European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Beith

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has just said. Clause 21 says:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament (including modifying this Act).”


That is about as broad as the power could possibly go. It seems to me to be entirely unacceptable that there should be absolutely no curb of any sort upon the powers of any Government, and I consider that it is something that this House ought to be very worried about.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 4 and my willingness to support it is partly based on a constant desire to police the boundary that ought to exist in the use of regulatory powers, so that they do not permit the imposing of taxation or fees, the making of retrospective provision, the creation of criminal offences or the establishment of public authorities, some of which could arise as a result of what is in the protocol. The Minister may well want to explain to what extent he thinks the protocol itself limits the powers that can be used under this section.

This is an area we have often been reminded of by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who until his recent departure was such a valued member of the Constitution Committee. If we had not policed the boundary, he would have been urging us on to do so. Indeed, he may have something to say on this amendment. It is an issue we keep having to come back to, because there are those within government who seem to think they can keep putting these kinds of powers into Bills, and we know how dangerous they are.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Beith

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

We should surely consider very carefully when what seems like a very necessary measure to tackle a great evil confronts a constitutional objection; this is not the way in which such a measure ought to be introduced. There are also qualifications I might make about the potential effectiveness of the public open registers to be imposed on these territories in dealing with the evil being addressed. But there is no question that those who are advancing the case are doing so because they see an urgent need to tackle this evil and see this as likely to help.

However when it comes to a constitutional objection, we have to think carefully. There are two constitutional issues at play: one is that the elected House has made a clear decision, following debates in both Houses, that we should proceed along this road. We have to accept that, as the Government have done. But we cannot do so without reflecting on the impact this will have, and in particular on the constitutional status of the territories concerned. They are, of course, a wide variety of territories, defined in Schedule 6 to the Nationality Act. That includes not just the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda but the British Antarctic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Pitcairn Islands, with about 50 inhabitants. It is not entirely clear how the Minister with responsibility—the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, of course—will deal with the situation as it will affect some of those territories.

That variety also illustrates that there is a range of democratic and other development in this list of territories which includes many at different stages. The territories that have attracted most attention are those which, by and large, have well-embedded constitutional arrangements, introduced by this country, of which a major component is legislative autonomy. The question that we now have to answer is: what do we do about the legislative autonomy that we purport to have given to people, if outside the parameters set when we gave that autonomy we then seek to legislate for them? That question remains unanswered in this process.

When Britain decided what its policy towards former colonies would be, it did not take the French approach. The French approach, in relation to a number of territories, including neighbours of the territories we are talking about today, was to treat them as integral parts of France and give them representation in the National Assembly. We are having this argument and nobody from any of the overseas dependent territories is able to take part in the debate; it is all being done by people who, for different reasons, are aware of them, friendly towards them or simply, in my case, see it as a constitutional issue for them.

We did not take that approach. Are we now saying that the idea of developing them as separate democracies through legislative autonomy is not one that we will pursue any more? We will have to give them some kind of assurance if they are to understand what their constitutional relationship is. Britain is not just a franchise brand that we offer and take away at a moment’s notice. It is a country which has promoted the democratic development of its former colonies and we have to ask whether we can really do that if we insist on legislating for them in areas for which we have given legislative autonomy.

There was a question from the Labour Front Bench a moment ago about what would happen if there was an international standard and one of the territories declined to implement it which, as has been pointed out, has not been their practice up to now. They have implemented all the international standards. However, it is a perfectly legitimate question and the answer is that this is an area in which we have not given legislative autonomy to those territories. We have retained UK responsibility to deal with their international relations and their compliance with international treaties. We would indeed impose, in those circumstances, exactly within the parameters of legislative autonomy that has been given.

I pay tribute to the efforts devoted to this subject by the Minister, which I think are partly motivated by the fact that he has to deal with the consequences. He is the person who is responsible for our relations with these territories. But how can we reassert the constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and those territories to which it has given legislative autonomy in the context presented by the decision that the House of Commons has taken?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am a vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gibraltar, which, apart from one brief mention by the Minister, has not been so far commented on. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I wondered, as between the United Kingdom and many of the overseas territories, where the mote and the beam lay. I will not pursue that any further, but I think that it may be where the noble Lord may not appreciate that it is.

Gibraltar is entirely compliant with all the current requirements. It is bringing a public register into its law early next year. It is unnecessary, unhelpful and inappropriate that Gibraltar should be held under the clause proposed in Amendment 22. It is not an appropriate way in which to deal, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Beith, have already said, with a country that has had its own constitution since 2006 and is entirely compliant. It is sad to find that countries such as Gibraltar should be under a proposed regime that would interfere with its constitution, as has already been set out.

It is obvious that what should have happened—it seems to me that the Minister was making it very clear—is that there should be encouragement to those countries that are not yet sufficiently compliant. However, that does not apply to any of the countries that have so far been referred to. It is very sad indeed that the way in which the other place has behaved on this matter brings us to this unhappy situation, pointed out so admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Beith.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Beith

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I am sorry I missed the beginning of the speech of my noble friend Lord Sharkey as a result of unaccustomed speed breaking out on the Bill’s proceedings while I was having a cup of tea. Whether this will be repeated, I do not know.

I had discussions before with my noble friend to properly understand his amendment and its main aim, which is to embrace, within scrutiny procedures used for withdrawal Bill statutory instruments, all those statutory instruments for the same purpose that derive from other previous statutes. That is an interesting idea. When it comes to referring back to the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, it is worth recalling that the Act was surrounded by generous commitments, promises that prayers against negative instruments would always have time for debate on the Floor of the House and all sorts of undertakings that were completely unfulfilled in practice.

Whether the amendment can be made to work in precisely this form I am not quite sure, but I think that the purpose of ensuring that nothing is slipped through by anything less than at least the procedure of triage and scrutiny that we seek for statutory instruments under this Bill—if it becomes an Act—is extended to anything that does the same thing. We certainly would not want to create a perverse incentive for a Government to use the wrong legislation, or a different piece of legislation, for the statutory instrument simply because they could evade a form of scrutiny by doing so.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, for the reasons that have already been given, I also support this amendment.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Baroness Butler-Sloss and Lord Beith

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, the housing situation in the villages of rural Northumberland leads me to want to support any amendment and any mechanism that will encourage and not discourage the continued provision of houses to rent in villages. The atmosphere here today, when Members in all parts of the House are showing a genuine concern for the problem of rural housing, reminds me of my early days as a councillor on a rural district council in Northumberland, at a time when members in all parties were absolutely convinced of the need to provide rented housing in villages. It was not a political issue.

Unfortunately, in the intervening years, many of the council houses that were built in those villages have, because of right to buy, gone into either the second home or the retirement market—because they are in beautiful places, by the seaside or among the hills of Northumberland. Therefore, I encourage Ministers to continue the discussions in which they have engaged and offer us some assurance before the Bill goes much further that we will not see the loss of one of the mechanisms by which we can get some rented housing into villages: a mechanism that brings housing associations into the management of these properties, and therefore protects them for future rented use in a way that local authority housing no longer does.

It is my fervent hope that this House will ensure that Parliament makes provision for the future of rural housing by understanding that it requires different mechanisms from what may be appropriate in urban areas where we are dealing with larger estates and more housebuilding. Rural areas are different and their needs are very serious.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken on this Bill before. However, I would like to add a practical point from the part of the West Country where I live, where there is both very large building going on—5,000-plus houses, some on a flood plain—together with very small building on small sites. What we are being told locally is that the various builders, particularly those on the larger sites, are now going back to the council to ask not to have to provide as much affordable housing as they were originally asked to do. It really is a very serious matter down in our part of the West Country. As everyone knows, affordable housing is so important that every step that can be taken to support it, I would hope that this House would support.