Improving oversight of UK foreign policy
Making governments accountable
Parliamentary responsibility
Mandating ministers
Mainstreaming foreign affairs
Strengthening Parliament’s committees
The need for specialist backing
Changing the culture
An ethical foreign policy
A proactive Parliament

Britain is a parliamentary democracy in which elected MPs and peers are supposed to hold ministers to account for their actions. Yet there are whole swathes of foreign policy which MPs and peers do not and cannot effectively oversee. Decisions on going to war, signing treaties, granting aid, selling arms or negotiating with the EU, NATO and the World Trade Organisation are often taken without the proper involvement of the legislature. But in our interconnected world these acts are important to the daily lives and values of UK citizens – the majority of whom believe our external policies should be both more democratic and ethical.

We describe our main recommendations to improve parliamentary oversight below. If you want to know more, check out our full analysis in Not in Our Name: Democracy and Foreign Policy in the UK, published by Politico’s (ISBN 1 84275 150 6).  Our proposals command overwhelming public support, as revealed in a specially commissioned opinion poll.

Prime Ministers and governments in the UK can bypass Parliament in foreign affairs – even as far as going to war – by making use the Royal Prerogative, a pre-democratic set of powers that Britain’s monarchs used to employ.  Nowadays these powers belong to the Prime Minister of the day and ministers, though officials and ambassadors also make extensive use of them.  As we have seen, these powers can make foreign policy the personal fiefdom of the Prime Minister and even the Foreign Secretary may act as no more than a lackey.

The prerogative enables Prime Ministers and governments to engage in a variety of foreign policy activities - going to war, despatching peace-making forces, making treaties, dispensing aid, negotiating within the European Union, NATO and  powerful international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), dispensing aid and participating in the G8 and G7 great power get-togethers.

The Public Administration Select Committee has published a thorough analysis of prerogative powers and proposals for reform which give priority to war-making powers, agreeing treaties and issuing passports. We also discuss the role of the Royal Prerogative in the conduct of armed conflict on our ‘Armed Conflict and Intervention’ page. 

 The prerogative is exercised without any formal need for parliamentary approval – and by convention acts associated with it are unlikely to be subject to judicial review. Most democratic nations give their governments room to manoeuvre in foreign affairs, but do also provide for checks and balances.

 We argue that the Royal Prerogative (which actually gives governments powers in domestic policy as well) should be placed on a statutory basis.  This would allow MPs to insist on making their use subject to parliamentary scrutiny and so to public debate.  In future, going to war, sending troops abroad and making treaties should all require the approval of  Parliament in advance – or where this is not possible, parliamentary ratification or rejection as soon as possible after the event. The British public overwhelmingly agree that “Parliament as a whole” should determine Britain’s major foreign policy objectives. Go to ‘What people think’

In constitutional theory, ministers are individually and collectively responsible to Parliament for all their acts and policies.  So ministers and officials argue that the powers that they exercise under the Royal Prerogative need not ultimately escape parliamentary scrutiny. 

But the point of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility is that it requires ministers to report on their policies and actions at the time or soon afterwards when they concern domestic affairs.  As they need not do so in foreign affairs, except in some cases by convention, Parliament’s ability to examine and influence policy is far weaker. Further, any attempt to enforce the doctrine of responsibility in such matters is likely to be long delayed or even just too late; and if an issue is politically charged, as it often is, a government can simply rely on its inbuilt majority in the House to rebuff even legitimate criticism.

MPs and peers may also exercise scrutiny through written or oral PQs; participation in debates; and through inquiries conducted by parliamentary committees.  Each of these three main methods of scrutiny is subject to its own rules of procedure and limitations.   Ministers may often be evasive when responding to both parliamentary questions and any questions put to them during Select Committee inquiries.  They also may be reluctant to allow officials to give evidence, or withhold information using an exemption under Part II of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Our proposals are geared towards strengthening the most effective, and most immediate, of Parliament’s mechanisms for holding the executive to account – the select committees.

Ministers and officials enjoy considerable discretion when representing the UK at international negotiations.  We give them a great deal of freedom even in negotiations within the European Union which have a major impact on domestic policies across the board.  It is possible, when an agreement is unpopular at home, for the government to present it as a fait accompli.

To counter this lack of accountability, Britain should adopt a “soft” version of the continental system of “mandating” in advance of key negotiations and international gatherings. Before taking part, ministers and officials should go before the relevant parliamentary select committees and discuss and agree the broad bargaining positions to be adopted.  These would not result in hard-and-fast mandates that they would have to comply with come what may; but if they do not remain within these established parameters, ministers could subsequently be called upon to explain themselves.

Soft mandating would have the additional advantage of opening up crucial debates and decisions to the public gaze and select committees could involve expert and concerned organisations in formulating bargaining positions and scrutinising the outcomes.

Parliamentary scrutiny of foreign policy is badly fragmented between select committees in both Houses and it is often “fringe” committees, like the European Scrutiny Committee, that bear most of the technical burden. This committee actually sits in private. It reports regularly to the House of Commons on significant EU documents and can recommend debate on important issues to other “fringe” EU standing committees or on the floor of the House.  Scrutiny in committees in the House of Lords often bring considerable thought and expertise to bear upon detailed EU issues, but their work goes virtually unreported. Go to Europe.

We believe that oversight of foreign and European policy should be brought into the parliamentary (and so public) mainstream.  This can be done by requiring select committees, the most effective bodies in terms of scrutiny and oversight, to inquire into all external policy measures which for which the government ministers and departments they shadow are responsible. “Mainstreaming” issues of foreign policy alongside domestic issues would enable committees to consider the international and domestic dimensions of issues, such as on the environment for example, to be considered together. 

This shift in parliamentary scrutiny would both make far better use of the specialist knowledge of MPs and peers on the committees and also broaden that knowledge.  It would rescue European Union policy from the fringe and adversarial ghettoes and enable Parliament to engage more effectively and openly with the huge and largely unseen volume of EU initiatives that profoundly affect our everyday lives.  It would also allow Parliament to ensure that there was consistency between foreign policies and actions and domestic policies.

Obviously mainstreaming foreign and European affairs will greatly increase the workload of their members, who are already struggling to balance their responsibilities as scrutineers of government with constituency interests, political and other duties.

To make it easier for them, we propose that select committees should be made much larger, if possible taking in all backbench MPs, enabling the extra work to be done. New committees and sub-committees, and more joint committees drawing upon both MPs and peers, could be established.  We hope that this additional deployment of members would also “mainstream” the duty of scrutiny of the executive, which at the moment comes a poor second behind constituency and political interests. Joint committees of both houses would also pool the expertise of peers and the democratic legitimacy of the Commons.

The remits of these enlarged parliamentary bodies should include examination of over-arching policy commitments, such as the Special Relationship’ with the US and our stance in Europe.

Parliament is very well served by the National Audit Office. We advocate the formation of a parliamentary “External Audit Office”, comprising experienced external affairs and human rights specialists. Attached to the existing parliamentary Scrutiny Unit, it would supply parliamentarians with expert assistance. But Parliament also needs its own legal advice.  So we argue that MPs and peers should be able to get advice from a parliamentary Legal Counsel’s Office. The legality of policies is far more than a mere technical concern, as the controversy over the Attorney General’s advice to the government on the legality of the invasion of Iraq showed.  In our poll on foreign affairs, 89% of people said that the UK should seek to comply with international law in its foreign policy.

The need for its own counsel is all the greater for two reasons.  First, there is a convention against the public disclosure of the advice provided by the law officers. Secondly, there is always the danger that they will tailor their advice to the political needs of the government in politically contentious matters. So Parliament really needs  access to independent legal advice if members are to make informed decisions on behalf of the electorate.

What difference could a reinvigorated legislature make?  One improvement would be more thorough scrutiny of the ethical nature of foreign policy, something which our poll shows is dear to the heart of the public. For example, 85% of the public want reform of EU trading practices to benefit developing economies, even at the expense of our own. Just one means of bringing this internationalist popular mood to bear upon policy formation would be through more effective parliamentary oversight of export policy.

Almost as many people are against arms sales to countries which violate the human rights of their citizens. To establish parliamentary control of arms sales more firmly, the Export Controls Committee in the House of Commons should – in accordance with its repeated requests – be given the power to examine export licences before they are granted.

These changes should between them bring about a fundamental change in Parliament’s democratic role in governance.   At the moment, Parliament essentially only ever checks on what government does after it has done it.  Our changes would utterly re-orient Parliament’s role.  MPs and peers would begin to share in framing policies as well as scrutinising them before rather than after the event.  The whole culture of Parliament would change as well. We think that also Parliament should be more representative of the people and less reactive to the executive’s demands.  Our poll suggests that then this country’s foreign policies would become more responsive, more geared to domestic needs, more ethical and above all more democratic.