Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Lord Fox ExcerptsThursday 2nd March 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 89-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee - (2 Mar 2023)
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I will have to send that sort of detail out in writing, along with the other letters we are going to be writing in response to other questions.
Lord Fox (LD)
I apologise for intervening. I think what I heard is that Clause 2 gives the Government the power to do this; I did not hear from the noble Baroness that the Government have any inclination to actually use that power. Will she explain what criteria the Government would use to actually apply the power that she has just revealed to the Committee?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I am sorry. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that there was no Machiavellian intent; rather, that date provides a ceiling for the presence of retained EU law on the UK’s statute book and gives adequate time to complete reform of the most ambitious nature in all areas. The 10th anniversary of the referendum vote served this purpose and offers a full-circle moment by which the UK can proudly proclaim that it has regained its sovereignty and has a fully independent domestic statute book—
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I am unfamiliar with modern parlance. Could the Minister please define a “full-circle moment”?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I think it is just a way of describing the 10-year anniversary of the referendum vote. It is just vernacular—
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Lord Fox ExcerptsTuesday 28th February 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 89-III Third marshalled list for Committee - (28 Feb 2023)
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendments 7 to 9 and 24 in this group, signed by me and my noble friend Lady Randerson, who gave an excellent speech setting out very serious points on these issues.
During the last Committee session, a number of serious points were raised. Aside from the unmitigated chaos that sometimes emerged on the Government Front Bench, there were three major, standout learnings. I make no apology for retreading them slightly because they apply to this and some other groups of amendments that we will debate. The Minister himself described British law as a “mishmash” of UK and EU-derived laws that operate together. That point, made by many of your Lordships, is also our point: how can you change one part of the mishmash without it having an effect on everything else?
Many of us raised the element of case law—the legal interpretation of the Minister’s mishmash. Last week highlighted the vital point that even assimilated law, essentially the same as the EU-derived law it replaces, loses the case law that was built around it to date. The Government seem not to have found a way of porting legal interpretations to new, assimilated laws under this Bill. We await further details of the Government’s plans from the Minister, as promised.
As my noble friend said, we got a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, some moments before we arrived here; some of us were already in here when we received it. It sheds some light on some of the other points that I was going to raise. The first is around the dashboard. There was complete confusion as to the status of this dashboard and when a definitive list of the retained EU law covered by this Bill would be published or available. We now have clarity. The dashboard
“presents an authoritative catalogue of retained EU law, not a comprehensive list of retained EU law.”
Can the Minister explain what an authoritative catalogue is in relation to a comprehensive list?
If, as the Minister describes it, it is “not a comprehensive list”, we are back to square one. When will we get a comprehensive list of all the laws covered by this Bill—and how long before the end of the period when these laws are automatically revoked? At the moment there seems to be no intention to publish an authoritative list, so we will never know some of the laws that are going to be revoked. We suggest that any such list should be tabled in Parliament, and there are a number of amendments coming up that will seek to achieve that change.
The third point that is also addressed in the letter is the status of Clause 15 and how regulatory burden is to be measured. Is it law by law, or will there be some net figure across a group of laws? As my noble friend pointed out, it was suggested from the Front Bench last week that it was going to be all of them, but now we hear that the laws are going to be divided up by SI, and each SI bundle will be allowed to have ups and downs as long as the net total is no more than the Government’s calculation of what a regulatory burden is.
It is still not clear to me how you calculate or rate a regulatory burden. How do you weigh a burden on two people versus a burden on 3,000 or 3 million? How do you rate one burden that saves lives against another that merely enforces a less life-saving regulation? The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, promised a letter about this issue, with worked examples. We look forward to that letter and to those workings. I do not know whether noble Lords remember maths exams where you had to show your workings, but this is definitely a situation where the Government have to show their workings.
There was one further point in the letter regarding the product safety review, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, responded to. In a sense, safety is one of the issues in this group. The noble Baroness stated that that review would be published later this spring. That is welcome, although it is about a year later than we were expecting. Can the Minister confirm that that is the case and perhaps give us a clear timetable for how the product safety review might come to your Lordships’ House and then be put into effect, given the nature of the Bill, the regulatory burdens that we have just been talking about and the point that my noble friend Lady Randerson made?
Last week the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said from the Front Bench:
“I would say that the sunset was introduced to incentivise departments to think boldly and constructively about their regulations and to remove unnecessary regulatory burdens”.—[Official Report, 23/2/23; col. 1821.]
I request to know—I believe there was a request last week as well—what guidance departments are receiving when it comes to regulatory burdens, how they will be calculated and what is expected of them.
As long those these three questions remain open, it is impossible for any Minister to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that the Government will maintain this or that law and this or that regulation. Quite obviously, it is not in the Government’s gift. All retained laws, even the assimilated ones, are open to interpretive change. In any case, we may never have a definitive list of all the laws that will be changed or revoked until it suddenly happens, and we do not yet know what constraints Clause 15 actually puts on the changes and amendments that will happen to those laws that are amended. This uncertainty is as true for this group as it was for the previous ones that we have debated so far.
Given the Minister’s excellent brief, I am not going to focus on specific areas, but I would like to talk about non-compliance. Speaking today, the Lord Privy Seal said, with regard to the Windsor Framework, that
“we will take further steps to avoid regulatory divergence in future”.
Very good—so what further steps to avoid regulatory divergence will there be in this regulation? This specifically points in the exact opposite direction to the direction signalled by the Lord Privy Seal not an hour ago. Could the Minister please explain how those two particular things are squared?
Various UK Ministers have committed to ensure that the operation of the Bill does not jeopardise international and environmental commitments—we will be talking about the environmental ones shortly—but, as a matter of law, these statements provide no real reassurance or protections. One area that I come back to is manufacturing in the automotive sector. I am on the executive of the All-Party Motor Group, so it is something I know something about.
The automotive industry is subject to a large number of sector-specific regulations, as well as many cross-sector business regulations. These are held across several government departments. The critical regulatory framework underpinning the industry and its huge economic contribution must not be put at risk—but that is what could happen, as my noble friend Lady Randerson alluded to. There needs to be a concerted process of detailed work to make sure that we do not accidentally end up in non-compliance, with our industry unable to access external markets because of deliberate or accidental regulatory divergence. That requires of course the Government and the industry to understand the scope, function and potential interdependency of all legislation in scope of the Bill. Can the Minister confirm that those talks will open up with that industry, and indeed other industries where this will become an important factor in whether these businesses can make things in this country and export them to the European Union?
Regulatory reform and development should occur in a managed way, with clearly defined road maps and priorities. Even a potential extension to June 2026 under the Bill is extremely challenging in any timescale to try to do that managed process. It needs proper regulatory reform on a scale that requires industry consultation and real scrutiny. So can the Minister confirm that this is understood and that proper consultation with industry will open up?
Once again, this group of amendments illustrates the complexity that the Bill brings to just one facet of our life and national livelihoods. Once again, it gives the lie to Mr Rees-Mogg’s declaration that this is a technical tidy-up. This is not tidy.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her expertise in this area. I intend to speak not as an expert in transport at all but as somebody who goes on holiday and flies to places in Europe. I would like to know whether I am going to be able to claim compensation next year if my plane is delayed or my luggage is lost.
As all noble Lords will know, European Union regulation 261/2004 gives us rights to compensation, care, assistance and information in case of cancellation, involuntary denied boarding or delay. Has that continued as a right that we all have as air travellers? It is retained EU law and it continues—this bit is from Google—“for the foreseeable future”, which presumably in this case means October, December or whenever, to give passengers the same rights that they previously had.
Many noble Lords will remember those rights being introduced, because you can get a reasonable amount of money in compensation and it is fairly straightforward to claim it. This
“includes rights created by past EU case law (such as the right to compensation for delay created in the controversial Sturgeon case), which will continue to bind lower UK courts”.
I mention that because it raises the question which the two noble Lords who have already spoken asked: what happened to case law in this case?
I suppose one question is: what does the travel industry have to say about this? ABTA and Which? have certainly said that they are very concerned about it. What do we do when we are booking our holidays in 2024? Thousands of flights and millions of people are affected by this regulation and what happens to it. I know that the Minister will not be able to say whether this is in or out, because the Government are not telling us that. But it is worth saying, as ordinary consumers, that this is a matter of some concern to us.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
I could not possibly comment on any wriggle room that the Government are giving themselves. However, because there is some justice in what the noble Viscount has said, I still want an explanation on the record from the Minister of how it can be authoritative if it is not comprehensive. Indeed, it cannot be authoritative at the moment because we know that it is still in the process of being added to.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
Yes, indeed, when is a catalogue not a list? It would be really helpful if the Government could explain that.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to how this is not a Conservative Bill because it is revolutionary. Yesterday, I found myself using the adjective “anarchic”, because the Bill is revolutionary and anarchic; we have an anarchist revolution from a Conservative Government, which is quite an interesting development. Another way of putting it is that it is a complete mess.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
It is a chaotic mess. They are making it up as they go along. We understand that officials are not only still dabbling around desperately trying to find EU law but thinking about what to do with each instrument once they have found it—whether it should be junked, preserved or altered. That is an odd way of putting the cart before the horse. Why was the Bill ever submitted if there was no idea of what was going to happen to EU law? I will add to my adjectives: the Bill is higgledy-piggledy and all over the place.
Finally, I wanted to raise another point for the Minister to answer. I am grateful to George Peretz KC for raising this point. We will come back to Clause 1 in future groups, but it is entirely relevant here to raise it. The definition of EU-derived subordinate legislation that is to be sunsetted in Clause 1(4) is
“any domestic subordinate legislation so far as … it was made under section 2(2)”
or another provision of the
“European Communities Act 1972, or … it was made”
otherwise, in
“implementation of EU obligations”.
But one problem is that sometimes an SI was made partly under Section 2(2) of the ECA and partly on another legal basis. Are those all going to be, whether this list is authoritative or comprehensive, or when it is finally arrived at—
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I hear the noble Lord, and I just want to clarify that I did speak to the specific amendments, because I was talking about transport and travel. I am particularly concerned about the impact that the Bill will have on the tourism and aviation industry, which has suffered a lot. I was talking about why we need to ensure continuity and stability in a market that has been affected. The problem is that without being very clear that we are going to keep that EU regulation to protect this industry, people cannot have confidence in booking their holidays for next year; some people book it even further in advance than that. That is why I am talking to the specifics here. However, we cannot ignore the fact that when we are talking about the specifics, we have had a letter literally presented to us that throws even more doubt on what the Government are doing. That is why we need to make that general point.
Lord Fox (LD)
Just to add to that, I say to the noble Lord that if he reads back through Hansard, he will see that my noble friend Lady Randerson dealt specifically with all four of those amendments in detail. I believe that that was not a very fair assessment of her contribution.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, I shall start on a slightly different note by sharing in the tributes that have been made to the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. She was a real inspiration for young women like me at the time who were learning to contribute to public life in different ways.
Turning to this group, we have already made it clear during this Committee stage that the Bill is an enabling Bill. The measures in it, including the sunset, will provide for the UK and devolved Governments to review and then preserve, amend or revoke their retained EU law as they see fit. There is no inherent need for policy or legislative exclusions to the sunset in the Bill. To respond to my noble friend Lord Deben, I feel comfortable with what we are doing as a Conservative and as someone, as he knows, who understands regulation. We will be making our legislation more appropriate, updating it where necessary, improving the quality and getting away from gold-plating as appropriate—while maintaining, as I said, necessary protections.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
A sunset gives us an idea of the timing of the measures. It has precedent elsewhere. We have brought forward the Bill, and I think it has great value, because we are now looking across the board at the 3,700 regulations that are the subject of this debate.
Just to finish my point to my noble friend Lord Deben, he will remember from his own time in Brussels, which was extensive, as was mine—we were sometimes there together—that some of the regulations that were made could be improved, with others preserved and extended. To respond to what has been said, each department is carrying out a review of its own regulations and will do so responsibly. The National Archives has come in, if you like, as a cross-check, as it retains the Government’s regulatory records. EU law, as we all know, goes back to the 1970s, so to bring the National Archives in and make sure that we look at its records to add to the list seems to me to have been a very sensible thing to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, is right to say that it can be useful to look at examples and that we should move on to transport and try to clarify things there. As my noble friend Lord Kirkhope said, we should try to tackle specifics, so let me turn to Amendment 7, which I think is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson—no?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for raising that; I will have to take it up with the Department for Transport and get back to her.
On Amendment 24 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, the Road Vehicles (Approval) Regulations 2020 are part of the recently created GB type approval scheme. These regulations were made under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act and therefore fall within the scope of the sunset as EU-derived subordinate legislation; they are essential to ensure that the GB type approval scheme can be enforced. The Department for Transport is committed to ensuring that our vehicle type approval scheme creates high standards of safety for vehicles and road users, is robust and will remain fit for purpose alongside future developments in road vehicles. We are developing an ambitious plan supported by evidence and engagement with our stakeholders to reform the way in which vehicles are regulated, creating an agile system that keeps pace with technological developments and innovation in a dynamic and rapidly evolving landscape.
I hope this provides some reassurance. We do recognise the importance of many of these regulations.
Lord Fox (LD)
I do not think the Minister was coming on to this point; if she was, I apologise. I asked a specific question about regulatory divergence. The Lord Privy Seal was clear that, going forward, the Government will put in place steps to avoid regulatory divergence with respect to the Windsor Framework. What steps are being put in place in this Bill to avoid regulatory divergence?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I thank the noble Lord. His was a general question; I was not going to seek to reply to it. Obviously, the extent of divergence that we might or might not have depends on different areas.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The Minister raised the question of aviation. It is one of the most serious points here because it is about business confidence, consumer confidence and consumer protection. The problem I have, and which she can take back to the Department for Transport, is this. We had a consultation that started at the beginning of last year on changing levels of compensation. Ideas were thrown up in that about reducing it substantially for domestic aviation. We had a summary of the responses published in July last year, and nothing from the Department for Transport about what its true intentions are. That raises serious issues about what the Government’s intentions are around the EU regulations that protect us all when booking holidays abroad next year. I hope that the Minister can go back to the Department of Transport and ask to be told what the true intentions are. People need to know. The simple fact is that this Bill and these clauses create huge uncertainty for a very vital industry of this country.
Lord Fox (LD)
The presence here of the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, is a good indicator of what we will get in the next group: the appropriate department covering the appropriate amendments. These amendments were not put down yesterday. This is not a letter that you receive from a Minister—we gave warning of these amendments. A Minister from the relevant department, the Department for Transport, should and could have been here to answer the questions, instead of a Minister saying, “It’s not my department. I can’t answer”. I am pleased to welcome the noble Lord for the next group but perhaps, as a lesson going forward, we could have the right Ministers here.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
We have been searching for some clue as to the criteria for what will be retained and what will be revoked, but we have not had any clarity—hence these hours of debate on safety of seat belts and so on. The Minister used the term “unnecessary” regulations and, in the famous letter, we have the line:
“For example, through removing unnecessary or unsuitable regulations or consolidating multiple regulations into one, it will be possible”,
and so on. Can we have a definition, in writing, of what the Government consider to be an unnecessary or unsuitable regulation? That may give us a clue as to the direction of travel on which regulations will be kept and which will be lost.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, this is offensive for democracy if it does go through.
Lord Fox (LD)
Very briefly, the reason we are welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, is not because we have grown fed up with the noble Lord, Lord Callanan; it is because he is the major shareholder in this Bill as regards the number of amendments. I hope that, as well as dealing with the 24 particular laws that are in this group, he will use his response to explain the process that his department is going to undergo in order to deal with the other 1,757 laws that are not included in this group. I think it will be very important if he is able to do that.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
I am very grateful to noble Lords for what has been a very thorough debate. Before getting into the meat of this, I thought I would just set the scene on why this legislation is important. I entirely agree with the point made by my noble friend Lord Inglewood, and also by somebody from the Benches opposite, about the need for good regulation. Business and the public respect proper, good regulation. They like it because it pushes out the bad actors; it focuses what the Government’s role is; and it gives that crucial word that my noble friend used, clarity, which is what we want to see.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, talked about the economics of these issues. She is absolutely right. The Dasgupta review, the first piece of work into biodiversity, commissioned by a finance department, the Treasury, is something I find quoted at me when I go all around the world, to COPs and other environmental events. It is an extraordinary piece of work, because it shows how nature and biodiversity underpin our economy. We cannot have social stability or economic growth if we do not have a sound environmental and biodiverse nature: that is my starting point.
I was a Minister when we were in the EU. I may have voted differently from my noble friend in the referendum, but I remember regulations coming from Brussels over which we had no say. They were rubber-stamped. Occasionally the European Scrutiny Committee would suggest that they might be debated, and we might have a debate, but by and large most of the regulations—
Lord Benyon (Con)
That would be the extension point. We will assess them on a case-by-case basis and apply the extension where we need to, because we want to get this right.
Lord Fox (LD)
That assessment process is part of what I was hoping the Minister could shed some light on. It is an awful lot of assessment, so could he let us know what proportion of his department’s resources are now focused on that process of assessment? Is it 10%, 1%, 30%, 40% or something else? How can he be sure that this assessment gets scrutiny at the right level, both politically and operationally, to make sure that the right decisions are being made?
Lord Benyon (Con)
There is a core team of Defra civil servants co-ordinating this but every policy area is involved, so it is impossible to say precisely how many full-time equivalents are being apportioned to this on a weekly or monthly basis or how many will be over the next six months. However, I assure the noble Lord that this is an absolute priority for my department. We have separated the different areas of REUL to suit Ministers’ areas of responsibility; we are working through them and making sure that we rigorously examine whether we have them in the right frameworks for retaining, removing or any other aspect of this process.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Lord Fox ExcerptsThursday 23rd February 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 89-I(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (22 Feb 2023)
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I wish to raise a point about Amendment 4. It relates to the interaction of this Bill with common frameworks. I believe—though I am open to correction—that EU regulation 1169/2011 is the foundation of a series of statutory instruments made by the United Kingdom Government, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, which all relate to what is called food labelling and compositional standards. That is one of the frameworks on the list of 32 which the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee has been scrutinising. My first question is: am I right that this regulation is part of this particular framework? If it is, it raises another question of great importance. What do the Government propose to do about legislation which is part of and built into a common framework?
The word “common” is used in the expression because these frameworks are common to the four Administrations that make up the United Kingdom. This is a method of creating an internal market which is a little more relaxed than that created by the internal market Act. The point is that all four Administrations consult each other about changes that may be needed and about the composition of the frameworks themselves.
I hope that the Minister will be able to say that the Government’s intention is simply to replace the regulation and the SIs that follow behind it so that they become part of assimilated law and lose their connection with EU law. I do not think that replacement would create problems, provided it is accurate. There is concern about Clause 15(3), which talks about alternative provision. If the proposal is to make alternative provision to any legislation which forms part of a common framework, to any extent or for whatever reason, it raises a question as to how it is to be done, while respecting the way in which the framework scheme operates. The essential part of the framework system is consultation between all four parties with a view to seeing whether there is a divergence, and, if there is, whether it can be accommodated by agreement between the parties? Where there is no divergence, one need do nothing about it—but it is all a matter of consultation.
I suppose my question is this: is it proposed to make any alternative provision in relation to this particular framework? If not, or if, as I said before, it is just a matter of replacing it, then I can see very little problem there. Any attempt to reform or make alternative provision raises a question of timing, which goes back to a point raised earlier today about whether the sunset is capable of being met. It is not just a matter of identifying the instruments and deciding what might be done about them; you have to have time to consult the devolved Administrations and secure their agreement. If there is disagreement, there needs to be time to go through a process for the resolution of disputes, which is built into the frameworks. It is a carefully designed system.
If the Government are proposing to maintain the common frameworks—I understood from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, quite some time ago that that is their intention, which I very much welcome—then it raises questions as to how exactly that process will be handled. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the points that she made, but this is a very specific issue. We will come back to the handling of common frameworks in later groups, but I raise it now because it is very much in point in relation to this specific regulation, which we will examine and see how this is going to be dealt with.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Brinton has done a fantastic job of explaining why these three amendments have been put forward. I was going to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for stealing his clothes, but I feel less guilty now—he was here just now but has popped out.
I welcome the Minister to her seat; I do not know what she has done to deserve this slot, but I see that the Lord Privy Seal is here to make sure that she turned up. I think that she was here earlier when the noble Lord, Lord Davies, brought up Amendment 45, which would explicitly exempt the financial services industry from the effects of the sunset. I would have thought that, at a time when the health service is under the stress that it is and is stretching every sinew to try to deal with the situation that it finds itself in, this would be a sector to qualify for exemption. I suggest to the Minister that she might like to go back to colleagues and accept an amendment to Amendment 45, which will no doubt come from somewhere, that exempts health service regulations from the sunset arrangement. As we have pointed out, it seems that the precedent has been set by the Government, so let us look at worthy causes for exemption. If the health service is not top of that list, I would like to know what is. That is my modest suggestion to help the Government out on that particular issue. It does not make sense to call into question the qualifications of the doctors we actually have when we are trying to get so many more. Perhaps that is a solution.
My noble friend, in speaking to Amendment 4, mentioned REACH and the UK version of chemicals regulation. I probably should not point it out, but the issue of the non-portability of data was brought up repeatedly by many of us on the Floor of your Lordships’ House and so it should not have come as a surprise. The fact that it is now costing substantially more to do what we were doing anyway also should not be a surprise. It is a lesson that perhaps has not been learned but could be learned.
Amendment 4 relates to EU-derived laws that ensure the safety and standards of food in the UK. Removing them would pose a serious threat to consumers and undermine protections that prevent loss of life, as my noble friend so clearly illustrated. That is why we have put this particular regulation in this group of amendments and suggested it should be exempted from the sunset.
On PPE, I think the performance of PPE speaks for itself.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, it is actually a great pleasure to join this debate on this important Bill. There are four of us on the Front Bench to listen to concerns expressed today—weighty Front-Benchers. I very much believe in the rights of this House and our work to review legislation, which I have done with many noble Lords over the last 10 years.
I will not repeat everything that my noble friend Lord Callanan has said. But I would say that the sunset was introduced to incentivise departments to think boldly and constructively about their regulations and to remove unnecessary regulatory burdens. We should not forget this, while, of course, maintaining necessary protections. That includes food safety, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, explained so clearly. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rightly pointed out that food moves across frontiers, which need to be taken into account, of course, in any review.
Of course, all protections will not disappear. That is not what we are debating. As the noble Baroness said, the Government are here to improve the law of the land and we need to avoid error.
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the Minister for giving way. She said that not all protections will fall away. Can she tell us which protections will fall away?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I said we would be maintaining the necessary protections. I was debating. People were saying that all protections would disappear; I wanted to make it clear that that was not the case. I am going to talk in a minute about the two or three areas raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fox.
The sunset clause, as we have said already, is not intended to restrict or influence decision-making. It will be for Ministers and devolved Governments to decide what action to take in their specific policy areas.
Even those of us who were remainers and who participated in discussions in the making of European regulations over many years were very frustrated by the bureaucracy and duplication of some regulations, and some of the compromises that we had to make were unwelcome. That was true for Governments over a long period; it was not only a matter of this Government’ concerns.
It is only right, in my view, that retained EU law is reviewed equally across all sectors of the economy and then, if necessary, reformed or preserved. To respond to one of the points made about carve-outs, we do not want to leave any area unreviewed. That includes financial services, but they are being reviewed in the context of another Bill that is going through the House at this time.
We think it is right to review all the areas, including health—
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
What I meant is that, when Bills are going through and noble Lords raise points, it is my experience, having done many Bills both as a civil servant and as a Minister, that these points are picked up and considered. Specific points were made, and I can certainly give an assurance that those points will be passed on to the departmental teams looking at the matters on food safety.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, coming in on that point—I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for starting the process—and bearing in mind that the number of regulations and laws we are discussing today with respect to Clause 1 is a very small percentage of the 4,700 that the Government have on their list, how does the Minister suggest we raise some of the others that we have not put before your Lordships’ House as amendments? I am happy to come up with some more amendments if that is the best way of doing it. If it is not the best way, perhaps a forum—we could call it “Parliament”—could discuss it.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Let me reflect further with the lead Minister on this matter and come back. The point that I was making is that the suggestion that nobody is listened to is not right. We are listening and we are concerned to make sure that necessary protections are extended. That is the intention.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, when I came into this debate, I did not anticipate saying anything, but I wear two hats—one as a farmer and one as a lawyer. I will not put my lawyer’s hat on. I would like to comment on the remarks, which were entirely to the point, of the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Hannay.
I have been actively involved, in one way or another, in agricultural businesses since the 1970s. I remember the damage, which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, described, to my livestock business—as an aside, it was subsequently destroyed in the hecatomb of foot and mouth. It goes to the bottom line of farmers’ businesses. As is well known, farmers are under the financial cosh because of all the changes being brought about on environmental payments and support systems, which are really hitting their incomes.
We are told by the Government that one of the desirable consequences of Brexit will be that British agriculture will be able to find markets elsewhere around the globe. In order to do that, there are two essentials. First, the other parties to these transactions must have long-term confidence in the quality and character of the product coming from this country. Secondly, they need to be sure that whatever rules are in place will remain, because these businesses depend on long-term supply agreements. The uncertainty hanging over the agricultural industry as a result of—if I may put it this way—clever-clever intellectual games by politicians and lawyers will damage their business. That is very unfair, not only for its own sake but because it will have a particular effect on those whose businesses are already being damaged by current government policies.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very long debate and I think there have been a lot of excellent speeches across the Committee. I was struck by the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, displaying his underlying humanity in expressing concern for the welfare of the Government Front Bench. I was also worried about which of them will receive the Defra buckets; I am hopeful that they will not receive the shovel of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, at the same time.
I shall speak to Amendment 25, which is in my name, and more generally on the issue of safety in the workplace, which is a subject we have yet to discuss today. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, talked about harm to business; this is about harm to people at work. My background for more than 30 years was in manufacturing industries, where the potential for harm to employees is very high and the role of employers and regulation in their supply chain is a very important part of making sure that nobody who goes to work comes home damaged that evening, because nobody should be harmed by the work they do.
Amendment 25 deals with asbestos and its safe handling. It would exclude the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 from the sunset clause. The regulations create the framework for the management of asbestos. These regulations form the framework for the management of asbestos, with provision ranging from building owners to those removing it or analysing samples which may contain asbestos fibres. Asbestos is a very serious issue in this country. Asbestos is the single greatest cause of work-related deaths in the UK. Asbestos-related diseases currently kill around 5,000 people a year in Great Britain. This is a really important regulation.
First, we should note that the British Occupational Hygiene Society, a leading scientific body in this field and the chartered society for worker health protection, has welcomed the findings of a review by the Health and Safety Executive of the current Control of Asbestos Regulations. The Health and Safety Executive’s review findings highlighted that the regulations were broadly effective and should be retained. In essence, they seem to do the job, although it of course suggested refinements to improve them. However, those bodies have raised the alarm—I am sure your Lordships will not be surprised—that these regulations get thrown into the mix by the Bill. What will happen at the end of this year? Will they be retained, modified or revoked? We need to understand the future of this really important piece of legislation.
Of course, other major regulations protecting health in the workplace are also in danger of falling off the statute book. In 2021-22, 123 workers were killed in work-related accidents, many others received life-changing accidents and many thousands died from work-related ill-health. Lots more needs to be done to ensure that working people, their families and their friends do not suffer the pain and bereavement that workplace accidents can cause.
Can the Government explain why they are proposing that these laws should be put in doubt? That is what this Bill does, in the same way that it does to all the other 4,700 regulations: it puts them into play. For any of these to be moved back, forgotten or revoked will push the country back decades; that is what the automatic expiry of these laws could create.
I am taking the Minister’s advice to make sure that we put on record the laws we are concerned about. I was not going to mention them, but I need to make sure that everybody knows we care about them because, as we know, this is the only forum we may get to talk about them. I shall talk about the so-called “six pack” of laws that forms the core of the country’s workplace safety regime—it was mentioned en passant by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, when he spoke to the first group. For reference, the “six pack” are: the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, the Manual Handling Operations Regulations, the display screen equipment regulations, the Workplace (Health, Safety, and Welfare) Regulations, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations and the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations. All of them form the centrepiece of how businesses are regulated on safety.
The best businesses operate above the law; that is how you improve safety. From my own experience of working within these businesses, I know that safety awareness goes beyond these regulations. But this is a minimum standard: it is, almost literally, a safety net, and it has to be retained. There are no grounds for calling into question these laws going forward. As the British Occupational Hygiene Society chief executive, Kevin Bampton, puts it:
“Asbestos, noise, radiation, gas safety and indeed the whole mechanism for management of health in the workplace are listed as retained EU law to be repealed, restated or amended. Most of these standards have been pioneered in the UK. The UK fought the European Commission over decades to retain its unique and effective approach to Health and Safety Management and the REUL Bill is likely to throw this all away”.
That is why I proposed this amendment and why I want to bring workers’ safety to the fore.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I am afraid that I will have to write to the noble Baroness on that; we do not have an answer at this stage. The consultation is a new initiative and will be launched soon.
Amendment 25 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, relates to the control of asbestos regulations. The noble Lord has provided a good example of an area where we regained the ability to regulate autonomously upon leaving the EU. Both the post-implementation review 2022 and the Work and Pensions Select Committee evidence suggest that further clarity around the categorisation of asbestos works, particularly regarding non-notifiable licenced work, would be beneficial, and the Health and Safety Executive has committed to considering how this could be developed further. HSE will undertake research and engage with stakeholders to consider an evidence base for the introduction of mandatory accreditation for asbestos surveyors. If this is taken forward, it will be as a result of a change to the CAR. Indeed—
Lord Fox (LD)
How does the Bill make that happen, when Clause 15 does not allow an increase in regulatory burden? The Bill does not facilitate what was just stated at the Dispatch Box: it cannot happen as a result of the Bill; indeed, the Bill stops it from happening.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I did not suggest that it was happening as a result of the Bill; it is happening anyway, and that will inform our decisions on further regulations.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I am afraid that the Government’s position is that we simply do not accept that interpretation of the totality. Of the 4,000 pieces of retained EU law, we will be repealing a number of things. We are talking about not increasing the totality of the regulatory burden because some of that will be falling away and may just simply not be appropriate, not just on asbestos but on many other fronts as well.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I think that we have just introduced a whole other confusion. Clause 15 talks about not increasing the regulatory burden. Is the Minister now proposing that it is the total across all 4,700, which is what she just said? She has an opportunity to correct that and explain what not increasing the regulatory burden really means.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I think the best thing I can do is commit to giving the noble Lord a definition of “regulatory burden” in writing in due course.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. Of course it would make all our lives easier, and they will be published in due course. I am not going to go further than that.
Lord Fox (LD)
This is new information. I have yet to hear from the Dispatch Box that this list will be published. I am delighted, but it would be very helpful if the noble Baroness could tell us when the list will be published.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
As the noble Lord will appreciate, it will be published when the work is complete. The work is ongoing within all departments—the noble Baroness looks shocked.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
It is good to hear that the dashboard is nearly finished; it has been interesting watching it emerge. Your Lordships will be glad to hear that I have read every single environmental provision in the original documentation that is on that list.
I wonder if the Minister could tell us about what happens when the buckets are published—not the list but the buckets we are sorting into. I do not know if your Lordships have ever watched that telly programme, “Snog Marry Avoid?”—that shows how intellectual I am on a Friday night—but I kind of typify the buckets like that. The “avoid” one is for the ones that we are going to get rid of because nobody really wants them; the “marry” one is for the ones that we all think are wonderful and we are going to just give a straight run through; and the “snog” one is for the ones that we have to spend a bit of time on to find out whether they are really up to it or not. The quicker we can get the buckets published, the better. Will the buckets come out early enough for this Parliament to play a proper role in coming to some conclusions and helping the Government decide whether they have everything in the right bucket? There might be a little desirable treasure tucked away at the bottom of one of the wrong buckets that we all cherish.
Lord Fox (LD)
I am sorry to keep labouring this point, but the Minister keeps introducing new information. In referring to the dashboard, the Minister implied that the dashboard is the list. Nowhere in this legislation is the dashboard referred to. What is the legal status of the dashboard with respect to the sunset?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The dashboard has all the retained EU law which is subject to the provisions of the Bill; it is a working document.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
I cannot resist, I am afraid, intervening on this. I was in a Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee meeting this week when it was indicated that the dashboard was just a tool and, as far as I understood it, did not have a legal status. While I am on my feet, can I ask where and in which bucket the legislation passed by the devolved Administrations is—which are, I believe, at a very much earlier stage in identifying the numbers for the dashboard?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The dashboard is ongoing work. It does not put things into buckets, but just includes all the EU laws that are subject to review. That will be published but it will certainly not have the buckets that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is asking for.
Lord Fox (LD)
There is an outstanding point here. How is the dashboard connected to the Bill? There is no legal connection between the two, so how will the Government connect them? Currently, there is nothing that joins the dashboard to this law.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I do not accept the noble Lord’s point. The dashboard is just a list of retained EU law that will be subject to the provisions of the Bill but will not be part of the Bill.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Not in terms of regulatory review, but those decisions will be taken within departments, and they will be sunsetted.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it seems that we will know at about one minute to midnight on 31 December, because it will not have been retained or amended; it will simply be revoked.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
With respect, it will be updated.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
To conclude, I feel that a rather large number of amendments from today will return in some form on Report, with possibly thousands more, as my noble friend Lord Fox outlined—
Baroness Brinton (LD)
Even if it is 1,000 fewer, a large number will return. On that basis, I withdraw Amendment 6.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Lord Fox ExcerptsThursday 23rd February 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 89-I(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (22 Feb 2023)
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for letting me in. Does he not accept, though, that, when this Bill was printed with the sunset clauses in it, that was the only point at which all this legislation started to appear? They had done nothing up until that time to actually dig it out.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it seems the debate has started quite strongly already, as I think we expected. I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for her intervention, which I think puts in context quite a lot of what we will hear today. This group of amendments is part of a series, as the noble Baroness will have seen, that highlight how this is not a tidying-up exercise, as it was characterised by Rees-Mogg, and is not about reindeer-related legislation. It is about a fundamental set of changes that could affect almost everybody, potentially seriously detrimentally.
Each of these groups sets out different areas of concern; that is the point of what we are doing here today. Together, they indicate the breadth and the importance of the legislation that is being cast into doubt by this Bill. It is all very well the noble Lord, Lord Frost, saying, “Trust us”—we do not, and we will not until all these laws are ruled in, because until they are ruled in, they may very well be ruled out or amended. That is our purpose here today: to use specific examples to explain that this is real, and affects real people and real lives. That is what we are here to do.
I rise to move Amendment 23, which is in my name, and to support Amendment 1, which is also in my name and the names of my noble friend Lady Burt and the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley. I also support Amendment 40, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Collins. This set of amendments concerns employee rights; Amendments 1 and 23 deliberately focus on one of the suite of employee rights that could be swept away by the effects of the Bill. These rights could be lost as a result of the deliberate actions of the Government, bent on winding back the national clock, or they could happen as a result of accidental changes that are not picked up—legislative commission, or legislative omission. In either case, Parliament is all but bypassed in the process.
Amendment 1, as we have heard set out thoroughly by almost all the people speaking today, on parental leave, is really vital to the lives of so many people, and an important enabler to working families. It is so vital that we do not think it should be risked in the potential pitfalls that this legislation sets out. That is why we propose to exempt it from the sunset, to make sure that UK working families get the opportunities they so need with their children at the start of life.
Turning to Amendment 23, which I know no one has yet spoken about, that looks at a different but equally important employee right: the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, known as TUPE. I am sure that noble Lords are more than familiar with this; I certainly am from my business life, and I am sure that many noble Lords are from their different experiences. To be clear, it means that when one business buys another business, there is a reasonable certainty as to which workers transfer to the new business, so that the purchaser knows what employees they are getting and what they will cost, and workers know that they cannot just be dismissed because of the transfer. This is about fairness and peace of mind, and ensuring that employees caught in an outsourcing, for example, are not driven out of work as costs are slashed.
We saw with P&O Ferries that this law has serious limitations, but it is better than nothing and we need it to endure through this process. This is also business-friendly, because it allows businesses planning that are acquisitions to know what they will be buying. Similarly, businesses that are pitching for outsourced work now, to be carried out next year, need to know what rules they will have when that work starts. So this amendment gives both workers and businesses certainty.
On Wednesday 1 February, in answer to a question regarding employee rights from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said that
“our workers’ rights, of which we are very proud, do not and did not depend on our membership of the EU … let me repeat: UK standards did not depend on EU law”.—[Official Report, 1/2/23; cols. 658-59.]
That spirit has been reflected by speakers opposite, but, as evidenced by these two specific regulations—real regulations that exist now—the Minister was not correct. It is very clear that, as the Minister indicated, there are UK-derived laws, but these work in tandem with, and are interwoven with, laws that were imported into the UK from the EU. These work together to deliver the suite of workers’ rights that we have today.
Parental leave and TUPE are not the only important worker protections that are in danger; they are illustrative of a whole raft of legislation that is up for grabs. For example, I would emphasise the right of NHS workers, who have worked through the pandemic, to be able to carry over annual leave that they have been unable to take; maximum hours, not just for office workers but for safety-critical workers such as airline workers, deep-sea fishermen and HGV drivers; and the obligation on employers to make an assessment of health and safety risks to their workers and to keep such risk assessments up to date—I think the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, referred to that. In the second group of amendments, we will also reflect on part-time work and agency workers, which is another important area.
There are a number of other laws that are set out by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, in Amendment 40. However, I am aware that this is not an exhaustive list, so can the Minister confirm that the Government now know all the laws that will be in scope of Clause 1? How many concern, first, employment rights and, secondly, workplace health and safety? We would be very pleased to know the numbers there.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, set out, many of these laws impact women more than they do men. The Bill’s equality impact assessment confirms that the Government’s commitment to upholding high standards in equalities does not expressly acknowledge the potential disparate impact of revoking these regulations. As we know, unless the Government positively act to save a regulation, it will be abolished at the end of 2023—although the Government can decide to extend that into 2026; that is a voluntary act.
In his answer to the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, earlier this month, the Minister also said:
“Regarding the regulations the noble Lord mentions, as with all retained EU law we will look at that and see whether it is appropriate for the UK economy, and if necessary we will modernise, update or replace it”.—[Official Report, 1/2/23; col. 658.]
Well, these are amendments about specifics. Will the Government be retaining these specific laws as they are or do they find it necessary to modernise, update or replace them? We would like specific answers on these specific laws.
I fear there is a further complication, which I would like to probe in this amendment—and here I thank the Employment Lawyers Association for some very detailed help. There is a third factor, and that is case law. On the face of it, the least disruptive course that the Government could choose is to take current law and assimilate it directly into UK law—essentially making no fundamental changes but perhaps tweaking some of the language. Surprisingly, that does not finish the uncertainty. That is because the Bill does not just turn off regulations; it turns off EU law that the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 kept in British law. Examples of the law that would be turned off are wide-ranging. The Bill also turns off the direct effect of many parts of EU law that the courts use to interpret regulations in domestic law, and this is what I wish to interrogate.
The turning off of this type of EU law is amplified by the Bill abolishing the principle of the supremacy of EU law in Clause 4, together with the general principles of EU law in Clause 5. The new Bill sets a new default that removes three principles from British law at the end of 2023. The Bill will erase the interpretive principles and settled decisions that courts have relied on to give settled and predictable meaning to hundreds of employment law rights and obligations that are derived from EU law. To be clear, the three principles are these: the direct effect, supremacy of EU law and the general principles of EU law.
Abolishing the direct effect removes rights such as a facet of equal pay law which is being used by tens of thousands of women to claim equality with better-paid men. This is because equal pay rights in the Equality Act 2010 do not go as far as the current case law, as since 1976 the Act has been supplemented by EU law. Abolishing the direct effect sets a default to abolish rights such as the right to normal pay during holiday—enjoyed by millions of workers—or the ability to carry over holiday, and with it holiday pay, from one year to another when sick. It sets a default to remove from UK law the legal reasoning that has helped extend anti-discrimination law and other protections to atypical and gig workers.
Abolishing the principle of supremacy, together with abolishing the general principles of law and the removal of the direct effect, means that the settled meaning of not only EU regulations but primary Acts of the UK Parliament, such as the Equality Act 2010, will not be the same after 2023. The Bill affects primary Acts of Parliament as they may be interpreted in the future. An employment dispute centred on the meaning of a legal right in December 2023 may have a completely different outcome from one that arises in January 2024. In other words, all the existing case law can fall away and new case law has to be built up from scratch. That will create huge legal uncertainty and a bulge of cases in the country’s courts.
These regulations, and ones like them, are used every day by workers and employers in courts and tribunals. Lawyers are asked to advise on them and use the certainty of past decisions to be able to give answers to clients that allow them to conduct their business and resolve their disputes in a settled, stable and well-understood framework of law. This reduces disputes and litigation. The settled and predictable meaning of a considerable body of employment law will be wiped away, creating unpredictability. It will be up to the courts to decide whether case law carries over or whether it changes. Legal uncertainty will undermine any plan that the Government might have for growth, as neither employers nor employees will have any clarity on the meaning of large parts of employment law that affect investment and the cost of labour. I ask the Minister to give us a very detailed response to this because it is one of the most important elements and has so far not been debated very much by the general public.
As I have said, these amendments are the first in a series that illustrate how everyday lives will be affected. They also bring into stark relief the risks inherent in this Bill of disturbing settled understandings of the law, turning legal certainty, clarity and predictability on their heads. Will the Minister please give the Committee a detailed response to this amendment, particularly setting out the view of government lawyers on the implications of removing direct effect, the supremacy of EU law and the general principles of EU law?
I repeat my question. Will the Government be retaining the specific laws set out in these amendments—parental leave and TUPE—or do they believe that there is a necessity, in the Minister’s words, to modernise, update or replace?
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
Does the noble Lord agree that it took trade unions years, representing cases, to win a definition of normal pay that included, when workers were normally working and were required to work overtime, that overtime? That money matters to thousands of workers, but if this Bill passes, all that case law, and all those years of hard work to win workers justice, will be swept away and we will have to start from scratch, as the noble Lord said. I hope he agrees that that would have a catastrophic impact on working families who are already struggling to manage.
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. To be brutally honest, it was her I was thinking of when I made that reference, because I know how hard she worked on that issue in her former life. Of course I agree, and that is why we bring it up. This is not about reindeer farming; this is about people’s lives.
Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)
I support the wise and well-expressed advice and views of my noble friend Lady Meacher. I was not going to speak but I am deeply disturbed by this legislation.
I said at Second Reading that I thought that this was bad government. I repeat that. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, is right: we need to know what EU-derived laws the Government propose to keep, amend or abolish. But this is not the way to do it. The Government should do the work first. This is lazy government and it is very improper.
It is 50 years since I first sat in the Box as a Private Secretary to a noble Lord, and I have been here for many Bills and attended many sessions in this House. I have never heard this kind of debate or seen this kind of Bill. It is shameful that the Government have not done the work. The right thing to do is for the Government to withdraw the Bill, go away and do the work, and decide what they want to keep, what they want to amend and what they want to abolish, and then tell Parliament so that it can debate and scrutinise what the Government want to do—and it can be a proper process with consultation. That will take longer, but the Government are taking on a very big job with huge complexity and scale. What you do not do is take sweeping powers which largely ignore Parliament, with the Government simply saying what they want the law to be.
I find great irony in the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that we never were consulted before. The Government, having complained about the EU being tyrannical and dictating our laws, want to substitute the Government having the same tyranny themselves. I do not think that works. Brexit was based on the return of sovereignty to Parliament. Do the Government still believe that? If so, will they act on it in relation to this Bill?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, I thank everybody who has contributed. I suppose we had to have the debate in principle at some stage, and we have had it on Clause 1. I will attempt to provide some reassurance to noble Lords. I suspect that those who think that somehow the Government have malign intentions will not be convinced, but let me try my arguments anyway.
As my noble friend Lord Frost made clear, this is of course an enabling Bill. The measures in it, including the sunset, will provide for UK and devolved Ministers to make decisions to review, amend or repeal retained EU law as they see fit. I agree with my noble friend Lord Frost’s point. I understand that the Opposition will want to portray all EU law as perfect and ideally suited for the UK’s circumstances, but most of my time in the European Parliament was spent during the period of the last Labour Government. There were numerous occasions when UK Ministers, and civil servant at the behest of UK Ministers, came to give me examples of where the regulations were not suited to the UK and not in the UK’s interests. Many times, as a Conservative, I agreed with them, and we did our best to change or amend them. Often, we were not successful. This legislation gives us the opportunity—
Lord Callanan (Con)
I will let the noble Lord come back in a moment, but let me make a little progress—I might answer some of his points, you never know.
Let us not pretend that it is all perfect. I accept that the Opposition have a principled difference with us on how we go about this process, but at least let us have the debate and, I hope, make some progress. The sunset is not intended to restrict decision-making; rather, it will accelerate the review of retained EU law across all sectors, as my noble friend Lord Hamilton made clear. The Bill will allow for additional flexibility and discretion to make decisions in the best interests of this country.
I start with Amendment 1, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I take this opportunity, as I have done many times in this Chamber before, to reassure him and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and the Committee, that the repeal of maternity rights is not and never has been the UK Government’s policy. As I have said many times before, our higher standards in this area were never dependent on our membership of the European Union. Indeed, the UK provides stronger protection for workers than is required by EU law. I have made this point many times, and the opposition parties do not seem to want to accept it.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I am going to make this point and then I will allow the noble Lord to intervene.
Our high standards were never dependent on our membership of the European Union. We provide stronger protection for workers than is required by EU law, both under previous Governments and under this Government. Let me give the Committee some examples. We have one of the highest minimum wages in Europe. On 1 April this year, the Government will increase the national living wage by 9.7% to £10.42—higher than most other European countries. UK workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of annual leave, compared with the EU requirement of four weeks. We provide a year of maternity leave, with the option to convert to shared parental leave to enable parents to share care, whereas EU maternity leave is just 14 weeks. The right to request flexible working for all employees was introduced in the UK in the early 2000s; the EU agreed rules only recently and will offer the right to parents and carers only. The UK introduced two weeks of paid paternity leave in 2003; the EU has legislated for this only recently. Let there be no doubt about the commitment of this Government to enhancing and providing for workers’ rights.
Lord Fox (LD)
I am afraid I can wait no longer. I am somewhat surprised that I still do not really understand what the Minister is saying. We did not put on the dashboard the regulations and laws set out so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and by my noble friend and others; the Government put them on the dashboard. If the Minister is saying that these do not affect British employment regulations, how can that be true? It is simply not true. What the Minister is saying is wrong. They are on the dashboard and they will sunset if nothing is done. They affect day-to-day employee rights, and therefore the Bill potentially affects those employee rights because these regulations are on the Government’s dashboard.
Lord Callanan (Con)
They are on the dashboard if they are retained EU law. I noticed that, in all the statements and speeches from Members opposite, the words “if” and “could” were doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. I accept that there is no trust from the Opposition in the intentions of the Government and that they want to make their political attacks. The reason I outlined UK employment rights and standards was to demonstrate the commitment of this Government to those rights. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, made earlier is essentially correct: while we have some very high standards, of which we are proud and will maintain, there is a complicated mishmash of laws in this area between some elements of EU and domestic law.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thought I had given the noble Baroness a serious response. Within the area of devolved competence, the devolved Administrations have the same rights as the UK Government to amend, repeal or replace retained EU law.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I am assuming the Minister has now sat down. He touched on the interpretive effects that I raised in the set of amendments, but I do not think the answer was as full as we need. I think there will be other opportunities for the Minister to come back, and I will certainly press them. In the end, my assumption is that it will be up to the courts to decide which cases are in and which are out; it will be up to the courts and the lawyers who are pressing the courts to reinterpret or allow interpretations to continue. We need to know from the Government what is their assessment of the effect of that on this body of law and others across the spectrum we are discussing.
All Governments have to make choices, and the day-to-day push and pull of government can throw up many difficult dilemmas and severely stretch the national bandwidth for decision-making, but with this Bill, the Government are giving themselves 4,000 more choices they did not need to make. In opting to make these choices alone, without debate, discussion or consensus, each of these choices is bound to become a battleground, and each will be down to a Secretary of State—decisions that will call down attention from every corner of civil, legal, commercial and social society. So good luck with that, Minister.
The first amendment in the group illustrates some of the places where these battles will be fought across the country. No matter how close to their chest the Government play this, the arguments will not go away; indeed, the more secrecy and circumspection, the more suspicion will rise. The right reverend Prelate spoke about using the specifics to test the general, and this was an opportunity for the Minister to be more specific so that we could judge the general better. I do not think he has yet achieved that; however, we have six groups in very much in the same vein, so perhaps the Minister can work on his performance. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 1.
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment excludes the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 and the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 from the sunset in Clause 1. These Regulations give part-time workers the right not to be treated less favourably than a comparable full-time worker and fixed-term workers the right to be treated no less favourably than a comparable permanent employee.
Lord Fox (LD)
I move Amendment 2 in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
We talked about some important employment law specifics in the first group, and we have some more in this one. The TUC, unions and employment lawyers have told us that they are particularly concerned about vulnerable workers, who would be hard hit by the potential removal of protections that the Bill can deliver, because a number of important rights originated in EU legislation—I come back to the point of contention between us and the Minister. That is why we have chosen to highlight the importance of the protection of part-time and fixed-term workers in this amendment.
The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 gave part-time workers the right not to be treated less favourably than a comparable full-time worker with regard to the terms of their contract. Part-time employees should benefit from the same terms and conditions as full-time employees unless the employer can justify that different treatment.
Likewise, the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 established protection for fixed-term workers, giving them the right to be treated no less favourably than a comparable permanent employee, unless, again, the employer can justify a different treatment. The employee can insist that the fixed-term contract be converted into a permanent one in certain circumstances, and they are entitled to be informed of certain permanent vacancies.
Any or all of these rights could be lost under the Bill, with women being particularly likely to be impacted. Some 8.2 million part-time workers in the UK fall into the most at-risk category. Some 72% of part-time UK workers are women, whereas only 40% of full-time UK workers are women. Some 750,000 workers are on fixed-term contracts, of which 56% are women. They would face an uncertain future without protection from the EU-derived Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002. The provisions of the Bill could see part-time and fixed-term workers treated differently from their peers in areas such as pay, holiday entitlement, pensions, and training and career development.
Not covered by this amendment, but equally vulnerable, are agency workers, of whom there are nearly 750,000 in the UK. Of these, nearly one-third work part-time, with 28,000 on fixed-term contracts, so they also have protection from part-time and fixed-term contract regulations derived from the EU. They also have the Agency Workers Regulations 2010, which could be lost at the end of this year. These provide agency workers with a right to the same basic working and employment conditions as direct employees.
As was said at Second Reading, the outlook is particularly bleak for creative workers in particular. The Government seem to have a poor understanding of what is meant by the creative sector and what the impact would be. In the impact assessment for the Bill, the definition on the dashboard states that 177,000 businesses and 658,000 jobs will be impacted. However, the DCMS definition of “creative industries” accounts for 300,000 businesses and 2.2 million jobs. Which is the correct figure? If the Government cannot work this out, how can we trust them on any aspect of the Bill or how the legislation will affect these people? Where is the audit of exactly which body of employment law is retained EU law and subject to the Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, seems to think that the figure is zero. If so, what are these regulations doing on the dashboard?
As Creative UK says, the creative industries are characterised by small and
“micro businesses and freelancers undertaking project-based work”.
Although proposed changes to workers’ rights will affect all sectors, the make-up of the creative industries means that the impact of any change on the protection of part-time and fixed-term workers is particularly important for freelance workers in the creative industries.
Of course, it is not just these regulations that are at risk as a result of the Bill: all the precedents and EU case law and principles, such as effectiveness and proportionality, by which these rights have been interpreted, will be swept away, as I outlined in the first group. The Employment Lawyers Association says:
“Abolishing the principle of supremacy, together with abolishing the general principles of EU law and the removal of direct effect means that the settled meaning not only of EU Regulations but also any primary Acts of Parliament (such as, for instance, the Equality Act 2010) will not be the same after 2023.”
I do not apologise for repeating that, because it is extremely important and apposite to our discussions. This will create a legal vacuum and huge uncertainty, not just for employees but for employers. Thousands of SMEs, many without dedicated HR resource, will potentially have to grapple with new laws or new interpretations of existing regulations. Given the sweeping away of European precedent, already overburdened tribunals will be asked to rule afresh on any regulation that is retained, at great expense to employees and employers alike. This is a waste of money and time and a huge opportunity cost. No wonder employers are overwhelmingly in support of keeping the existing regulations and the supporting case law as they are.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My noble friend asks what she can say to women. She can tell them that they have one of the highest minimum wages in Europe as a result of the policies of this Government, that they are entitled to 5.6 weeks of annual leave compared with an EU requirement of four weeks, and that they are entitled to a year of maternity leave in the UK whereas the EU minimum is only 14 weeks—that is what she can say to women workers.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I believe I owe the Committee an apology. In withdrawing my previous amendment I said there were 4,000 unnecessary decisions facing the Government. I am afraid I was wrong. I have listened to the Minister and I understand now that it is 4,700 unnecessary decisions, on which the Government will be using important legislative and administrative bandwidth. I believe there are better things to be doing than this process, and perhaps in one of his other comments the Minister can explain why all this time is being wasted if, as he says, nothing will change—and that is our point.
When it comes to the question of interpretative effects, it is strike two. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and indeed the Minister himself, set out this intermingling of UK-derived, EU-derived and case law, and the fact that if we start pulling one piece of string there is a very great chance of it unravelling. The Minister has acknowledged there are interpretative effects, but we need a more detailed assessment of how the Government expect those to pan out as the courts get their teeth into the post-2023 situation. When I ask this in the next group, it might be better if the Minister undertakes to write a very detailed letter—possibly assisted by the department’s lawyers—that explains the legal view on how this is going to work. That is perhaps a way of avoiding me asking the question another few times.
At the end of the previous group, there was a very interesting intervention from the Minister’s own Benches on Clause 15(5), and how changes to the wording of that clause could begin to draw the sting of some of the arguments that we have heard so far and will hear later. The Minister might take to heart the advice that came from his own Benches.
We heard in the debate about the disproportionate effect that the stifling of this legislation could have on women, minorities, the creative industries and a wide group of people. That is why it was important to have this amendment in a separate group. However, given the nature of the debate, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.
Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill
Lord Fox ExcerptsTuesday 21st February 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 View all Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 30 January 2023 - (30 Jan 2023)
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. There is an old maxim that applies here and now: everything has been said, but not everyone has said it—and now it is my turn to say it.
This has been an interesting Second Reading— I really mean that—and I have enjoyed your Lordships’ contributions, particularly that of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. I am sure she is going to be a strident voice on local government, and we welcome that voice. Even if we do not always agree with what it says, it is representing a sector that has been underrepresented in your Lordships’ House, so I say to the noble Baroness: welcome.
As we have heard, the Bill imposes obligations on trade unions and individuals to comply with minimum service levels, enabling employers within specific services to issue work notices to roster the workforce required to secure those minimum service levels on a strike day. At its heart, the Bill seeks to grant broad powers to Ministers to limit strike action, and to introduce sweeping Henry VIII powers to amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation through regulation. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, so eloquently explained, this is another attempt at shifting power from Parliament to Ministers.
My noble friends Lord Allan, Lord Strasburger and Lady Randerson, along with many of your Lordships, explained that, in reality, the Bill is another attempt by the Conservatives to distract from their appalling mismanagement of the economy and their failure to avert public sector strikes in the first place. This is a political Bill. It has nothing to do with the practical needs of industrial relations or the real-life delivery of services. It was designed to protect the Government from a strike backlash, and it has failed to do that. The government spokespeople do not even mention the Bill anymore, because they know that it does not work; it has failed. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, that this Bill was not in the Conservative Party manifesto. One that dealt specifically with rail services and trains was in the manifesto, but this Bill is a bigger and different animal from that Bill altogether.
But more deeply, this Bill fails to get under the skin of the real crises in public services, and we have heard that from many of your Lordships. These crises should be seen in the context of the relentless effect of the past few years on employee morale, mental health and well-being.
Further, this Bill is an admission that the Government do not understand how the lives and livelihoods of our valued public sector workers have been eroded over time. It fails to grasp the recruitment crisis across the public sector. Far from making it more attractive to work in these services, this Bill is a huge disincentive to possible new recruits.
Looking beyond this huge array of failures, I will now talk about the concept of minimum service levels. As we have heard from many of your Lordships, the notion of a minimum service level is one that should start from the day-to-day level of service we get when there are no strikes at all. Are the tens of thousands of people waiting weeks to see their GP getting a minimum service level? Are the people right across Britain waiting sometimes tens of hours for ambulances getting a minimum service level? Are the people trying to travel by train from Manchester to Leeds experiencing a minimum service level?
This is the baseline from which this legislation is working. In health, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Allan and many others, minimum service levels will not cut waiting lists or help solve staff shortages in the NHS. There will still be huge overcrowding and delays and terrible problems for people who are facing an emergency.
On the railways, even the Government’s Transport Secretary—I forget which one—has said that this legislation will make no difference to the current strikes. As we have heard time and again, the best way to avoid disruption of this kind and to prevent strikes in the first place is to get around the table and have meaningful, trusted talks with staff and their employers.
Judging by this evening’s news, it seems that there may be the beginning of a damascene conversion coming for the Government, but it is late. You solve strikes only by people sitting down and discussing them. That is how strikes end. They always end with an agreement and that is what the Government should have been seeking from day one.
Then, there is a central concern around the erosion of the rights of the individual, something we on these Benches hold very dear. This Bill shifts the responsibility for delivering a minimum service level on to the individual worker. We believe that this is fundamentally wrong. In setting out their minimum service levels the Government are shirking their duty of care and shifting the onus of service delivery squarely on to named individuals. It is not the Minister, the bosses, or even the union leaders who will be sacked in the morning if the Government’s standards are not met; it is those individual workers.
To be clear, the Bill removes protection from workers who are currently allowed to strike without losing their jobs. As we have heard from the Minister very clearly, there is no automatic protection from unfair dismissal for an employee who is identified in a valid work notice but participates in a strike contrary to that work notice. Quite simply, an employee identified in a valid work notice for a strike day who takes strike action that day and fails to comply with the work notice can be sacked. I am pretty sure that is not what the ILO had in mind.
Moving on, the Bill does not contain any detail about what the minimum service levels will be; however, some consultations have begun to appear and are now out for scrutiny. That is helpful, although the latest arrived only about an hour before we convened in this room.
My noble friend Lord Allan spoke about the ambulance service consultation. I will not repeat what he said, except to say that we do not have a national ambulance service, so how do the Government plan to implement a national minimum service level without doing what they are already doing, which is having local discussions with local service deliverers?
Then, there is the fire and rescue minimum service level consultation document. The consultation notes for this document offer an interesting confirmation of the importance of collective bargaining. It cites Portugal, France, Spain and Italy and makes it clear, as we have heard from many noble Lords, that in each of these cases the minimum service levels on offer in these countries are the result of collective agreement between employers and unions. We thank the Minister and the Government for confirming the essential difference between this legislation and the situation in other countries—a difference which effectively undermines the approach of this Bill completely.
However, I really want to bring one element of this fire service document to your Lordships’ attention; it was alluded to en passant by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh. In the foreword to the consultation, the Home Secretary raises the horror of the Grenfell Tower tragedy while, at the same time, calling for minimum service levels during strikes. Page 11 of the online consultation then adds to this by raising the Manchester Arena disaster. I remind your Lordships that this is a minimum service level consultation document.
Whatever failings existed around those two tragedies, they would not in any way have been altered or met through a minimum service level agreement on striking. It is entirely inappropriate, and a dreadful piece of political opportunism, that these two issues have been conflated. I believe that it is beneath the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, whom I respect; I mean that, I really do. I ask him both to use his response to distance himself from that approach and to go back to his department and seek to remove those passages from the consultation document.
To close, the Bill is taking powers from individuals and giving them to Ministers. Individuals could be fired by ministerial edict if they refuse to work when they have been given a work notice during a strike. Meanwhile, the Bill hands powers to Ministers at the expense of Parliament. It remains unclear what the specific provisions for minimum service levels will be and how they will relate to day-to-day service levels that are widely falling short of need and expectation. Several speakers have talked about balancing rights and responsibilities. If there is to be any such balancing activity it should be Parliament that does the weighing, not Ministers or Secretaries of State.
For those reasons, when the Bill Committee convenes, it needs to address at least a number of issues. We should aim to remove the Henry VIII powers; ensure that minimum service regulations are made only after consultation and negotiation with social partners, and then properly approved by Parliament; conduct realistic impact assessments on the Bill before it comes into operation; and remove the onus on individuals to carry the can for delivering minimum service levels. We on these Benches promise the Minister a high service level when it comes to that Committee’s work. We will do our best to help him take out the invidious elements of the Bill, which, frankly, make up most of it.