Call for Evidence

The Foreign Affairs Committee is seeking written evidence on sanctions scrutiny. The Committee will be considering whether Parliament should have greater oversight of the UK’s sanctions policy, and if so, how that scrutiny can be undertaken to best effect, bearing in mind the balance between the need for expediency and the need to ensure sanctions have clearly defined aims that align with wider foreign policy goals. This short inquiry will seek to establish how scrutiny could improve the effectiveness of the UK’s autonomous sanctions regimes including aims, cost-benefit analysis and delisting. 

Prior to leaving the European Union, Parliament had a more substantial, formal role in scrutinising autonomous sanctions implemented by the UK, typically being given confidential information on new EU sanctions before their adoption. In the House of Commons, the European Scrutiny Committee was given access to draft EU sanctions legislation before the regimes or designations were adopted, on the understanding that sensitive details would not be made public prematurely, and would routinely report significant changes in EU/UK sanctions policy to the House.  

Following the UK’s departure from the European Union and under the provisions of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, as amended by the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, Parliament has not been given prior information on new autonomous UK sanctions by the Government, before they are made public. Most regulations establishing new UK autonomous sanctions regimes are subject to the limited post-publication parliamentary scrutiny mechanisms for Delegated Legislation. 

The Committee welcomes evidence on: 

• How can Parliament most effectively conduct scrutiny of the FCDO’s sanctions regimes? Of specific regimes? Or individual designations?  

• At what stage should Parliament be consulted, if at all? 

• Which aspects of sanctions policy would benefit most from broad and open discussion? 

• What concerns does increased Parliamentary scrutiny raise and how could they be mitigated? 

• How effective has parliamentary scrutiny of sanctions been in other parts of the world? What has been the experience of other countries?  

Each submission should be no longer than 3,000 words and contain a brief introduction about the author. Submissions should be in malleable format such as MS Word (not PDFs) with no use of colour, logos or photos. Further guidance is available on our Written Evidence Guidance.  

Deadline for submissions

The deadline for written submissions is 23:59 (GMT) on 17th March 2025. Written evidence may be submitted on the basis of anonymity (meaning that it will be published, but without your name), or in confidence (meaning that it won't be published at all). If you would like to submit evidence anonymously or in confidence, you will be able to select this option during the submission process. Please also state at the beginning of your evidence which of these you want to request, and tell us why.

For further guidance, you can contact fac@parliament.uk.

It is recommended that all submitters familiarise themselves with the Guidance on giving evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons which outlines particulars of word count, format, document size, and content restrictions.

Diversity

We encourage members of underrepresented groups to submit written evidence. We aim to have diverse panels of Select Committee witnesses and ask organisations to bear this in mind when we ask them to choose a representative. We are currently monitoring the diversity of our witnesses.