Starmer is wrong not to have a dedicated Commons committee to scrutinise the UK-EU relationship

Then there were none. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, there were two Commons committees looking at the government’s handling of the relationship with the EU. Hilary Benn’s Exiting the EU Committee oversaw the process of withdrawal and then morphed into the Future Relationship Committee when the department it shadowed was abolished. It expired in early 2021. Bill Cash’s European Scrutiny Committee (ESC) – originally a mechanism for scrutinising EU legislation during the UK’s membership of the EU – evolved to focus on the minutiae of the post-Brexit relationship. It increasingly saw its role as holding ministers’ feet to the fire on delivering as pure a Brexit as possible. That committee continued until the end of the last parliament.

Now the government has decided to have no dedicated Commons committee looking at the difficult nexus of issues around its management of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Instead, now that management of the relationship falls to the Cabinet Office, it has decided that scrutiny should fall within the purview of the already overstretched Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC), with other select committees picking up relevant policy issues as they arise. This is a mistake.

MPs objecting to the scrutiny vacuum were right

Labour’s rationale for the abolition of the ESC was that its function of detailed document scrutiny was no longer necessary now Brexit had happened. That is true. But the UK’s relationship with the EU continues to loom large over numerous domestic and foreign policy issues and the government has said that resetting the relationship with the EU is one of its priorities.

The UK still has obligations under the Withdrawal Agreement. It has obligations under the Windsor Framework that it still needs to implement and ensure are operating effectively, which have important consequences for the future of the Union. Officials are meeting regularly in the plethora of committees established under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the implementation of which will be subject to review in 2026. Before then there will need to be renegotiation of fishing quotas which the EU has linked to the expiring energy chapter of the TCA. 

Meanwhile regulatory divergence continues to be an issue for UK business and for the operation of the UK internal market (which is also a source of tension between the four governments with regulatory competence). The government’s legislative programme appears to presage a new approach with the proposed Product Safety and Metrology Bill which will make it easier to align with new legislation (or diverge) if the government deems it to be in the UK’s interests. Such decisions will involve trade-offs – and one thing that departmental select committees cannot examine satisfactorily are trade-offs between different policy areas. The unlikely duo of Reform MP Richard Tice and Labour Movement for Europe chair, Stella Creasy, were right to highlight the gap the government has left. ⁸ https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-07-30/debates/10086BEF-3542-4036-AA55-5E5D57C8A77F/EuropeanScrutinyCommittee  

A new committee should oversee relationship management

Lucy Powell was right that the ESC had outlived its usefulness. What is needed instead is a new committee which can look both at the UK’s implementation of existing agreements, but also examine the government’s overall management of the relationship and its approach to setting future direction. The Lords can fill some of that gap with its European Affairs Committee  ¹¹ https://x.com/LordsEUCom/status/1817943438404251757  but ministers need to be scrutinised by their peers not just peers. The best option would be for the government to revisit its decision not to replace the ESC and establish an EU Relations Committee. It could take that opportunity to ensure the chair was elected – unlike that of the ESC. And one of the roles of the committee should be to ensure that other select committees are aware of relevant upcoming issues that might affect their departments. 

If the government chooses not to reconsider, PACAC should consider setting up its own subcommittee to focus on EU relationship management. And the Liaison Committee should ensure that it regularly schedules sessions with the prime minister to examine progress towards his priority of resetting the relationship. 

There is an opportunity to rethink the role of parliament on trade deals

The new government seems to be keen on pursuing trade deals with other countries or blocs.  The last government was very reluctant to engage parliament in any meaningful way at either the start or the end of trade negotiations (in marked contrast to the roles other parliaments play, including the European parliament). The main task of scrutiny was left to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee. 

The creation of the Department of Business and Trade means that there is no longer a dedicated International Trade Committee. In contrast, the International Development Committee not only survived the initial merger of DfID into FCDO, but will be retained in this parliament). ¹² https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-07-30/debates/9976B64E-277F-4F7A-AAC1-51E385F57615/BusinessWithoutDebate  Again, the Trade and Business Committee could establish a trade sub-committee – but the government, as part of its promised trade strategy, should also set out an expanded role for parliament in scrutinising trade agreements.

Parliamentary scrutiny of the EU has always been a task that the many have been happy to delegate to the few – even when the UK was a member of the bloc, departmental committees were desultory in their attentions to the UK’s largest trading partner. Arguably now, in the context of the government’s growth mission, scrutiny of the relationship and the bilateral trade deals necessitated by the UK’s departure, scrutiny is more important than ever. The government should learn from history and ensure that there are specific mechanisms for parliamentarians to engage with this priority.