Tag Archives: Department for International Trade

Parliamentary scrutiny of international agreements should not be limited to legally binding treaties

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Last week, the Constitution Unit published a blogpost which posed five key questions for the Conservative leadership contenders, one of which focused on rebuilding parliament’s scrutiny role. In this post, David Natzler and Charlotte Sayers-Carter argue that such scrutiny should include telling parliament about politically significant international agreements it has made and allowing for oversight and the expression of dissent.

On 11 May Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed bilateral security agreements with Sweden and Finland. At that time both countries were actively considering applying for membership of NATO, which they did together a week later, on 18 May. Once objections by Turkey to their membership had been dealt with, NATO agreed to these applications at its June meeting in Madrid. Now they have been admitted, the necessary amending Protocols to the North Atlantic Treaty will be laid before parliament. Under the terms of Part 2 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRaG), it is usual practice that the government can ratify a Protocol unless there has been a parliamentary objection within 21 sitting days. NATO expanded to include the Baltic states in 2004, Montenegro in 2016 and North Macedonia in 2019. On none of these occasions was positive assent given by parliament; in the absence of dissent within 21 days of their laying, the Protocols were duly ratified. However, viewing the current circumstances as an ‘exceptional case’ to which the 21 day requirement can be disapplied under section 22 of CRaG, the government intends to proceed with ratification before parliament breaks for summer recess.

The 11 May agreements may have looked like stopgap measures, an interim bilateral version of the regime of multilateral mutual protection offered under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, but the Prime Minister explicitly said that they were not, and the leaders of both countries went out of their way to assert that the agreements would make their countries more secure. Although appended to both agreements were confirmations that they did not give rise to legally binding commitments under international law, they have been described as ‘solemn declarations’. While the UK might very well have been expected in any event to have come to the assistance of either country in an emergency if a request had been made, the situation following the signing of these agreements was different, in that there was a real prospect that British armed forces could have been actively engaged in coming to the assistance of these hitherto neutral countries as a fulfilment of these agreements.

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Brexit and parliament: treaties beyond the EU

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In the latest extract from our joint report on Parliament and Brexit, Jill Barrett argues that the need for effective scrutiny of post-Brexit trade deals is high, and that parliament needs to develop mechanisms to better scrutinise the deals made by the government.

Leaving the EU means the UK is not only leaving the EU trading bloc and negotiating a new future relationship with the EU, but also leaving its global network of trade treaties – which consists of 41 trade agreements covering 72 countries. All of these will cease to apply to the UK at the end of the transition period (31 December 2020, unless extended by agreement). The UK’s trade with other World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries will then take place on WTO terms, except where there is a new trade agreement in place.

The UK government is seeking to ‘roll over’ the 41 existing EU agreements, by negotiating similar new agreements with the third states concerned. So far, only 19 replacement agreements have been signed and a further 16 are ‘still in discussion’. In some cases, notably Japan, the other state is not willing simply to replicate the terms that it has with the EU, but is seeking further concessions from the UK. Achieving a deal in all cases by the end of 2020 will be extremely challenging, and some may well take considerably longer.

Now the UK has an independent trade policy it can also seek new trade relationships with states that are outside of the EU’s treaty network. The government has announced that its priority is to negotiate bilateral trade treaties with the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and one may expect the next phase to include negotiations with major emerging economies such as China and India. All of these will raise matters of intense interest to parliament and the public.

What is parliament’s role in relation to the making of treaties? Treaties are negotiated, adopted, signed and ratified by the government using royal prerogative (executive) powers. In legal terms, parliament has two distinct roles. First, the government is obliged to lay a new treaty before parliament for 21 sitting days prior to ratification, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRAG). In theory, this gives parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the treaty and object to ratification, by passing a resolution. An objection by the House of Commons (but not by the Lords) would block ratification. Secondly, if implementation of the treaty requires new legislation, parliament has the power to pass or defeat that legislation (or amend it, if it is a statute). If essential implementing legislation is blocked, this would normally stop the government ratifying the treaty. Continue reading →

Brexit and the sovereignty of parliament: a backbencher’s view

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Brexit is a constitutional, legal, and political challenge of a size the UK has not seen in decades and will have consequences that are both uncertain and long-lasting. In this post, Dominic Grieve offers his distinctive perspective on Brexit, discussing the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, the role of international courts in UK law, and the more troubling aspects of the Withdrawal Bill itself. 

The EU and the sovereignty of parliament

My Brexiter colleagues have in varying degrees signed up to the view that EU membership undermines the sovereignty of parliament in a manner which is damaging to our independence and our parliamentary democracy. This certainly fits in with a national (if principally English) narrative that can be traced back past the Bill of Rights 1688 to Magna Carta in 1215.  This narrative has proved very enduring; it places parliament as the central bastion of our liberties.

But it can also be used merely as an assertion of power, particularly when the executive has effective control over parliament. It is with that power that parliament enacted the European Communities Act 1972, which gave primacy to EU law in our country. It was parliament that chose to allow what is now the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to override UK statute law, so as to ensure our conformity with EU law in all areas in which it has competence.

The justification for requiring that supremacy was that without it, achieving adherence to the treaties and convergence between member states in implementing EU law would be very difficult. This was not an unreasonable argument; but it is hard to avoid concluding that the supremacy of EU law lies at the root of the feeling of powerlessness felt by sections of the electorate and reflected in the referendum result. This feeling has been encouraged by the habit of successive UK governments to hide behind decisions of the EU as a justification for being unwilling to address problems raised by its own electors. But where the lawyer and politician in me parts company with the views of my Brexiter colleagues is in the extent to which they appear oblivious to the extent to which parliamentary sovereignty is not – and never has been – unfettered. Continue reading →

Brexit and departmental restructuring: an unnecessary distraction?

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Theresa May’s new cabinet brought the first significant restructuring of Whitehall departments since 2008. In this post Peter Waller considers the pros and cons of these changes. He concludes that the downsides outweigh the advantages, suggesting that there were alternative options that would have allowed dedicated Brexit and International Trade ministers to join the cabinet without the difficulties involved in establishing new departments.

In announcing her new cabinet, Theresa May indulged in a certain amount of Whitehall restructuring. Two new departments were created – the Department for Exiting the European Union and the Department for International Trade.  To balance the books (at least in part) she abolished the Department for Energy and Climate Change, transferring its functions to the Business department. The Business department (now formally the rather turgidly titled Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) in turn lost responsibility for higher education and science policy, which returned to the education department from where it had come almost a decade earlier.

The new Prime Minister thus made the first significant changes to the Whitehall infrastructure since 2008, when Gordon Brown created DECC. David Cameron, whether by design or lack of interest, had maintained the departmental structure he inherited. So the 2016 changes found Whitehall needing to set up new departments, something it had not done for half a generation.

So are these changes likely to prove worthwhile? What are the pros and cons of marking a national turning point – which Brexit undoubtedly was – with new departments with a new focus?  Writing as someone who spent a high proportion of my Whitehall career in departments whose boundaries were constantly changing, I rather sadly conclude that in this area decisive action by Theresa May is likely to be rather more troublesome than the benign neglect of her predecessor.

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