European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Tunnicliffe

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, it may be convenient for the Committee for me to set out the Opposition’s view—

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords—

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

The noble Lord may speak after me, and as many times as he likes, but—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wigley]

Not on this amendment, because these points have not been covered. This is Committee, and we have a right to put our points.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

Those who are familiar with the rules will know that as many Lords as they like can speak after me. They cannot speak after the Minister.

I think it will be useful if I simply set out the position of the Opposition. The seriousness of the situation, as described by a number of speakers, is entirely accepted. Those of us who have slogged through the road haulage and trailers Bill know that the extant law that a no-deal would fall back on is totally unfit for purpose and would give us perhaps only 4% of the capacity we need. I think there is a consensus on that. The fear of customs friction, which, once again, we raised at Second Reading, is acknowledged. It was neatly summed up by the chief executive of the Road Haulage Association:

“Simply using current customs practices and applying them to UK/EU traffic risks delays of biblical proportions which would strangle growth and hurt the entire economy”.


Basically, these amendments say, “Sort this mess out before you start executing change through Clause 7”, and, “Don’t misuse the regulations to do it”. We broadly agree, and we hope everybody agrees. We hope everybody recognises that we need these problems solved in road haulage—I will not repeat myself later; it is the same in railways and in aviation—before we can contemplate leaving the Union. They are not related to soft or hard Brexit, although each means different problems; they are related to transport problems. No deal means no transport, and that has to be sorted out.

Are these amendments the best way of doing that? I am not sure. At the moment we have an open mind on that. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the Government to propose a series of meetings for interested Peers off the Floor of the House with senior Ministers—no doubt with the noble Baroness, and perhaps the Secretary of State should intervene because this is so important—so that we can get to the bottom of the progress that the Government are making and find out how they propose to tackle what is a real problem. We have a common interest in it being tackled, and the Government have a duty to put a lot of effort into convincing sceptical Peers. They should tell us what they plan to do, respond to ideas and come back with amendments to assure the House that we are not going to drift into a disaster of biblical proportions.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords—

Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Pupil Information by Welsh Ministers) Regulations 2011

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Tunnicliffe

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, the Minister will be delighted to know that I do not intend to oppose or object to these regulations. I can see the relief on his face at that statement. I will make a few comments on the reasoning and the likely outputs, and just touch on the confidentiality point.

The mood of the Explanatory Memorandum seems to suggest that the Welsh regulation—I will only talk to the Welsh regulation—is to facilitate the Beyond 2011 Programme. It does not quite say it, but the language of the Explanatory Memorandum seems almost to suggest that the decision has already been made not to have the 2021 census. In this day and age there are probably three reasons for having a census. The first is as a source of information for decision making. I have looked at the Beyond 2011 Programme and the sense of trying to produce something of equivalent capability for decision making is there in the terms of reference, and that is good.

We have also moved on in what the census is used for. The census has become highly valued in our society for academics, for what it can tell us about history, for the insights produced by past censuses— I am not sure what the correct plural is—that the academics have been able to glean, and the extent to which many citizens of this country find great value in being able to look back into their past, their families and the history of their surroundings. I hope the Government have not made the decision to abandon the 2021 census yet, and I hope that in making that decision they will take all considerations into account, including those that are of value to individuals as well as to the decision-making bureaucracy. Perhaps I should say administration—I would not call it bureaucracy because I like administrations.

My second question is: what are they going to collect? The terms are probably well defined in some administration Act, but I would be grateful if the Minister would flesh them out a bit. The two things that stand out are the ethnic group and the source of that information, and what we mean for these purposes. My wife was foolish enough to buy some tickets to the Millennium Stadium, so I have to be partly Welsh in this. I am not sure whether Welshness is ethnic or not, but as sure as hell it is sensitive. Is a sense of Welshness or Celticness part of what is being gathered here, as well as other things? Clearly it is an important issue in the country. What do we mean by the “source of that information”?

The second area is what is almost the political correctness around asking about a pupil’s level of fluency in English where their first language is neither English nor Welsh. I see that if your first language is neither English nor Welsh, fluency in English is quite important. However, fluency in English is also important if your first language is Welsh, because in the United Kingdom the extent of fluency in English must be important information about the way people live in the wider community. We move about this land from Wales to England. If one is gathering information about fluency in languages, one should gather it comprehensively. We have a peculiar situation where, as I read it, if you are fluent in Welsh your fluency in English is not even a consideration.

[Lord Wigley]

Before the noble Lord leaves that point, I say that I go along with what he says on the need to ascertain fluency in English. However, given the growing importance of the Welsh language in Wales, would he accept that there would be an equal case for ascertaining fluency in Welsh?

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

I certainly see that the people of Wales might think that there would be an equal case—and because I am not a brave person, I would support that.

The Explanatory Memorandum refers to a series of outputs. Paragraph 7.4(ii) refers to,

“differentiating migrants in order to improve our understanding of moves within and between local authorities in England”.

Once again, I am not clear what a migrant is. Is it somebody moving from Shropshire to Monmouthshire, or somebody with no connection to the United Kingdom who finds themselves in Wales as the first place they come to? Does it include somebody who comes from outside the United Kingdom who goes first to England and then to Wales? What level of granularity are we talking about when it comes to migration? Are we talking about small movements or larger ones?

Finally, I must say a word or two about confidentiality. The essence of much of the data-gathering law in this country is that it puts barriers between departments so that they cannot look at each other’s data, in order to maintain confidentiality. We then break down those barriers in order to use the data in a richer way. That is an entirely reasonable thing to do, but it is equally reasonable that whenever the barriers are broken down, as they are by these regulations, we should seek assurances that we are moving forward on confidentiality. It is no secret that there were unfortunate lapses under the previous Administration. I am absolutely sure that they were not in any way malicious. We acted in good faith and I am sure that this Administration, too, will act in good faith. However, have they made progress towards being able to assure us about improved confidentiality? Are there any new techniques, audits or penalties that will allow the Minister to say that confidentiality when this barrier is taken down will be even better than it was in the past? With those few comments, we are quite happy to support the regulations.