Trade Deals: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Sarah Green Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) on securing today’s debate and on his excellent speech.

The Australia free trade agreement set a precedent. Unfortunately, when it comes to parliamentary scrutiny, it demonstrated what not to do. Select Committees were given insufficient time to prepare their reports; parliamentarians and key stakeholder organisations were given insufficient time to digest and scrutinise those reports; and, crucially, elected Members of Parliament were denied a meaningful debate and vote on the agreement.

It is worth repeating what the hon. Member for Totnes alluded to earlier. The relevant Select Committees were denied sufficient time to scrutinise and advise on the agreement. There were just seven sitting days between the Government publishing their section 42 report on the free trade agreement and triggering the CRaG period. At that time, the International Trade Committee had been able neither to take oral evidence from the Secretary of State nor to finalise its report on the agreement.

That evasion was facilitated by the vague language in the Government’s commitments. For example, they said that they would “endeavour” to share the signed free trade agreement with the International Trade Committee prior to publication, “where time allows”, and that they would ensure that Select Committees had a “reasonable amount of time” to scrutinise free trade agreements and produce reports.

This is easily fixed. The Government must replace these vague commitments with stronger ones containing concrete guarantees and well-defined timelines, which provide Committees with the time they need to undertake full and proper scrutiny of agreements.

My biggest concern, however, is the failure of the Government to facilitate a meaningful debate and vote on the agreement. That cannot happen again. A desire to hurriedly chalk up deals has left farmers and fruit producers feeling sold out by the Australia trade deal, with the services industry raising concerns over the India trade deal, which none of us has seen. The Government must ensure that they do not repeat their mistakes. I urge the Minister to strengthen the Government’s commitment to the parliamentary scrutiny of free trade agreements and to focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of the deals that his Department strikes.