Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Lord Benyon

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have got the resources that we need to carry out this work.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Can I just finish this point? Where there are more complicated issues that may require us to spend longer dealing with them, the extension mechanism is there to achieve that. That should be a reassurance that we will not risk, with this challenging timetable, making the wrong decision. If necessary, we can apply the extension mechanism.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, while I am impressed by the resources being put into this effectively useless power, what more productive use could those resources be put to?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Having laboured through many of the details of this, I can assure the noble Lord that it is a good thing for a Government to be doing. We are tackling some areas of law that have no relation to this whatever. They are about fishing arrangements between Denmark and Norway in Svalbard or export policy in olives. There are many areas that we can get rid of, but there are other areas of regulation—this point was made very well earlier—that we would be updating even if we were in the EU. So it is a good thing for the Government to make sure that we have proper regulation that is up to date and tied into our ambitions in the 25-year environment plan, the Environment Act and the environment improvement plan.