Jill Barrett gives evidence to House of Commons Committee on Exiting the EU

Jill Barrett gave oral evidence on 2 May 2018 to the House of Commons Committee on Exiting the European Union, as part of its inquiry on the progress of the UK’s negotiations on EU withdrawal. She fielded questions from MPs on the legal status of the draft Withdrawal Agreement including its provisions on the transition period, financial obligations and the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’, as well as its relationship with the expected political declaration and eventual agreements on future UK-EU relations. She also gave her opinion on the applicability of the parliamentary scrutiny provisions in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act to each of these documents, and the sequencing of this procedure, the ‘meaningful vote’ motions in both Houses and the legislative process on the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill.

A video of the proceedings may be viewed on the Committee’s webpage at:

https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/8a8be16f-b2ff-443a-b208-50161192d27b

and a transcript will be available here

Jill also gave oral evidence to the European Union Committee of the House of Lords at its Inquiry on ‘Brexit: Parliamentary Scrutiny’ on 6 September 2016. The evidence is published here

Jill Barrett was formerly Legal Counsellor at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. While at the FCO, she led the Government’s work on the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, Part 2 (Ratification of Treaties). She published an article on this subject: ‘The United Kingdom and Parliamentary Scrutiny of Treaties: Recent Reforms’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 60 (1), 225-245.