Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for speaking so soon after my previous contribution, but I will speak to my Amendment 20A. I associate myself with the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, which I have signed.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for adding their names to my Amendment 20A. This iniquitous Bill challenges the very foundations of devolution in the United Kingdom—namely, that decisions should be taken at the local level, and that local leaders should be answerable for them, rather than decisions being taken at the centre by remote politicians and officials. I say that as a former Secretary of State for Wales who helped bring in the Government of Wales Act 2006, which strengthened the devolution possibilities for the now Welsh Parliament —the then Welsh Assembly. My amendments and those of my noble friends address one aspect of that: they seek to remove from the Bill matters for which the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should properly be responsible.

I will speak about Wales in particular. The Explanatory Notes acknowledge that the Bill affects the decision-making of the devolved Administrations. The memorandum of 8 September 2023 from Rebecca Evans MS, the responsible Welsh Minister, set out in detail the way in which the Bill intruded into devolved competences in Wales and why it was right to withhold the legislative consent of the Senedd—which has occurred.

Deciding whether a particular purchase or contract should be made by the Welsh Government, or any other public authority in Wales, is patently a function exercisable in relation to Wales under the terms of Section 3 of the Wales Act 2017. The conduct of foreign affairs is reserved to the UK Government under that Act, but the making of moral or political judgments about the conduct of foreign states is not conducting foreign policy. That is a crucial distinction denied by this authoritarian Bill, which abrogates powers to Ministers so that they can act by executive diktat—in this case, by overriding the devolution settlement in respect of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Moral and political judgments are made by every individual—and so they should be; they should not be dictated by the centre. That means that the decision-maker should be at the lowest accountable level. In the case of Wales, decisions should be taken by a county or county borough council, the Welsh Government or the Senedd. Those authorities would be answerable for the moral and political judgments they make at the local or all-Welsh level. Are the Government seriously saying that they have a monopoly on moral and political judgment? That is what the Bill saying, which is both arrogant and absurd. Council tax payers in Neath, Gower, Wrexham or the Vale of Glamorgan are best placed to decide whether their councils are making the right decisions, and electors in Wales can make the same decision about the Welsh Government’s and the Senedd’s choices.

I cannot agree more with the Welsh Government’s view that the Bill is disproportionate and unnecessary, and I support the Welsh Parliament’s decision to refuse to give it legislative consent.

There are also major constitutional issues. If the Bill is enacted, it will fly in the face of the fundamental constitutional principle articulated in Section 2 of the Wales Act 2017, with parallel provisions, of course, for Scotland and Northern Ireland, that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of—in this case—the Senedd in Wales, the Parliament of Scotland or the Assembly of Northern Ireland.

The Bill would also fly in the face of the principle of subsidiarity to which the Government ostensibly subscribe: namely, that decisions are made at the level closest to the citizen, consistent with effective delivery.

So far as our amendments are concerned, because there is a single jurisdiction of England and Wales—something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, has reported on compellingly—the amendment of Clause 17 to remove the word “Wales” would not work technically. For that reason, it is necessary to achieve the removal of Welsh devolved bodies from the Bill in a different way from the way that can be achieved for Scotland and Northern Ireland, because England and Wales have a common legal framework and that is not the case for Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is done by my amendment to the schedule. This would add the Welsh Government and public authorities that are responsible to that Government to those bodies excepted from the provisions of Clause 1. Effectively, it would mean that the Bill would not apply in devolved Welsh areas.

Our amendments are an opportunity for these issues of devolution to be canvassed, for the devolution settlement to be preserved and for the rights of the other Governments in United Kingdom and their legislatures to be asserted. I hope that the House, in some way, will manage to protect the devolution settlement, because otherwise the future of the United Kingdom is threatened.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and to essentially agree with everything they said. I rise to offer Green support; I am not going to engage in the technical details, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, set out so clearly, but I will simply say that this Bill should not apply to Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

I listened to the debate on an earlier group, when the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, talked about a small nursery, run by a charity, deciding to ban oranges from South Africa. That obviously is not right—it is the sort of thing that the Bill appears to be addressing—but how much more so when we are talking about an entire devolved Administration? If we think about the kinds of examples that might apply here, let us say that one of the nations’ devolved Administrations might choose to block a supplier of staff uniforms because the clothing is made under abusive conditions in an abusive regime. How can it not be right that the people of Wales can decide for themselves that they do not want to see people wearing uniforms from that kind of source?

In the earlier group, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb pointed out how the environmental derogations are utterly inadequate. How can it be that the Scottish Parliament could not decide to ban food sourced from deforested areas of the Amazon from being served in the Parliament? Those are the kinds of things that the Bill is currently providing.

It is worth looking over the history of this a little bit. I think it was two Prime Ministers back—it is rather hard to keep track, but I am referring to Boris Johnson. Under Boris Johnson, it seemed that there was a real desire to pick fights with the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd in particular. Since then, we have seen some improvement; we have seen the Review of Intergovernmental Regulations, which said that

“decisions will continue to work on the basis of agreement by consensus”.

I think that is an important phrase to look at, although I note we have seen some backsliding recently, and perhaps this Bill is a symbol of that.

Scottish Government: Devolved Competences

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Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think that the way in which the Cabinet is organised and the responsibilities of different Ministers is very much a matter for the Prime Minister, but I am glad that we have a new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Scotland Office. He has been an MSP, and I think that that will bring a new dimension to our discussions on this important subject.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in responding to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, with whose contribution I entirely agree, the Minister said that there were well-established relationships between Westminster and the devolved nations. But there is a report out today from UK in a Changing Europe titled Brexit and the State, which says that, particularly under the regime of the internal market Act, relationships are nascent rather than developed. The report very much focuses on how the Scottish Government have made a decision to remain, particularly in the agricultural area, closely aligned with standards in Europe—which means higher standards than we have in England. Does not much more need to be done to develop those relationships identified as nascent?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have not seen that report. Of course, agriculture is devolved to Scotland, and it is Scotland’s choice, if it wants to do things in a different way. I think that we need to move forward on the new basis. I have nothing further to say.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. In 2019, she told the BBC that she aimed to be challenging, authentic and brave. Your Lordships’ House often sees her living up to that.

I begin with a statement of the obvious. The Green Party, as a party that believes in democracy, in empowering local communities, in encouraging people to get involved in politics at all levels—to make politics what they do, not have done to them—and in defending the rule of law, is opposed to this Bill. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will focus on the attack on local democracy that the Bill represents, but I have a specific question about local government for the Minister. What happens if a city, town or village is twinned with another and decides for moral or political reasons that it wants to “untwin”? Is divorce to be banned under this Bill? Will a city, town or village be forced to arrange exchanges, even if it does not want to?

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made a point that deserves repeating. The first clause of this Bill is entitled:

“Disapproval of foreign state conduct prohibited”.


In George Orwell’s Oceania, that would surely be a banned phrase—far too blunt and obvious in its repression —yet this is what the Government want to make law.

In her introduction, the Minister said that this Bill went through the other place without amendment, as if that were an argument for a light touch in your Lordships’ House. We know that it is instead a glaring red-light signal that we will have a great deal of work to do, not even necessarily in addressing issues that could be described as ideological but in simply tidying up the mess. This mess was noted in the other place—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, reflected on the many comments across the Chamber about how poorly drafted it was—but no action was taken there. Our archaic, historically assembled and undemocratic constitution is not working at even the most basic level.

The Minister also said that foreign nations might be or are confused about UK foreign policy because of the actions that local councils or nations in these islands choose to take. That reminds me of the heat of the Brexit debate, when some politicians, particularly on the pro-Brexit side, seemed to think that other nations’ diplomats and leaders did not read Twitter or view television. They made pronouncements for local consumption in the UK and were then surprised when they had international impacts.

Please, let us not underestimate the capacity of the peoples of the world to deal with complexity, and to understand that, for example, when Sheffield City Council’s Green Lord Mayor Magid Magid once “banned” Donald Trump from visiting—and good on him—that is not Westminster and that is not UK policy.

However, I now want to turn deadly serious and take us to Gaza, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, did, where my latest briefing from Oxfam says that Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 29,000 people, including well over 12,000 children. Nearly 70,000 people are injured and at least 7,000 are missing, presumably still underneath the rubble. Some 1.5 million people, including half a million children, are sheltering in less than 20% of the Strip without access to shelter, water, food and medical facilities.

The Government are saying, in response to all of that, that local communities, as represented democratically by councils, cannot take peaceful, non-violent action—the kind of action that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, so powerfully set out, once helped to change the world in the right direction in the context of apartheid South Africa.

Much has been said about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. This is something that the Green Party supports and has done since our democratic conference of members agreed in 2014 to call on

“individuals, organisations, councils and governments to refuse to deal with companies and institutions identified as facilitating Israel’s military capacity, human rights abuses or illegal settlement activity”.

The motion referred to this being how the Green Party could best act on its commitments as an anti-racist party committed to upholding human rights.

Looking over the history of the Green Party, you see that we have long been a leader—going back decades —in defending the rights of the people of Tibet, back when we were a much smaller party than we are now. We continue to speak for the Uighurs under genocidal repression from the same capital, as I have spoken as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. We have spoken for the victims of the massive human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia, to which we absolutely oppose arms sales, as we oppose arms sales to Israel.

Finally, I want to pick up the issues about the nations of the UK, as a number of other noble Lords have, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. I will use a specific point to make a general one. The Government have claimed that there is no interaction with devolved matters, but how does the Minister explain the interaction with the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales?

The well-being of future generations is clearly dependent on a stable, secure, environmentally balanced world—shorthand for the delivery of the sustainable development goals. Even looking at the exemptions in Part 2 of the Schedule to the Bill, there are a lot of potential activities that the Senedd might choose to work with the Government to act against that are not covered under the Schedule.

I am interested in the definition of environmental misconduct in Clause 10(3) of the Bill. The Government have, in other instances, been firmly attached to the view that we can only consider illegal deforestation, for example, yet here we have a clause that refers to any kind of negative environmental impact. Some very interesting things might be done with that.

I have a final, quick question for the Minister. Does the Bill prevent public bodies calling on the Government to change their foreign policy—not taking actions but doing politics? Is that really to be banned, as the Government seem to suggest, as the Government have again and again sought to ban peaceful protest? What fate democracy?

Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]

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Friday 9th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have listened as we all have to many brave and important speeches today, so I join in humbly to offer my strongest possible support for the directions and intention of the Bill proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, which is very much in line with the policy of the Green Party of England and Wales. Our policies for a sustainable society, democratically agreed by members at conference, says on conversion therapy:

“The Green Party recognises that these practices are unethical and harmful and believes that such practices should be illegal”.


The policy goes on to acknowledge the particular harm that such practices represent to young people and vulnerable adults, reflected in the fact that our Young Greens have been particularly strong in campaigning for the Government to live up to their LGBT Action Plan 2018. One of the key actions listed in that plan was to bring

“forward proposals to end the practice of conversion therapy in the UK”.

The plan went on to say:

“Our intent is to protect people who are vulnerable to harm or violence, whether that occurs in a medical, commercial or faith-based context. We are not trying to prevent LGBT people from seeking legitimate medical support or spiritual support from their faith leader in the exploration of their sexual orientation or gender identity”.


I believe that that is what everyone who is speaking in support of this Bill today, and its direction, is seeking to work towards.

I feel that one of the most useful contributions I can bring to this debate is to reflect on what is happening in Scotland, where the Scottish Green Party, working with the SNP under the Bute House agreement, has been at the forefront of working towards a conversion therapy ban. The history of that is of careful, consultative, evidence-based work. In 2020, a campaign group, End Conversion Therapy Scotland, lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament. The petitions committee considered the issue worthy of further consideration and passed it on to the equalities committee. The following year, the equalities committee began an inquiry into conversion therapy, and its final report recommended a criminal ban.

In the following year, 2022, the Scottish Government created the Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices, which included legal scholars, human rights experts, LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, faith leaders, medical professionals and survivors of conversion therapy. The final report of that expert advisory group unanimously recommended a comprehensive ban and a suite of measures regarding communication, engagement, prevention and support for survivors—which is something that we have not really talked about today and that is urgently needed.

This year, the Scottish Government launched a detailed consultation on proposals to ban conversion therapy, which runs until 2 April. I cannot but note that, had the Westminster Government followed a similar path from 2018, we could today be debating a government Bill and saving the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and her team a great deal of work.

I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that conversion therapy is about the abuse and misuse of power. It is nearly always conducted by someone in a position of authority, power or respect over the victim. It also often relies on secrecy, control and shame, so it is difficult for victims and survivors to come forward or seek help. It is therefore useful to consider conversion therapy to be a similar experience to domestic abuse in the form of coercive control.

In saying that, it is clear that many of the actions that we are talking about might well be covered by other legislation, but, as a specific pattern of behaviour and action, some elements would not be, and that is clearly what this legislation that we are talking about seeks to address, as does the planned Scottish legislation. It is worth looking at this from the international context—that conversion therapy is widely considered to be a form of torture, in certain forms. This was the view taken by the UN Committee against Torture and the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. Failure to protect people from conversion therapy leaves LGBTQ+ people at risk of having their convention rights breached.

I conclude by noting that many faith groups responded to the Holyrood equalities committee’s inquiry, and all were supportive of a ban. Scotland’s largest faith organisation, the Church of Scotland, stated its view that conversion therapy is wrong and should be banned.

Gaza: Humanitarian Situation

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Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece. A stock-take: more than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Many hundreds of those have been killed since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take all possible measures to prevent genocidal acts. Around 1 million children are in need of homes, basic sustenance and medical care, and almost an entire population has been displaced. Scores of Israelis remain hostage in Gaza and hundreds of Palestinians are being held in Israel. What can and should the UK do? First, it should call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire now, as the Green Party has long been doing. Secondly, it should resume the funding for UNRWA, the largest aid agency, that is so crucial to people’s survival. Thirdly, it should suspend all arms sales to Israel, particularly parts for the F35 joint strike fighter. This is particularly crucial: these sales could soon see us taken before the ICJ.

Elgin Marbles

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Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and entirely agree with everything that he said. I think he said that the Parthenon sculptures sitting in the British Museum are less than the sum of their parts that they would be if they were together in their original context with their original structure. That reflects a recent article in the Times that talked about going into the Parthenon sculptures gallery and feeling the melancholy of exile. These marbles have been deprived of the charisma that ancient objects can have when they are in the place where they were made, created and lived with for thousands of years.

I was a volunteer at the British Museum for many years, and I am a passionate lover of the place. One thing I did as a volunteer was to stand in the galleries with ancient objects and give visitors the chance to hold them. One such object was a 350,000 year-old hand-axe from Kent. That was a magic object when you felt it in your hand, but it was a magic object in its place and time. You could feel the connection to the people—probably homo heidelbergensis, or possibly early Neanderthals—who lived before us on this island and whom you were experiencing in that moment. That is something that we are depriving the world—anyone who visits Athens—of, by taking the Parthenon sculptures away.

Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for the chance to have this debate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, who set out the case very well—I am not going to repeat it. I disagree with the noble Lord’s conclusions, which are very much contested. I am, perhaps typically as a Green, going to take this as a chance to think a bit more broadly. This is a chance to reassess the position of many objects in the British Museum—the Benin Bronzes are another very obvious example. Let us think about our museums, galleries and collections, and place this in the context of Britain’s place in the world. We hear a great deal of talk of Britain wishing to be world-leading in standing up for human rights and the rule of law, doing the right thing and promoting a proper international order. Let us think about that and about what we could actually do. I am no legal draftperson, but I am sure the Table Office could come up with a Bill that would see the Government directing museums, galleries and other institutions to make, over time, an assessment of their entire collections to see whether they have fair, just and rightful title to the objects in those collections.

I would ask the Government to provide some modest ongoing funding; I am not saying this is something that would happen in a year or even a decade. It could be an ongoing programme—and we can already identify some of the objects that would clearly be a problem.

Noble Lords may ask what this would achieve. I pick up the point the noble Lord, Lord Allan, made about how the sculptures here in London send out a message of celebration, still, of that period of colonialism, exploitation, extraction and straight-out theft. We would be saying, “That’s not the kind of world we want to live in”. We want to build and create a new and different future that respects the rule of law and different cultures all around the world and that seeks to work with them to celebrate together the wonderful creativity of humans. That is a global tradition that belongs to everyone that should be all in its rightful place.

UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

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Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount and to join everyone in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for securing this debate in such a timely manner. I thank him and his committee for the excellent report. I note the noble Earl’s comments, and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about emissions trading schemes and carbon border adjustments. I will not repeat them, but I associate myself with the concerns expressed.

We have here a committee report which has produced a huge amount of sense in the midst of so much nonsense from the Government. To take just one recent example, there was the long, unnecessarily drawn out, politically biased delay, which was so deeply damaging and draining to the scientific community, to the process by which we finally re-joined the Horizon programme.

I feel I should begin by setting out the Green Party’s position to demonstrate to your Lordships’ House, and to the country, that there is a political force ready to stand up for the country’s clear, best economic, social and environmental interests and for the wishes of the people. The Green Party is working to make us “rejoin ready”, so the UK can rejoin the EU when the political conditions are right. In the meantime, many of the worst problems created by Brexit would be eased by rejoining the customs union, negotiating the return of freedom of movement of people between the UK and the EU, and signing up to a comprehensive agreement covering the protection of human, animal and plant life.

Brexit has been all pain and no gain. I start where I always start, and that is with the losses of all Britons, but particularly the young, who have suffered from the loss of freedom of movement. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, referred to their awareness of this. These are the young people who in 2016 overwhelmingly voted to maintain their European future, and who no doubt today would do so even more overwhelmingly, although, as we have seen from the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon, the Tory Party is clearly no longer interested in attracting the votes of young people.

Young people today have considerably fewer freedoms and opportunities; the loss of Erasmus+ is only one part of that, and I am delighted the committee recommends resuming participation. But far larger is the fact that they can no longer start a journey to Poland or Finland, Spain or Croatia from Victoria Coach Station, just down the road from where we sit. I looked it up: tomorrow at 7 am, they could have got on a coach to Warsaw for £91 and they could stay there or anywhere else across the EU. They could explore, find work or study, make friends or find a partner, or settle down across a continent with the wonderful freedom that their parents enjoyed but young people no longer have. Youth mobility schemes are clearly essential, as the committee recommends in paragraph 333.

Then there are the economic effects, and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, will forgive me for joining their chorus that focuses on the creative sector: the musicians, the theatre groups and many others who have been forced to lay down their careers on the altar of so-called sovereignty. Also hit hard are the small and medium enterprises which have lost half or more of their markets, blocked by the impossibility of import controls and custom duties, from customers who have now been forced to go elsewhere. Their businesses were sacrificed on the false promise of replacement trade with distant Japan or Australia, with trade deals that not only hold no hope for those businesses but threaten the futures of our farmers and our already dangerously inadequate food security.

I turn to a couple of specific environmental elements of the committee’s findings, which I am afraid may well have been overtaken by the events of this afternoon. Paragraph 192 recommends regular meetings between the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and the European Commissioner for Energy. Well, yes—although I doubt whether they will regard us as in any way a serious partner after this afternoon’s climate horror movie starring Rishi Sunak. In paragraphs 206 and 207, the committee suggests full membership of the North Seas Energy Cooperation, with which the UK signed an MoU to support offshore grid development and renewable energy potential in the North Sea. Again, yes—although our offshore wind programmes, both those already supposedly in train and those not bidding in the latest contracts for difference auction, are in grave question. Why would the NSEC want to bother?

Nuclear Test Veterans

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Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

In the circumstances, I forgive my noble friend for the breadth of her question, and certainly join her in welcoming this event today. It is very important for the future of this country. Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are very important to our stability, resilience and safety.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, to return to the issue of nuclear tests, I am sure that the Minister is aware of the Montebello Islands off the coast of Western Australia, which are at the centre of a 60,000-hectare marine park. Three tests were conducted there, and there is increasing research and concern about residual radioactivity. There are areas where tourists are told not to stay for more than one hour. While the Government rightly focus on the circumstances of British nuclear veterans, are they also keeping a close watching brief on those sites and on the fallout—literally—that continues from those tests and will they make sure that they take any remedial action or provide any remedial support or information that they can to help other countries deal with the leftover situation?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I look forward to discussing the point that the noble Baroness raised in more detail. That is another question of breadth. Clearly, the nuclear test medal was designed specifically to recognise the unique contribution of the personnel who served in the locations, such as Australia, which she mentioned, and who served with UK forces as part of the testing of the vital deterrent.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

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Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 41A in this group. We discussed this issue in Committee. I said, “If the Government want to go down the route of keeping in Clause 16(5), why don’t they promise the same about the environment?” After all, the Government made the same set of promises regarding environmental legislation—that they would not do anything to damage the protection that the current regulations offered—while here in Clause 16(5) they are saying they will not do anything to increase the regulatory burden.

The Government wisely said they did not want to put in the Bill the promise that they would not damage environmental regulation. I had rather hoped that meant they would take out Clause 16(5), because to my mind that subsection offers nothing but uncertainty. How is it to be interpreted by the courts if the Government propose to use the clause and someone challenges its use in the courts, saying, “This subsection says ‘in relation to a particular subject area’. Has that been reasonably chosen and correctly defined? What is the overall effect of the changes?”? They will have to look at every piece of legislation that has passed in relation to that particular subject area. How are they to be weighed up? There is no mechanism here providing for them to be weighed.

The courts are going to be asked how one bit of legislation should be weighed against another with regard to the changes that it makes and the regulatory burden. How do you weigh one bit of regulatory burden against another if one bit of regulation imposes something on one group and the next regulation imposes something on another? How do you weigh those two things together? It seems to be asking the absolute impossible. It means that any bit of legislation passed under Clause 16 will be open to all sorts of challenges in the courts, and there will be no way of knowing what the outcome will be, because nothing in this subsection, or elsewhere in the clause, tells you how to parse it. So I hope the Government will see the good sense they had when they chose not to adopt my suggestion of doing this for environmental legislation and take Clause 16(5) and (6) out of the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I agree with the entirety of Amendment 41A from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, while agreeing with only half his reasoning. I entirely agree that, as we discussed at length in Committee, this is essentially impossible to calculate and creates a great deal of legal uncertainty. Where I disagree with him is that I would very much like to have seen non-regression clauses for the environment, public health, workers’ rights and a whole range of other things in the Bill.

Practically, what we are doing with the clause at the moment, if it is implemented, is creating a guaranteed regression of workers’ rights, food standards and environmental standards. If we do not have regulation of business, we will certainly see at least some cowboy businesses taking advantage of a reduction in regulation. That of course will not be in the interests of businesses that want to do the right thing on the environment, public health or workers’ rights.

I spent a great deal of time during the passage of the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act arguing for non-regression clauses. What the Government are currently giving us is a guaranteed regression clause, and that really should not be acceptable.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, as the proposer of Amendment 45, which is also in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I feel a terrible weight resting on my shoulders as a result of the preface from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, because this is the amendment that seeks to remove Clause 16 and I fear that I am not going to reach the billing that he gave us.

Over the course of this session, we have heard numerous arguments about the way in which the Bill more and more removes Parliament from the process of revocation and reform. I am not going to rehearse all those arguments again, because your Lordships have heard them both on Report and in Committee. Clause 16 is one of the key parts of the machinery in the Bill to govern how retained EU law can be reformed. There is an argument for removing the clause altogether, but I have bowed to the spirit of scrutiny rather than total oblivion and, as such, I do not intend to move the amendment.

As we have already heard in advance from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the provision that causes most concern is Clause 16(5), which mandates the nature of any reform of REUL to be deregulation—and deregulation only. The point the noble Lord made is about how we measure the sum of regulation. There was all sorts of debate in Committee. Is it the total of the changes across a group of amendments or a section of amendments? Is it each amendment by itself? These questions were never satisfactorily answered in Committee, so perhaps during Report the Minister can tell us how the amount of regulation will be measured. In other words, can one increase in regulation be balanced by two decreases in regulation through adjacent provisions, for example? We have not had answers to that.

Essentially, the spirit of the Bill is that there can be no increase in the “burden”—according to the Bill—caused by this reformed retained EU law. Clause 16(10) defines burden, with its paragraph (b) including “administrative inconvenience”, but one person’s administrative inconvenience is another’s life-saving safety measure. It depends on which direction you look at it. Clause 16(10)(d) includes

“an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”

as a burden. Again, what may seem an obstacle to one group may be existentially important to another.

As I said, I am not aiming to push this amendment to a vote. We are seeing amendments that are putting some safeguards in place. The noble Lord mentioned Amendment 76, which we anticipate. I am anticipating Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, where we will talk about non-regression, and Amendment 50, which will come up shortly. These are other important pieces to put in place to try to draw the majority of the sting from Clause 16.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank (Con)]

My Lords, I realise that the hour is late and I do not intend to detain your Lordships long. I speak to Amendment 48. It is a cross-party amendment and this morning, when I began to consider this, I typed up some notes, which I have—but I do not have my glasses and I typed in a font far too small. I feel I am now a speaking metaphor for what the amendment represents. We have to be careful that we are looking not just at the fuzziness of the whole issue but at the detail. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, ably set out why it is important.

This is a non-regression amendment. We are where we are right now, and we are content with that—if anything, we should be going further, but let there be no step backwards. The important statements in this amendment are very clear: let us accept what we are able to achieve, look at the international standards by which we must be judged and consider how to do that correctly.

I am pleased to see the Minister before us. It is not my intention or desire to vote against the Government, but these things occasionally happen. I think he can give us some words of comfort this evening about how we might help us to be able to understand the non-regression element of each of the matters we have touched on so far.

I will speak no further, other than simply to say that the amendment establishes and stabilises what we are about. We are a nation with clear ambition in this area, and we have done good work. Let us not let that be lost; let us not regress.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, having attached my name to Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, I shall make just a couple of points on that. I stress Amendment 48, to which the Green group would have attached our names had there been space, and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that this is writing into the Bill what the Government tell us again and again, as they have for years, they want to achieve. It is simply delivering the Government’s expressed desire.

I want to make just three points on Amendment 47. There is some important terminology, with which I suspect the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, may have had something to do. That refers to the methodological quality of the evidence. There is increasing awareness in the scientific community of the need to look at the problem of publication bias: the probability that a scientific study is published is not independent of its results. That is just one way in which we have real problems with the methodology of what has been published and the Government have considered in the past, to which the amendment is to some degree addressed.

Proposed new subsection (5) mentions

“a sufficiently wide view of the ecological impacts”.

I will take a case study of this. Scientists are increasingly concerned about the combined cocktail impact of pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals together in the environment. I point the Minister to a European report by the CHEM Trust, Chemical Cocktails: The Neglected Threat of Toxic Mixtures and How to Fix It and, independently occurring, a launch this month in the UK of a report from the Wildlife and Countryside Link with the Rivers Trust and UK Youth for Nature, Chemical Cocktails: How Can We Reduce the Toxic Burden on Our Rivers? The scientific view taking that overall wide ecological view is increasingly being recognised as crucial, and massively understudied.

The final point I want to make is that Amendment 47 is reflective of something that I am increasingly finding: groups of scientists—including established scientists whom you might expect that have a very good route into the Government—are coming to me and saying, “Please advise us on how we can get through to the Government to make sure that our scientific advice and discoveries are acted on”. There is real feeling in the scientific community that there has been a breakdown in communication and consideration from the Government in terms of the current science. This amendment seeks to address those issues.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I just want to give particular support to Amendment 48, to which I have added my name. We cannot allow the Bill to weaken environmental and food safety standards. We know that Defra has by far the largest share of affected regulations of any department, so the Bill really will have significant implications for environment and food safety law-making unless it is done well.

I will not repeat the reasons why we need these amendments, but what has come across very clearly is the fact that there is widespread and strong support for the environmental non-regression principle.

Importantly, Amendment 48 would give transparency but also legal substance to the warm words of the Minister, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned. On day 2 of Committee, the Minister said that the Government are committed to maintaining high environmental standards and that he wanted

“to see … standards improve in future”.—[Official Report, 28/2/23; col. 208.]

I absolutely believe that is the case but, as a matter of law, the Bill provides no assurances or protections and cannot bind the hands of future Ministers. It is absolutely critical that these assurances and protections are in place in the Bill because, without a non-regression principle in law, they simply are not there.

On that basis, if the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, wishes to test the opinion of the House, he will have our support.

Cross-government Cost-cutting

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for securing this crucial debate on the Government’s plans to cut even further our clearly already hopelessly overstrained and underresourced machinery of government. Yesterday in the Finance Bill debate, I focused on the social costs of the kind that the noble Lord so powerfully introduced this debate with. These are the result of the past decade of austerity 1.0, a policy that only the Green Parties across these islands have been consistent in opposing, and the threat of austerity 2.0, a cascade into a hell of poverty and inequality, which the Government have just embarked on.

Today I am going to focus on the impact on the natural world, the very foundation of life on these islands and of the economy, which the Government like to talk about as their top priority. To start topically, COP 15, the biodiversity COP, has just finished, with a better outcome than many had hoped for: a globally agreed promise, to which the UK has signed up, to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. Yet currently only 3% of England’s land and 8% of English waters are being effectively protected and managed for nature, as identified in the 2022 Progress Report on 30x30 in England by leading NGOs. As my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb so regularly sets out in this House, our streams, rivers and seas are in a parlous state and our air is causing great damage to human health—and no doubt also to the natural world. That is in large part due to failures of enforcement as well as failures of regulation.

These are matters largely for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—Defra. We all know, and the political journalists here in the lobby tell us, that Defra is regarded as a department pretty far down the Whitehall pecking order—far below the lofty towers of the Treasury, with its tight stranglehold over the purse strings and narrow focus on the economy. To meet our COP 15 commitments, and for these islands to make the transition to looking after the natural world in a few short years, is a huge job, yet Defra is in no way keeping up with even the commitments that have been made by Ministers here in your Lordships’ House. The ENDS report recently came up with a list of 16 areas in which the Government had failed to meet their own commitments under the Defra umbrella. One of the largest of those was, of course, the legally binding commitment to set targets for air and water by October 2022. If anyone missed them, they were rushed out late last Friday afternoon—in December.

In your Lordships’ House, on 15 September 2021, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, promised that an independent environmental assessment of nappy use would be published by the “end of the year”. That was in the middle of 2021, and it has not been published. Also in your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, promised us a soil health action plan for England on Report on the Environment Bill, on 8 September 2021. It was offered as a trade-off for the other place dropping the soil targets that so many noble Lords from all sides of your Lordships’ House helped me insert into the Bill here. There is no soil health action plan as we enter 2023.

I am going to carefully anonymise my concluding remarks here, as I do not want to get anyone to get into trouble. I was speaking recently to a member of Defra staff who I know to be extremely dedicated and knowledgeable—indeed, a world-leading expert in their field. They have to be, since the problems that they are tackling in England are worse than pretty well anywhere else in the global North. This staff member’s head dropped in despair as they told me that staff had been told to prepare for a 20% to 40% headcount cut. This would be a gutting of a department already hamstrung by understaffing, poleaxed by cuts, and facing the huge burden of trying to manage post-Brexit deregulation. Can the Minister reassure me that that cut to the Defra headcount is not going to happen? Can she offer a Christmas present for nature, on these islands, where nature does worse than in almost any other part of this poisoned, plastic-choked, trashed planet?