Trade Bill

Reaction to the House of Commons votes today on the Trade Bill.

Ahead of the Second Reading of the Trade Bill in parliament today, Jean Blaylock, trade campaigner at Global Justice Now said:

“The Trade Bill being debated today entrenches the government’s power to do deals behind closed doors without needing to tell parliament or the people what it is doing. If this feeble excuse for a bill goes through, we could be signed up to a high-risk, damaging US trade deal without any democratic control.

Parliamentary processes on scrutiny of trade deals have today been branded as “anachronistic and inadequate” in a report released by the UK parliament’s Constitution Committee. The report on “Parliamentary Scrutiny of Treaties” is the sixth in a series of reports by parliamentary committees that have strongly criticised current parliamentary processes for agreeing trade deals.

Trade justice campaigners have welcomed the government's defeat over Amendment 12 to the Trade Bill in the House of Lords. A cross-party amendment to give parliament the power to hold the government to account for its trade policy was passed by 215 votes to 168.

The Department for International Trade has today set out a woeful set of proposals for the scrutiny of trade deals after Brexit, campaign group Global Justice Now has said. It follows a written statement by the secretary of state, Liam Fox, designed to allow the government’s Trade Bill to proceed in the House of Lords.

An amendment by Caroline Lucas MP (NC3) to give parliament control of post-Brexit trade deals was defeated by 30 votes in the House of Commons this afternoon as MPs debated the Trade Bill. Other amendments to give devolved administrations statutory powers over trade were also defeated before the Trade Bill debate moved on to discuss the customs unions

Campaign groups Global Justice Now and War on Want have condemned Liam Fox’s transparency concessions on the Trade Bill ahead of tomorrow’s Third Reading as inadequate, following Liam Fox’s statement to parliament this afternoon.