Parliament creates an International Agreements Committee

For two years our research project Treaties, Brexit and the Constitution has lobbied for better Parliamentary scrutiny of the Government's treaty behaviour. Parliament recently took an important step to strengthen these scrutiny structures. We welcome this development.

Last month, The House of Lords endorsed a recommendation by its Procedure Committee to establish a new International Agreements Committee. The new Committee will operate under the aegis of the House of Lords EU Committee, and it will scrutinise treatymaking. However, its terms of reference are presently unclear.

This post by Dominique Gracia and Alexander Horne explains these recent developments and highlights some important questions. Dr Gracia is the Clerk of the new Committee and Mr Horne is its legal advisor. 

We are also pleased to announce that the core of our argument will be published in the July edition of Public Law. We will share a version of this article in due course.