UK: Trade Bill - Four years of demanding a say over trade deals
'Trade Bill - Four Years of demanding a say over trade deals', 23 March 2021
"After four years of campaigning for trade democracy, today the Trade Bill has passed its final stage in the House of Lords, and will shortly become law.
Over that time we have done a huge amount, and there have been some big ups and downs – at some points we won changes, only to see the government walk away from the whole bill or later on, overturn the things that had been won.
It is clear the fundamental argument for meaningful democratic scrutiny has been won among MPs and peers of all parties.
We shouldn’t oversell that – we didn’t succeed in a key thing that we set out to do, which was to ensure that MPs would get a vote on trade deals.
But we have completely changed the conversation, we have forced the government to be less secretive than it would have liked, and we have won concessions.
So what happened in our campaigning for trade democracy?..."