Liam Fox’s department for international trade has signed agreements with the US which will make it much more difficult to find out what is being discussed in early-stage US-UK trade talks.

Fox’s department last week quietly released an exchange of letters between the UK and the office of the US trade representative agreeing to mark exchanged information, papers and discussions as either “sensitive” or “confidential”, with both sides also agreeing to keep the information “held in confidence” for four years after the conclusion of the talks.

The US-UK trade working group has a mission to “lay the groundwork for a potential future free trade agreement” as well as discussing ways to strengthen UK-US trade ties during the Brexit discussions.

This has led to concerns from politicians and campaign groups that the talks could pave the way for the UK to accept lower US standards on issues including animal welfare, chemical and pesticide usage, and other practices.

Transparency pledge

Fox’s department formally agreed to tighten the rules on information handling two days after the trade secretary made a public pledge to boost transparency during the talks.

During an interview with the BBC’s Today programme, Fox said he intended to learn the lessons of the backlash against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade deal, better known as TTIP. It was negotiated between the EU and US amid heavy secrecy. Talks have subsequently largely stalled amid high-profile public protests.

“Consumers will want to be consulted. We don’t want to get into a situation where we’ve been with the TTIP agreement with the US and the EU where a huge amount of work is done only to find the public won’t accept it,” said Fox on 7 November.

The pushback against public access to information on the US-UK trade talks comes as environment secretary Michael Gove insisted on Wednesday that MPs would have the power to vote down any deal if they believed it would lead to weakened animal rights standards.

The letters were also signed less than two weeks after Unearthed revealed through information obtained through US Freedom of Information (FOI) laws that Fox’s 27-strong UK delegation to the first US-UK working group meeting was lacking in any experts with substantial trade discussion experience. In contrast, the US team was 77 people strong and included at least 20 officials with direct experience of negotiating and enforcing trade deals.