Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Lawlor Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—so you have four noble Baronesses tonight on different sides.

I welcome this Bill to remove and reform EU law. It honours the country’s decisions in the 2016 referendum and the 2019 general election leave the EU, its legal orbit and its corpus of law. The voters’ mandate was clear—to restore sovereignty so that the laws under which we are governed reflect their wishes and the Parliament they send to Westminster honours their mandate. The Bill honours that mandate in two principal ways. First, it accords supremacy to UK law, ending that of the EU where there is incompatibility. Secondly, retained EU secondary legislation will, unless otherwise decided, lapse at the end of 2023—the sunset clause about which we have heard so much today.

Others have spoken about the economic potential of this measure. I shall touch on the concerns, which I do not share, practical and constitutional. The practical concerns relate to timing and uncertainty—what is thought to be too short a timeframe and possible uncertainty in so rapid a switch to a new system, which could, it is thought, be bad for business. But not only should the deadline be achieved quickly and smoothly if individual departments get down to the task—a task with which they will already be familiar through the laws for which they are responsible—but the more rapidly this corpus of secondary legislation is removed or adapted for UK law, and the sooner the two systems of law end, the greater the certainty for all. The constitutional concerns relate to what is seen as the Executive overlooking Parliament—or what others have called, in more colloquial language, a power grab.

We are speaking here about secondary legislation, which was introduced under the EU, much of it without proper parliamentary scrutiny. It did not reflect the wishes of the people of this country but was the result of a Byzantine system of laws under an unelected European commission and handed down from on high to Parliament. Moreover, there are good reasons for acting as proposed. Unlike the UK system of law, EU legislation is based on the continental system of law. It is a different form of law. It enshrines the precautionary principle covering every possible situation, but often does so too late for innovators and entrepreneurs. Four thousand is the number of regulations we have heard mentioned today, but more laws do not necessarily mean better law.

Moreover, Ministers are and will be accountable, but to Parliament, and more accountable and more important to the people of this country, who, at a general election, send Parliament to Westminster. It is from the people that the authority of Parliament derives, not from itself. Governments listen to the voice of the people and have acted decisively and rapidly throughout the centuries: workmen’s compensation in the 1890s; national insurance and pensions in the 1910s; widows’, orphans’ and old age pensions in the 1920s; holidays with pay in the 1930s; family allowances, national insurance, maternity allowance and legal aid in the 1940s. I therefore welcome this measure. I have no doubt that the Government will move ahead rapidly and I shall do nothing to delay the passing of the Bill.