Six Practical Steps to Strengthen Parliamentary Scrutiny of UK Trade Agreements

Trade and Public Policy (TaPP) Network [1] 13 June 2022 [2] Free trade agreements (FTAs) cover the liberalisation of goods, services, and investment and can have substantial and long-term implications for many areas of public policy, from the environment to public health, from industrial strategy to farming practices. In the UK, parliamentary scrutiny plays an important role in holding the Government to account and ensuring that UK FTAs reflect the public interest, from negotiations to signature, and later, implementation. This blog highlights six ways to further strengthen the process. […]

By |2022-06-13T15:14:33+01:0013 June 2022|Uncategorised|2 Comments

The UK’s new trade deals – what should happen before they are signed?

26 November 2021 Chloe Anthony is an ESRC-funded doctoral researcher in environmental law at the University of Sussex Law School. Minako Morita-Jaeger is a Policy Research Fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Sussex Business School. L. Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of UKTPO. Trade deals primarily aim to facilitate trade between countries by lowering barriers to trade in both goods and services. Many of these barriers are increasingly concerned with different regulations across countries and also with so-called ‘non-trade policy areas’ such as labour or environmental standards. The UK’s most recent FTAs – for example, the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership – aim for cooperation beyond trade. The domestic impacts of trade deals – economic, social and environmental – can be significant, so it is important that UK trade deals are scrutinised domestically before they are signed. For example, trade agreements with larger partners, such as the EU or the US, may have significant domestic impacts. Even if aggregate impacts of a trade deal with one country are small, there still may be significant implications for certain sectors or groups within [...]

By |2021-11-26T14:59:33+00:0026 November 2021|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|2 Comments

Parliamentary Scrutiny of Trade Deals: How does the UK Measure Up?

Guest blog by Emily Jones, Associate Professor in Public Policy and Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme and Anna Sands, Research Officer of the Global Economic Governance Programme both at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. 30 September 2020 In the next few weeks Parliament will decide how much scrutiny it has over the UK’s future trade deals. The Trade Bill is currently in the House of Lords, and a series of amendments have been tabled that aim to strengthen Parliament’s role. As things stand, Parliament’s role will be minimal. The negotiation and ratification of international trade agreements falls under the Royal Prerogative – the making of international treaties is one of the few actions that Ministers can take without the approval of Parliament. […]

By |2020-09-30T08:56:16+01:0030 September 2020|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment
Go to Top