Queen’s Speech

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I have the privilege of chairing the European Union Justice Sub-Committee, which scrutinises legal matters and deals with regulations and sanctions emanating from the EU. In the period since the referendum, we have issued two reports. One is on the acquired rights of EU nationals, which will be debated next Tuesday, and I encourage Members of this House to attend and take part. The other report we have issued is on civil justice issues in the Brexit negotiations affecting individuals, families and businesses. Currently, we are beginning an inquiry into consumer rights, and we are taking evidence on the potential impact on those rights as we leave the EU. The report that will follow will look at patent law.

All those reports show that a hugely beneficial body of law exists across Europe and works to the benefit of businesses as well as ordinary citizens, but it depends on reciprocity. Bringing in new legislation here, which is supposed to bring all this home, is not going to deal with that need. What is being done to create that reciprocity, and are the negotiations taking account of the need for it? We have a very interesting system just now called the “Brussels regime”, which creates opportunities through protocols that enable enforcement. It is enforcement that is the difficult aspect of issues such as divorce and maintenance for children in cross-border marriages, or if you are trading with Poland and the company goes bust and you want your money back. Currently, we have mechanisms for getting an order in the courts here and having it enforced over there. What is going to be done about enforcement? Those are difficult matters of law that should be exercising us, and they show us the complexities of what is going to be involved in the negotiations to come.

I am an unrepentant remainer, and as far as I am concerned it is clear that this country is making a grave mistake in deciding to leave the EU. Economically, it makes no sense, but it also undermines one of the greatest projects of international collaboration in the history of the world. So much that has been carefully woven together over decades is being unravelled. Behind it is an aspect that I feel is forgotten in so much of this discussion: a project for peace and justice. In a globalised world, being part of a trading bloc makes absolute sense. We trade with each other within the bloc, but we also trade as a group with the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, many of those preferential trade agreements work to our benefit. Being in a group provides us with protection and solidarity when being buffeted in globalised markets. We have created high standards among ourselves regarding the ways in which we deal with each other, and in turn we demand high standards when we are dealing with the world. We do so through law and regulation.

I want to remind the Government and some of the people who sit on the Opposition Benches that cross-border relationships require cross-border law, and supranational bodies are needed to deal with disputes. We need international courts—you can call them what you like, but you need them—and good regulation. It is part of the incremental way in which we improve the world. The fixation on the European Court of Justice is ludicrous. You need a court if you make a deal. If you make deals with the World Trade Organization, you will end up going before what is essentially a court if things go wrong.

However, we hear from people like the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, who seem not to understand that while we may have marvellous judges and courts here—I am second to no one in saying how great our judges are—they are no good if, say, you are having a battle with Poland over a Euro-warrant. The Poles are not going to want that decided by our courts; there has to be an ultimate court that is seen to be independent of either of the jurisdictions to deal with those overarching issues. If we want to be part of the Euro-warrant and Eurojust, that system of collaboration that deals with terrorism and international crime, then we have to get our minds set on the fact that we need to have courts.

I want to mention the matter of regulation. If you look at the recent flaming inferno in the Kensington tower block, you see where lowering building regulation standards and sneering about health and safety standards gets you—scores of people dead. Our children are protected by many of the regulations that we have created over the years, with British lawyers often taking the lead because it is a collaborative project: insisting that there should be no lead in paint; that plastic toys should contain no poisons; that fertilisers and insecticides are not toxic; and that pharmaceuticals and other drugs and medicines reach high standards so that we do not have repeats of disasters like thalidomide. You will not get those kinds of relationships in trading with China for some time to come. By being included in a trading bloc but, more importantly, by being an active participant in it, providing our legal expertise and joining in with others, we raise the bar for other countries within the EU, for ourselves and across the world for the people we trade with as a bloc. For years, we have been subjected to a barrage of tripe from the tabloid press claiming that there was a tide of laws coming at us, when in fact we have been at the heart of creating some of that very good law.

Brexit was supposed to be at the heart of the election, yet for many people it was not. We are in a deeply divided country where the better-off do fine, thank you, while the rest feel totally undervalued. That includes many doctors and people working in healthcare, law and the sort of areas that I work in, social services, probation, the police and so on. Labour’s great success in this election—a Corbyn-led Labour success—was that its manifesto touched a nerve with the public, especially the young and those who are disadvantaged. It was a social justice manifesto that directly challenged the neoliberal economic policies that have damaged our communities and are destroying our public services.

The young—basically, those who want to be in Europe—came out in favour of that manifesto. I say to noble Lords on the opposite Benches that they should listen to the young. It was the old who voted for them, and who voted in Mansfield against Labour, but the young are increasing in number. The young will wash you away if you do not listen to them because they want a different world and a different society, and they want to be in Europe.