Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement: Scrutiny

I sit on both the International Trade Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. The latter is doing an inquiry into CRaG. We heard clearly from legal experts last week that it is unprecedented for the Government to ratify a treaty before the implementing legislation has been passed. The fact that the Government are trying to ratify the treaty through the CRaG process before that is surely problematic. In addition, the fact that CRaG only allows a treaty to be stopped through a debate and then a vote in this Parliament means that the denial of a debate is the denial of the CRaG process, in the spirit in which it was written. I beg the Minister to reconsider his foolish urgency on this matter, delay CRaG by 21 days—that would not delay the ratification of the treaty, because the implementation legislation is still needed—and give us a debate.