Treaty Scrutiny: Working Practices (EUC Report)

Lord Beith Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I speak as a member of the Constitution Committee. I welcome the fact that our report is being debated and that it is being debated alongside two excellent reports, which have been equally well presented.

The point made by both committees is that treaties now extend far more into the daily lives of people than many did in the past, particularly when their primary concern in the past was either tariffs or international boundaries of countries other than our own. People who do not know their Ponsonby rule from their CRaG will find their daily lives affected on issues that have been mentioned, such as standards and environmental rules of the kind that appear in many trade agreements.

That is one part of the background. Of course, there are lobby groups that know perfectly well what is involved and are very active when trade negotiations are going on. We are about to lose a much higher degree of systematic parliamentary engagement with and accountability for treaty-making in the areas for which the EU had responsibility, notably trade. The European Parliament carried out that scrutiny vigorously, with a degree of engagement and information not to be found in Westminster’s scrutiny of treaties. That will go, and when it has gone, we will not be able to control our laws in the sense of those other than the Executive controlling our laws. They will be subject to much less democratic control than they were before.

Clearly, treaty-making is a function of the Executive, but they must be an accountable Executive, subject to oversight continuously through the process. One thing that happens when Executives are subject to scrutiny is that the question is asked during the process: will Parliament wear this? Is this something that we can get through or will it be opposed? Will we have to rely on loyalty and the fact that people do not want a general election at the moment to ensure that we get it through? It is at that level that our treaty scrutiny has tended to be, I am afraid.

Governments worry that demanding effective parliamentary scrutiny prevents the Executive doing their job, but that clearly was not the case with the European Commission, which had to accept detailed scrutiny by the European Parliament. It comes strangely from those who thought that the Commission was too powerful to ignore the fact that when we want to create a system here, there is no reason we should not have that level of accountability.

We have argued in our report for a Westminster alternative. Indeed, the process has been going on because existing and newly created committees have started to assume that role. There are some things which a trade scrutiny committee can do itself; there are others which might be better done by a committee which specialises in a particular field. But the committee structure of the two Houses of Parliament really needs to engage with this task.

There is some government recognition in their response of the need for improvement, but the rejection of the presumption of transparency is a mistake. It is not that everything by law would have to be transparent; the working assumption would be that there was transparency, backed, where necessary, by confidential discussion with the committee—which, again, featured in the European Parliament, which must be just as likely to be subject to the pressures around leaking that we worry about here.

If noble Lords want to know what the Government really think, they should look at page 8 of their response, where they make this very generous offer:

“If a third country’s domestic procedures mean it will publish a draft treaty at an earlier stage, then the Government will also look to do similar to ensure that the UK Parliament is not receiving less information than the Parliaments of negotiating partners.


In other words, we might get some information if some other country decides to release it and we then have to. The pointer has to be shifted towards real transparency, with full recognition of the need, which any negotiating body has, for a degree of confidentiality. I think the system in Parliament is capable of accomplishing that and we should give it the opportunity to do so, when these things have such a profound effect on the lives of the people we serve.