Electricity: Cost-competitiveness

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The costs that I quoted are what are called the levelised costs, which are an industry standard, and they take account of other system costs. But, as I said, we will of course need back-up and storage. What the noble Lord said is true: gas will play an increasingly marginal role, but it will play a role in ensuring that we have energy security going forward. The estimates are that we will have about 7% of gas generation by about 2035.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There is already some wind generation, but of course the waters are deeper, which is one reason why we are developing floating offshore wind, which I referred to earlier.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

On the hidden costs of harnessing wind power, which seems to be a theme, will the Minister acknowledge that, in any wind turbine, there is a huge amount of steel, fibreglass, resin, plastic, copper, aluminium, iron and cast iron? Therefore, does the Minister acknowledge that, for decades to come, these materials will be extracted and manufactured only with the help of fossil fuels? As is often the case, fossil fuels are invaluable, but that is never part of the public discussion.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to acknowledge the noble Baroness’s point, but, if she is attempting to say that other forms of generation—gas-fired power plants, nuclear power plants or whatever—do not have many of those materials, she would be wrong.

Limiting Global Temperature Increase

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I repeat the answer I gave earlier: these statements demean the noble Baroness. The UK provided fantastic leadership. We have an official, Alison Campbell, who co-chaired a number of the panels. She was the penholder on a number of these negotiations. We succeeded in all of our aims. There was robust political leadership; Graham Stuart was there. For a lot of the time, our own Minister, my noble friend Lord Benyon, was there. There were many other Ministers who were also there. There was no gap in UK representation or in the agreements that we achieved.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, whatever about the lobbyists from the fossil fuel companies, do the Government have any assessment of the cost in terms of CO₂ used to travel to Dubai, or in terms of public money paid to facilitate the tens of thousands of pro-net zero lobbyists, NGOs and consultants who attended COP 28? Can the Minister reflect on the impact for developing countries of not using fossil fuels when they are so essential for enabling their citizens to achieve the prosperity of western economies?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

On this issue of lobbying, tens of thousands of people were at COP, representing a whole series of different shades of opinion. Of course, there were lobbyists from all sides, but that does not mean you have to agree with the position that they take. A wide range of views were represented; I said to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, when he asked me something similar last week, that you listen to the views, and there are lots of people having meetings around it, lobbying groupings and so on, but the negotiation is done by committed teams of officials who probably do not watch any of the TikTok videos that the right reverend Prelate referred to. However, as I said earlier, the needs of countries are also different in different environments. We are fortunate, being a relatively wealthy country, that we can transition away from fossil fuels. It is much more difficult for some third-world countries, which is why we are offering them considerable amounts of finance—we have £11.6 billion of international climate finance with which to help them with the transition. We are leading on initiatives such as the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which helps developing countries to move away from coal-fired power stations as well. So we are taking a range of different initiatives in collaboration and co-operation with a number of different other countries.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Noble Lords will not be surprised that I agree with the amendment as tabled. I have been a student of history for many years. You do not requisition labour except in times of dire national emergency. We did not even requisition it at the outbreak of the Second World War. Conscription did not come in until half way through the First World War. To deprive a person of the liberty to decide whether they go to work is something that is done carefully and very seldom. I think this goes far too far. It is an imposition not only on the workforce but on the trade union movement.

We spend a lot of time saying how much we want to build a prosperous Britain, but I remind noble Lords that 60%-plus of trade unionists have a higher education degree or more. We are not dealing with the trade union movement of the 1920s. We are now dealing with a trade union movement on which Britain depends for its prosperity. The people who look after the skies, fly the planes, run the National Air Traffic Service, keep our nuclear power plants going and manage our railways are highly skilled people who are in trade unions because they see a trade union as being a way of defending their interests.

Sadly for the party opposite, some one-third of them do not see that party as being the one that will deliver their political future. But that is a good thing, because I do not believe that we want sectarian trade unions. I want people to join trade unions because they want to better the welfare of their country. Taking steps such as this will just alienate people. They are not the sort of steps where people are going to be happy and say, “Oh it’s a really good thing”.

As for minimum service levels, I live in Cambridge. We seem to have had lots of strikes this year, but there has never been one that prevented me getting here, because many of the unions have a harder job keeping their people out on strike than getting the original ballot to put them on strike because, when push comes to shove, a lot of them do not wish to lose the money that they lose. So I think we need to be realistic about this.

All we are doing here is heating up the atmosphere and making it harder for the reasonable people in trade unions to make this country work. Every trade union has within it a group of people who hate strikes; they regard them as being the last thing they want, because it is a sign of failure. So I say to the Government as a whole—because it is not just this Bill—for goodness’ sake, make peace with organised labour; it is fundamentally on your side. It is much more on your side than some of the people who are contributing to the political parties of this nation and doing so for reasons which I would not say are particularly honourable. So please, Minister, send this back to the Commons and look for a compromise. I certainly will not vote for it to go again because I believe that the Commons must, in the end, have its primacy; that is why we have it. But it is quite legitimate to send this back and I ask that, when it gets there, our Ministers on our Front Bench say, “Look, there are very genuine reasons for this. Please try and give us some concessions”.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will say very briefly I have no doubt that the Government do not want to lead to the sacking of workers through this Bill. However, when the Minister seeks to reassure us with the conclusion that it will be left to the discretion of the employer, I say to the Minister that those are dread words for anyone who is an employee of said employer if you are in dispute. As this Bill is about enforcing consequences, nay punishment, I do not care whether the Minister intends that people are sacked, I simply point out that that could be the consequence even against what the Government want. I hope the Government will reconsider this and bear in mind that it is to do with freedom, rather than coercing people: the freedom to go on strike and withdraw your labour, which is something that all sides of this House should support.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment D1 and address some of the issues the Minister mentioned. Of course, when I spoke in the earlier debate, I focused on the fact that, when it comes to minimum service levels during disputes, what works are voluntary agreements—and that is across the world. I repeat that what this Bill does is undermine co-operation and voluntary agreements.

The fact is that this Bill will place trade unions in the unacceptable position of being asked to ensure that members who vote for industrial action do not take part in that action. It is a complete contradiction of their role. My amendment would remove the obligation on the union to take undefined reasonable steps. The Minister referred to the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I appreciate the Minister attempting to meet me and my noble friend to discuss what “reasonable steps” might mean. Sadly, the two-page government amendment that he gave me placed huge burdens on employers and unions—the complete opposite of what this Government say they want to achieve.

The simple fact, as I mentioned on Report, is that if a union is deemed not to have followed the legislation, it could mean that the strike is regarded as unlawful and that protections such as automatic unfair dismissal protection could be removed from all striking workers, including those not named in the notices. Again, if a union is deemed not to have followed the legislation, the strike could be regarded as unlawful, and that then opens up all kinds of consequences.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 51A, to which I have added my name. There is perhaps little to add to what has been said in support of the amendment, other than to recall that the corpus of retained EU law that will be covered by it remains a corpus of law—however normalised, we must hope, by the Bill—that was brought on to the UK statute book in a distinct and different way that did not always enjoy full discussion in this Parliament, as we have said many times. It is logical and reasonable to keep that corpus of law under particular review under this distinct process, so that it can be kept in view of this House and of Parliament. The original purpose of the Bill as introduced by the Government—to review, reform, perhaps revoke and perhaps continue with the legislation—can be kept fully in mind and implemented. To me, that is the logic behind the amendment, and I hope the Government will be able to take that on board.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support this amendment, whose intention is well thought through, whatever the lawyers say. I shall say why.

When consideration was being given to what had driven the changes that the Government themselves brought in with the removal of the sunset provision in Clause 1, some credence was given to the words of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had originally introduced the Bill, and who stated that this was an admission of administrative failure and the inability of Whitehall to do the necessary work. I am no fan of blaming “the blob” for everything. The reason why I support this amendment is that it allows the general public, let alone Parliament, to see what work is being done when and where. That is why transparency matters: so that you cannot just blame things going on behind the scenes.

The Secretary of State for Business, Kemi Badenoch, suggested that the previous demands on the Bill, with its cliff-edge, had caused so much concern that civil servants were choosing to reduce legal risk by preserving EU laws, rather than prioritising meaningful reform. Now that the Government have changed this, we need to be aware that we are having meaningful reform and, again, to see it. Otherwise, I worry that we will have simply put off making decisions about how to deal with this situation.

My final reason is that in this House on many occasions noble Lords have, in good faith, worried that the whole removal of retained EU law was a plot to undermine workers’ rights, women’s rights and everyone’s rights. I have never been as cynical about it as that and have always believed that those rights were fought for domestically and we do not need to be concerned. But I hope that everybody in the House might support this amendment because it should reassure. It gives us now the opportunity to say what is retained, what is removed and what is reformed—rather than, as it were, gossiping behind the scenes with almost a conspiratorial atmosphere of what is really going on—and that we simply are enacting now what was voted for in 2016 and everyone can see what is happening. Reporting it in full will be very helpful.

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[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

I commend to those on the other side who share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, an article this morning by the Conservative Peer, the noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein. It is in the Times and it is worth reading. It is about the tendency to set impossible demands and then to blame the failure to achieve them on the blob. It is the finest article I have read on this tendency and, in terms of education, I think it would be well worth some people on the other side reading their noble colleague’s comments.

All I can say, and I held office in nine departments of state, is that there were occasions when I would have liked to ask civil servants to give me a plan to double expenditure on the Armed Forces, to build 500,000 houses, to make everyone happy. Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that I did not ask them so to do, not because I thought they were a blob and would resist it but because I knew it was an impossible demand I was placing on them. In all nine departments, when I made some challenging demands, the civil servants responded—but I would not ask them to do something that was impossible, or to take a course of action for which the work had not been done in advance, or where I disregarded the consequentials, the downstream incidentals, that I had not thought about. The Government did all three of those things with Brexit, and they are now paying the price.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the other day when we were debating the Bill, a number of people stood up, largely on this side of the House, and said that it was inappropriate to make Second Reading speeches or grand speeches about politics and that this was not about Brexit. I tried to say that maybe the Bill was a new Bill and we should be able to regardless, and I was told off for that.

What we have just seen demonstrates to me why we have a difficulty, both in this House and in the country, when it comes to what people feel about the Bill that we are discussing and the general political situation that we are in. It is true that I do not blame the blob. However, I blame many of the people in the House of Lords, among others, who tried to say that when the decision was made in 2016, regardless of what you thought of it, the British public had got it wrong. They slowed down the process and did everything to obstruct what needed to be done to extricate the United Kingdom’s law, which it had been decided to take back control of, from the European Union.

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[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Shut up.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

“Shut up”?—well done. I am just saying: let us get on with the Bill seriously rather than keeping on blaming each other. That was my point in the first place. Drop the smug tone.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Perhaps I can remind the House that we have been incredibly patient but noble Lords should stick to debating the amendments rather than general points. Perhaps we can get on and make some progress.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have one clarification for the noble Baroness. The point was made that this is not a Second Reading, but it has also been recognised that the amendments to the original Bill are substantial. The difficulty I have is how we hold this Bill to account when it is different from the Bill that we were holding to account. In many ways, it has been gutted, and we have had four days to assess it. I am not suggesting lots of Second Reading speeches; I simply wanted to reflect, as the noble Baroness already has, that this is a big change to the Bill. How do we deal with that in this discussion?

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but I remind the whole House that, as we are on Report, there cannot be any interruptions apart from material descriptions of various features.

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[Lord McLoughlin (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the changes that the Government have brought forward, but I also think that the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, is one that the Government should very seriously consider, and I shall support it later on this evening—and I shall support it for a simple reason. The question as to whether or not we leave the European Union has been settled. I was on a different side to my noble friend Lord Hamilton—I believed that we should remain in—but I accept that that debate has gone and that I lost it. We now have to move on, and we must find a way in which to give the House of Commons and the House of Lords a say over the legislation that is going to replace it.

The sad story of this Bill so far is that we were told that there were 3,000 pieces of legislation, then it was 4,000 pieces—and we now have 900 pieces that can be got rid of very quickly. One thing that is changing dramatically is how a lot of detailed changes have to be made at pace, and it is not always going to be the case that there will be time for primary legislation going through both Houses of Parliament. That is why we need to adapt ourselves to a very different mode of doing regulations. Some of the regulations are technical and the House will not necessarily want to take a particular view but, when they are of a more practical nature, I think that there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses that says to the Government: “Hold on, let’s discuss this”. That is what happened when we had the initial withdrawal Bill and, in a way, the proposals that have been put forward today are mirror images of those particular ways forward.

The changes that the Minister has brought forward, which are very welcome, came very late in the day, and nobody really knew what was happening until late last week—and we are debating them here this afternoon. So I very much hope that the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will give the Government time to reflect and see that they have nothing to fear from a Joint Committee of both Houses looking at these matters. After all, if the Government have a majority, it will probably have one on that committee as well—and that is a sensible way forward, giving that parliamentary accountability that we all wish to see.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I would like to focus my probing on Amendment 1—

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[Noble Lords]

Front Bench!

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I think that I have been encouraged to go ahead. Is that appropriate?

[Noble Lords]

No!

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin. His historical point is completely correct: the period of maximum EU legislation was during the delivery of the single market programme, which was based on the Cockfield White Paper and the agreement between Prime Minister Thatcher and President Delors. That legislation came through mainly in the early 1990s, and some of it is in the schedule—it has probably been overtaken by something else. It is simply not true that it was all imposed on us.

I support Amendment 76, which is essential. I can explain my reasoning by reminding the House of what Clause 16 says. It is a bit presidential; one might almost say “dictatorial”. Clause 16(2) says:

“A relevant national authority may by regulations revoke any secondary retained EU law and replace it with such provision as the relevant national authority considers to be appropriate and to achieve the same or similar objectives”.


In the phrase “considers to be appropriate”, “appropriate” is a very presidential word rather than a parliamentary word. Okay, there is still the saving caveat that it has

“to achieve the same or similar objectives”,

but here comes Clause 16(3), which uses almost exactly the same wording:

“A relevant national authority may by regulations revoke any secondary retained EU law and make such alternative provision as the relevant national authority considers appropriate”.


Here there is no saving caveat about achieving the same or similar objectives, so under Clause 16 the Executive may, by regulations, do whatever they well choose. That seems to me to make it absolutely essential to have the parliamentary scrutiny for Clauses 13, 14 and 16 that would be delivered by the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, is certainly correct that no legislation was forced on the UK by the EU. Indeed, many Ministers from all parties were happy to take advantage of laws made in Brussels, which they sometimes even suggested, by coming back to the UK and reading out the legal text from the EU Commission—and then, if there was any objection, they blamed the EU. But what was removed from that equation was the scrutiny and accountability of the electorate. They were the people who were told that they could not change the law; it was ring-fenced away from them. That is what voters rejected in 2016.

I will be clear on what this Bill is all about by quoting the European Commission, because I know that so many noble Lords trust it and not me. In October 2021 the EU Commission stated, in relation to a dispute with Poland:

“EU law has primacy over national law, including constitutional provisions … All rulings by the European Court of Justice are binding on all Member States’ authorities, including national courts”.


That is no longer the case for the UK, and we are now trying to untangle how we deal with that.

In relation to the Bill, it is, in my opinion, not the case that Brexit was an act of reclaiming sovereignty, a blueprint for saying exactly what laws we would keep or retain, or a means of just getting rid of EU law as an end in itself, as it were. Rather, it was about putting the responsibility for choosing which laws to prioritise, reform or even improve in the hands of the Government and Parliament, who are answerable to the British people—the electorate. I have listened carefully to a lot of the very thoughtful amendments put forward to try to ensure that too much power is not put in the hands of the Executive or Whitehall, as opposed to an accountable Parliament, but I get anxious about how the arguments are posed sometimes, so I will query some of the amendments in this group.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

That is true—absolutely, not at all.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Indeed, so that is true. For once noble Lords are agreeing with me: this House is not representative of the feelings of the British public. Therefore, the Joint Committees of Parliament, which include many from this House, who are hostile to what the British public voted to do in the past—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am simply asking whether that is the solution to resolving the problems that we face in terms of our disentanglement from the European Union’s lawmaking.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, could she tell us, then, what Bill is the ideal Bill to bring an end to the constant use of statutory instruments?

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening again, but the rules found in the Companion are very clear about speaking once on Report.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley (Con)]

Like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I also remember the 1980s. Probably one of the problems of this House is that we can all remember the 1980s slightly too well—possibly excluding one or two other younger Members of the House.

I am not accusing the noble Lord of misleading the House. These things are always just a question of tone. Certainly, with the great many reports that come to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, it is matter of getting the tone right, so that we can all come to an agreement. On that committee, and I am sure it is true for a great many other committees, we always try to get agreement from every member; that helps to give greater effect to the report. Interpreting the tone of the report is important. That point was the only reason I wanted to make a contribution; I was not planning to speak on the Bill. I will probably stay here for much of the rest of the debate to make sure I can contribute as appropriate; I will ensure that I have a copy of the report in front of me.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am surprised that anybody has been able to check whether the Bill is compliant with human rights legislation, because there is nothing in the Bill. I try very hard to read the legislation that comes before us, but I cannot always do it because I have tomes and, as I am not in a party, I have no one to outsource it to. However, I did not have much trouble with this Bill, because there is nothing in it—and, in a way, that is the problem. So although I am not keen on human rights legislation, I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that this is some big conspiracy against human rights legislation. But I cannot tell what I think about the Bill in relation to that point.

If we forget the human rights aspect, the problem with the skeletal nature of the Bill is that employment rights are important to millions of people in this country, and they were long and hard fought for. If there is a risk of their being taken away, we are not all just going to sit here and say, “Well, we will trust you, even though you haven’t written it in the Bill”.

I have so many questions. At Second Reading, the Minister stressed that a process of consultation would be required before regulations on maintaining

“minimum service levels are introduced”.—[Official Report, 21/2/23; col. 1640.]

But with whom are they consulting? The fact is that we are discussing minimum services and we do not know what the minimum services are. Is it 90% or 50% of services? Will it be different for different services? It is inevitable that this will make it open to conspiratorial questions; people will ask, “What are they up to?”

All the time, I just keep thinking that the consequence of this is that overstretched public services will have to assess these minimum services, which I think will waste endless amounts of their time when we have a crisis of public services. Named individuals may be persuaded to vote for strike action—it is perfectly within their right to persuade them, if there is an argument as to whether they will go on strike or not—and decide to go on strike, which is quite a big decision to make, but then they are named by their employer as somebody who has to strike-break and cross a picket line. If you refuse to do that, you jeopardise everybody else’s employment rights and get the union sued, so you can understand that concern. As an aside, strike-breaking and crossing picket lines is a point of principle that some of us we will not defy; it is a big deal for us. I wanted to make that one bit of clarification.

I just do not know why we need the Bill, and there is nothing in the Bill to tell me why we need the Bill, because—and I think this relates to some of the points made in the Opposition Front Bench’s opening speech—is it not the case that many of the sectors mentioned in the Bill already have their own minimum service requirements? They are often voluntary, but sometimes not. Only in 2019, in the Queen’s Speech, we were told that we needed a Bill to ensure that people could depend on their transport networks; they were trying to legislate on minimum service in transport. At the time, I wondered why they were picking on transport workers, but the point was that they felt it was so important that they had to mention transport. However, now they are just throwing in everybody else. So it has changed from having any kind of democratic requirement; that would imply that this is because more people have gone on strike, but the Bill comes across as a Bill to stop strikes, and, surely, that is one of its problems.

We have the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, which allows the Secretary of State to provide and to maintain services and facilities in fire and rescue situations. That was given to him, and, while I did not agree with it, he has that legislation. In the education sector, there are various statutory duties on schools regarding the safeguarding and supervision of children and so on.

Do not get me wrong, I do not agree with all the strikes that have been called recently—I am not in those unions, and I might argue against them—but that is not the point; the point is that we are talking about fundamental rights. They are not human rights; they are long-established employment rights, and the Bill does not tell us which ones are being taken away. It will inevitably cast the Government as people who are indifferent to workers’ rights. I have defended the Government on the Retained EU Law Bill when people have said that they are using it to smash workers’ rights; in response, I have said, “Don’t be so conspiratorial”. I am not helped in defending the Government on that when they bring this Bill forward which is about attacking workers’ rights.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I will respond, briefly, to the noble Baroness, and I am grateful to her for her ability to disagree well. First, I point out that many of the fundamental employment rights that she holds so dear are actually human rights, and they are set out in international conventions and the covenants of the Churchill settlement. If she does not like the word “human”, she does not have to use it, but these rights are, as a matter of law, international human rights.

Secondly, again, I know that she does not like our human rights settlement or the Human Rights Act, but in our public law in this country, not just under the Human Rights Act, one of the main benefits to the Government of putting the policy neat in primary legislation and not leaving it all to regulations is that regulations—to respond again to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—may be struck down in the courts in ways which primary legislation may not.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I completely support the Minister’s aspirations for the public to be able to conduct their lives without disruption. They want to be able to use transport and health services. But when the minimum service levels are decided by whoever it will be—we are unclear—will the Government be penalising those employers who do not provide them on non-strike days as well? I just wondered. We do not know what the minimum service levels will be. If 50% of the trains need to run, that would mean all signalpeople would have to work. I would like to be able to use the same Bill to have a go when I cannot get a train, the ambulance does not come or what have you, but it is the fault not of the strikers but of the organisations or institutions. Can the Minister extend this Bill so that I can use it to sue the people who do not deliver the services I need to live my life?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness says that these regulations will be imposed by whoever feels like it. They will be imposed by this Parliament because we are consulting on minimum service levels in three areas that will be subject to regulations. Each sector is different, which is why we have laid some consultations on the regulations; we are interested in hearing views. Again, the noble Baroness is getting ahead of herself. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, has amendments in later groupings similar to what the noble Baroness wishes to bring about; perhaps if she restrains her enthusiasm, we will get to these points later.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

It is fairly straightforward. Those of us with extreme concerns about the Bill do not want a Bill passed where time after time people, especially the wider public, realise that regulations have been sunsetted without their understanding of the consequences—and without our own Parliament’s understanding of the consequences. Frankly, that is the one delay that really should be put in place, because we do not know what is going to happen.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have tried to follow and to listen to as much of the discussions on the Bill as possible, and I confess that some of the legal arguments happening earlier were beyond me. I will raise a couple of points, the first of which is in relation to the delay. I said at Second Reading, and I maintain the point now, that the Bill has been a long time coming. The public perceive the debate about how we deal with taking control of our own laws, as the UK having left the EU, not in the sense that it has been rushed through, but rather that it has been sluggish and blocked, and that any attempts to try to force through that break from the European Union have been obstructed by people who did not approve of the decision taken in 2016.

I am very sensitive to the perfectly reasonable criticisms made throughout the arguments I have heard. The Minister must give some reassurance that there are no unintended consequences of the Bill and that important laws are not lost that the Government do not intend to lose—those they will lose by accident, as it has been described. That is of some concern. Reassurances that they are in control are not that reassuring when we look at the parlous state of the way everything else is falling apart at the moment. So I have reservations myself; I wanted to clarify that. But saying that we should delay things until 2028 will be seen, understandably, as quite simply putting off the task, and that does not work at all.

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[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I just wanted to say to the noble Baroness—and I probably will not go into lawmaking in the EU, as the noble Baroness was an MEP herself—that to say that lawmaking in Brussels is not democratic is, to my mind, ridiculous.

I particularly want to address her assertion that objections to this Bill are mired in politics. Had she been here, as I have, through the entire four days—now nearly four and a half—on this Bill, she would know that across the House the objections have been because it is an Executive power grab. Almost no reference has been made to the Brexit referendum or the policy of Brexit. It is about the way that the Bill is constructed and the power that the Government are concentrating in themselves. It is a question of the rights of Parliament and the type of governance we are objecting to. It is not political in that sense. The objections to this Bill are constitutional.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I appreciate that I have not been in the Chamber for all of that time, although I have been here a fair few hours, one way and another, and I have read everything that was said in previous discussions. I do not feel as though I am just wandering in to make this point.

I have also talked to people outside this House about their understanding of this discussion and I am trying to draw attention to that—

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I have got more questions flying at me today.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for giving way for my question to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. If the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is not concerned about Clause 10, does that mean that she disagrees with the very clear comments from the Delegated Powers Committee? It sees it as a power grab and thinks it is a completely inappropriate use of secondary legislation.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am concerned about aspects of this Bill from a delegated powers point of view, as I have been on a range of Bills that we have had in this House. Maybe it is because, as in the previous intervention, it was made clear to me that there is a disagreement about what democracy is. I do not think that while we were in the European Union that was a democratic, accountable form of lawmaking. I did not make that point. That point has just been made back to me. I am saying that although I understand that the arguments put forward say that they are not replaying a lot of discussions from the past, I think that argument has been implicit in a lot of the discussions. That was certainly what I heard at Second Reading and I have picked it up.

I am also making the point that if there was a genuine enthusiasm from this House about how we can take the opportunity of having left the European Union to now study and look at all of those laws, there might be less cynicism outside this House. That was my point.

I also was making a different point about timing. I have not heard from this House, either while I have been in it or before I got in it and was watching it from the outside, an enthusiasm to rush things through, as soon as we voted in 2016, to say, “Let’s take all the laws. Let’s look at the EU retained laws. Let’s now make a decision about what we do with these laws.” People did not want to do that because they did not accept the decision. Now, people are saying that it is too rushed and that there is a danger that this will come over—as it is doing—as an attempt at blocking taking back control.

As to the delegated powers and the power grab, I am afraid that that is something I have broadly been worried about from this Government, not just with this Bill. I have spoken on it many a time.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 129 and 131 in this group in my name and those of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lady Boycott, who, I am sorry to say, are not in their places. These two amendments are about transparency, accountability, and scrutiny, so, in a way, they follow neatly from some of the points the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, was making a few moments ago.

Transparency, accountability and scrutiny are surely not contentious concepts so I hope that the Government would agree and therefore sign up to these amendments. Amendment 129, very simply, would require the Government to seek advice from the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland as to whether any proposed changes to the regulations will reduce food safety or other consumer protections in relation to food.

Noble Lords will recall that the Food Standards Agency is the non-ministerial department in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with responsibility for food safety and consumer protection in relation to food. It would surely be bizarre beyond belief not to consult the relevant department and its Scottish counterpart before making any changes to retained EU law. The importance of this underlined by referring back to a previous debate in Committee. I quote from Hansard. I said on 23 February that

“I will quote what Professor Susan Jebb, the chair of the Food Standards Agency, said on 2 November last year:

‘In the FSA, we are clear that we cannot simply sunset the laws on food safety and authenticity without a decline in UK food standards and a significant risk to public health’.”


I then said:

“According to the government department in charge of food safety and standards, the sunset clause is putting public health at risk. There is no point in the Minister trying to deny it, because that is what a government department is saying.”—[Official Report, 23/2/23; col. 1832.]


I will now quote the Minister’s reply because she did indeed deny it by saying:

“Let me assure noble Lords that any decision on REUL reform will not come at the expense of our high standards.”


She added that

“our commitment to not reducing consumer protection remains in place.”—[Official Report, 23/2/23; cols. 1856-57.]

Here you have it in black and white. The head of the relevant government department, Professor Susan Jebb, says that we cannot sunset EU-derived laws without sacrificing consumer safety and other protections. The Minister told this House on 23 February that, in effect, that is a load of rubbish. Who would you believe? I know where my trust lies. It is with the department that has the responsibility and accountability for and expertise in protecting consumers’ interests in relation to food. There could not be a clearer demonstration of why Amendment 129 is essential

Lest this be thought to be some sort of political point, I want to say that when I was chairman of the Food Standards Agency, with a Government of a different political complexion, Ministers were keen to rush to reassure the public on issues to do with food safety, whether it was BSE or foot and mouth disease, and I really had to stand up against pressure from Ministers and say, “No, we can’t provide reassurance on safety”. If this amendment is accepted, it will ensure that the proper expertise, lines of accountability and scrutiny are in place to review any proposed changes in food law.

I turn now to Amendment 131, which is about transparency. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded noble Lords earlier in Committee, the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland published their first annual report on food safety and standards across the UK, entitled Our Food 2021, in June. Here is a quotation from the introduction:

“At a time when the UK is taking on new responsibilities for food following our departure from the European Union … consumers need strong watchdogs looking out for whether standards are being protected. This report—the first in a series to be published annually—will help us do so by providing an objective, data-driven assessment of the safety and standards of food over time.


Why us? Because the Food Standards Agency … and Food Standards Scotland … are together responsible for food standards across the whole of the UK—this is an important, long-term collaboration between our two organisations that should provide greater transparency and accountability for food quality across the four nations. This, in turn, will help us work with food businesses, local authorities and other partners to address any emerging threats or vulnerabilities.”


Amendment 131 simply seeks to put this annual report, or a slightly modified version of it, on a statutory basis. It will tell the public, businesses, the Government and others whether, as result of changes to our laws, food standards and safety are being compromised. How on earth could one object to this transparency?

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us the other day in Committee, transparency is one of the keys to trust. It has taken years of work by the Food Standards Agency to rebuild public trust in the UK food system after the disasters of the 1990s, including BSE and salmonella in eggs. Indeed, that is why all parties supported the creation of the Food Standards Agency, so it could be a department that puts consumers’ interests first and rebuilds trust in our food system. Why would the Government wish to squander those gains now? I therefore look forward to the Minister warmly welcoming both my amendments, and to assuring us that the FSA and FSS will have the necessary resources to fulfil the duties that are implied by them. These are very modest changes to the Bill, aimed at improving it, and I hope that, if the Minister does not welcome them, he will at least agree to meet me and others to discuss the implications of not accepting them.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am totally opposed to the Bill, not least because it is an act of evasion and avoids tackling some genuinely dire problems in public services. Instead, it aims to punish ordinary people for daring to ask the perfectly reasonable question: “Will you give us pay rises in line with inflation to get us through this economic crisis, which is not of our making?”.

Yesterday, I spent hours in this Chamber listening to some fine rhetoric from the Government and across the House about levelling up: about improving the lives and living standards of millions of people who are struggling because of where they live and a lack of opportunities. I confess that I had some qualms about a paternalistic tone in terms of helping the northern poor. However, what is interesting today is that we encounter real workers—not passive supplicants—standing up for themselves, sometimes bolshie and angry, but unwilling to be forced to accept a pay cut. What is the Government’s response to workers fighting for a bit of DIY levelling up? They call their actions selfish and greedy, and smear them as a risk to public safety.

Yet again, we are offered an unnecessary law. The noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, wrote an excellent article recently in which he noted:

“The itch to announce a new law … often feels irresistible to governments, but it … always has bad results.”


The Minister should read that article because it is a warning of the unintended consequences of overlegislating. There is already a plethora of laws arming the state with emergency powers to ensure that strike action does not seriously threaten people’s welfare and ensures life and limb cover. What is more, the mechanism of the law has been used as a blunt instrument since the 1980s to weaken trade union power, so being able to legally call a strike requires a ridiculously high, but arbitrary, turnout and a voting threshold of 40% and 50% respectively. Note that this unelected Chamber would not often reach that threshold, and we have the temerity to make the laws of the land.

Despite the Trade Union Act 2016 setting such onerous strike-busting restrictions, the recent turnouts in strike ballots across workplaces have smashed through those obstacles. You would hope that might give the Government pause for thought to ask why so many working people who the state relies on to man railways, treat the ill, put out fires, guard borders, teach our kids, and so on, are so unhappy at work that even sectors that have not voted to strike for decades are now downing tools. This should prompt politicians to take these people and their demands seriously. But no; instead, they drag out some Thatcherite cliches about the 1970s and, as always, think the solution is more illiberal law to change the rules and make striking even harder. However, in the haste to play the hard man, we end up with shoddy legislation which even Jacob Rees-Mogg has described as “badly written”, saying that it smacks of “incompetence”.

Introducing the Bill in the other place, the Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, tried to gaslight trade unionists with this repetition: “This is not an attack on the right to strike” —we have heard various iterations of that today. However, with even more cynicism, he emphasised that the Bill is about the rights of the public, who

“work hard and expect the essential services that they pay for to be there when they need them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/23; col. 54.]

Hear, hear to that. However, if your object is to give public services to the public when they need them, why focus on strikers as the culprits for poor service? Why not target those who consistently run poor services?

I can tell your Lordships, as a regular Avanti West Coast train user, that there has been little difference between strike and non-strike days for months and months. Where are the minimum service regulations or punishments for train operators when trains are routinely cancelled or late, or for those at the top of the NHS who are responsible for the public facing waiting lists of years for treatment? What mechanisms do we have to impose minimum services on government departments which have singularly failed to control our national borders, or will the Government blame the small boats crisis on strikers too?

This whole Bill smacks of a cynical attempt to scapegoat striking workers for the wretched state of public services. It is an unjustified smear to suggest strikers are putting the public’s lives at risk. I find it particularly galling because one recent policy really did deny people health and social service and put their health at risk, with dire consequences; namely the shutting down of society for years in response to the pandemic. Who turned the NHS into a Covid-only service, with no regard for minimum service provision for those at risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke? Not even life and limb cover was provided. While we might not all agree in here on lockdown policies, my point is that those of us who argued for a more proportionate response to Covid and for maintaining services were often shooed away, but those services are now still creaking to recover. Long-term damage and suffering caused to the public, especially children, is a consequence of decisions made here in this Parliament and will be felt for years to come. That is where the energies of Parliament should lie: focus on that and not on offloading blame elsewhere.

One reason why so many workers are demoralised and burned out, as we have heard here today, is staff shortages and the struggle to recruit and retain staff for even minimum services, day in and day out. I am all for the Government trying to tackle this. It will need creative, courageous, radical solutions, and some of these might lead to clashes with trade unions—so be it. For example, I think that we need to look at seven-day NHS provision, and that GP surgeries should be open over weekends and for longer hours. I am impressed by the work of renal consultant Dr Andrew Stein in his 7DS policy, which wants to get more consultants into hospitals over weekends and elective surgery seven days a week. No doubt some of those ideas will clash with the BMA. So what? I support the rights of trade unions but I do not put them on a pedestal. I have no doubt there might be clashes with unions if we shake up public services and deal with the huge task of recruiting more staff to tackle our problems, but this Bill is counterproductive and will not work. Does the Minister think it is a productive use of overstretched public services personnel to invest time and resources to work out who needs to be in work, how many people and where, in order to create work notices? What a bureaucratic waste of time that is, with more management red tape—great.

My final point is on the public. There is no doubt that the strikes are disruptive and a real pain, creating more obstacles to negotiate just to get through the day, and sometimes they are scary, if you need to call an ambulance and so on. Many parents, for example, feel betrayed by education unions that denied children and students even a minimum education over the Covid years, and feel bitter that so many public servants are still working from home and not providing adequate face-to-face services. To the unions I say that there is no room for complacency. After all, only 23% of workers are members of a union, so unions need to work proactively to win hearts and minds beyond their members. To the Government I say do not make assumptions about the public and where they will land on this issue. The Government should not treat the public as their own army. I think the public are intelligent enough to work this out. A great notice we got in preparation for this debate from a group called Organise made the point that many non-trade unionists support these strikes, and their message is that they stand in solidarity—so do I.