Select committee: International Agreements Committee
Recommendation 50
4th Report - Scrutiny of international agreements: UK-Australia free trade agreement
Published 23 Jun 2022
Paragraph 161
International Agreements Committee UK-Australia trade negotiations All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Whilst we are grateful for the time we had to scrutinise this FTA prior to its formal laying under CRAG, we were only able to scrutinise this agreement after all decisions had already been taken. The Government commitment to facilitate a debate on the Negotiating Objectives if requested by the committee was made too late for this particular agreement. We reiterate the recommendation we made in our Working practices: one year on report that it is important that consultation and dialogue with our committee starts before a mandate is established, so the final mandate can be informed by Parliament.
From: International Agreements Committee, 4th Report - Scrutiny of international agreements: UK-Australia free trade agreement, paragraph 161, 23 June 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 5 September 2022 (deadline 5 September 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and responds to its recommendations in turn, setting out its existing approach and some specific commitments, while declining to pre-empt future negotiations on matters such as ISDS.
- On monitoring, the Department "has committed to publishing a comprehensive ex-post evaluation" of the UK-Australia FTA "within five years of its entry into force", and a biennial monitoring report that will include measuring utilisation.
- On emissions, it says negotiating GHG reductions in trade agreements would be "neither practical nor coherent", as this is handled through UNFCCC and inter-Governmental environment agreements.
- On scrutiny, the Department "will make Ministers and senior officials available to privately discuss prospective negotiations with the Committee, before negotiations are launched", expected during the public consultation period.
- On the devolved administrations, it says its involvement is "already in line with the committee's recommendation", but that "it would not be appropriate for the Government to report directly on their views".