Treaty Scrutiny in Westminster (International Agreements Committee Report)

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I am loath to repeat what has been said before, but I want to thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for this report and for outlining its principles very clearly, which are, to encompass them in just one sentence, that the current legal framework in which we operate is not good enough and does not work in the interests of our people, Parliament has to work to ensure that it is fit for purpose and we need to make sure that that change is ahead of us. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for his work and for his clear explanation.

The matter before us is that the Government’s response to what has been put before them is. “Well, we’ll have a look at absolutely anything you want us to, but what we will not do is enter into a statutory change”. In fact, somewhere within the response there is the wonderful phrase that we hear so often, “Parliamentary time is not available”. The reason for this work is primarily contained in a single sentence in paragraph 39:

“Treaties are now not just about high policy affecting relations between states, but deal with a huge range of issues directly touching on matters of domestic law and people’s daily lives”.


It is that function, which is charged by the CRaG legislation, that is so poor in the way it can be interpreted to provide an answer to that single point inside the report.

I would like to ask the Minister how co-ordination works between the FCDO and those who provide the background work on developing the treaties and other matters that come before us. It seems to me that most of what we hear comes from either the Department for Business or the Home Office, and that these proposed treaties coming before us are both devised and run by those departments. I would like to understand better the relationship between the FCDO and the implementing departments that are responsible for the development of the treaties before us, so that we can seek better engagement. At the moment, it looks to me as if the Government’s response is, “Keep taking the paracetamol because there’s no need to bother the doctor”. In other words, the Government are basically saying, “Make do with what you’ve got because we can’t make a firm diagnosis and make the change that is required”. That is not something we wish to hear, and nor does it benefit the purposes of the treaties and their impact on the human lives of so many of our people.

On that, I will address the issue of the devolved Parliaments, which the committee has taken in its stride in trying to understand how they deal with these matters. Given that so many of the treaties affect the devolved Parliaments’ working relationships and working activities, as well as the legislation they apply—on education, health, transportation, roads, planning, the provision of social services, agriculture and much more—it is, at the moment, very difficult for the Assembly and the other devolved Parliaments to respond in the given time. Imagine it: we have 21 days and we give it to them and say, “Why don’t you tell us what you think?” By the time we get an answer back and their committees have sat, we have well exceeded that time. So I want to hear from the Minister what more the Government can do to encourage and assist the Assembly and the other devolved Parliaments so that they can deal with these matters properly.

The third bundle of activity, which has already been referred to, concerns the new way of doing free trade agreements, treaty agreements and so on—what the Government call “NBIs”, or “non-binding instruments”, in their response—which seem to be coming before us in a huge way at present. In their response, the Government give an explanation and say that they will do more of them if they can; we have also heard that in evidence from witnesses on the government side. If that is going to be the practice of the future, who will decide how these matters must be dealt with? The Government say that they will

“treat it like all other significant policy commitments”.

So the Government will decide whether it is a “significant policy commitment” and will then provide

“appropriate and timely information to Parliament”.

Information is not scrutiny, though. That is what this debate and this report are about: looking for appropriate scrutiny of what is happening, so that things can be improved in order to better the lives of the people of this country.

I am, therefore, pleased to support the recommendations in this report and ask the Government whether they intend to take the bold steps stated in the report, even though they have indicated that they cannot find the time.