-legally binding arrangements are not routinely published”


unless they raise

“questions of public importance. Ministers consider this on a case by case basis.”

This brings me to a question I have for the Minister about the security assurances given by the Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, to the Prime Ministers of Sweden and Finland pending NATO membership. I checked yesterday’s Hansard and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, said in a question to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, that

“we have seen the Prime Minister go to Finland and Sweden and offer bilateral security commitments. That could be seen as very brave, but is it credible?”—[Official Report, 18/5/22; col. 460.]

I read through the noble Lord’s response. He had 60-odd speakers to respond to, so I do not blame him for not mentioning that matter, but I will mention it now. Sending our troops into battle does not get much higher in terms of “public importance”—as referred to in the Government’s response. I take comfort from the fact that it is not legally binding, but will the Minister clarify what assurances were made, and whether the leaders of Sweden and Finland were aware of what the security assurances amounted to? Alternatively, was it just a bit of springtime hand-patting? It would be unfortunate if the Prime Minister were to be accused of being “prima facie ludicrous”.