Trade and Foreign Office ministers to face MPs on scrutiny of international treaties
International trade Minister Nigel Huddleston and Americas Minister David Rutley will face questions from the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on the scrutiny of international treaties.
Meeting details
The final hearing of the inquiry will explore the Government’s view on calls to strengthen the parliamentary scrutiny of trade deals and other international agreements. The number of international agreements and their influence on citizens’ lives has grown significantly, yet scrutiny arrangements have remained largely unchanged for nearly a last century, even diminishing since the UK left the EU.
In previous sessions of this inquiry, former Commons library clerk and legal expert Arabella Lang described the current system for scrutinising treaties—under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010— as a “weak, opaque and outdated system that is not fit for purpose”.
Lord Frost, former chief Brexit negotiator, told the Committee he believed it would be helpful to have parliamentary debate on negotiating positions for treaties, which would be much earlier that under the current process.
The Committee will interrogate the Government’s position on the parliamentary scrutiny of international agreements and examine the potential for reforming scrutiny arrangements.