Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I think it is appropriate that I speak to Motion B1 in my name, on the issue of parliamentary scrutiny. That issue remains as important this afternoon as it has been since the Bill first arrived in this House and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, addressed us, with his usual skill, as to the importance of the issue. I have been doing my best to secure its place in the Bill at every stage, but each attempt has been rejected, either as novel and untested, which happened twice, or as incompatible with the system that the Bill lays down, on the last occasion. I regret very much that I have not been able to devise any other way of achieving that object that would be acceptable to the Government.

However, I did find two words, buried in a long and rather complicated paragraph in Schedule 5, which I think may at least open the door to something which is worth looking at more carefully, and that is the subject of my amendment. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for being prepared to speak to me so that I could explain the purpose of my amendment and ask him whether he would be prepared to make a statement, in effect, giving me, in his words, what I was asking for in my amendment: words of explanation about these two words and reassurance about how the Government propose to respect the need for Parliament to be kept properly informed and consulted at each stage as the process of revocation proceeds.

The two words I am talking about, by way of explanation, are to be found in paragraph 6 of Schedule 5, which sets out an elaborate screening process in a case where a Minister is of the view that these statutory instruments should be subject to the negative procedure. The protection lies in the hands of screening committees of both Houses, which can take the view that the instrument should be subject to the affirmative procedure. If that is done, the Minister has the opportunity to give an explanation and perhaps try to persuade the committees to change their mind.

The important point for my purposes is to be found in sub-paragraph (12) and the words:

“Nothing in this paragraph prevents a Minister of the Crown from deciding at any time before a statutory instrument containing regulations under section 11, 12 or 14 is made that another procedure should apply in relation to the instrument”.


It is the words “another procedure” that caught my attention, because there is no further explanation in the schedule as to what that other procedure might be, except that in the following sub-paragraph there is a declaration that the statutory procedure for laying regulations in draft under the 1946 Act is not to apply, so we cannot have the statutory procedure of the 40-day period; that has been ruled out. My question to the Minister is: what is this other procedure that is available? The Minister has been very good in explaining in considerable detail what he builds into these words. In effect, he is providing me with exactly what my amendment is asking for. I welcome very much the clarity of his statement and we will of course bear it very closely in mind as the process proceeds.

My concern has always been that we are moving into the unknown. We have been told many times that the dashboard contains information. The dashboard sets out a list of names of the instruments, but it does not tell us, at least at the moment, what is to be done with them. That is the importance of the statement that the Minister has made today, because we need to be told, as everything proceeds, what is going on and what is planned and be able to express our views as to whether the proposals are acceptable or sensible or otherwise. I thank the Minister for his statement and I also express my warm thanks to all noble Lords who have supported me throughout my campaign and enabled me to maintain my campaign to the point I have reached today, but in the light of what the Minister has very kindly said, I am not intending to press my amendment.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, for their persistence on these issues that they have brought before the House. I hear with a little disappointment that the noble and learned Lord does not intend to press further with his amendment in its current form. From their efforts, it is absolutely clear that this House strongly holds that, if the Bill is to become law, it must contain proper parliamentary scrutiny over the treatment of all EU legislation, whether that treatment is to revoke, amend or approve it. There are in the region of 4,000 regulations that need to be considered.

I remind the House of the Divisions that have resulted from these efforts. There have been three Divisions on Report and two more in our jousts with the Commons during so-called ping-pong. On each occasion, we have replied not to the Government as a whole or to the House of Commons as a whole, but to a small caucus of Government Ministers and parliamentary draftsmen. I ask noble Lords to look at the substantial numbers in the House—up to 400 Members and sometimes more—who voted on all five of these amendments. For example, on 6 June no fewer than 439 Members voted and on 20 June no fewer than 422. The majorities on each occasion ran between 91 and 60 votes.

The question is what happens now. Sadly, although most understandably, it appears that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and, I imagine, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, are saying that this is the time to give up. This could bring the Parliament Acts into consideration. I will not go into them, but I have examined their application very carefully. I have also had good conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Fox—he need not look so startled; he must remember them—about their relevance. The serious difficulty with the Parliament Acts is that, if we held our ground, the House of Commons would have to present this Bill in its original form to the House of Lords. As the noble and learned Lord wisely commented to me, “Oh really?” I took that plainly as a riposte for us not to involve them. The question of the Parliament Acts must now arise on another occasion, which may not be far off.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No, I will not let the noble Baroness intervene. She spoke at length.

I spoke yesterday evening on a regret Motion on magistrates’ courts sentencing and afterwards I was told by the Minister very politely—clearly, it was not the Minister sitting with us now—that I had spoken completely off topic. Therefore, I am hoping to be a bit better today.

This group is full of very good amendments; I support them all, and they have all been very well introduced. I am concerned in particular about air and water. In their whole 13 years the Government have done barely anything to clean up our air, and now they are expecting us to wait decades to clean up our water as well. I simply do not understand why they cannot take these basic requirements for human life seriously. I personally would be happy to vote on all these amendments, and probably thousands of others as well.

The Government have to make a clear commitment that they are not going backwards on clean air—although we do not have clean air yet—and that they are not going back on any regulations about cleaning up our air and water. I expect the Minister to make a clear commitment on that today. It is absolutely crucial. None of the things we are throwing out today will actually matter. I was assured earlier that the Government are not being “evil” in throwing out these particular ones and that they are in fact probably fairly benign, but I am not terribly confident about that. I therefore hope that the Minister can explain that they are not going backwards. Of course, I support Amendment 76.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not get into the debate with the noble Baroness, Lady Foster. The fate of the Bill and how it is here has been correctly described by my two noble friends.

I endorse particularly what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said a few minutes ago. He said that this is an impossible task on Report and that it surely should not have been inflicted upon us. Indeed, the Bill should never have been inflicted upon us. A sensible course, which was the earlier position of the Government, was to let all EU legislation lie where it lay, and if there were a problem with any of it, to bring it to the forefront and deal with it. However, that is all history. What we are having to deal with now are the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has introduced into Schedule 1.

I took the trouble—there was not much time to do so—to read through all 111 pages of the explanatory spreadsheet as best I could. There was an immediate difficulty about that, because the regulations are not listed in the same order as they are in the Bill. That was an unnecessary complication when trying to check through. I noted that, time and again, the explanation, the “reason for revocation”, to use the exact words, reads that this regulation

“is no longer in operation, or is no longer relevant to the UK”.

That description and justification of these 928—in my arithmetic—regulations appear time and again. It must have occurred 100 times as I read it, and possibly 200, and the latter figure is the likely one. The big question is: if this has all been properly researched, is the particular regulation

“no longer in operation, or … no longer relevant to the UK”?

It must be one or the other.

My particular reason for looking through the spreadsheet was to look at what is happening to two sets of regulations, both of which I referred to on our first day on Report. I refer to the Habitat (Salt-Marsh) Regulations and the Civil Aviation (Safety of Third Country Aircraft) Regulations 2006. I could not find the latter regulation at all. I do not know where it was, but I could not see it when going through the 111 pages. The Habitat (Salt-Marsh) Regulations appeared a number of times on a number of pages, all separate and quite disconnected from the original order. I did that because I thought they were rather important environmentally. The first time they appear, they are described as being

“on agricultural production methods compatible with the requirements of the protection of the environment and the maintenance of the countryside”.

I thought that was central and something we should be thinking about. Yet, time and again, a feeble and inadequate “reason for revocation” was given.

I have to say frankly to your Lordships that this is a futile exercise, an exercise we should not have been asked to carry out, and I greatly regret that we are.

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, as a former head of the Civil Service, I feel bound to say that the criticisms of the Civil Service which have been made are ill-judged and grossly unfair. The Civil Service will ride out these criticisms—it has a thick skin, it will put its head down and go on doing its duty—but there is a serious worry underneath this debate.

It took us 10, 15 or 20 years to join the Common Market/European Union. It was only reaching the Home Office when I became Permanent Secretary in 1994. It will take us 10, 15 or 20 years to leave the European Union. Brexit, whatever your views on it, was undertaken without a proper appraisal of what it entailed—the work and the consequences—and we are living with it with this Bill. It is the most terrible experiment with government and an enormous learning experience for the Government. It will not be done quickly, and what will slow it down is not the Civil Service but the huge volume of work involved in it.

We are dealing with 50 years of complex, detailed regulation that has been put together in consultation with vested interests and public authorities and reaches into every household in the country. I tell Ministers on the Front Bench that there are things buried in these 500-and-whatever-it-is regulations that will embarrass them, will have unforeseen consequences and will go wrong. We are in an impossible position. We cannot look at this schedule in the detail required. It is not the fault of the Civil Service but the responsibility of the Government. The consequences of it will be severe and will take years. History will write this up. It will read these debates and think about the moral involved, which is, “Do the work before you implement the policy”. I will sit down now, but I wanted to defend the Civil Service. It is not its fault that this is such a terrible and deeply worrying mess.

--- Later in debate ---

I understand that it is a task and a half, but what has effectively been said in the last few contributions is that it was too difficult to do this when we decided to do it in 2016. How could we possibly envisage it? We could never do it, but we should not blame the blob because of course Brexit itself was impossible to do. So the British public are effectively being told that it is too difficult. The Bill, for all its imperfections, at least tried to say, “It’s about time, after all that time trying to block it, that we get on and take the instructions of the British public”. We should at least be humble enough to acknowledge that, as far as the British public are concerned, this has been an attempt at blocking their decisions. Let us take the Bill seriously now.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Shut up.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

“Shut up”?—well done. I am just saying: let us get on with the Bill seriously rather than keeping on blaming each other. That was my point in the first place. Drop the smug tone.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I will have my say; plenty of people have had a say on the other side.

The disillusionment of people who supported Brexit in good faith is bad for democracy. People are beginning to ask, “Does democracy work?”

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I will move the House away from the Bay of Biscay and back to this Bill. I tabled Amendment 7, that Clause 1 should not be retained, but I will not move it in view of the radical changes that the Government have brought to the Bill. I therefore easily support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, on his Amendment 2. However, I do so with a substantial caveat: that whatever decisions are made by way of advice from the Joint Committee. We must remember that the Joint Committee’s central role is to decide whether the item of legislation before it will bring about a substantial change to current UK law, although the Joint Committee will also bring other considerations.

Important as that is, this is only part of our duty; indeed, our duty is to the whole of the Bill and to the whole of the new schedule before Schedule 1. The Minister referred to 600 specified pieces of EU law, which are represented in the long list represented in the long list before Schedule 1. I have done the arithmetic—even though my arithmetic has never been quite perfect—and the total is 928. We have a responsibility for every one of those 928 EU measures.

I ask your Lordships to concentrate on our wider responsibility, such as whether there is a need to revoke a particular piece of legislation. Is it causing any harm? There are a number of other tests which your Lordships should apply, but which will not fall under the remit of the Joint Committee. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the six sets of Habitat (Salt-Marsh) Regulations stretching over pages 24 and 25 of the Marshalled List. The question, for which we have a responsibility to answer, is: are they defective? If so, how?

[Noble Lords]

Wednesday!

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Is somebody correcting me?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

We will discuss it on Wednesday.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I got a prompt from beneath me that we are discussing this on Wednesday. I will not go into further detail; I just wanted to bring your Lordships’ attention to one example out of the 928 EU measures which fall under the new schedule before Schedule 1. The same test could easily be applied to the Civil Aviation (Safety of Third Country Aircraft) Regulations, which is on line 177 of page 27 of the Marshalled List. We have wider responsibilities, and we should exercise our influence over them during the passage of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

Given that the vast majority of the remaining retained EU law relates to Defra, will it be retained by default or will Defra have to pass a number of statutory instruments to secure it? Moreover, what is the position regarding the Minister’s own department, and others, in respect of which there will be a lot of retained EU law secondary legislation to which these sunset clauses apply? With those introductory remarks, I beg to move.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister will recognise, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has taken a close part in all our discussions throughout the Bill’s passage. She has been wholly consistent in arguing that we, or the country, should be given more time to fully process its contents. I hope my Front Bench will support her.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I wish I could support my noble friend but I am afraid I cannot. She shows a total misunderstanding of the way in which bureaucratic minds work: if you extend a deadline, they do nothing until they are approaching it. All that happens is that you prolong the whole thing. Let us face it, we would not be considering the whole business of how many laws we should be retaining or binning if there had not been a sunset clause in the original drafting of the Bill. That concentrated minds in Whitehall and got them to start finding out how much legislation they have. I think some of them were quite surprised how much there was. I certainly cannot support this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Thank you; I did not get up because I thought the Opposition Front Bench was going to speak. I reject Amendments 3, 36, 38 and 42 to 44, tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh.

I will deal with the point raised by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and give an explanation to my noble friend Lord Hamilton. A notion seems to be springing up that the Government and departments somehow did not know what legislation they actually had responsibility for. They knew very well what legislation they had; what was sometimes unclear was whether that legislation was as a result of an EU obligation and therefore was retained EU law. This was because, over the 40-odd years of our membership, different Governments had different policies. Only a small part of EU legislation was introduced through the so-called Section 2(2) pipeline of the European Communities Act. If it is those regulations, that is very obvious—people know where that has come from—but Governments often did not want to say that legislation was introduced as a result of an EU obligation. It was therefore introduced under various instruments, under either domestic legislation or normal domestic secondary legislation. Therefore, the difficulty that departments faced was identifying what was an EU obligation. It is not that they did not know what legislation they were responsible for, were somehow finding legislation down the back of the sofa or anything else. That has been the issue: the definition of what was retained EU law. I hope that explanation is helpful.

Amendment 3 seeks to change the sunset date, pushing it back to the end of 2028. Given the amendments to the Bill that we have already discussed and the significant changes to the operation of the sunset, I hope my noble friend recognises that it is therefore not necessary to also change the sunset date. The current scope of the sunset in Clause 1 will no longer be relevant, as it will be replaced with a schedule to the Bill. The schedule will list retained EU law that departments have identified for removal. This is the only legislation that will be revoked on 31 December 2023.

Similarly, Amendments 36 and 38 seek to change the date of the powers to restate under Clauses 13 and 14. Amendment 36 would mean that Clause 13 was capable of acting on retained EU law until 31 December 2028. Pieces of retained EU law that are not included in the revocation schedule will, of course, not be revoked on 31 December 2023, but they will be stripped of their EU interpretative effects and assimilated in domestic legislation.

Consequently, those pieces of legislation will no longer be retained EU law. They will be assimilated law as part of the normal law of the United Kingdom, and the status of retained EU law on the UK statute book will come to an end. There will be no more REUL after 31 December. As retained EU law will end as a legal category at the end of this year, it is right that this power, which is capable of acting only on REUL, expires then. I am not clear why my noble friend wants to extend the sunset date of a power that will no longer be required.

Amendment 38 seeks to change the date on which the power to restate assimilated law under Clause 14 will expire from 23 June 2026 to 31 December 2028. It is in my view entirely right and appropriate that this power should be available for a time-limited window up to 23 June 2026. This is consistent with the powers to revoke or replace in Clause 16. I am confident that the time window currently set out in Clause 14 will provide sufficient time for the power to be exercised on all the necessary legislation.

Amendment 42 changes the date on which the powers to revoke or replace within Clause 16 are capable of acting on REUL from 23 June 2026 to 31 December 2028. Similarly, Amendment 43 changes the date that the powers to revoke or replace can act on assimilated law to 31 December 2028. Amendment 44 changes the date in Clause 16(11) from the end of 2023 to the end of 2028 so that the references to retained EU law in Clause 16(8) can be read as a reference to assimilated law until 31 December 2028. Again, this group of amendments is no longer necessary due to the revocation schedule. There is more than adequate time for the use of the powers on assimilated law within the timescales provided for in the Bill. The powers to revoke or replace will enable UK and devolved Ministers to remove those regulations that are no longer fit for purpose and replace them with regulations that are more tailored to the UK within a timely manner, and the Government are committed to achieving these much-needed reforms by 2026. That is why the powers are restricted in their use and available only for a time-limited window, up to 23 June 2026. I hope that, with the explanations I have been able to provide, my noble friend will withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, can he explain assimilated law? The present position—it is clearly shown in the schedule—is that either the European provision turns up as a statutory instrument or it is referred to precisely by the regulation number of the EEC or EU regulations. How are we going to find this assimilated law?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord is confusing two things. The schedule is the retained EU law that we are proposing to allow to be revoked on 31 December this year. Assimilated law will be that retained EU law, stripped of its interpretive effects, that will remain on the statute book. We will end the special category of retained EU law that has existed because of our membership of the European Union. The noble Lord is confusing two things. The items listed in the schedule will disappear, and the rest, which is not revoked, will become assimilated law. The powers that remain can act on that law to change or modify it. That will be subject to approval by Parliament through the normal process.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

How do we identify the assimilated law on our statute book?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The dashboard lists all the pieces of retained EU law that have been identified; the schedule lists those that are being revoked.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As I said, I am sure that the Health Ministers will consult the Food Standards Agency. The food standards agencies have been set up for this purpose. If you are making changes to legislation, of course there will be consultation. I am not the Health Minister, so I cannot make a declaration of that kind, but I have already said that I will pass on to the Health Minister the discussions we are having on food safety.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I think the question my noble friend was asking was what the Government’s position is—that is the answer we need.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have given my answer. I have been very clear about the importance we attach to food safety from both a government point of view and my own historic point of view, which I hope adds some credibility. I do not think I have a lot further to say, apart from the fact that officials are working with the Food Standards Agency day and night on these areas.

Amendment 132, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, proposes that a Minister of the Crown should publish a report 30 days before the powers can be exercised. The report would have to include a list of criteria which relevant national authorities would need to take into account when exercising the powers under Clauses 12 to 17 of the Bill. The delegated powers within the Bill will enable Ministers to make active decisions regarding their respective retained EU law. It is only right to have such powers; they will help to put the UK statute book on a sustainable footing within a reasonable timeframe and facilitate the much-needed review and reform of retained EU law to ensure that we can capitalise on the benefits of UK autonomy. Furthermore, the Bill has been drafted to ensure that legislation made under the delegated powers is subject to scrutiny procedures proportionate to the scope of the powers. I therefore do not consider that publishing a report setting out criteria which Ministers must take into account when using the powers within the Bill is necessary given the scrutiny already provided for.

I turn now to Amendment 141 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead; I am sorry he is not here today. The amendment would impose a requirement to seek consent from a Scottish or Welsh Minister where a Minister of the Crown intends to exercise a power in the Bill separately on legislation which is in an area of Scottish or Welsh devolved competence. First, I assure your Lordships that the Government are committed to respecting the devolution settlements and the Sewel convention. Indeed, none of the provisions within the Bill, including the powers, affects the devolution settlements, nor is the Bill intended to restrict the competence of either the devolved legislatures or the devolved Governments.

I recognise that the extension power is not conferred on the devolved Governments. However, we are keen to ensure that the provisions within the Bill, including the powers, work for all parts of the UK. That is why the majority of the powers will be conferred concurrently on the devolved Governments: to enable them to make active decisions regarding their retained EU law. As such, introducing a requirement for a Minister of the Crown to seek legislative consent when using the powers on legislation within areas of devolved legislative competence is not necessary.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the proposal that Clause 12 should not stand part, which is in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Fox and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. I will also speak to the proposal that Clause 13 should not stand part, and to Amendment 111, which would require consultation, reasoning, et cetera for proposed restatement regulations.

My noble friend Lady Humphreys quoted the powerful view of the Delegated Powers Committee that Clauses 12 and 13 should be removed from the Bill because they inappropriately delegate legislative powers and appropriate powers that ought to belong to Parliament and be achieved subject to specific primary legislation. That committee brought to our attention, or reminded us of, the delegated powers memorandum, which says:

“This power cannot substantively change the policy effect of legislation.”


The DPRRC says:

“We doubt whether this is correct. Where there is ambiguity—


allowing Ministers to make changes to resolve ambiguities is one of three factors that a restatement is supposedly able to address—

“as to whether policy A or policy B is intended and the legislative restatement emphatically resolves in favour of policy A, the restatement has … made a firm policy choice”.

That view of our committee makes sense. It invited us to ask the Government to explain why none of the law that can be restated under the powers in Clause 12 would instead merit being restated in primary legislation. I hope the Minister will do so in his response.

The committee also draws attention to the powers that Ministers have, I think in Clause 14(6), to reproduce the effects of the supremacy of EU law, the retained general principles of EU law and retained EU case law, to ensure that the restatement has the same practical outcome that existed previously. These three elements are the ones that are otherwise abolished by the Bill; we debated that today in relation to Clauses 3 to 5. So the Government want to bring back, under Clause 14(6), the power for Ministers to reproduce the effects of the things they are abolishing, to ensure that the restatement has the same practical outcome that existed previously.

The DPRRC comments:

“This power may give rise to significant policy questions”,


but they are given to Ministers to answer rather than Parliament. I add to that a suggestion that it will also create legal confusion, because, on the one hand, you have abolished these three elements—supremacy, general principles and retained rights—yet, on the other, Ministers can bring them back. I have not quite worked out how that is supposed to work.

My noble friend Lady Humphreys quoted the fact that the powers in Clause 12 are completely “open-ended”, with

“no requirement for consultation … criteria … or … pre-conditions”.

That explains our Amendment 111, which again seeks to repeat the elements we constantly introduce.

The other thing that Clauses 12 and 13 give to Ministers, in restating REUL in secondary legislation, is the power to use different words or concepts from the original instrument and to make any change considered appropriate. That is rather worrying, and requires the Minister to explain what is meant by “restatement” if the restated law will be different in concept from the original law. To what extent can different words be used before the restatement changes into a new and distinct law? It is no longer a restatement; because different words and concepts have been used, it becomes, in effect, a new and distinct law. When does it morph into a new law, having started off as a restatement? There is quite some confusion on that.

Finally, if I have understood correctly the email from, and blog of, the distinguished legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg, it appears that he has been highlighting the fact that the pensions of some 11,000 serving or former part-time judges were going to be abolished because they relied on EU law. But apparently the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Justice, announced that he was going to save these pensions and that there was no intention to grab them back from affected judges.

I presume that this is the first announcement we have had of what is to be preserved under the Bill. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that. Obviously, I think it is a good thing. I do not think that judges’ pensions, any more than former MEPs’ pensions, should be whipped away. I suspect the Minister might agree on that point. That is a good thing, but we are still fighting for confirmation on things such as water safety, air quality, product safety, employment rights and everything else. When are we going to hear about what is going to be preserved from those other areas of deep concern? I am very pleased for judges, and indeed gratified, but it seems quite odd that we have had an announcement about that but we do not know whether anything else is going to be preserved. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us in his reply.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Clauses 12 and 13 no longer standing part of the Bill. Opposition to those clauses has been led by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I support them on the very simple premise that the Government are attempting to sweep all legislation, including primary legislation which creeps up on secondary legislation; in other words, the secondary legislation has been adopted as primary legislation.

Before I go further—and I think I have attempted to do this already—I would like to put right the misconception that the EU law coming into our country was all under the carpet, that it was not considered and endorsed by Parliament. I suppose the Government have not put it quite so colourfully, but they could well say, on that basis, “What’s all the fuss about? The EU legislation arrived under the parliamentary carpet, why are you making all this fuss now?”

I want to correct that misconception. I sat for a number of years on the EC Committee and then the EU Committee in the 1980s and 1990s. I must have had about 10 to 12 years sitting on those committees—it was the same committee but it was renamed when the EC renamed itself the European Union. When I was on that committee, we had very alert clerks and very good relations with Brussels. The result was that when a regulation that caused concern was being considered by the Commission, with great co-operation from the Commission we were shown the draft of that regulation, really in its final form, before it was introduced as a regulation. We would examine it. It happened on a number of occasions; I cannot count the number. Your Lordships’ European Committee considered in detail the regulation, took evidence, wrote a report and sent that report back to Brussels.

I do not want to fancy ourselves too much, but the House of Lords European Committee had a great reputation in Brussels. Of all the parliaments in the union, we were the most constructive. I suppose I have to include whatever the other place was doing. With our good relationship with the Commission, when the Commission read our report it was influenced and changed the drafting of that particular regulation.

Of course, of the many regulations that were brought through when we were in the European Union, I am referring to only a few, but it is an example of how we were involved in the creation of regulations in an influential way.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am much more a supporter of this bit of Bill than some, but even I am astonished by Clause 15(5), which seems to introduce uncertainty and immense delays in the process without offering any great benefit. After all, what we are talking about here is essentially declaratory legislation. It is the Government saying, “We are not going to increase the burden of regulation by what we do under this Bill”. It is a political promise. It will, by and large—unless the Government chose to commit suicide, which is always possible—be delivered before the next election, so there is no benefit to be gained from this declaration. The Government will do it anyway and they will make the changes they wish to make, but the Bill introduces huge uncertainties.

I go back to my previous intervention when I queried the letter that we got as a result of the first day in Committee, which I think misinterpreted the way this subsection works. It is clear to me that, in deciding whether you are allowed to deregulate, you have to look at all the previous regulations made under this section within that subject area and decide whether your particular regulation plus all those adds up to something deregulatory.

It is going to get challenged in judicial review. If you give a water company a couple of hundred million quid fine for dumping turds in the Thames, you will find that its lawyers look at opportunities. Through this section we have introduced so much vagueness, such widespread uncertainty, that whether the regulation is in any way valid can be questioned at enormous length—including, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, says: what is the subject area? Has the Minister got it right? Should it have been narrower? Should it have been larger? What is the right way of measuring these things, of all the things that can be taken into account in regulatory burden? Have they been weighed correctly?

It is total apples and pears mathematics anyway. How on earth do you summon these things to produce a single-digit answer? There is no formula in here as to how you can weigh an obstacle to trade and innovation against an administrative inconvenience. There is no way you can use this clause to arrive at a safe answer. The Government will never know—because of Clause 15(5)—whether any legislation that they have passed through Clause 15 is valid. It will be open to endless challenge. Because of that, in deciding whether to bring forward regulations under this clause, civil servants will have to go through the most enormously detailed and tiresome exercise to discover whether they will be able to make this balance work. That must add hugely to the delays.

I entirely appreciate what my noble friend on the Front Bench said on our previous day in Committee: that the Government want to get on with this and that he has his suspicions—which I hope do not embrace me—that there are people who do not want him to get on with it quite as quickly as he would like. I want these things to happen with speed and accuracy but the work that will have to go in to satisfy Clause 15(5) is huge, and an enormous diversion of effort away from the purposes of this Bill.

As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, pointed out, the only way of avoiding it is to introduce some whacking bit of deregulation smack in the middle of the most important subject areas, such as—let us take the environment since that is something I am heavily involved in—some enormous bit of environmental deregulation; then you know that you are safe because the rest of it cannot add up to excessive regulation.

We have been promised that that is not going to happen, in any segment of the Bill, so that is not open to the Government. They will have to weigh these little changes, pluses and minuses, in detail, every single time—to achieve what? As I said, to achieve nothing, because all of this is totally in the Government’s control. They can choose whether a particular instrument increases or decreases the regulatory burden and they will do it all within their term in office. There is absolutely no net benefit at the end of the day for all the work, difficulty and uncertainty of this, except that it will reduce the chances that my noble friend will achieve what he says are his objectives.

Of course, I am well used to getting things wrong in this House, and it may well be that I have here. In that case, I have Amendment 134, which mimics Clause 15(5) and says, “If you’re going to do this and we’re going to have declaratory legislation, then let’s do it for the environment”. Let us put in this Bill the promises the Government have made in front of us in this Committee about their environmental legislation, and then we can all be comfortable and spend the rest of the decade challenging their interpretation of that.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to draw attention to two paragraphs in Clause 15 to which there has not been any reference in our Committee. Indeed, I do not think there has been any reference to them since Second Reading, but concern was certainly raised then about Clause 15(4)(c) and (d), and it is those that I now want to address.

We should remind ourselves that immense powers are vested in the Minister under Clause 15. Subsection (1) allows them to

“revoke any secondary retained EU law without replacing it”,

while subsection (2) allows them to

“revoke any secondary retained EU law and replace it with such provision as the relevant national authority”—

that is, the relevant Minister—

“considers to be appropriate and to achieve the same or similar objectives.”

That is a power, without reference to Parliament, resting entirely in the hands of the Minister.

I now turn, more precisely, to Clause 15(4)(c) and (d). I shall read those paragraphs out to your Lordships. When replacing revoked secondary EU law, the Minister has the power to

“create a criminal offence that corresponds or is similar to a criminal offence created by secondary retained EU law revoked by the regulations”,

and, in paragraph (d), to

“provide for the imposition of monetary penalties in cases that correspond or are similar to cases in which secondary retained EU law revoked by the regulations enables monetary penalties to be imposed”.

It has been a cardinal feature of our law that the creation of criminal offences and the penalties that arise from the breach of those offences rest entirely in primary legislation. If, hidden under some carpet, there have been EU regulations that create a criminal offence or monetary penalties, then I am ashamed and embarrassed. But for the Government now to seek powers to replace them—again, without putting that before Parliament—is another wrong. My simple contention to your Lordships is that two wrongs do not make a right.

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 121 and 123 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley. At Second Reading I welcomed the opportunity created by the Bill to review, improve and update a wide-ranging tranche of important legislation. However, I expressed some concerns about process, and one of those is the constraint that I believe Clause 15 imposes on improving and updating existing legislation. That constraint is also a concern to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and Which?, among others. Here I should declare an interest as the president of the CTSI, my predecessor in that role being the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley.

The principal constraint I am referring to has been well articulated by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others: Clause 15(5) —namely, the proposed requirement that any changes to retained EU law should have an overall effect of not increasing the regulatory burden. I say immediately that I am a long-term advocate of better regulation. Over the years, I have served on the better regulation commission and various other bodies advising government on what better regulation looks like and the framework for its development and oversight. I fundamentally believe that regulation should be avoided wherever there is an effective alternative and that, when there is no alternative, it should be designed so that it achieves its desired effect with the least possible burden.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

There is a balance here. What we have got are powers that allow us to make changes, such as the example that I gave, which will improve the state of regulation. There may be a bit of an extra burden at the margins, but if you are bringing regulation into a new area, which I think is what we are talking about, in my opinion—and I am not an expert in this particular area—that might be a case for primary legislation. Of course, we are about to have further primary legislation in the digital area in the coming months.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I thank the Minister very much indeed for sitting down. The Minister did not quite answer my cardinal point that it is well-established in our law that all criminal offences, and all penalties arising out of those criminal offences, are part of primary law, not secondary law. That means that, if there are EU regulations that are creating criminal offences and penalties, they are no more right than the current proposal that Ministers will now do it. Both are wrong.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The point I was making is that we are not creating new offences with these provisions. I will look further at Hansard, but I think that what I said was right and not a cause for concern—obviously, there were penalties attached to Section 2(2) and so on, in my experience.

I need to move on. Amendment 121A was tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. As I made clear in relation to the previous amendments, the restrictions to the powers set out in subsections (5) and (6), combined with a non-exhaustive list under subsection (10), will help the UK to establish a more nimble and innovative approach to seize Brexit opportunities. Furthermore, the ability for the powers to act on assimilated law after the sunset date will enable the Government to have sufficient time to undertake necessary reform. However, the Government agree with the principle that adequate limitation should be in place on the exercise of powers. We have sought to ensure the powers are restricted in their use and are available only in a time-limited window—this ends on 23 June 2026.

In the same spirit, Amendment 123, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, seeks to remove the non-exhaustive list in Clause 15(10). Let me again assure the Committee that the requirement not to add to the overall regulatory burden has been drafted in a manner which will allow the relevant national authority to determine how best to achieve the desirable policy outcome.

I turn to Amendment 134A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas and pick up on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. Honourable Members—sorry, I should say noble Lords. I think I need to pay 50p for any such mistakes; I am sorry about that. As outlined by my noble friend Lord Benyon on day two of Committee, the Bill will not alter our commitments to the environment. The Minister made it clear in his speech that the default position of Defra is to retain EU laws. This will allow us to keep protections in place, providing certainty to businesses and stakeholders, and to make reforms tailored to our needs. The Government also recently announced the environment improvement plan, on 31 January 2023, which sets out comprehensive action that the Government will take to reverse the decline in species abundance, achieve our net-zero goals, and deliver cleaner air and water. I hope this will help reassure the Committee that the Government will not be trashing the kind of protections that we want to continue and improve. There will also be a further opportunity to discuss the environment in a later grouping on Wednesday.

Lastly, I turn to Amendment 118A—it was the last amendment to be tabled so I have come to it last—for which I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Her proposed criteria include a requirement to share the draft instrument with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and for the commission to provide an assessment setting out the potential legal impact on human rights and equalities, including in relation to the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998. As such, no replacement provision could be made under Clause 15(2) and (3) unless the Equality and Human Rights Commission had confirmed that there was no negative impact as a result of the proposed draft instrument.

We fully intend to maintain the UK’s leading role in the promotion and protection of human rights and the rule of law. We have a long, proud and diverse history of freedoms and we will ensure that our international human rights obligations continue to be met. The powers to revoke or replace are important cross-cutting enablers of retained EU law reform in the Bill. Clause 15 has been purposefully drafted to be broad in scope, and we have sought to ensure that there are important safeguards in place. This amendment would restrict the ability for the powers under Clause 15 to be used to undertake important REUL reform, so we do not believe that it is necessary.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, as the former Permanent Secretary to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I would like to tell your Lordships that that is how he was as Secretary of State. I am so proud of the speech that he made, because I agree with it all. I also agree very much with the noble and learned Lord’s amendment.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, should begin to be a little concerned that former civil servants and diplomats are beginning to mobilise behind him, because I agree with virtually everything that he said, which should be unnerving—except for one point. I want to focus on the idea of “incentivising” the Civil Service. The view that I have expressed already is that the work should have been done in government before the legislation was introduced, and that is still my view. We are discussing an administrative task, not a legislative one. I know that the noble Lord knows how to incentivise the Civil Service, because in the 1980s, when I worked for Mrs Thatcher, he used to sit in the Cabinet Room behind her listening to her “incentivising” her Ministers and civil servants. Although I cannot see him right now, he jolly well knows how it is done.

What we should have is the Bill being paused or withdrawn. The Prime Minister should assemble all the Permanent Secretaries, together with the heads of the Civil Service, and the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office, who is sitting on the Front Bench. Then he should say to them, “I want this sorted out by the end of, say, June”—the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, described this accurately. After they report back, the Government should then introduce in Parliament whatever legislation is needed to implement it. We would then have something to discuss, rather than operating in a policy void as now.

By all means, let us accept one of these amendments—I would go for that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—but let us recognise that this is an administrative task. It should have been handled properly, in an administrative way, before Parliament had to spend time on it.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, with whom I have university connections, and even more of a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Deben, with whom I used to joust in the Cambridge Union more years ago than I can remember. He was persuasive then and he is persuasive now.

Before I speak to the two proposals I have put my name to, I will just refer to what my noble friend Lord Whitty said about the devolution of laws when the Empire, or the Commonwealth, was broken up. He was entirely accurate in what he said to your Lordships. I raise this point because I remember particularly that, several years ago, I was defending an accused who had been convicted in the courts of Jamaica. He was attempting to appeal to the Privy Council in London and I was his counsel. We had to refer back to the relevant laws in Jamaica and, in doing so, to go back to a homicide Act of 1926 and to a Court of Appeal presided over by Lord Reading. That was disastrous to my client’s case. I am very happy to tell your Lordships two things: first, that my client was relieved of the death penalty which hung over his head when I took on his defence and, secondly, that in Jamaica they paid swift attention to those out-of-date laws, so that Lord Reading’s pronouncement is no longer binding in Jamaica. That is the process which one would expect to happen if we adopted EU law, as I say we should; then if something uncomfortable comes to our attention, it is dealt with in a fair and swift way.

The two proposals that I have put my name to are Amendment 42 and the opposition to Clause 1 standing part of the Bill. I will also speak to my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 44A. I would like to address the parliamentary consequences of any of those amendments being voted in on Report. Given the large opposition that has been put to a number of provisions in the Bill, which is exactly what these three proposals are doing, the high chances are that they will succeed in Divisions on Report. The consequence of that, which we should take strongly in mind, is that it would kill the Bill because all three start from the premise that Clause 1 should be left out. I think the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has a different introduction, so let us just refer to those three and their consequences.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that the Minister will respond, not just in a dismissive way but in a way which pays tribute to the voices heard in the debate—from people with long experience of government, whether in Whitehall, Westminster or other spheres—and explain to us why the Government need to prioritise speed and executive control over accountable, considered and transparent lawmaking. They have not convinced this Committee. They would be wise to take what is being said and maybe have a holiday—I think we would all like a holiday from the Bill—and come back with something that actually makes some sense.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I interject to make a point that perhaps I did not get over clearly enough earlier. In moving Amendment 42, we would be doing nothing but trying to help the Government and help good governance.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I listened to my noble friend Lord Benyon’s earlier statements and they are entirely in accordance with the provisions of the Bill. It is for Defra’s Secretary of State and Ministers to take a position on what they want to do with Defra’s large body of retained EU law. They are examining it closely. I think my noble friend said that the Defra Secretary of State said her position is that most of it is appropriate and she wants to retain it. If the Bill is passed, she can use the powers granted to her and other Ministers by the Bill to achieve that aim. I do not see any inconsistency at all.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I have one question before the Minister sits down. He said twice that Clause 1 is the backbone of the Bill. Can we take it that, if Clause 1 is removed, the Minister will withdraw the Bill altogether?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Let us wait to see what happens, but the Government are committed to the Bill. As I said, it had a big majority in the elected House, so I hope noble Lords think carefully before they remove key elements of it. It is up to the House what it does with the amendments tabled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the two amendments in my name. It is late, and I will try to keep this as short as possible, first addressing Amendment 67. Amendment 62, in the names of my noble friend Lady Ludford and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, focuses on much of the same ground as Amendment 67, and there has been a lot of wise discussion in that area. I support their points but do not need to echo them. However, I add that Clause 3 has the effect of sunsetting retained EU rights, powers, liabilities, et cetera. Unlike Clause 1, the Bill does not allow the Clause 3 deadline to be extended, which increases the likelihood of accidental deletions. Why is that extension not advanced for Clause 3?

I will focus on the proposal that Clause 5 should not stand part of the Bill. This is intended to probe the effect of abolishing the general principles of EU law—we briefly heard from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on that process, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, also alluded to this. I remind your Lordships that we have established that much EU law is, as the Minister described it, a “mishmash” of interwoven UK and EU-derived law. I think that that is what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, called, rather more alarmingly, the “interpenetration” of law. Until now, the general principles of EU law have been used by lawyers, court and tribunals in the UK to interpret the EU part of that mishmash. These general principles include legal certainty, equal treatment, proportionality, non-retroactivity, effectiveness, equivalence and respect for fundamental rights, among others—like the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I was unable to find a definitive list.

A further example of a general principle of EU law is the Marleasing principle. Looking at experienced lawyers opposite, I feel I am probably entering terrible territory by even mentioning this. But my understanding is that the application of this principle means that, if no national law at all has been passed to comply with a directive, it was held that having national legislation passed specifically in the name of the directive was not necessary. In any case, the Bill does away with this, so there may be some lasting effect. So this amendment probes the practical effect of abolishing direct-effect supremacy, and the general principles of EU law, taken together.

As we know, the UK regulations set out the letter of a law, the bare bones. However, in spite of the excellent work done in this Chamber to achieve clarity in those laws, there is often uncertainty—noble Lords will find that hard to believe—as to what the words actually mean.

Where the regulations give effect to a directive, such as the working time directive, the courts use the directive to help them understand the meaning of the regulations. Directives, unlike UK law, set out their purpose and their aims. Those aims help a court or tribunal to interpret the regulation. My understanding is that during the process of assimilation, new assimilated law loses contact with the EU directive and the EU-derived part of the law in that mishmash. It loses the basis for ongoing interpretation.

I can understand, post Brexit, why on the face of it the Government wish to sweep away all mention of EU law and EU directives—I get that. However, the meaning and understanding of the regulations, as we now have them—the Minister’s mishmash—has taken years and many different appeal cases, and much individual expense, to give the level of understanding of the law and the regulation that we now enjoy.

For example, litigation began in 2001 over whether workers were able to carry over their annual leave when they were too sick to take it. This was finally settled many cases later by Plumb in 2015—14 years later—with a carryover right. This is not unusual. Common law incrementally decides issues before a settled understanding emerges. The default of the Bill is to sweep away all this accrued understanding or at least put it in question and not provide any clear statement of what the law will be going forward.

If the Government do not want to change the settled meaning of UK law as it is interpreted today, my understanding is that they would need to audit all the conforming interpretations that have affected regulations from court decisions and translate those court decisions into the body of the new or replacement regulations. Is that what the Minister intends? If so, that intention should be inserted in the Bill. However, I suspect this is not the plan. In that case, even if all the regulations were preserved in assimilated law, the abolition of direct application, supremacy and general principles will result in the UK waking up on 1 January 2024 to a new year with large swathes of law that no lawyer will be able accurately to predict or advise on, causing great uncertainty—the sort of uncertainty that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, alluded to.

A colleague said to me as I was trying to explain this, “Surely no judge would want to throw out all that case law.” That is where we come to the interrelation of Clause 7. However, we will not know what the judges decide until a case has been brought. Let us not forget that there are thousands of laws here, which could mean thousands of potential tests. We will not know how the test will end until a judge rules on it—probably more than once, as experience shows.

Can the Minister explain why there is no plan to port the interpretation and case of the laws that we have within the mishmash into the assimilated law as we go forward? If there are plans, could he explain what they are?

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

It is quite clear from what the noble Lord said to the Committee that he is in favour of Amendment 62. It seems to me that, as a result of what he has said, he must be opposed to Clause 3 standing part of the Bill. I wonder whether he could confirm that.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

Yes, absolutely. I made the point about Clause 3 missing out on the sunset laws. That is clearly part of my dissatisfaction. I also said that I supported, but did not echo, the wise words on Amendment 62. In the interests of brevity, I was trying not to cover everything.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will give my noble friend the Minister a couple of thoughts to take away.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

Leave the Minister alone.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

We are in Committee, and anyone who wants to leave may leave, but I wish to speak. I will say two things. I recommend my Amendment 134A for the Minister’s attention, as a way to get out of some of these difficulties. Secondly, the letter sent to us today misrepresents the effects of Clause 15(5), in that it does not take into account the words “including changes made previously”. I hope that the Minister may be able to rectify that in what he sends to us later.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, further to that point, even this discussion on the first amendment that we are faced with requires the Minister to withdraw some of the assertions he has made, and which his noble friend has just made again. The very fact that we are debating maternity rights which were brought in because of the European Union means that his statement that British workers do not depend on the European Union for their employment rights is made absurd. It is correct that successive British Governments have decided that they will go along with the European rights, but it was because of the European Union that we have those rights. Therefore, we need a specific exclusion from the fact that, by 31 December this year, these regulations, and many other workers’ rights regulations and related regulations, will fall automatically, without any parliamentary decision.

I would like the Minister to withdraw his assertion about European rights. He forgets his history. Why does he think that Mrs Thatcher fell out with Jacques Delors? Why does he think that John Major refused to sign the Social Chapter? Until the Labour Government came in, British workers’ rights were less than those of workers in Europe. This is an absurd assertion, as has been made clear by the debate on this very first amendment.

I have one more general point. I tried to table an early amendment which would give Parliament an alternative way of dealing with this, where we would have a Joint Committee to look in a reasoned way at the priority, the status and the need for action to change European laws. There is an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to do a similar thing, but we are not debating that today.

However, there must be a better way than leaving a whole tranche of European-derived law to an unknown process, ministerial decree—when they come in with their own version of the law—or simply leaving it until 31 December when the law will then disappear. This Parliament, this House, must assert a better way of dealing with this. That is clear from this amendment and from the complete absurdity of how we are dealing with the subject matter in this Bill.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has done that in his Amendment 40, which is the sensible way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, on the issue of timing, bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, and my noble friend Lady Andrews said, I and I am sure other noble Lords are increasingly hearing that we are not talking about 31 December as the sunset; we are talking about October. If December as the cut-off date for civil servants to find all this law is bad enough, October is disastrous. We may be replacing EU law with our own versions, but I am told by a senior civil servant that the fail rate for SIs is 10%. Therefore, the replacements will not be perfect and many will have to be looked at again once they have been published.

My noble friend Lady Andrews is right that the dashboard is a mess. Again, from talking to people close to the dashboard, they were not sure when asked whether they were talking about one directive or one directive plus the four SIs that come from it for each devolved authority. Really and truly, we must think very carefully about signing up to this sunset.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, this is to correct myself. I referred to my noble friend’s Amendment 40 in error; it is my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 44A which is the right way round.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for introducing this group of amendments. I particularly associate myself with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for the simple reason that having confidence in our food is essential to the food and farming sector.

I spent five years in the other place chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and perhaps one of the most difficult inquiries we had was that into the horsemeat scenario. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said in speaking to the amendments before us, Amendments 30, 39 and 146 in particular, it could so easily have been not just a fraud and a scare but another food scandal. Humans could have been infected. I suppose it was a blessing that it was just one type of meat being passed off for a much more expensive type of meat.

I pay tribute to the work the Government did at that time in setting up the independent inquiry led by Professor Chris Elliott and its work to review Britain’s food system. Amendment 30 goes to the heart of the matter. I am not entirely convinced that the food checks we agreed to in the TCA are in place. We were told they are going to be introduced and I have discussed this with the Food Standards Agency; they are meant to be introduced completely this year.

Also this year, we are introducing unitary government in North Yorkshire so are merging the two key departments that look at this—environmental health and another department, the name of which will come back to me. I think the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was right about the few local authorities that are actually conducting tests into the safety of our food, and whether the food is what it says on the label and is not a fraud.

Amendment 39, while it perhaps does not cover every single scenario as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, goes some way to expressing why it is vital that the European regulations provide the food safety and hygiene to which we have signed up.

In summing up this debate, I hope my noble friend puts our minds at rest as to what that procedure is going to be and gives us an assurance that the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Krebs, have sought in this small group of amendments that those tests, which have stood the test of time, will continue to be place.

One of the recommendations—I do not know if it was implemented—from the report that looked into the horsemeat fraud in 2013 was that major retailers, and I think my noble friend did work for Tesco for a time, should conduct their own tests on a mandatory basis, not just the voluntary basis as it apparently is at the moment. I hope my noble friend updates us on the Government’s thinking in that regard.

My preference would be that phytosanitary checks take place at our borders. That is what we signed up to, and the food industry hopes that the Government can show that imported food meets the same tests and is as safe to eat as domestic food produced under our very high standards. In addition to them, regular checks should obviously be conducted. I do not know whether my noble friend has an update in response to the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on how many local authorities are actually doing checks that we require of them at this time. Is my noble friend convinced that they have the manpower and funding resources to ensure that this remains a priority? With those few remarks I lend my support to, in particular, Amendments 30, 39 and 146.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I sat through the entirety of the Second Reading debate—I missed only one speaker—and I have sat through today’s Committee, just missing, alas, about five minutes at the beginning of the session after lunch. I have been in receipt, as I am sure most noble Lords have been, of very strong criticism from those outside the House. For example, I had a briefing from Prospect which is central to the matters of this Bill because it covers inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive. It describes this Bill as “reckless, unworkable and undemocratic”. Without reading the reports, there has been severe criticism from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

This has sorrowed me. I am sorry for the Government and am particularly sorry for the two Ministers who have been to the Dispatch Box. Indeed, if there is a third Minister to go to the Dispatch Box—she nods her head—I am sure that I will have sympathy for her. Look at the number of interruptions that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, received when he was at the Dispatch Box, and it was the same for the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. Look at the blasts that came from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. The Ministers are safe from that at the moment because those noble Lords are no longer in their places, but there are further days in Committee, and I am sure they will come back and that the same blasts will be sent again to our Ministers.

I am sorry for the Government because they have just made a very simple mistake. They have sought to deal with European law the wrong way round. The right way round, as will be advocated later by my noble friend Lord Whitty, is to retain it. This is what happened in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act: it retained all EU law so that, when provisions of certain EU laws need adjustment, then adjust them, change them, scrap them; do what you like with them. That is the right way round. I have already expressed my reasons for being sympathetic to the three Ministers who are sitting on the Government Front Bench.

The sensible thing, having produced a Bill that is simply the wrong way round, is for the Government to withdraw it in a dignified way. I am sure all your Lordships would welcome that and would not seek to affront the Government in their modesty when withdrawing the Bill. It has happened before in my experience. In 1995, the then Conservative Government produced an arbitration Bill, which happened to be in my area of expertise. It was shown to members of the arbitral community, who told the Government that they had got it all wrong and that it was an atrocious Bill. The Government politely withdrew it. Then, under the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville, a new Bill was brought—not disposing of the Bill, just starting again. The noble and learned Lord produced a report and a draft Bill that was perfect, and the Arbitration Act 1996 has been in operation ever since, to the great benefit of the arbitral community, which is now a very big community.

That is the simple thing to do. If the Government simply and politely withdraw the Bill, we will politely applaud them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, and I entirely agree with his conclusion, even if I might have expressed it in slightly stronger terms. I rise to make the first Green group contribution to Committee. I will speak particularly to Amendment 38 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Krebs, to which I have attached my name, although all the amendments in this group are closely related to food and farming, so to a large extent I will cover all of them. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others who signed Amendment 2: I also signed it, but unfortunately other business in the House forced me into the other Chamber.

It is interesting to draw parallels between the first two groups, which covered employment law and employment rights, and this group. When we were talking about employment rights, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, along with many others, focused on their having been achieved over decades as a result of public campaigning and effort. We often talk about democracy as meaning things that happen here in this Chamber, and in elections and votes, but democracy at its heart is people campaigning. That is how we have delivered many employment rights and food protection rights, including in respect of pesticides, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, clearly described. Those protections were not arrived at by people sitting in a chamber; they have come through huge outside campaigns.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I have listened to nearly all the debate thus far. We heard, particularly in the early stages, the Minister say, “Trust the intentions of this Government”. I have to contrast that with what we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who talked about departments thinking boldly and unnecessary regulatory burdens being removed. If that is the message being sent to departments, that would seem to indicate the Government’s intentions. Those intentions have been mentioned by all sides of your Lordships’ House, notably, and with horror, by Cross-Benchers. They cannot be accused of playing party politics and thinking about elections; they are simply horrified by the undemocratic—a word that has been used many times—and reckless, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, approach of this Bill.

The reason I chose to sign Amendment 38, when I could have signed any amendment in this group covering toy, cosmetic and food safety, is the issue of farm antibiotic use, which nobody has focused on yet. There is an interesting parallel to be drawn between antibiotic use and, as many people have referred to, the fact that financial controls have explicitly been excluded from the Bill because “This is all being dealt with elsewhere until we start going forward.” We are now coming towards the end of a crucial—and, I will acknowledge, the Government’s world-leading—antibiotics strategy, which is now going to be reviewed. So, why not exclude antibiotics, if nothing else? If we are looking to exclude the financial sector, why not exclude antibiotics, given that a review process is built into the system that is going to look at antibiotics?