With Brexit negotiations underway, the UK government must pass legislation on trade in line with the powers it is expected to gain to negotiate and conclude UK trade deals. This legislation will be captured under the trade bill due to come before parliament in September 2017. Controversial trade deals TTIP and CETA were negotiated in secrecy with parliamentarians denied access to key documents, with freedom of information requests on critical public interest issues like the NHS refused, and, for CETA, concluded without the publication of impact assessments - and with parliamentary scrutiny intentionally avoided by the UK government.

We urgently need a democratic agenda for securing UK trade deals.