Get ready for a decade of secret trade deals.

Sovereignty. Independence. Freedom. The great mantras of the Brexiteer religion.

They forgot to mention the other one: ‘Total secrecy’. 

This week the i newspaper revealed that our the trade talks with the US will not just be partly kept from public scrutiny. They will be totally behind closed doors:

“A working group from Dr Fox’s Department for International Trade (DIT) had agreed with its American counterparts that the negotiations would remain classified for four years after a deal is struck.”

Note the wording. Four years after a deal. That means we could be in the dark about the negotiations while the new deal has already come into affect.

We will have no idea what was explicitly traded, what compromises were made, what we lost.

After we leave the EU, we could lose trade deals with 65 countries – and will have to start from scratch.

These discussions – too many to monitor in any great detail – will potentially impact what we can and can’t privatise, what industries and sectors should be open to foreign competition and mandatory tendering, dispute resolution (companies being able to sue our government – or NHS), and our tariff levels (impacting the price of basically everything).

All the talk so far has been about the secrecy of the EU trade deal negotiations. But these will be the most open of any of the dozens we will have to negotiate once we’ve left the EU – all the public pressure and media lens is on those talks. There are many more to come. How much will be hidden from voters?

Labour and campaigners War on Want are pushing against the information lock-down, with the opposition aiming to raise it in Parliament.

War on Want’s Senior Trade Campaigner Mark Dearn said:

“Despite what he says, Liam Fox seems intent on repeating the mistakes of TTIP – a secretly negotiated deal in which our government sought to unpick regulations and lock the NHS into privatisation while showing disdain for any degree of public or parliamentary scrutiny.

“It is critical that parliament and the British public are not kept in the dark over a trade deal which could affect everything from climate change rules, to how we regulate the big banks, and whether or not we can renationalise our public services without being sued in secret courts for doing so.

“Trade deals affect every area of the lives of ordinary working people. Instead of Liam Fox being allowed to negotiate in secret with Trump’s trade team, there must be full transparency and accountability so that parliament and the British people know exactly what we might be trading away to the USA.”

The attempts to keep the EU talks as hidden as possible are just the tip of the iceberg. We face over a decade of trade deals with dozens of countries. Make no mistake – they will be as secret as the government can get away with.

Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter

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