European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

May I ask the Minister a few questions, because I suspect that his response is going to proceed on the basis that the Hague conventions are sufficient? It is true that the biggest number of abductions that come to our courts relate to Pakistan, the USA, Australia and then Poland. It would also be very sad if either we or the rest of the EU put ideology ahead of the welfare of children. Therefore, I want to know what the Minister’s prediction is as to the arrangements that might be made.

Overall, I feel that the amendment is perhaps too narrow. We have units in this country that study the effect of abduction: we have a permanent bureau, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit, which can look not just at the European Community countries but at the others. We need a global view of the welfare of children and cross-border abduction, not just an EU view. How does the Minister think we can cope, given that the EU takes apparently 164 days to deal with returned children, whereas we manage to do it in 90 days? For a small child, a matter of a few months is extremely important.

Is the Minister satisfied that we can swiftly and properly sign up to the 2007 Hague convention, which at the moment we are a party to only through the EU? We need to, and we should be able to, join it in our own right. Those are the questions that I put to the Minister.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, I am obliged. “Reciprocity” was the term used and emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. They both recognised the significance and the relevance of that term in the context of the issue we are discussing and of this Bill. They may have approached it from different directions, but there is a common recognition there. I will come back to that point in a moment, particularly in the context of this Bill and not the other Bills that may follow it in due course.

I acknowledge the commitment of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, to family law and the rights that it provides to many of the most vulnerable in our society. I also extend my appreciation to the report on this subject produced last year by this House’s EU Justice Sub-Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. In addition, I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, met my noble friend Lord Callanan and officials to discuss this matter a week or so ago. I observe also that officials have engaged in discussions with a variety of groups, including Resolution and the Family Law Bar Association, and others at an EU level, to discuss this critical issue.

To the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I say that I would be perfectly willing to meet—or at least to arrange a meeting with other Ministers who might be more directly involved in this issue—at some stage in order to discuss with all relevant and interested parties the issues that arise here.

I emphasise that the Government are committed to maintaining an effective system for the resolution of cross-border family law disputes once the UK leaves the EU in 2019—of course we are. Any system which requires cross-border dialogue and co-operation needs a common language to be effective. To that end, as part of our future partnership we want to agree a clear set of coherent common rules about: which country’s courts will hear a case in the event of a dispute—that is choice of jurisdiction; which country’s law will apply—that is choice of law; and a mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments across borders. That can be achieved within the EU and beyond the EU as well.

We are only beginning to embark on the negotiations of our future partnership with the EU 27 but we set out our position on this in a future partnership paper in August last year. That paper makes clear that an effective framework of civil judicial co-operation, which includes family law, is an important part of any deep partnership we want to establish with the remaining members of the EU. We believe that the optimum outcome for both sides will be a new agreement negotiated between the UK and EU as part of a future partnership which reflects our close existing relationship.

My noble and learned Friend, Lord Mackay of Clashfern made the point that the object of this Bill is to bring into our domestic law existing EU law so that we start out in the same place as the other members of the EU. We have to bear in mind the means of ensuring that litigation in a cross-border case involving UK and EU parties, wherever it takes place, can be as easy, efficient and cheap as possible. Such an agreement is necessary to provide confidence and certainty to families and individuals.

As the noble Baroness reminded us in backing up a point well made last year by the EU Justice Sub-Committee in its valuable report, reciprocity is key. This Bill can bring EU rules and regulations across into UK law, but it cannot place requirements on the remaining EU states. That is precisely why we want to negotiate a new deal with the EU and, as of this month, we are set to embark upon that negotiating process.

The current reciprocal rules on which we hope to model a new agreement provide a legal route to resolving what are often difficult and intractable problems. As noble Lords may know, and the noble Baroness readily appreciates, that can include determining in which member state a divorce takes place, child arrangements are made, maintenance issues are determined and, on the fraught issue of child abduction, the return of an abducted child is facilitated.

As I have mentioned, this area goes far beyond the EU. The EU, of course, is important, but we have the Hague conventions with respect to children, one in 1980 and one in 1996. The Hague convention in 2007 has the EU as a signatory, not the individual members of the EU. We will be taking steps to engage with the council on the Hague conventions in order that we can become individual signatories of that convention. I acknowledge the well-made point of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about the three-month time lapse that could potentially occur. We are mindful of that in setting about the process of negotiation because no one wants to see a gap in the process.

We also have the Lugano convention which engages with not only the EU, as a signatory, but also the other parties to it—Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. Returning to the point raised by the noble Lord about having regard to cases of another court, as between the Lugano convention and the EU it is agreed that each will have regard to the decisions of the other’s court. They are not bound by them or subject to the jurisdiction of the other, but they will have regard to them and take them into consideration when construing the rights and obligations that arise under these various conventions. So it is not making yourself subject to the CJEU but, in general terms, it is saying that you will respect its decisions and look at them for consideration.

Perhaps I may elaborate on that a little. The role of the CJEU is often either misunderstood or exaggerated in this context. What we are concerned about, generally speaking, is the ability of a court in one jurisdiction to recognise the pre-eminent jurisdiction of another country, the willingness of the courts in one country to recognise the orders made by the courts of another country, and the willingness of the courts in one country to enforce the judgments of another country in respect of these matters. Of course, if you are within the EU, the construction of a particular provision such as the Brussels convention—Brussels Ia, IIa and so on—would ultimately be a matter for the CJEU. However, in negotiating with our other partners, we recognise where we start from and the wide ambit of these conventions, and we understand how critical they are to family life going forward. No one is going to ignore them or turn their back on them, so I can assure noble Lords that we are intent on negotiating this. The precise way in which it will be done will have to be the subject of negotiation with our EU partners.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, asked me, as it were, to enumerate the negotiations that are ongoing, but so far we have been dealing with the separation agreement. From March we have set upon the negotiation of our future partnership; that is what the Prime Minister set out in her recent speech.

With regard to the other jurisdictions within the United Kingdom, officials within the Ministry of Justice are in regular contact with officials in Scotland and in Northern Ireland in regard to these matters. Of course we take account of those, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, will recognise that I am conscious that there are different laws in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

I thank the Minister for giving way. Of course discussions are taking place between officials in the different departments, but are Ministers talking to each other and are agreements being reached that will ensure that the right decisions are made to serve the different jurisdictions of the UK?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I cannot say that agreements are being reached at this time because we are only setting out on the process of negotiation with regard to the future partnership; I cannot take that any further at this stage. However, our position is that family law co-operation is critically important, and it is no different from our general position with regard to civil co-operation.

I would acknowledge that the development of Brussels IIa is an improvement on the Hague conventions, and indeed I believe that some would acknowledge that it is an improvement on the terms of the Lugano convention in this regard as well. The terms have been refined and developed, and it may be that there will be a further negotiation and conclusion over Brussels IIa—what might be termed as Brussels IIb, I suppose—which may well occur after Brexit. Nevertheless, in order to ensure that we have reasonable alignment and therefore the basis for reciprocity, we will want to take into consideration such developments in the law.

Let us be clear: generally speaking, these developments take place for all the best reasons. They are developments that reflect improvements, so why would we turn our face away from improvements in the law on the reciprocal enforcement of family law matters related to maintenance, divorce and child abduction? We have no cause or reason to do so and of course we are going to embrace these matters.

I appreciate that the amendments in this group are probing in nature, but I shall try to address some of the specific details. The report called for in the first amendment tabled by the noble Baroness would require the Government to publish details of how rights in EU family law operate in domestic law as well as key details of the negotiations within six months of this Bill receiving Royal Assent. With great respect, that is an arbitrary deadline which makes no reference to the position of the negotiations at that stage or the other documents that the Government will be publishing on the subject. These documents include not only any final agreement reached in the negotiations regarding continuing judicial co-operation on family law, but also the explanatory material that Ministers will publish when they exercise their key Bill powers to amend retained EU law. That will include retained EU family law. So, as I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, any agreement between the UK and the EU will be detailed clearly within the withdrawal agreement and domestically legislated for in the upcoming withdrawal agreement and implementation period Bill, which Parliament will have a full opportunity to scrutinise. However, I have to say that it does not arise in the context of this Bill.

The next amendment concerns the jurisdiction of the CJEU. We will discuss that in more detail when we come to debate Clause 6, so I will not take up a great deal of time although I want to make a couple of points. First, it is not necessary for the UK to be subject, unilaterally, to CJEU jurisdiction to secure a reciprocal agreement in this field any more than it is a requirement of the signatories to the Lugano convention to secure agreement with Brussels regarding family law matters. There are a number of existing precedents: not just Lugano, but the Hague convention as well. As I have indicated, the jurisdiction of the CJEU is sometimes either exaggerated or misunderstood in this context. In the EU, it is of course the final arbiter of the construction and application of EU instruments, but that does not mean that we have to embrace the CJEU’s jurisdiction to have a suitable partnership agreement with the 27 members of the EU.

[Baroness Ludford]

In his lengthy reply, the Minister appears to perpetuate some of the misunderstanding that underlay the Prime Minister’s speech on Friday, which is that somehow if you mirror the laws of the EU 27 and start from the same position, you do not need the rest of what Commission jargon calls the ecosystem—in other words, the common rules and the enforcement of institutional and supervisory mechanisms. Surely that is the difference between the EU context and the Hague and Lugano conventions, and accounts for the difference between having regard to and mutually recognising and enforcing judgments. It is part of a complex of arrangements. There is a qualitative difference between the international arrangements and the EU arrangements, which does not seem to come through in the Minister’s response.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect, neither I nor the Prime Minister misunderstood any of that. With great respect, I want to correct the noble Baroness on one point: that ecosystem is simply not required for mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments by two separate jurisdictions. That happens between the countries of the Lugano convention and countries in the EU in any event. I am talking about starting from the same point, with common rules regarding judicial recognition and enforcement, and moving from there to the negotiation of a new partnership. We do not foresee the sort of difficulty that the noble Baroness alludes to in that context.

At this stage, I want to come back to the point I was seeking to make. First, it is not necessary for the UK to subject itself unilaterally to the CJEU’s jurisdiction to secure a reciprocal agreement. Many other countries do that. Secondly, in any event, the Government have been clear throughout debate on the Bill that it is in no way designed to legislate for any future agreement between the UK and the EU. That is not the purpose of the Bill. We cannot unilaterally legislate for our future relationship with the EU simply by including in our domestic legislation certain provisions about recognition of family law, maintenance and other agreements—a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, readily acknowledged at the outset of her opening remarks some considerable time ago.

I understand that the intention behind Amendment 120 is to make sure that there can be continued application of international agreements, such as the Hague 2007 maintenance convention, which the UK currently operates by virtue of its membership of the EU. Of course, we are intent on doing that; as I noted earlier, we understand that there is a potential three-month gap there, which we need to address. I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that we are clearly intent on securing an agreement, albeit not as an EU member and not subject to the direct jurisdiction of the CJEU, which ensures that we can maintain the highest standards of family law and mutual recognition, whether it be jurisdiction, choice of law or enforcement. I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

I entirely understand the response the noble and learned Lord gave to the effect that you can, of course, have a treaty to ensure reciprocity, but he does not appear to recognise the role of the CJEU in the difficult cases where there is an argument about what reciprocity means and the obligations on states that are parties to that treaty. I do not know that there has been any explanation from the Government of how we deal with the difficult cases without accepting the jurisdiction of the CJEU. Would he like to elaborate?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am happy to repeat the observation I made earlier: these difficult cases are resolved, for example, between Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and the other members of the Lugano convention embraced within the EU. In that context, each of the courts—the Lugano court and the CJEU—respects each other’s judgments, but they are not bound by them. That happens all the time. Ultimately, it would be for the domestic courts of each jurisdiction to determine what they were and were not prepared to enforce in the context of these agreements. That does not present any insurmountable difficulty, any more than it does in the context of the reciprocal recognition and enforcement of orders made pursuant to the current Hague conventions.

Again, I am obliged to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for the report. I repeat my offer of further meetings to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed and the Minister for his reply. When I tabled these amendments—I realise that they have not found favour in all corners of your Lordships’ Committee—my aim was simply to have a discussion that I thought had not happened since the Bill began. It had not happened in another place and, with all respect to the Government, it has not been happening in the kind of detail we need in the publications we have seen so far. We have at least now begun to have this conversation and I am delighted that we have.

The debate has established to so many people quite how important these family law provisions are. They are fundamental to the welfare of so many of our children, because issues of child abduction, child protection and child contact are caught up at the centre of this. Those points were made very well by my noble friends Lady Massey and Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The importance of a single effective family law system was stressed very well by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, who also expressed how well-functioning and widely admired our system is. The need for it was underscored so well. I am hugely grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. When I heard her speech I wanted, in the way children do nowadays, to say “what she said”. She expressed it so well that I should have walked away at this point, but I think convention prohibits it so I press on.

I will pick up two or three points that were in contention. I do not think I will take up all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, but his most important contention was that the provisions in the Hague conventions and elsewhere are sufficient unto the day. I hope he will take the opportunity, when he can read Hansard, to reflect on the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and to look at how the weight of opinion in family law is clearly against him on this matter.

I would be happy to discuss this further outside the Committee, but to make a couple of specific points, Brussels IIa is distinctly better than Hague because it has a stricter timetable on abduction. There is a back-up mechanism—a second bite of the cherry—so that the child’s home country has another opportunity to overrule a decision by another court not to return an abducted child. The Brussels II recast will make that far better still.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, mentioned the provisions on divorce, which I found harder to understand. My understanding is that the 1970 Hague convention is much more restrictive than the current arrangements and that very few EU members are signed up to it anyway. It has no direct rules about jurisdiction, so we would be back to these forum conveniens arguments deciding expensively where which court should rule. Those things take at least two days in court, probably with a circuit court judge or above. I do not think there is a practical alternative on divorce, but I would be very interested if the noble Lord wanted to intervene or to talk to me later to challenge that.

I hope that we would all widely accept that the current EU provisions are the superior offering available. The challenge would be to find out how we can best salvage what is there. I take the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, from whom I dissent with great trepidation, that the Bill is doing what it can to replicate the current provisions. The problem is that, by importing those provisions, it is not replicating the current situation, because, by doing so in a context of no reciprocity, it is creating asymmetry between our obligations to the EU 27 and theirs to us. That needs dealing with very early on.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

That is our position: we should have this amendment now but work on it in the longer term. I am sure we could all find ways of improving it. The easiest and most honourable thing is to transpose what was in the treaty and move that wording over, then move on to something better for the longer term. I agree with my noble friend.

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to it. I start by directly addressing the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Davies, my noble friend Lord Bowness and others. There is no question but that this Government regard animals as sentient beings. As we said on this issue in the other place, we certainly agree with the sentiment of the amendments, such as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. However, as I will set out, we cannot support them.

Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to which many noble Lords have referred, places an obligation on the European Union and EU member states when formulating and implementing certain EU policies to have regard to the welfare requirements of animals because animals are sentient beings. However, the weakness of that article—this relates directly to my noble friend Lord Deben’s point—is that it applies only to a limited number of EU policy areas and, even then, allows for certain religious and cultural traditions which many would consider to be cruel. Two examples, of course, are bull-fighting and the production of foie gras. Article 13’s effect on domestic law is minimal. As the Secretary of State for the Environment has made clear, as we leave the EU, we believe that we can do much better.

We have made it clear that we intend to retain our existing standards of animal welfare once we have left the EU, and, indeed, to enhance them. This Bill will convert the existing body of EU animal welfare law into UK law. It will make sure that the same protections are in place in the UK and that laws still function effectively after we leave the EU. However, the purpose of this Bill is to provide continuity by addressing any deficiencies in law as we leave the EU. It is not about improving EU laws that the Government think could be better. That is why, at the end of last year, the Government published draft legislation, the Animal Welfare (Sentencing and Recognition of Sentience) Bill, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. The draft Bill sets out how we can better enshrine in domestic law the recognition of animals as sentient beings.

Let me reply to the questions asked by my noble friend Lord Bowness and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. The Secretary of State for the Environment has been clear that we will legislate and that there will be no gap left in our law on sentience after we leave the EU. We believe that the draft Bill is a significant improvement on Article 13, imposing a clear duty on the state to have regard for animal welfare when considering all policies, rather than just the six areas outlined in Article 13.

[Lord Deben]

My noble friend has said that the reason we are not including that part of the article which is excluded is that it does not go very far and it is not good enough, but that is not what the Government promised. The Government said that they were going to include in this Bill all the present legislation. That is all we ask. Why will he not include even so deficient a piece as this and then do the additions afterwards, which is what he has told me he is going to do on every other occasion?

[Lord Callanan]

Because we do not think that Article 13 works in the context of UK law; it applies only to EU law. I have set out why we think we can do better.

The public consultation on the draft Bill closed on 31 January. The Government are analysing the responses and will publish a summary and next steps in due course—I hope before we get to Report. I hope this reassures the noble Baroness, and indeed my noble friend Lord Deben, about the Government’s firm stance on animal sentience.

[Lord Wigley]

The Minister emphasised that he hoped this would be brought forward by Report. If it is not, would he be prepared to look at an amendment along these lines to meet the Government’s shortcomings and ensure that the Bill covers the possibilities we have outlined in the debate, rather than relying on the possibility of future legislation that may not reach the statute book?

[Lord Callanan]

I do not want to give the noble Lord an exact commitment but, as I have said, we hope to have it by Report stage. If that is not the case we will look at what can be done in its place.

Amendment 30 seeks to transfer the obligations contained in Article 13—to have regard to the welfare requirements of animals as sentient beings when developing and implementing certain EU policies—to domestic law. Unlike Article 13, however, the amendment applies only to the formulation rather than the formulation and implementation of law and policy. Furthermore, once the UK has left the EU we will obviously no longer be a member state and therefore no longer formulate or implement any EU laws or policies. Therefore, by referring to the obligations contained in Article 13, it is not clear what the effect of the amendment would be in practice. Although it is assumed that its intention is to require the welfare requirements of animals to be taken into account in formulating domestic law and policy, it appears that the amendment would only require it when formulating and implementing EU policy and law, which of course we would no longer be doing. As I have said, the Government have published a draft Bill which introduces a clear duty on Ministers to have regard for animal welfare when formulating and implementing all government policy and not only the six areas I mentioned earlier.

Amendment 98, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, seeks to apply the requirements of Article 13 to the use of Clause 7. It would require Ministers to pay full regard to animal welfare requirements when introducing any legislation under Clause 7. I remind noble Lords that the purpose of Clause 7 is to allow the Government to address deficiencies in retained EU law arising from our withdrawal. Clause 7 provides powers for Ministers to make secondary legislation to deal with any problem that would arise on exit—for example, to remedy any provisions that would have no practical application after the UK has left the EU.

However, the power is temporary and can only be used for up to two years after exit. After that point it will expire. Similarly, the proposed amendment to Clause 7 would only have effect for two years from the date of our withdrawal from the EU. The amendment would also only apply to those regulations introduced by Ministers before March 2021 for the purposes of addressing deficiencies arising from our withdrawal. Therefore, the limited protection provided for animals by the amendment would also expire on 30 March 2021.

The amendment would not hold Ministers to the standards required in Article 13 two years after we have left the EU and, therefore, would weaken the current obligation in Article 13. The provisions set out in our draft Bill in December go beyond the two years following our exit from the EU and will apply to more than just those regulations that deal only with any deficiencies arising from the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

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[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, when we last debated this issue, the Advocate-General for Scotland said that he was very attracted to the proposals published by Professor Paul Craig in his blog—the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to that. I notice that Professor Craig published a subsequent blog on 26 February, also referred to by the noble Lord, in which he suggests that, once the process of transposing law has taken effect, we should assign,

“legal status to EU retained law in the UK based on the status it had in EU law”

Having read his blog as a non-lawyer, I felt that, if the intention is to give certainty, the proposals of Professor Craig would do that—except in one key respect which I hope the Minister might comment on: what process would be undergone between now and next February to allocate the huge body of retained law to one or other category if we were to adopt Professor Craig’s mode of proceeding? Since the Solicitor-General said in the House of Commons that about 20,000 pieces of EU law will be transferred, and if it were possible to establish, as Professor Craig sets out, a criterion based on the intention of existing EU law which would divide between primary and secondary legislation, can the Minister indicate, if he is minded to go down that route, what process would take place, so that, on 29 March next year, we know the status of law being transposed?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords—

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

We need to speak from these Benches as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made a powerful speech in favour of his amendment, backed by the powerful arguments of the Constitution Committee. It is apparent that this gives rise not to a difference on what the end objective should be: the need for clarity; the need for a clear status for EU law; and the recognition that retained EU law will need to retain its position of priority over pre-existing UK law because that is the status it has at the moment and because, as we have been reminded in debate after debate, the Government have promised that EU law will be passed across on exit day as it is at the moment. The routes proposed by the Constitution Committee and the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law—and in the interesting proposals put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles—demonstrate that it is possible to reach those objectives by different routes.

However, the methods put forward by the Constitution Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, have the merit of simplicity and elegance. The status of the law is clear. We do not have to go through a process of trying to decide between now and next February what it is; we certainly do not have to go through a process of allowing a Minister to use powers under Clause 17 to assign a process, which would be, as the Constitution Committee says, an unacceptable approach.

It would have the additional advantage, or so it would seem to me at least, that retained EU law would then have some protection against amendability, save by the processes of this House and the other place considering the amendments which ought to be made rather than by a process of delegated legislation—I say “some” protection, because it would not be complete. Those seem reasons why the elegant solution proposed by the Constitution Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has much to commend it

I would like to read when it becomes available what the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said, to make sure that I fully understood all of it. I do not disagree with the intention behind it, but the proposal of the Constitution Committee may achieve it more readily and elegantly.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I am obliged for all the contributions and for the opportunity to respond to this debate. These provisions and amendments may be technical, but, in debating them, we must not lose sight of the real practical consequences that follow from how we deal with this issue. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, observed in passing, we are aiming at the same goal; it is a question of which route can most appropriately take us there. I shall come on in due course to look at some of the routes proposed.

[Lord Goldsmith]

I was referring to the different proposals by the Constitution Committee and the Bingham Centre, rather than to the Government’s proposals.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Then I reassure the noble and learned Lord that we are all intent on arriving in the same place; it is a question of how we arrive there. I shall deal with the routes that he touched on.

Perhaps I may correct one point: the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred to the work of Professor Craig and to some previous remarks that I had made about that. I commend to him what I said as recorded in Hansard. I referred to the publication of 26 February on the previous occasion; it did not come out after those remarks were made. I shall mention Professor Craig’s analysis in due course. The task of categorising such legislation would be challenging, but we would consider it as one route forward.

As we know, one of the core requirements of EU membership is the principle of supremacy of EU law. In the event of any conflict with domestic law, domestic law must give way. When we leave the EU, it would make no sense and would not be in keeping with our principles to leave that unchanged in our law; we all recognise that.

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[Lord Pannick]

It is more fundamental than that. The difficulty is, why use the concept of the supremacy of EU at all? It is surely inappropriate in a Bill of this nature.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Not necessarily in the context of retained EU law, which comes over with that principle of supremacy standing behind it. I will come on to deal with that in more detail. I understand that, as the noble Lord indicated, his amendments draw on the recommendations made in the Constitution Committee report on the Bill—although I was interested to note that Amendment 33 appears to go further than the recommendations put forward by the committee, in that it extends the status of primary legislation to all retained EU law, rather than just to law being preserved by Clauses 3 and 4 of the Bill. So there is that difference between Amendment 33 and the recommendations of the Constitution Committee.

I understand entirely the concerns here and the attraction that these amendments have as a result. It is only right, however, that we should examine fully the consequences of dealing with status in a one-size-fits-all way.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Before the Minister moves on to the consequences, perhaps I might draw his attention to the status of environmental law currently drawn from the European Union. Of course, a considerable proportion of the anticipated changes that will be required are in environmental law, because so much of what we draw from Europe is environmental law. At the moment, the status of environmental law drawn from Europe has been pretty random, to be frank, and not at all reflective of the importance of the legislation. It has been random, whether it is drawn from a regulation which would be picked up by the clauses that the Minister mentioned or from a directive which would not be picked up in that way. But it did not really matter that it was rather random in its status, because the framework provided by the ECA was there, and therefore none of the legislation could be meddled with randomly by the Executive. Of course, once the safeguard provided by the ECA has gone, the status of existing environmental law becomes rather strange. It sticks out like a sore thumb, in that some of it that one would think was sufficiently important to be considered eligible, as it were, for primary legislation, has not got that current status, while other bits of law that are pretty functional and practical have a much lower status. So I urge the Minister to think about just how complicated the process would be if we did not simply adopt a single status for all that law.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

First, with respect to the noble Baroness, I do not accept that the way in which environmental law has been received and enforced in our domestic legislation has been random. We differ at the outset to that extent. Of course, various propositions have been put forward, one of which is to give the status of primary legislation to all retained EU law—but that would raise difficulties that I will come on to address. The categorisation below that can be carried out: indeed, the noble Baroness tried to set out for Amendment 32A a hierarchy that could be employed in that context. But I do not consider that environmental law stands out in the way that the noble Baroness suggests.

Our concern is that, as I mentioned, a one-size-fits-all approach will not really work. Again, I quote from the Bingham Centre’s report, which stated:

“We consider that the Rule of Law objectives of legal continuity and certainty are better served by the approach taken by the Government in the Bill. The principle of supremacy is well understood and its future role is very limited, being confined to the relationship between retained EU law and pre-exit UK law. Treating all retained EU law as primary legislation enacted on exit day, on the other hand, will increase legal uncertainty because it changes the settled approach and leaves unclear whether the interpretive obligation, to interpret pre-exit UK law so as to be compatible with retained EU law, continues to apply”.


EU law that is being converted into domestic legislation under this clause covers both a vast range of different policy areas and different types of EU law, from regulations and directives applying to agriculture and farming to detailed and technical pieces of tertiary legislation, such as the list of contents for a dye or chemical. At the end of the day, treating all of that as primary legislation would present, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, indicated, a quite enormous task for Parliament if it is going to legislate to amend any of that retained EU law. How many Acts of Parliament would we have to contemplate putting through this House to wrestle with that demanding position? It really would be formidable. Because this legislation will come on to our domestic statute book in a unique way, it will not already have been scrutinised and approved by this Parliament—so we would be bringing in this enormous body of law and treating it as primary legislation when nobody in this Parliament had actually examined it.

The breadth of this body of law, in the case of EU law being converted, is unique in its nature, which is why the Government have deliberately chosen to tread rather carefully and not simply assign a single status to that retained law in domestic legislation. While assigning a single status for all purposes to all retained EU law may be theoretically possible, it would have the most difficult consequences and might lead ultimately to a situation in which we had to extend the use of Henry VIII powers beyond any reasonable limit normally contemplated in the context of provisions of this kind.

Beyond that practical consideration, there is a more fundamental concern about the constitutional appropriateness of what has been proposed. Domestic primary legislation is less vulnerable to subsequent amendment and is less vulnerable to challenge in the courts for a very good reason—because, as I said, it has undergone scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament, which means that there can be no doubt about Parliament’s intentions so far as that primary legislation is concerned. That would not apply to retained EU law.

While we are spending considerable time scrutinising this Bill, we are not able to scrutinise the law it is converting. Some of that law is itself the EU’s own subsidiary legislation, which has not been subject to comparable scrutiny anywhere. The noble Baroness observed on an earlier occasion that the European Parliament had had the opportunity to scrutinise much of this. It has had the opportunity to scrutinise some of it, but scant scrutiny—if any—of the subsidiary legislation has actually occurred in the European Parliament. By contrast, our proposed approach has been to deal with the status of converted law for certain specified purposes, such as that alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick: that is, paragraph 19 of Schedule 8 in the context of the Human Rights Act and rights arising from there.

Of course I understand the concerns put forward by the Constitution Committee and noble Lords about the consequences of the case-by-case approach that we are taking. I do not dismiss them lightly and I do not say that the Bill is a perfect solution to the issue that we have to address. As I indicated on day three of Committee, there is some scope for considering how we can take this forward. Reference has already been made to the work of Professor Paul Craig and the alternative model of categorisation that he proposed in his article of 26 February. That is something that we are looking at—albeit, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, anticipated, that it might involve a considerable amount of work. But if that can be an appropriate and effective categorisation, rather like that of the noble Baroness, it is something that we are willing to look at.

Again, I ask the Committee not to dismiss lightly the potential ramifications of treating all this law as having the status of primary legislation just to exclude the concept of supremacy from the operation of Clause 5. That would raise formidable problems for us and we do not see it as an effective way forward for the Bill. But, as I indicated previously, we are looking at the mechanisms employed here, and a mechanism that avoids actually applying the doctrine of supremacy may find greater traction as a way forward if we can come up with a suitable categorisation for retained EU law, rather than a blanket categorisation of primary legislation. I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted]

Perhaps I may make an observation. Leaving general principles out of it, if you categorise all the legislation as secondary legislation and then deem that some of it can be amended only by Act of Parliament, you do not have to sort it all. You would have to sort it only when you wanted to amend it—and at that point you would look at the basis on which it was made.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am obliged to the noble Baroness for that observation. Obviously, that is something that we would take into account. It perhaps touches on a question I did not answer from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with regard to Clause 5(3), where he queried the reference to the “intention of the modification”. Of course, what that makes clear is that this will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

[Lord Pannick]

Of course, “case-by-case basis” suggests lots of work for lawyers and a lot of legal uncertainty. I am grateful to the Minister and all those who spoke in the debate. There was, I think, widespread agreement in the debate—apart from the Minister—and from expert commentators that a legal status does need to be conferred in the Bill on retained EU law. How one confers the legal status is much more difficult than what legal status one confers. I would say that there is more than one way to skin a cat—but that may upset those who spoke in the previous debate.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Goldsmith, for supporting the approach recommended by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. But I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, that there is also great force in the suggestion made by Professor Paul Craig that the Bill should confer a status of either primary or secondary legislation, dependent on the category of EU law from which the retained EU law derives. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who asked about this, that Professor Craig is not advocating a process of allocation on a case-by-case basis; he is advocating that legal status should depend on the article of the EU treaty from which the retained EU law derives—a much more objective approach.