I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Of course, I have only been back at the Department two days now, but I will carefully consider the representations that he has made on parliamentary scrutiny. As I am laying out, CRaG is a process that, I believe, works well overall. We have added elements to CRaG, on top of the situation we inherited in 2010.
I should stress that no international treaty—we saw this in the House earlier in the Committee stage of the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill—can of itself change the UK’s laws. That can be done only by Parliament. What is more, it is the long-standing practice of successive Governments to ratify treaties only once relevant domestic implementing legislation is in place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes knows, the Australia free trade agreement is not actually ratified yet, because the domestic legislation is not yet in place.
My hon. Friend made an excellent speech. He rightly praised a litany of successes and the importance of our trade policy in making a difference to businesses, exporters, and consumers. Having read through quite a few of these free trade agreements and international trade agreements, I can say that there is no point negotiating just for the sake of producing a doorstep-style document. The point is to have an agreement that works for our exporters, consumers and producers, as rightly pointed out by various hon. Members.
May I give some praise to my officials? I was a little perturbed by the points raised by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle). Whatever officials may or may not have advised Ministers in the past, it is unfair to attack them if Ministers chose not to follow that advice or did something else. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will want to think about that and perhaps intervene on me to clarify what he meant.