My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and to noble Lords who have taken part. The Minister said that the Government will keep Parliament informed. Parliament has not been informed until now. We have no idea, because nothing has been presented to Parliament, about notification of the status of the potential agreements. We were not informed in advance about Switzerland, which is the only one so far; we have been asked simply to ratify it and to consider whether or not we accept what comes with it.
I tried to probe the Minister’s comments on Amendment 18. She told us that in discussions with third countries, if there is an agreement and the EU asks them to consider the UK as a continuing member of the European Union for the purposes of international treaties and trading agreements, the Government will not provide the information to Parliament on which countries that poses no difficulties for, which countries have indicated that that may require them to change domestic law, and which countries are refusing to make the discussions public.
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It seems as if our trade policy is now being run by Donald Rumsfeld. We know the known known of Switzerland; we know the known unknowns, which are countries which have said yes, but the Government
are not going to tell us; and we have the unknown unknowns of the countries that are not telling the Government whether or not on exit day, with an agreement, we will be treated under the international agreement that we currently have a relationship with. That is not acceptable on our way to exit day. This started with a probing amendment. I think there needs to be considerably more probing if this Bill goes on Report. It is incumbent on the Government to give us this information. Even if there is an agreement, would all the countries that we have an international agreement with consider us to be continuing as a member of the EU during the implementation period?
On Amendment 19, it is not acceptable for the Government to say that they cannot provide information on the current status of discussions with third countries that we have an existing relationship with about the existing agreement. If the Government are saying that there is a handling risk or that confidential discussions are going on and these are simply about rolling over existing agreements, what is the new information which provides a handling risk that the Government cannot tell us? Everything the Minister has said so far at Second Reading and in Committee is that there will be nothing different in these agreements. It is simply a cut-and-paste job, as a Minister previously said.
Amendment 19 puts in place much greater clarity about the agreements, their scope, their impact on the United Kingdom, their impact if there is no agreement, and a current status register. That is absolutely doable by the Government. There is no confidentiality risk, no governance risk; we will not put any of our relationships with third countries at risk by doing so. In fact, it will enhance the relationships. I have been offended by hearing Dr Fox blame other countries for not acting quickly enough because, as he said this morning, they do not believe that there will be a new deal—presumably they were also on the conference call with the Chancellor of the Exchequer who said that Parliament will block no deal. Blaming other countries for not moving quickly enough is simply not acceptable. This information needs to be made public and Parliament needs much greater transparency—in fact, it does not need greater transparency, it just needs transparency.