Business: Greenwashing

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the practice of ‘greenwashing’ by businesses; and what steps, if any, they intend to take to tackle it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, green claims made by businesses should be clear and accurate and not mislead consumers, who are increasingly looking to make environmentally friendly choices. The Competition and Markets Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority have published guidance to help businesses to comply with the law when making environmental claims about their goods or services. If a business does not comply with consumer law, the CMA and other bodies, such as trading standards, can bring court proceedings.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, while many businesses are genuinely committed to the net-zero objective, should not there be zero tolerance when businesses puff their publicity and accounts with dishonest claims about their green credentials? Does the Minister accept that for those businesses self-regulation will not work, that tough regulation and penalties are needed to deal with these fraudulent practices, and that the Government must work urgently with international partners to establish standardised accounting rules, an end to bogus carbon offsets, rigour in the definition of ESG, and reliable and clear information for investors and consumers?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I understand the point that the noble Lord makes, but businesses do not self-regulate in this area. In September 2021, the Competition and Markets Authority published guidance on environmental claims on goods and services, to help businesses to understand how to communicate their green credentials while mitigating the risk of misleading consumers. The Advertising Standards Authority has also taken action against some businesses.

EU: Imports

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to facilitate imports from the European Union.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, on the second Oral Question, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, will be contributing virtually.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for International Trade (Lord Grimstone of Boscobel) (Con)]

My Lords, HMG have taken several actions to facilitate imports from the EU. First, we have negotiated the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which delivers zero tariffs and zero quotas. Secondly, HMRC provides services to help importers understand the customs border requirements, including webinars reaching around 20,000 UK and EU traders to date. Thirdly, our 2025 UK Border Strategy will transform how our border operates, to build the world’s most effective border.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, has the Minister visited GOV.UK and read the page, “Import goods into the UK: step by step”? It could have been written by the Spanish Inquisition. The Government proclaim that they will legislate for a bonfire of EU red tape, but why did they so mess things up that they are actually erecting trade barriers and forcing up costs instead of using post-Brexit freedom to make trading easier for our businesses and cut tariffs on goods that consumers buy? Why do Ministers go around chanting that they are creating the most open economy and unleashing Britain’s potential when in fact they are multiplying bureaucracy and exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the noble Lord mentioned Brexit freedoms, because there was a Statement made on that topic just yesterday, setting out what the Government intend to do to make sure that those freedoms can be available to everybody in the United Kingdom.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my warm welcome and congratulations to my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. Despite the case just made by the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, it is a puzzle to me that the Government have introduced this Bill, given the commitment agreed in the Joint Ministerial Committee—of Ministers of the UK and the devolved Governments—to develop by consensus common frameworks for the UK internal market. We are told that good progress has been made on that yet, with perfunctory consultation, the Bill has been brought in.

The Bill contains no mention of common frameworks. It takes powers to override devolved legislation by means of regulations passed at Westminster and to spend money in areas of devolved competence. It contains only patchy and vague provisions for future consultation on the exercise of the powers that it creates. It has provoked indignation in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and legislative consent is highly unlikely to be forthcoming. The Bill is disrespectful to the devolved Administrations. When the union is under great stress from Brexit and Covid, it is also reckless.

The Bill is disrespectful towards this Parliament. It contains egregious Henry VIII clauses, most notably Clause 53(2), which says:

“Any power to make regulations under this Act includes power … to amend, repeal or otherwise modify legislation.”


The Bill is disrespectful towards our treaty partners. It authorises breaches of the Northern Ireland protocol and the withdrawal agreement. The Government offer as justification that the EU may intend to interpret ambiguities in the withdrawal agreement—ambiguities that the Government were happy to write in a year ago—to the detriment of the UK’s internal market and the Good Friday agreement. Ministers may see this as a suitable tactic in the Brexit negotiations. It may also be a reckless reminder to other countries not to trust perfidious Albion.

The brutal declaration in the House of Commons by the Northern Ireland Secretary that the Government are deliberately taking power to break international law sounds a loud alarm. The Bill is disrespectful to the rule of law and the judiciary. In this regard it echoes thinly veiled threats to the judiciary in the Conservative manifesto, the notorious remarks in Conservative Home by Suella Braverman shortly before she was appointed Attorney-General, and attacks on lawyers by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister at the Conservative Party conference.

The Government make the case in self-exculpation that their defiance of international law is legal under domestic law. They also insist that they are not precluding judicial review, although in Clause 47 they go to extreme lengths to insulate regulations made under the Bill from challenge. The Government cannot justify what they are doing by quibbling. Constitutionality entails acting in a spirit of respect towards the rule of law, including both international law and, in our domestic jurisdiction, the effective ability for persons to have redress in court for the misuse of executive power.

It consists in respecting conventions which, though uncodified, ought to be binding on Ministers and on Parliament. These conventions include respect for the role of other institutions which form part of the constitution, among them the devolved Administrations as well as the judiciary, and therefore acting with restraint towards them. Proper government keeps the convoy moving along together. It shows itself to be trustworthy. The doctrine of the omnicompetence of statute, undoubtedly valid, is gratifying to the vanity of parliamentarians and convenient to Governments, but such ill-judged deployment of statutory power as we see in this Bill risks imposing intolerable stresses on the cohesion of the constitution and of the United Kingdom.

The Bill is an expression of a loutishness that characterises this Government’s political dealings. Where will this debasement of our democracy take us if we collude in it?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I remind the noble Lord of the advisory speaking time. We cannot go beyond midnight, and if everybody goes over, some Lords will have to wait until tomorrow to speak.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

In this House we must do all we can to limit the damage that the Bill causes, starting by supporting the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on the rulemaking powers. I first draw attention to my interests in the register, in particular that I am chairman of the Financial Markets Law Committee, which is interested in clarifying and making certain the law.

It seems that there is a clear dilemma. The Bill is needed very urgently. It is sensible to make the changes to insolvency law that have been consulted on for some time and to provide for a new form of reconstruction, but these are needed now and they cannot sensibly be left to a later time. However, the Bill is of such complexity and, in some areas, of such novelty that more time is needed to sort out the many technical points that continue to arise, despite all that is being done by the Minister, his department and the insolvency services.

Points are being identified all the time. I will give just one example that possibly illustrates the interrelationship between new points and the scope of the delegated powers. It is unclear whether financial service creditors with super-priority have a claim on assets charged to secure debts without super-priority. The Minister might say that these can be dealt with under new Section 174A(3) to the Insolvency Act on page 108 of the Bill, but it is not clear that that power is wide enough. I take that illustration because it shows two points: first, that areas of uncertainty remain, and, secondly, that it is not clear that the delegated powers are drafted in wide enough terms.

Normally, I would absolutely deprecate extensive Henry VIII powers, but I really feel that these are needed in the circumstances of the Bill. It is absolutely essential that uncertain points can be clarified, I hope while the Bill goes through its remaining stages over the next week, but if not by swift rulemaking changes or regulatory changes to it. Points will go on being spotted—some have already been spotted and not rectified—but certainty is essential if we are to weather the problems that will undoubtedly arise over the coming months. We obviously need safeguards. I do not wish to add to the length of what I wish to say by going through the various solutions put forward by the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee, so ably explained by my noble friends Lady Taylor and Lord Blencathra.

However, I will emphasise that we cannot escape the need for delegated powers, we cannot escape the need for speed and we should make sure, because it is the reality, that we can iron out points of uncertainty as quickly as possible.

We might say that the courts can do this. I have no doubt that they can, but there are two things that one should say. First, there are issues of policy here which ought to be decided either in this House or by the Executive, and, secondly, there are bound to be mistakes which it is not possible for the courts to rectify.

The courts will of course have extra work, as people have acknowledged, and they may require additional resources. Amendment 62 suggests that there be a report on how the courts are managing and whether training is under way. My understanding is that a significant amount of training has taken place, but the adequacy and the scope of it is under the Constitutional Reform Act a matter for the judiciary and not for the Executive or for this House.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as a fellow member of the Constitution Committee, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton, the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. I also endorse warmly the powerful points made by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover.

Amendment 66 would enable Parliament to “keep … under review”—a phrase we hear endlessly—the manner in which the Secretary of State keeps under review the use of the very broad Henry VIII powers to change the law on corporate insolvency by regulations which Clause 18 empowers him to make. As many noble Lords have said, if we are to have Henry VIII powers, which are in principle constitutionally offensive, a special and convincing case must always be made for their creation by the Government. If they are to be legislated for, they should be as narrow as possible to meet their specific purpose and they should not last a minute longer than—as far as this legislation is concerned —the emergency requires.

As has been noted, the powers in Clause 18 expire on 30 April 2021, but regulations already made under that power can be extended. Moreover, the Henry VIII power itself can be extended by regulations under Clause 22 for another year, and again and again thereafter. That being so, these clauses give the Government a blank cheque. So Amendment 70, which sets a final expiry date, is the very least that is required.

I am very attracted to the robust and no-nonsense approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe: simply abolish the clause. Clause 39, to which she spoke, is a wicked piece of legislation in constitutional terms. It creates a power for the Secretary of State to change the duration of temporary provisions and to keep on doing so, ad infinitum. It is the most self-indulgent of Henry VIII powers. It is constitutionally offensive, and it really should not stand part of the Bill.

I accept, as do members of the Constitution Committee and, I think, all other noble Lords, that there is an emergency which needs urgent legislative action and that, as long as the emergency persists, we will need provisions in place to protect as far as we can businesses that are vulnerable to the coronavirus crisis and of course the jobs of those employed by them or dependent on them indirectly. However, as has been noted also by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, in an emergency—and this applies especially in a prolonged emergency—the more important it becomes for Parliament also to be vigilant and to protect the principles of the constitution.

The Bill, which the Government are fast-tracking, is huge. It has 47 clauses, 14 schedules and 234 pages. Like Henry VIII clauses, fast-tracked legislation should be rare. It should be specifically and convincingly justified and its scope should not extend beyond the minimum necessary to achieve its purposes, although the scale of this legislation makes even more questionable the appropriateness of the fast-track process.

The Government are tracking the Bill so fast that the House of Commons barely saw it. Its Second Reading and remaining stages all took place on the same day; the remaining stages were transacted in half an hour. The Bill was gone in a blink and the House of Commons did not perform its proper responsibility, I regret to say, of scrutinising it. If the House of Lords steps in where the House of Commons fears or has failed to tread, and if we seek to advise and to do so by way of passing amendments, Ministers and even Back-Bench Members of Parliament are wont to express some resentment. But we have a responsibility to scrutinise and improve important legislation. What else is Parliament for? Noble Lords have made a large number of important observations and criticisms of flaws in the Bill today, particularly in the very long debate on the first group. What we need to do, I suggest, is to separate policy for the emergency from policy for the long term.

This brings me to my second objection, beyond the inappropriate fast-tracking of some of this legislation. As many noble Lords have noted, the Government should not smuggle in permanent changes to policy and law via fast-track emergency legislation. There are three sets of permanent changes, as I understand it, in the Bill. There is a procedure for a new moratorium on enforcement action against companies in financial distress, even though this procedure may be detrimental to creditors and investors, and therefore be potentially as damaging as allowing the debtor companies to go to the wall. The Bill also provides for permanent new arrangements for restructuring companies that are in financial distress, and for restrictions on contractual supplier termination clauses.

In winding up on the first debate the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, argued that the Government had previously consulted on the permanent measures. Indeed they did, but that is no excuse for seeking to bypass full parliamentary scrutiny of important changes to the law on insolvency. We are not making a fuss about the dignity of Parliament. We are complaining about the Government outflanking a process which actually enables them to get difficult changes right and give democratic legitimacy to changes in the law. In another context, the Minister was very keen to restore full law-making rights to this Parliament. I wonder how he justifies what I would regard as this two-fold abuse of Parliament: fast-tracking such a vast law and using emergency legislation to enact permanent changes.

If the Covid-19 effects should, unfortunately, persist in a very damaging form, Parliament should return in new primary legislation to the question of what emergency powers the Government should continue to be able to exercise. I was attracted by the proposal made earlier by my noble friend Lord Liddle: that there should be post-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, put it to us that delegated powers are essential in the emergency. Yes, they may be, but there should be proper sunset clauses attached to all the powers that the Bill creates, and especially the ones that are intended to be permanent, which should never have been in a Bill creating powers for an emergency. At the least, as the DPRRC has recommended, these powers should be amended to limit their use to a period only so long as the Secretary of State judges that the effects of Covid-19 require them.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it seems that there are different rationales for why amendments can be put forward and supported. It is often because of the poor drafting of legislation; sometimes, of course, it is for political point scoring or, often, where there is a clear difference of opinion. Sometimes they are intended to save the Government from themselves and, having heard the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and others, it appears that these amendments sit within the latter category if they are to have any validity. I note that the Law Society is rather supportive of some amendments, in contrast to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, although I found his arguments logical and persuasive.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

My Lords, if I might take just a couple of seconds of your Lordships’ time, we have 10 minutes left to finish this group. I encourage people to make their comments as short as possible, so that we at least finish this group.

[Lord Howarth of Newport [V]]

My Lords, I will follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and make my comments in reference to Amendment 129 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I begin by commending him on the very strong statement of principle he made in the debate on the first group about the constitutional impropriety of too many aspects of this Bill.

His amendment dealing with the “relevant period” provides us the opportunity to touch on the constitutional principle of retrospectivity. The Bill’s provisions are backdated, altering the law on winding-up petitions as it stood after 1 March in some aspects and after 27 April in others. I do not in any way dissent from the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, to bring in a further measure to protect vulnerable businesses. None the less, we ought to recognise that it is generally held that retrospective legislation undermines the rule of law.

In this Bill, a legal right that people relied on is ex post facto wiped out, to the detriment of persons who relied on it. Provisions in Schedule 10 operate retrospectively to invalidate winding-up petitions made by creditors, albeit creditors exercising a statutory right. They could even be deprived of the benefit of a favourable court judgment previously made, as the noble and learned Lord just said. It allows the court to undo the effect of winding-up petitions and even to require petitioners to be liable for costs. This is a remarkable provision and appears to be incompatible with the rule of law.

Retrospective legislation should be very rare indeed. It is constitutionally objectionable in principle, so, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, I ask: how does the Minister justify it? If he considers it necessary to deal with abuses by creditors, how widespread are these abuses? How many instances have been reported? Why is a change in the law needed to deal with them, and why a retrospective change in the law?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara [V]]

My Lords, I have nothing to add; the arguments make themselves. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.