How do we make trade policy in Britain? How should we? - L. Alan Winters

As a centre of excellence for innovative research on trade policy and its inclusiveness, we aim to equip the UK with the capability to formulate and implement a trade policy tailored to the needs of the whole of the UK, while recognising the importance of the multilateral trading system and the UK’s role within it. [...] The paper argues that some of the mistakes were the result of the absence of constraints on the executive (the UK Government), and it makes three sets of proposals for redressing the balance. [...] 2 This was during the brief application of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, 2011, which required Parliament to agree to the date of a General Election inside the normal five year term, rather than, as the situation was before and has been since, the date being entirely at the discretion of the Prime Minister. [...] The topics covered a wide range of trade policy with online sessions on • The impact of UK trade policy on the rest of the world • Balancing trade between territories and sectors of the economy • Privacy and data transfer • Food and the environment The face-to-face session dealt with four issues, one from each of the four topic areas and with a specific question, plus an introduction and a wrap-up. [...] Given the breadth of the trade policy issues covered and the geographical spread of the juries, the results are informative of UK attitudes, but the samples are small and they are not statistically representative.