Committee Chairs appear as witnesses on scrutinising international treaties
The chairs of Parliament’s international trade and international agreements committees, Angus Brendan MacNeil MP and Baroness Hayter, are quizzed by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the sixth session of the Committee’s inquiry on the scrutiny of international treaties. The session explores the Lords and Commons Committees’ experiences scrutinising international agreements entered into by the Government and how those scrutiny arrangements have developed since the UK left the EU.
Meeting details
The Commons International Trade Committee called the mechanisms for trade deal scrutiny “not fit for purpose” in a recent report. It criticised the Government for “rushing scrutiny” of its free trade agreement with Australia, the first new trade deal agreed since the UK left the EU. Former Environment Secretary George Eustice later said that the deal was “actually not that good for the UK.”
The Lords International Agreements Committee has said that without new statutory powers “Parliament’s scrutiny of agreements is extremely constrained”. The Lords committee has also called the Government’s use of a memorandum of understanding to establish a system for sending asylum seekers to Rwanda as “unacceptable” and that doing so has avoided meaningful parliamentary scrutiny.