Conclusion 1

The International Trade Committee’s textual scrutiny of the agreements with Japan, Australia and New Zealand set a high bar, but it also came at a cost: the work was so resource-heavy that the Committee was unable to undertake any meaningful examination of the other functions of the Department for International Trade. The targeted, thematic examinations of the prospective agreements with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were conducted before the final texts of the agreements had been negotiated. The confinement of each inquiry to a few key topics may have lacked the rigour of close textual scrutiny, but it was less resource intensive; and we believe that the reports which resulted meet the House’s needs in informing debate on broader policy issues.