Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Deech

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow a fellow campaigner and the sole Green Party representative in this place. I congratulate the Minister on taking her first Bill through this House and thank her for the graciousness and openness that she has demonstrated in the meetings and exchanges that we have had. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Henig, for supporting my amendment and for reaching common ground on this issue, as we have witnessed today. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for showing his support, for his charm and graciousness and for not roaming in the gloaming as we did last week on the mobile phones SI. Above all, I acknowledge the work of the Minister in this regard.

I hope the Minister will not think me churlish of the spirit that she has shown in the text of the amendment, but it would be remiss of me not to say why I have tabled Amendment 4 for the purposes of debate today. I accept that it is a matter of language and semantics but, in the law, language is important. I understood her to say that guidance would be issued once the Bill had received Royal Assent, but guidance does not have statutory effect and I wonder what its legal status be. I do not take issue with her as much as the parliamentary and legal draftsmen in this regard.

As the Minister said in moving her amendment, we wish to maintain domestic standards when we leave the European Union. I point to the retained EU law—which I think we now call primary or principal law—on sanitary and phytosanitary requirements, in which it is generally understood that standards of food safety are paramount. That has been reflected in the campaign carried out by all the farming organisations, not least the NFU. However, the wording of the World Trade Organization and its committees states that:

“For all of these agreements, the WTO encourages international standards as it believes they are ‘less likely to be challenged legally in the WTO than if it sets its own standards’”.


That is the reason for tabling the amendment. It is a serious omission.

My noble friend said that proposed new subsection (4B)(a) to (d) covered food safety but, having seen epidemics almost every 10 years such as BSE, foot and mouth disease and the horsemeat scandal that could easily have been a food safety issue, I think that it is better to get it on the statute book.

I reiterate what the Minister said: there have been constructive discussions which have permitted us to coalesce around her Amendments 1 and 2. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has done, I put down a marker that we will return to this issue when the Agriculture Bill reaches this House. However, I again thank the Minister and congratulate her on getting us so far to Third Reading.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may make what I hope are reassuring noises about food safety. There has been much discussion here about the fear that our food safety will decline once we have left Europe. Across Europe there are 23 million cases of food poisoning a year and 5,000 deaths.

In the global food security index we tie, at number three, with the USA. Only Ireland and Singapore are ahead of us. Most European countries are way down that list, including, for example, Poland and Bulgaria. In other words, they should be keeping up with us. We would have an awful long way to fall before our food safety record could be compared with the very low standards prevailing in much of Europe. While one welcomes this amendment, in practice there is very little to worry about.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Deech

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am genuinely torn on how to vote on this amendment and turn to my noble and very able friend the Minister to guide me in this respect. I listened very carefully to all the speakers this afternoon, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, who I think comes at this with the same approach that I do. These amendments seem based to me on a very simple proposition, which is that rights given to British subjects by statute can be removed only by statute.

Of the two alternatives available, particularly in Amendment 3, which I am tempted and minded to support—a resolution to be passed by both Houses or a Bill to be passed by both Houses—the amendment neatly leaves it to the Government to determine the means to choose. I would like to know—and I seek guidance from the Minister and very powerful arguments against—why it would not be appropriate to include the amendment here on the face of the Bill. I say this because this is the last procedural stage before we embark on the substance. We are told that there will not be just the great repeal Bill but a number of substantive primary pieces of legislation as well as, no doubt, multiple pieces of secondary legislation to repeal some of the acquis that we might wish no longer to apply.

Why is it important to write it on the face of the Bill? It is for so many reasons: times change; politics change and personalities change. We are being asked to take an awful lot on trust here, both in terms of a commitment from the Government and in terms of a commitment given on the Floor of the House of Commons that Parliament and the Government would hope to follow through. Surely it is only right and proper that it should be put on the face of the Bill.

I remind the House that we spent about two hours and 30 minutes talking about the rights of EU nationals going forward. If the referendum had been held on the same terms as the European Parliament elections, all the EU nationals living here for the required length of time would have been able to vote. As I understand it from memory, an amendment passed in this House deprived those 1 million EU nationals living in this country of the right to vote. In fact, that 1 million number could have changed the outcome of the referendum overnight.

I refer to the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, in summing up on Second Reading. He expressed to the Government, in a helpful way, that the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller went further than just this Bill before us today, which embarks on the negotiation procedure. A majority of the House would not wish to stand in the way of the triggering of the process. By the same token, the noble and learned Lord went on to say, in respect to not writing into the face of the Bill—I do not want to press him too hard, but I think that the noble and learned Lord was saying the same—that,

“obtaining approval by resolution in Parliament is not the same thing as being given statutory authority”.

That is why he cautioned the Government against thinking that this Bill before the House today,

“on its own will give them all the authority they need, or that obtaining approval for an agreement by resolution is the same thing as being given statutory authority to conclude that agreement”.—[Official Report, 20/2/17; col. 23.]

I will refer also to an article written by five eminent QCs, including three knights, who gave their opinion on the matter and stated:

“Meaningful Parliamentary decision-making cannot be achieved by Parliament authorising exit from the European Union, two years in advance, on as yet unknown terms. Equally, it cannot be achieved by a single ‘take it or leave it’ vote at the end of the process”.


The article argues very straightforwardly:

“The constitutional requirements for a decision by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union include the enactment of primary legislation consenting to give legal effect to the terms of a withdrawal agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union”.


Therefore, rather than being a wrecking amendment, I see this amendment as being potentially helpful to the Government, responding to a situation that we found ourselves in, having now lost three to six months through a court case and then an appeal, by writing on to the face of the Bill that Parliament—these two Houses —will have the final say. It will be of the Government’s choosing what the mechanism will be—whether a resolution of both Houses or an Act of Parliament. Otherwise, there will be a complete lack of clarity over what remaining rights already extended to British subjects can continue to be relied on. I will go further and say that, when we come to the great repeal Bill, there will be a complete lack of clarity over the court on which we should rely to make sure that those outstanding rights can be enforced.

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords—