Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

If they find themselves in the same Division Lobby, but that is rather unlikely.

For this reason—the reason that I spoke of some time ago—I am proposing Amendment 113, which seeks to remove Clause 9(4) from the Bill. In the view of the committee and of your Lordships, this is the main offending clause, as it essentially grants Ministers unlimited powers. That is why we are proposing that amendment.

Amendment 133 harks back to an amendment for which many of the Minister’s colleagues and of those on these Benches voted during the passage of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, as it is very similar to an amendment that was tabled then. It is relatively self-explanatory, and it was explained even better by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I suggest that it imports some sensible consultation into the secondary legislation process without overburdening that process.

That may be the Minister’s response. He may say that this is bureaucratic and a lengthy process, to which I would say, to some extent, “So what?” This legislation does not have to be a breathless process; it is supposed to get it right. Many of your Lordships will have witnessed statutory instruments that come back to correct previous statutory instruments. I know of one case when we got into three or possibly four statutory instruments before we were presented with something that was acceptable. A bit of time, consultation and reflection gives us a chance to make regulation that is better and achieves what is intended.

I do not think this is an overwhelming process; it is about careful, purposeful regulation and proper consultation during that process. To an extent, that goes some way to dealing with some of the issues in the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor—who has now made it from her transport system to her place—in fact in a rather more inclusive way, covering large portions of the Bill.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 132, also in my name, which I do not believe is controversial. Again, it continues the theme of the retained EU law Bill. As memory serves, one of the last things your Lordships did when sending that Bill back in the previous Parliament was to add a reporting requirement, so I suspect that there may not be much argument on either side of this against having a window on what is going on in the regulatory process. Indeed, it should provide a platform for us to have a discussion on a regular basis about the effectiveness and necessity of regulation, which I am sure many noble Lords would welcome.

My noble friend Lord Foster will not speak but has deputed me to speak on his behalf, which is a great honour and responsibility. He also signed Amendment 126 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley. Amendment 129 in the name of my noble friend would ensure that an amendment that he will bring to the Committee later would be subject to the affirmative procedure. Like me, I think my noble friend would like to say that we do not think that the affirmative procedure is an adequate scrutiny measure, but it is marginally better than nothing.

Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, makes an interesting point. I would like to hear from the Minister about who and what they are seeking to address in Clause 2(3)(h), because it is very broad. What level of specificity should we expect, or is there none?

To close, there are substantive amendments in this group, and I suggest that Amendments 113 and 133 are two that should find their way forward with the Government’s help.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, we have been here before. When the Schools Bill was in front of us, I was very happily lined up next to Lord Judge in saying that this would not do, and I find myself in the same position today. We have a job to do in the House of Lords; it is the proper scrutiny of legislation. This Bill seeks to avoid that. Either the Bill needs to wait and rewrite itself in rather more detail when the Government know what they want to do, or we need some such provision as has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson and others to allow us a proper view of what will actually happen under this legislation. I very much hope that the Government will rethink, in one direction or the other.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, on his appointment. I look forward to working with him in the years ahead.

I thank all noble Lords for speaking on this group. Noble Lords across the Committee have raised a number of important issues relating to scrutiny. I reassure them, up front, that this Government take very seriously the importance of scrutiny, in particular facilitating parliamentary consideration of government proposals. However, we believe overall that the Bill strikes the right balance on the need for proper consideration of the important issues and the technical nature of many product regulations.

I start with Amendment 132. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, has proposed the publishing of impact assessments of affirmative regulations laid every six months after the Bill’s implementation. The impact of any new regulations will be fully considered through the development of proportionate impact analysis. The Better Regulation Framework, as most noble Lords know, is the system that the Government use to manage the flow of regulation and understand its impacts. In line with the Better Regulation Framework, for regulations where significant impacts are anticipated —above £10 million per year—full impact assessments will be published. For regulations with lower anticipated impacts, a proportionate de minimis assessment impact analysis will be completed. These assessments will, as a matter of course, consider the impact of regulations on small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, the laudable sentiment behind these amendments is already covered.

A number of the amendments relate to the use of the affirmative procedure. There exists a process for scrutinising secondary legislation that will operate under this Bill, including by scrutinising committees. I recognise the Bill’s delegated powers have raised questions, including from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Rights, Minister Madders, and I appeared before in October. I remind noble Lords that the DPRRC stated and admitted in that evidence session that it saw the need for powers. The Government take seriously the recommendations of the DPRRC, and I plead mea culpa—we put our hands up that we should have been much clearer and could have done more to explain the reasons for the approach taken in this Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, asked about the Attorney-General’s speech at the Bingham lecture. He is a fine lawyer and is a good friend of mine. I listen to him all the time. But he said in his speech that this Bill does not exceed excessive powers. Product regulation is very technical, and we have ensured the that the Bill allows for appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, enabling this House to play the crucial role of scrutinising legislation. Existing secondary legislation runs to over 2,500 pages and covers everything from consumer products, such as toys and cosmetics to heavy industrial products like pressure equipment. We intend to use the Bill’s delegated powers to make targeted changes, on a case-by-case basis, to update and build on the large and well-established existing framework.

I should like to reassure all noble Lords on the specific point around EU law. The appropriate scrutiny procedure is provided by Clause 11, which applies the draft affirmative procedure to various regulations, including those making provision for a power of entry, creating a criminal offence or amending primary legislation, which will need to be debated and approved by Parliament before being implemented.

I turn to Amendment 133, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. This proposes a sifting mechanism whereby all regulations are preconsidered by a joint committee of both Houses. While we understand the need for oversight, a bespoke joint committee approach could cause delays. In addition, there is already a parliamentary process for statutory instruments made under specific Acts of constitutional significance where sifting is applied to ensure appropriate scrutiny. We do not consider that such a process is proportionate or necessary under this Bill, where regulations will often relate to routine minor technical changes—for example, a change in chemical content in cosmetics or toys.

I turn to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor—

EV Strategy: (ECC Committee Report)

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her superb chairing of the committee; it was a real pleasure to be part of it.

I share my noble friend Lord Lilley’s aversion to subsidy. It seems to me that subsidies that are too large and too long stop real solutions emerging, and that we really need to work against them. It was a huge pleasure being on the committee with him. I learned what dissent effectively delivered with great style was, and I learned how one can chair in such circumstances, so it was a great educational experience.

I do not think my noble friend should despair too much about not being on the committee any more: we have my noble friend Lord Frost there. I see that the current inquiry is into methane. When I was a Whip in MAFF, the BSE crisis hit and the first reaction of the scientists was, “We must kill every cow in the country”. I hope, with the fate of the cows being in my noble friend’s hands, that he will mount as good a defence as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, did under those circumstances.

There are some things the Government can do to move things along. First, on regulations, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and others, we are faced with a set of regulations, particularly when it comes to flats, on-street charging and similar areas, where we are deliberately slowing things down. We are making it harder to make progress. This is a Government who have said, in Defra, in housing and elsewhere, that they will do something about ineffective and unnecessary regulations. I know how hard that is but I am optimistic; I very much hope that the Government will go down that way.

Another area where regulations have been getting in the way is on the evolution of small, cheap electric vehicles. If I want something that will carry myself and a couple of kids, or maybe the shopping around town, I can go to China and buy it for £1,500. The cheapest alternative here is £15,000. Some of that difference is quality but an awful lot of it is regulation. The question of whether the value that we are getting from that regulation justifies the cost of implementing it really needs examining. We really ought not to be getting in the way of the development of new forms of local mobility in the way that we are.

I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said about information. We ought to publish an overall projection for energy and net zero. I would not call it a plan—it is too uncertain and far away for that—but it should be something that shows us how the Government believe we can get there, including what the steps will be, what the consequences will be and what the experience will be like. It should be open, moving, discursive and, above all, truthful. That would make a good base for good policy. The current darkness, for which the previous Government must accept some responsibility, is not a constructive background.

I would also like to see open information rigorously applied to the availability and state of charging points, so that anyone can find out the state of any charging point and where they might go in the hope of finding it, rather than it being balkanised into little sets of information for people who subscribe to particular networks. I would really like to see people being able to rent out their own home charging spaces to other people. Apart from not having an electric car and the ability to charge it, I cannot see why I should not be able to have someone else’s car on my drive and charge it there. The prices charged for on-street parking are ridiculous. I could make a very nice little turn, as I might do from selling my surplus strawberries, by selling a bit of electricity and thereby keeping everybody’s price down.

Lastly, I would like to see us pay serious attention to resilience—getting ourselves into a position where we can genuinely support a manufacturing industry. The key thing that I would like to see us do is put money into battery research. We cannot continue— it is totally impossible—to rely on the rare materials that find their way into current batteries. We have to do better; there are signs that we can do better. If we find ourselves at the forefront of a really effective sodium battery development, we will have a chance to create that industry or a share of it here, but while we rely on old materials and rare materials, we really must keep here the materials that get here. We must have an effective recycling industry so that what comes here stays here and we can use it to make new batteries.

Civil Nuclear Road Map

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her suggestions. Of course, we need to pay close attention to the skills needs of the future, which is why we have set up the nuclear skills task force and are eagerly awaiting its report for us to take forward. My noble friend is also right that we need to keep a close eye on the costs of the different technologies. She is right to say that they are essentially long-term projects, but many of our energy infrastructure projects are long term—even offshore wind developments take a number of years to bring to fruition. Many of the projects that are coming on stream now were started a decade ago. Obviously, we want to try to bring down the timescale for those deployments, but nevertheless all those infrastructure projects contributing towards our long-term energy security of supply are essentially long term, and nuclear will be an important part of the mix.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, is the European pressurised reactor working reliably and safely anywhere in the world and, if so, where?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes a good point—but, of course, these are matters for the regulators, which will keep a close eye on the safety, security and efficacy of the technology.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

I do not think that this amendment duplicates what the Government have already done; it actually focuses them on an area where we need to do better than we have in the past. If the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, chooses to test the opinion of the House, I will certainly support her.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, as I did in Committee. The reduction that she has achieved in her ambitions sits very well with what the Government have said are their ambitions. I would like to see my noble friend supporting this and saying that it is an opportunity. Giving us a tight, but not too tight, timescale to make this happen is a good way to demonstrate that.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I will make a few comments. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lady Blake for their amendments and will make our position on them clear. Secondly, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for the welcome changes that he made to the Bill in the other place on the housing levy and on renewable liquid fuels.

We generally welcome the passage of the Bill. It has been a long time in gestation—15 months or more—with hundreds of changes and more today. We welcome all those too, although they probably could have been made earlier.

I turn to the three amendments. First, on coal, the new new Labour Party is no longer in favour of coal. We absolutely support what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about the coal industry, and it is time to put this in legislation. It is not enough to say that we are no longer committed to coal; we need to legislate for it and so we will be supporting this amendment.

On my noble friend Lady Blake’s amendment on energy efficiency, I will restate the facts. First, the UK has the least energy-efficient homes in Europe. Domestic energy-efficiency measures have fallen 95% since 2012 and are 20 times lower than they were when Labour was last in power. The Resolution Foundation estimates that 9 million households are paying an extra £170 a year as a result of these failings.

The Minister said that the amendment is unnecessary, because it is partly in the net zero strategy and the Powering Up Britain publication, but this is legislation, and it should state what the Government propose to achieve and by what timescale. Therefore, we support the amendment.

On community energy, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, set out very clearly her proposal to commit the Government to finding out what the barriers inhibiting the development of community energy are, and to bring forward a plan to overcome them. That is a very modest amendment from where we were the last time around, and I can see no reason whatever for the Government not to support it. We will support those three amendments should the Members wish to test the opinion of the House.

Cement Industry: Carbon Dioxide

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lucas]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to support lower volumes of carbon dioxide production, as well as increased carbon capture and storage, in the cement industry.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to working with the cement sector to explore decarbonisation options and are pursuing several strategic funding and policy initiatives. This includes developing options for access to CCUS. In March this year, as part of the CCUS cluster sequencing process, the Government published the Track-1 project negotiation list, which included the Hanson Padeswood cement works project. That was one of five projects to proceed to negotiations for support through the relevant business model.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. As cement accounts for about 8% of our carbon dioxide output, this is a crucial area for us to pay attention to. May I draw my noble friend’s attention to the importance of standards in this area? So many specify which materials should be used, rather than what performance should be achieved. If the Government could help the transformation of that, there would be much more ability to use bath furnace slag and more modern additives such as graphene.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The figures I have are slightly different; my figures say that the sector accounts for 1.5% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The sector has made strong progress in reducing its emissions. Of course, we stand by to help it further. It is a particularly difficult sector to decarbonise, given that 70% of its emissions are process-related.

Geothermal Heat and Power

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject, and to my honourable friend Kieran Mullan for all the work he has done in exploring its potential. I am going to approach this as a former investment banker because I think we are looking at an extremely investable set of projects, but one which needs some government support at the beginning.

Once we get going and are in the state they are in on the continent—when we know the state of the underground aquifers and know that they are permeable —we are looking at producing a long-term stream of income, which is essentially index linked. By long term, I mean 100 years or so. Essentially, these projects have low costs to keep them going. Such a project is an extremely attractive asset for big insurance companies, pension funds and others, but one that they are not used to. They need talking through, educating and working into this so that they are prepared to pay a really good price for what should be, for them, an excellent asset. That is work I hope to encourage the Government to do.

The second side is the initial risk. For instance, looking at southern England, we know that there is a good layer of carboniferous limestone. We did a lot of oil exploration in the layers above it, so we have a pretty good picture, but we do not know that the fracture zones are permeable. We could get down there and find that it is all gummed up. I do not think it will be. The British Geological Survey produced some recent mapping, which gives me a lot of confidence that that and other strata throughout the UK will prove to be productive, but we just do not know.

Although we have experienced crews from the North Sea, they are not experienced in this geology. It will take them longer to drill the first hole than the 10th hole, by which stage it will be falling off a log for them, as it were. You just do not know, when you are drilling a first hole into a stratum, exactly what it will feel like and how it will work. There are risks there, which are likely to increase costs. For the first well, there are very substantial equity risks. In a stable situation, you will get one bad hole in 20 and you can insure against that. They do this on the continent; the insurance system covers it, and you know what the picture is. But for the first hole in a new geological province in the UK, you just do not know.

There is a real role there for the Government to stand as a very expensive equity investor—not to say, “We will give you a grant or a subsidy”, but “If we are taking the risk, we want a proper return from this. If you can do better on the commercial market, then do better on the commercial market, but we will be the first equity investor because we as a country need to get this started”. If that is an attractive idea to the Government, I hope they will agree to a meeting because I have been running around the City looking for people who would respond positively to such an opportunity. There appears to be no great shortage of them.

I am optimistic that we can make this happen, even below London. We do not know anything about what happens below London. The first well there will be a complete unknown, but if we can show that there is a geothermal resource beneath London, that is a superb place to start heat networks. We can, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, start to chew into the 40% of our energy that is going on heating, most of which is coming from fossil fuels. We could provide maybe up to 10% of total UK energy demand from geothermal resources. I encourage the Government to take this seriously and do what it takes to get it started. It could be a complete bust, but without their help, we will never know.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 118A in my name. I thank my noble friend Lady Chapman for her kind words about my modest amendment, and other noble Lords. From the discussion at Second Reading when my noble friend Lady Crawley referred to human rights and equality, and from earlier in Committee, it became clear to me that it is necessary to provide protection for human rights and equality and their infrastructure in the UK in the Bill.

I actually have been on the dashboard. I went to have a look to see whether I could gain some knowledge and possibly reassurance about the consequences of the Bill. I spent an hour or so putting questions about a variety of issues; of course, human rights and equalities are not a government department so I had to work out how to identify them across the variety of departments concerned. Digging into workers’ rights, I found descriptions of all kinds, many of which have been mentioned in the Committee over the past few days—maternity rights, trade union rights, and so on—but what I could not find out was what might be retained, what might be changed and what might be abandoned, so clearly I either need to spend more time communing with the dashboard or perhaps the criticism levelled at it in earlier debates has been borne out.

As a result, like other noble Lords I decided that the only safe solution was to require, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, proposed earlier today for the Food Standards Agency, that any proposed change, revocation or alternative provision should require an opinion from the EHRC on its impact on equalities and human rights before the powers can be used. Parliament gave the EHRC powers to advise on the equality and human rights implications of laws and proposed laws and to publish information and advice, including to Parliament, on any matter relating to equality and human rights. The breadth of law within the scope of the Bill is considerable and has considerable implications for equality and human rights. They include, but are not limited to, parental leave, annual leave, rights for part-time workers, maximum hours for heavy goods vehicle drivers, and other employment rights. The Bill could also impact on laws on minimum rights for refugees and disabled people’s access to rail and air transport.

So rather than going into detail about all the things that might be affected by this, I thought it would be worth putting on the record five concerns that the EHRC has about the Bill and why this amendment is important. These are:

“Uncertainty about the Government’s policy intentions and potential effects on equality and human rights protections … lack of parliamentary scrutiny of potential changes … limited time available before the proposed ‘sunset’ date … Legal uncertainty resulting from the Bill … implications for devolution and the Union”,


which are immense. So it seems to me that this amendment should help the Government. It is a logical answer to those concerns, and I hope that the Minister might see it in that light.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think the safeguards were in relation to the clause as a whole, but I will certainly write to the noble Baroness. This has been an important discussion, but for now I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are taking huge powers in the Bill to abolish EU legislation and are asking us to believe the promises they have made; for instance, on environmental law, that they will not decrease environmental protection. I entirely accept those promises. This is a well-run Government who are capable of controlling what they do and living up to their promises. In that case, what is the problem with just saying, “And we’re not going to increase the regulatory burden”? We would say, “Okay, we believe you; we don’t need you to have a power to stop yourselves doing that”. What kind of Government need to legislate to stop themselves behaving well?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

This clause has got to the guts of the Bill. It is a real mistake for the Government to be quite so certain in their position on this and to not give even the slightest indication that they want to consider some of the suggestions made by noble Lords in this debate. I think the Government may come to regret batting things back without really taking on board the very serious and well-considered points that have been made. This is certainly something we will return to on Report.

I have worked on a lot of Bills—not as many as others in this place—but never one where nobody has turned up to support their Front Bench on the Government side on anything.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am sad that the Government have chosen not to address the points made by this Committee concerning democracy and the proper role of this House in reviewing legislation, and are stepping away from the conversation that has been offered by the Opposition. I see this as a Bill which is headed for the Parliament Act—I cannot see any other option being offered by the Government. I hope that they will step away from that; I think that we can achieve a better result if all sides looked at how the role of this House can be properly fulfilled with this sort of legislation. I think that is really important for this House and for democracy, and therefore I personally very much hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, will persist with his amendment—not today, obviously.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

With that one final intervention, let me say to my noble friend that he knows I greatly respect his view. I think the Government’s record, certainly on all legislation that I have been responsible for taking through this House, shows that the Government always listen carefully. The Lord Privy Seal will agree that I am always very frank with the advice that I give to colleagues within Government about what is possible within the Government’s legislative sphere. We always listen very carefully to what the House has to say. The Government want to get their business through, obviously. We will reflect, as we have done, on amendments that are passed and proposed in this House, and will of course seek an alternative opinion from the House of Commons if amendments are passed. But I think that our record shows that, on some very controversial pieces of legislation, the Government listen to what the House has to say.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, could I raise one point on delay? I am trying to visualise a situation in which officials are considering a particular set of regulations—let us not identify them—that are complicated. Therefore, the possibility of delaying a decision on those regulations is under way. We get to 30 December 2023: no statutory instrument has been laid, because they are still considering whether to delay consideration. How is this to be considered “scrutinised by the House”? There will be nothing there to scrutinise—there will be no statutory instrument—and the House will be thinking that this set of regulations will disappear on 31 December.

[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.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. There are far too many and the hour is too late for me to comment on them individually. I am very grateful for the support for the amendments in this group.

The Government want to leave the environment in a better state than they found it. This is no mean task and needs continuous and immediate attention. Removing these regulations from the Bill will not ensure that this happens.

I thank the Minister for his response and his passion for the subject matter. I will study his response in Hansard. I would welcome a dialogue with the Minister on a way forward, and I feel certain that we will return to this issue on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 10.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

Where Ministers see fit—and that includes Ministers in the devolved Governments—they will have the power to preserve retained EU law, and much of it will end up being preserved from the sunset. I submit, and it is the Government’s belief, that there is therefore no need for specific exemptions. I suspect I have not convinced Members opposite of this fact but, nevertheless, I hope that at this stage they will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

In the context of some of the arguments advanced by my noble friend, has he considered extending the principle embodied in Clause 15(5), which says that, in particular subject areas, changes cannot increase the regulatory burden? This would address some of the points made in the amendments by giving an overall protection that workers’ rights will not be reduced by the changes made as a result of the Bill. It might give some comfort to those of us who support the Bill and do not doubt the Government’s intentions to see them embedded in law, in just the same way as they propose in Clause 15(5).

More generally, I am disappointed that my noble friend does not address the issue of the role of Parliament. To my mind, it is a great demonstration of the need for the House of Lords that this Bill has arrived in our House in this shape, and if we let it go out of this House in the same shape, we will demonstrate why we ought to be replaced.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I totally understand the point my noble friend makes; I am a passionate believer in the rights of this House and have happily stated on many occasions within government that in many cases we do a much better job of scrutinising legislation than the other House. It sometimes makes life a little uncomfortable for Ministers such as me defending this, but when I talk to some of my colleagues in the Commons, I realise how relatively little time is given to some legislation compared to this House.

I also understand my noble friend’s first point. I reiterate that it is certainly not the Government’s intention to reduce workers’ rights. The House will get tired of hearing me repeat it, but we have higher standards than most of the rest of Europe and we have every intention of maintaining that.