Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, very briefly, I too added my name to Amendment 16, so well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly. I simply remind the House that, when we remove legislation and regulations, it can have unintended consequences. There is evidence that accidents happen. For example, if we abandon working time directives and regulations, when people are overtired their accidents can be fatal—and there have been fatal accidents. Let us not lose sight of the clear evidence of harms when regulations are no longer in place, because lost lives cannot be reclaimed or replaced. The amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, provides a check mechanism for Parliament to look at regulations and allow scrutiny before things are abandoned. Therefore, although I do not anticipate Amendment 16 being pressed to a vote, I strongly support Amendment 2.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak—briefly, I hope—to the Government’s Amendment 1. I direct your Lordships back to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who is absolutely right: this Bill, in its current position on the Order Paper, is substantially different from the Bill that was considered by the House of Commons and at Second Reading by this House. If we are to properly scrutinise and analyse the Bill, and have proper oversight of it, we have to be cognisant of that fact.

Notwithstanding the comments of my noble friend the Deputy Chief Whip, where else are we going to acknowledge the very substantial and significant change that has come as a result of the Government’s announcement last week? It is a reasonable point to make. If this were any other Bill—any other potentially epoch-making primary legislation—your Lordships would be up in arms about the fact that we are rushing through on Report the Government’s amendment to Clause 1, which effectively rips up the Government’s policy on the Bill.

I defer to no one in my admiration for my noble friend Lord Callanan, the Minister. I worked with him in DExEU in the run-up to Article 50 and the TCA. He is one of the most gifted Minsters. He has obviously had a very difficult time in your Lordships’ House, putting a viewpoint that has not always been universally popular.

However, the wider context is very important, as put forward by my noble friend Lady Noakes. The Prime Minister did say that in his first 100 days as PM we would review or repeal post-Brexit EU laws. Indeed, that bastion of blue in tooth and claw Conservatism, the Independent newspaper, described the government retreat as a course of action that

“turns the logic of the bill on its head”.

I do not underestimate the task that we as a Government—or this House and the Government—gave to civil servants. In fact, the agency Thomson Reuters estimated in 2017 that 52,741 laws were introduced in the UK as a result of EU legislation between 1990 and 2017. Many of them of course were worthwhile and much needed, but many were about protecting boondoggle schemes, market distortions, oligopolistic behaviour and were designed to ossify market dominance, restrict the need for innovation and lock out more agile and dynamic competitors.

Notwithstanding that, I welcome the Government’s sincere endeavours to both review the regulations and to deregulate more broadly. But we have seen that 52,000 shrink to 600. Most EU laws will remain on the statute book, seven and a half years after in the EU referendum we decided to take back control and trust our own elected politicians rather than a foreign legal entity—in this case the European Court of Justice.

Ministers pray in aid the capacity and capability—or not—of civil servants to scrutinise, prioritise and audit so much of our retained corpus of EU law. But I saw, in my role as a special adviser in the run-up to the TCA and the Article 50 process, that with firm and principled political direction and drive, so much more could have been achieved with vision rather than capitulation.

In fairness, it is not solely the responsibility of this Administration. I concede in all fairness—it would be churlish not to—that the previous Johnson Administration could and should have legislated for a Bill in 2021 rather than last autumn. The Government have resiled from a well-understood political commitment, which voters supported with a strong mandate, and which passed, as my noble friend Lady Lawlor said, in January in the Commons.

No one ever voted for these proposals. The Government have picked a side: big business, senior civil servants, special interests, well-remunerated lobbyists and the ex-Mandarin cohorts ably represented in this House. Leave was the biggest vote in British electoral history, but that counts for nothing as opposed to the pearl-clutching vapours of big business, self-interest and shareholder value dressed up as defending parliamentary sovereignty and concern for “significant uncertainty”. Whither the vision of self-government, independence, democratic renewal and sovereignty of June 2016? Instead, we have the cold pragmatism and cynicism of a technocratic elite.

This has not been handled well by the Government. I refer in particular to the lack of proper scrutiny by the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place, and the failure of the Minister to properly attend to those issues.

I will finish by making reference to Schedule 1. We are offered the mere scraps from the table with the new schedule. It is not so much a bonfire of regulations but a damp, fizzing Catherine wheel. There is no fundamental interest in that schedule in the governance of our country.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 39, and I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Hope for the way in which he has introduced this group.

The problem, basically, is that Westminster seems to be trying to make laws that cover devolved matters, which cuts across the democratic mandate of devolved Ministers and legislatures. The consent process has to be in the Bill, and I can see that Amendment 75 would be speedier than Amendment 39, to which I have put my name. I very much hope that the Government will be able to tell us that they accept Amendment 75 or that their amendments will do exactly what that amendment states, as that will be a faster process, from Minister to Minister, rather than having to go through the whole process of debate. However, I do not think that agreements behind the scenes and reassurances that this will be sorted out later will be adequate.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

While it would be better if the Bill is not taken forward at all, if it is, it should not apply in Scotland and Wales. I would support particularly then Amendment 49. What the Bill has achieved is a strong case for devolving employment law to Holyrood and the Senedd. As explained quite entertainingly and enjoyably by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the Sewel convention has been abused time and again so that it is no longer meaningful. There is an urgent need to rethink the balance between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. As we approach the 24th anniversaries of the opening of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd, we should remember that these institutions were established to allow the people of Scotland and Wales to make decisions about how their countries should be run. This must not be undermined by such poorly framed and unnecessary legislation as this Bill. I urge noble Lords to support these amendments.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, and to add to her remarks. I strongly support Amendment 49 and point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that the phrase in Amendment 19 of consultation implying a view to meeting an agreement is particularly important because in this Bill we are talking about devolved competencies directly, and I am afraid the track record has not been that good. Indeed, the Bill seems to have been announced without any prior consultation with the Welsh Government at all, and officials have been reluctant to share substantive information relating to the Bill which is not in the public domain but does affect devolved competencies.

In paragraph 141 of Schedule 7A to the Government of Wales Act it would seem that legislative consent is required over aspects of health, education, fire and rescue, and certain transport services. But the Welsh Government appear to be set to vote overwhelmingly to refuse legislative consent, and for good reason. As the Government themselves have conceded, the services are

“run differently in England, Scotland and Wales and are the responsibility of Scottish and Welsh Governments respectively.”

With that responsibility comes a requirement to set pay and terms and conditions of service, and those cannot be disentangled from strategic and operational decisions taken in Wales and Scotland. To give those powers to Westminster and override the devolved legislations would effectively undermine their ability to run the services that they run as effectively as they see fit to meet the needs of the population—the population which have voted those devolved Ministers into their positions in government.

There is a different approach to the unions, as has already been said. There is a model of social partnership, which I am familiar with in Wales. It was notable that, even going back to 2015, the junior doctors did not go on strike in Wales whereas they did in England, and the current rail strikes have shown a different pattern of working because an agreement was made with Transport for Wales.

It certainly is not incidental that this has been included in the Bill, because it threatens the Welsh Government’s ability to maintain a model that is interwoven with those responsibilities, as I have said. In fact, those services are essential to the running of the devolved nations. The approach would undermine accountability in Wales, as the Bill provides no role for the Senedd, despite the strong argument that it has the competences to legislate in areas contained in the Bill. The Secretary of State being able to set minimum service levels for local services in most parts of England is already questioned by some, but it seems almost an affront to devolved responsibilities to say that that could override the responsibilities in the devolved nations.

The consultation process set out in the Bill fails to specify who should be consulted; it is whoever the Secretary of State sees fit, and they do not seem to have to pay regard to the outcome of that consultation. That means there is no role for the Welsh Ministers, who are actually responsible for running the services. If the Bill is passed, the backdrop to negotiations undertaken in Wales will be fundamentally altered. There is a concern—a valid one, I think—that that could be used for political ends, because there is no protection in the Bill from a Secretary of State who wishes to provoke or prolong a dispute for political ends.

Sadly, no Minister in Wales or Scotland can take comfort from assurances given and being told that they will be consulted. Similar assurances were provided over the financial powers in the internal markets Act, but those are now being used to ensure that Welsh Ministers cannot take the decisions over EU successor funds provided in the form of the shared prosperity fund and the levelling-up fund. I hope the Committee will see that in order to maintain the integrity of the UK, it will be important to take Wales, Scotland and, I think, Northern Ireland out of the wording in the Bill.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

Has the noble Baroness realised that the Bill does not actually require any employer in Wales to issue a work notice? The only thing that the Secretary of State will be doing is setting minimum service standards. The implementation via work notices is entirely at the option of the employers, which will be either the Welsh Government or one of the various Welsh bodies that are answerable to the Welsh Government. I understand the point that she was trying to make, but she was implying that the UK Government were interfering in the operation of the services, which the Bill does not come close to doing.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I remind the noble Baroness that we have already had a debate over the difficulty of setting minimum service levels and the dangers thereof. Minimum levels for nursing have already been set in Wales, for example, so we cannot disentangle the one from the other. That is the point that I was trying to make.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

Yes—“Come into my parlour”.

I attended the Wales TUC and the Scottish TUC for well over a decade—some might say I do not have a home to go to. That helped me to understand the completely different cultures of those countries and the completely different relationship that the workforce, the trade unions, employers, Governments and successive Administrations had with each other, and the respect that successive Governments had with the trade unions. It is not just that this is a damaging Bill; it is an affront to those countries that there should be some imposition of power. That is what we are talking about, not whether employers should be forced to issue a work notice but that there will be an overall power, the details of which are not known, which the Welsh and Scottish Administrations will have to accept.

We are talking here about the tone of employment relations, which has always been completely different. It has been conducted in a non-legalistic way. There have been as many strikes, and I am not saying that the services are particularly better in Wales or Scotland, but the tone of the relationship is what could be so badly damaged.

It was most interesting at Question Time today for those noble Lords who were here to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, talking about the distinction between the workforce and the trade unions. I have been trying to make the point all along that this Government are doing their best to separate trade unions from their workforce. The noble Baroness was very keen to assure the House that she was not blaming the workforce for people not doing non-contractual rest-day work; she was blaming the trade unions for those members not doing non-contractual rest-day work. That in any case is a bad practice that has grown up over the years, which has really been because members have wanted a better standard of living, but are we really saying that a minimum service level will have to include this non-contractual rest-day working, or will it not include it? Or will it not be mentioned at all in any document?

The Minister is shaking his head and smiling. I realise that he must be getting very fed up of listening to all of this. Maybe that will help the Government next time to bring forward a Bill that actually has some content in, and then he will not be so bored.

I do not know how many people here watched “Boys from the Blackstuff”—some Members are certainly too young for that—but I am reminded of the character called Yosser Hughes, who went around saying “Gis a job”. In this case it is the Government saying, “Gis a power. We don’t know what we’re going to do with it, we can’t tell you yet, we promise to consult you, but gis a power.” I think the Government are hoping that, if they carry on repeating that for long enough, everyone will sit back and say, “Oh all right, let’s see what they do with it”. As far as I am concerned, that is the main principle: the Government are asking us to give them a power and not telling us how they will use it.

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[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister, when he comes to sum up, if he could clarify for the Committee why he was shaking his head so strongly over his experience in the European Parliament? I think it would be quite helpful to clarify that, given the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an incredibly valuable discussion. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is absolutely right. One of the problems we have is that, in the past, good governance was Green Papers, White Papers, a debate about policy and then a considered approach to what sort of legislation would be appropriate. The other thing we are jumping around between is the question: is this about minimum service levels, or is it a power grab by the Government?

The reality is that we have minimum service levels, but they are negotiated locally, taking in many factors. As the noble and learned Lord said, we are talking about devolved matters. It is the responsibility of the Welsh and Scottish Governments to set up and organise their health, education and other services. It is not just about the devolution settlement. I have heard Government Ministers, on the levelling-up agenda, talk about how we want to push responsibility locally. But suddenly that sort of politics goes out of the window when it comes to trade unions. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said about his party, but the simple fact is that this is a power grab by Ministers.

We will no doubt hear the Minister respond that work notices are a matter for employers, and no one is forcing people. Let me ask the question: if the Minister is going to set the minimum service levels but a local authority, a devolved mayor or the Welsh Government do not force through work notices, will that leave those authorities that fail to implement it in the way the Government suggest open to legal action? Will they face a challenge from those who claim they were denied services? We need a very clear answer to that question. The Bill was published without any consultation of the people who will have the responsibility to deal with it and implement it. Even the consultations taking place now are using language that I find difficult to understand, in terms of the responsibilities of devolved authorities and local mayors.

I am trying to avoid being repetitive—I know that will get the Minister’s head nodding—but fundamentally we will keep coming back to certain principles. Let us just focus on these amendments and have some clear answers to questions. If it is down to the devolved Administrations and local mayors to determine something, does it leave them vulnerable to legal challenge?

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for the way that she introduced her amendment in this group, to which I have added my name. The beginning of the letter circulated earlier says:

“The Government remains committed to protecting consumers from unsafe products. From toys to cosmetics, these products are essential to our daily lives and ensuring they are safe underpins both consumer confidence and competitive markets”.


Yet we are faced with a large amount of health and safety legislation simply falling, with no real understanding of why. That is why I added my name to the amendment. A lot of aspects of health and safety are complained about by some of the people who have to implement the regulations—they say they are excessive—yet, as has already been said, they save thousands of lives every year. It comes down to the fundamental question of how much value we put on the lives of our citizens.

We started off today discussing child seat belts. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, certainly dealt with that topic comprehensively, but I want to touch on seat belts in general. Before the 1980s legislation, when only 40% of people wore seat belts, there were about 500 deaths a year and about 10 times as many hospital admissions to treat serious injuries—so, about 5,000. In 2021, a quarter of the people who died on the roads were not wearing seat belts, despite our existing legislation. It seems that there are approximately 75 deaths every year in the UK from people not wearing seat belts. That is a dramatic decrease, and it is also a dramatic decrease in cost to the nation of managing serious injury.