Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

I absolutely agree and, as the noble Viscount has made clear, a number of things could be interpreted as of sufficient gravity to trigger, we hope, the powers in the Bill, then the Act, and it would be for the Joint Committee to decide—as a number of committees of your Lordships’ House already decide—that the lack of consultation is a serious flaw in the bringing forward of proposals for, for example, delegated legislation. So I hope I have set the noble Viscount’s mind at rest, but I am happy to talk to him outside the Chamber if further reassurance is required.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I ask noble Lords who support Amendment 2 how it is that they now wish to involve Parliament and our democracy in getting rid of these laws when they were perfectly happy to see them imposed in a wholly anti-democratic process. I describe it as such because all the laws which the Government now wisely wish to cancel were proposed in secret in the European Commission. Their national interest was then negotiated in secret in the Committee of Permanent Representatives, after which they were signed off in the European Council and Parliament, which could not change them. Our Select Committees could indeed scrutinise a tiny sample of them, or even recommend them for debate in the Commons or Lords, but, once those debates, which could not change them, had taken place, they became our law. So why do the proposers and friends of Amendment 2 now wish to subject the process of their abolition to our democratic processes? And, talking of which, what do they say about the fact that the Bill has already been through the Commons?

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a single point. In his opening remarks, the Minister referred to the affirmative procedure as though it is a perfectly satisfactory way of dealing with these very substantial ministerial powers to deal with retained European law. As a former member of the Delegated Powers Committee, I want to say that that is absolutely not the case. Under the affirmative procedure, Parliament has no power to amend any proposals coming from Ministers. It is therefore absolutely essential that this House approves Amendment 2 in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and others. I very much hope that it does so.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure that the House will approve Amendment 2. I am not sure that the noble Baroness grasped the point I was trying to make, so, if I may, I will finish it.

I accept that the Government were in danger of biting off more than they could chew with their original proposals but those now seem eminently achievable, especially if our civil servants rise to the occasion in identifying the EU laws that we might want to retain—very few, I submit, so the effort should not exhaust them too much. But perhaps the Daily Telegraph was right in its headline on 10 May, which read:

“Whitehall ‘blob’ thwarts bonfire of Brexit laws”.


I support the whole Government wholeheartedly in their endeavours.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

May I clarify something? In his initial remarks, the noble Lord suggested that the problems he believes this Bill is designed to address stem from the fact that laws were imposed on this country. Whether or not one agrees with that statement, his proposal is that laws were imposed on this country without parliamentary scrutiny, and therefore without democratic accountability. If one accepts that that is the case, how is it then right to perpetuate that wrong by trying to get rid of those laws through a process that is itself without parliamentary scrutiny? The amendments are trying to impose parliamentary scrutiny; indeed, one of the reasons for our departure from the EU was to take back control to our Parliament, which is what these amendments seek to do.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Pearson of Rannoch Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Does he agree that all EU law was put into law without the consent of the British people and Parliament? That is the EU system, is it not: proposed in secret by the Commission, voted on in secret by COREPER and eventually passed through the Council of Ministers? When have the British people ever agreed to a single EU law that we are now, rightly, getting rid of?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The noble Lord may want to re-open the debate on the referendum and EU membership, but I do not. I want to focus on people’s rights now; that is the important point. That is why I appeal, across the House, to people who may have supported Brexit and people who did not. I think the House can unite on this sort of issue. As we have heard, this is not the way to do it; there is a better way to review retained EU law and a better way to create certainty and understanding on the part of the public.

That is why these amendments are so critical, in that they ask for specifics. I am pretty certain that, sadly, the Minister will give us the same mantra that we heard in the other place: “Trust us, this is a process; we have a time constraint.” Why they have put this time constraint in place, God only knows. But the Minister will not give us an idea about the specifics, and that is really important.

As my noble friend Lady Crawley, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others have mentioned, this is not just about regulations; this is about case law as well. That is vital. I cannot beat the illustration of my noble friend Lady O’Grady. All Governments of all colours have had to be persuaded to give these rights. It has not been an easy journey for workers, particularly women workers, and that is the other thing about this. Hard-won rights, particularly on equal pay and equal rights at work, are under threat here. That is something that the public need to hear very firmly.

I conclude with a simple request of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. He has assured us that UK employment rights do not depend on EU law, and we have heard the arguments in this debate. Can he confirm which of the regulations that I have listed in Amendment 40 are not covered by Clause 1? Can he give us that guarantee? I suspect that he will not; he will make some excuse. But this will not go away; this debate will continue because the public out there need to know whether they can trust this Government. I suspect that they will answer no; what they want is Parliament to decide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, across my whole career, I have worked with other women and admired the work of trade unions trying to help the employment protections for women in general, mothers with young children or women with other caring responsibilities, by helping them to keep working and to build their economic and financial resilience. This includes parental leave, the protection of pensions in TUPE and the other areas we discussed in the first group, but it also includes the worker protections for part-time workers, which have resulted in improved working conditions and protections for men, disabled workers and minority groups, not just for women. For those reasons, I wholly support Amendment 2.

Quite frankly, the fact that the regulations and laws which are the subject of the Bill derive from the EU seems to be a red herring. As my noble friend the Minister said, this is an enabling Bill, which will allow Ministers to retain, amend or revoke our laws and public safeguards. That these protections originated from the EU is just not the point: in reality, as my noble friend said, we have higher standards, so, had they not been introduced by the EU, the implication must be that we would have introduced them ourselves. In reality, my noble friend is saying that the fact that they were introduced as a result of EU measures, and were not objected to when they were introduced, is because Parliament itself would have chosen to have them. So we should not be here debating the fact that, because they originated in the EU, we have to tear them up or to assume that they are somehow bad. Vast swathes of long-standing and hard-won protections are under threat—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that they are bad to the extent that they never went through the House of Commons, the House of Lords or any of our democratic procedures? This legislation was imposed on us by Brussels and there was nothing we could do about it, so why are we fussed about removing it?

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I am afraid I absolutely do not agree with the noble Lord on that point. The fact that they came from the EU was because that was the way the law worked at that stage. They were fed into by our own elected representatives there, and the principles being introduced were supported by our Parliament. It is a red herring that they came originally from the EU. Are we saying that we, as a civilised country, would not have had these protections anyway? The idea that this word “regulations” is a negative in some way—and, if it is associated with the EU, it is an even worse negative—is not the point; “regulations” is another word for “protection” or “safeguards”, and we must not forget that.

These hard-won protections are under threat, and our constitutional principles are being undermined—as are, potentially, the rule of law and parliamentary democracy itself. When or if our laws need to be changed, surely that must be approved and debated in Parliament, and not just handed to the Minister of the day, who may have no expertise in the area and who may be under the influence of a lobby group. Giving Parliament no proper say or role in changing the law exposes millions of citizens to harms that our normal constitutional safeguards are there to protect us from.

I fear speaking this way from these Benches and I hope that my noble friend will understand that this is not a direct criticism of this Administration or of this Government. It is a comment and a deeply expressed concern about the potential harms that could result from this legislation and the way in which it is being introduced. The Government may not intend this, but we may have another Prime Minister and a whole new range of Ministers soon. Given recent experience, it is not about whether or not we trust the current Government; it is about the way in which our country operates.