Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Lisvane

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?