Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Like him, I am a fellow survivor of Margaret Thatcher’s first Administration—although I was but a humble spear carrier at the time. I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Bray who, like me, before she came here represented Ealing and Acton in another place—a constituency of beauty and contrast. As I remember it, all the beauty was in Ealing and all the contrast was in Acton.

About two hours ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, in introducing this debate, said that it was not about Brexit versus Remain: it was about the Executive versus Parliament. Control may well have been brought back, but it has been delivered to the wrong address: to Whitehall instead of Westminster.

Following what my noble friend has just said, I have left the Government five times—more than anyone else in this Chamber—but only once voluntarily. That was when Boris Johnson illegally prorogued Parliament. My concern then, and my concern now, is that, in the legitimate delivery of the referendum decision, the Government have done, and continue to do, injury to Parliament. They are repeat offenders, and we got used to this under the last two Prime Ministers, but the present one has inherited this poisoned pill and we should help him by amending it.

Last Thursday, I tuned in to a Zoom call organised by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and listened to Ruth Fox of the Hansard Society. Her verdict in a nutshell was that the powers in the Bill transfer future democratic oversight of any changes to REUL away from Parliament. The Bill itself does not specify the Government’s intended policy changes in respect of any area or piece of REUL. We are being invited to give Ministers a cliff-edge power without knowing what, if any, pieces of REUL may be thrown off the cliff on sunset day.

So far, no one in this debate has explained the indecent haste proposed in the Bill. Everything else to do with Brexit has taken some time. It has taken about seven years to get this far, but we now have this mad rush to disengage from inherited legislation, contradicting, as we heard from the DPRRC, pledges by the Government that Parliament would be the agent of substantive policy change in these areas. Noble Lords do not have to read its report; they just have to look at the headings: “Bypassing Parliament” “Uncertainty” and “Lack of justification for the powers”. The Regulatory Policy Committee said that the Bill’s impact assessment is “Not fit for purpose.” It said that the Government needed to

“provide a stronger argument for why the sunsetting of REUL is necessary, as opposed to merely setting a deadline to complete the review.”

Grant Shapps told the Regulatory Policy Committee:

“Efforts are also underway to understand the potential impacts of sunsetting.”


That is an astonishing confession. Those efforts should have preceded the introduction of the Bill, not followed it.

We are all entitled to have reservations about this Bill, but I read in the Telegraph on 28 January that my noble friend Lord Hannan believes that those who do so are “demented”. He wrote:

“To overcome the bureaucratic inertia, ministers came up with the sensible idea of a sunset clause, whereby all EU rules would lapse at the end of this year unless expressly readopted. The demented response to that proposal, not just from Opposition parties but from civil servants, is revealing.”


I say to my noble friend that it is not just opposition parties and civil servants who suffer from this sad lack of short-term memory loss and an inability to articulate themselves clearly, but two Select Committees of this House, about half the Conservative Peers speaking in this debate, the CBI, the City, constitutional experts and the law. I suspect that the last person who called the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, demented was sent down for a few hours to cool off. If ever there was a Bill the second Chamber should revise, it is this one.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Grand Committee

Amendments 92 to 97 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

My Lords, I must inform the Committee that if Amendment 98 is agreed to, I will be unable to call Amendments 99 or 100 by reason of pre-emption.

Amendment 98

Moved by

Employers: Fire and Rehire

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We do disapprove of these practices, which is why, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, we are producing a statutory code and will consult on it shortly.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the Government themselves have been guilty of firing and rehiring Ministers?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

In his excellent way, the noble Lord makes a good point. I am sure it will give all of us, including the Prime Minister, cause for reflection.

Carers: Unpaid Leave

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yes, of course.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, in response to an earlier question, my noble friend the Minister said that employers were free to grant one week’s unpaid leave already. Is it the case that government departments do this?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

That is a good question to which I do not know the answer; I will get back to my noble friend on that.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I agree entirely with what my noble friend has just said about the imperative of driving up productivity, but I want to speak on a niche subject which has not been addressed at all so far in the debate but which is highly relevant to the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to

“a responsible approach to the public finances”.

Under current policies, there will be an annual hole of £30 billion in government revenue because revenue from fuel duty and excise duty on cars will entirely disappear as electric vehicles are exempt. By 2030, the loss will be roughly tuppence in the pound, and if no action is taken there will be windfall gains for drivers against non-drivers, public transport will become more expensive at time when it needs to be encouraged, and there will be an increase in congestion and, crucially to the debate today, a large hole in government finances. We should think now about an alternative basis for replacing this lost tax, and I believe the case for road pricing is overwhelming.

While my noble friend Lord Wakeham was busy privatising the electricity industry, I was Transport Secretary and advocated the policy, but I discovered it was a matter not for the Transport Secretary but for the Treasury. The case is much more powerful today because of the advent of electric vehicles, the successful introduction of new technology with the congestion charge and automatic number plate recognition, and the need to make more intelligent use of a finite resource; namely, road space—no one suggests building our way out of congestion. Road pricing can do this with differential rates for congested routes, different rates for different times of the day and week, bringing it into line with other forms of transport, and exemptions for people with a disability, which you cannot do with fuel duty.

Ministers may be concerned at the hostile reaction to the policy when it was last floated. In 2006, Lord Darling—Alistair Darling as he then was, the Transport Secretary—announced that a pilot scheme would be decided by 2007 and would be up and running within five to six years, promising a 40% reduction in congestion with only 4% fewer cars on the road. The policy was abandoned two years later after a hostile public response. I believe that today’s response will be different. A survey carried out last year by the Social Market Foundation indicated a major shift in public opinion. Of 3,000 adults surveyed, more respondents supported road pricing as a replacement form of taxation than opposed it: 38% to 26%. The Social Market Foundation has published today a paper, Miles Ahead, which sets out a compelling case for road pricing.

I understand the concern that people may have about their car being tracked, but the reality is that that is already happening with ubiquitous CCTV and automatic number plate recognition, and if you carry a mobile phone with you, you are being tracked. This is not just a proposal from a Back-Bench Peer. The Transport Select Committee in the other place recently published a report which concluded that road pricing should be implemented. My question to the Minister is this: will the response to the Select Committee report confirm that road pricing is being actively considered?

I have a second niche subject, this time relating to the commitment in the Queen’s Speech on climate change and net zero. It has a common element with my first suggestion in that it relates to electric vehicles. As other noble Lords have said, over the next few years we will become more reliant on sustainable energy resources: wind, hydroelectric and solar power. The problem is that these sources are intermittent, and there is therefore an imperative for economic means of storing the electricity to avoid reliance on fossil fuels.

The Climate Change Committee has estimated that by 2030 there will be 16 million electric vehicles, each with a capacity of 60 kilowatt hours. My noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to say exactly how many power stations that equates to. These vehicles are unused for 90% of the time and, for the most part, will be parked outside homes at the time of peak energy demand. They can be recharged in the small hours of the morning at times of low demand, and 72% of homes have off-street parking. So my second niche question to the Minister is: what is being done to promote this new source of energy and to iron out the peaks and troughs of demand for energy? In particular, what is being done to promote connectivity between this potential source of stored energy in motor vehicles on the one hand and domestic energy supplies and the national grid on the other?

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the compelling speech of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I have added my name to Amendment 10 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted.

As I said in Committee, it is essential that all the nations within the UK can pursue effective policies on public health, which is my particular interest. Last Friday, the Public Services Select Committee, of which I am a member, published its first report on the lessons from coronavirus for public services. One of the key recommendations to the Government was that there is an urgent need to recognise the vital role of public health in reducing deep and ongoing inequalities exacerbated by Covid-19. Unamended, the Bill makes that task more difficult.

While the committee welcomed the Government’s commitment to extend healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035, and to narrow the gap between the richest and the poorest, we also recognised that this would be tough to deliver. We called on the Government to wait no longer before publishing their strategy to achieve this manifesto commitment and their response to the Green Paper Advancing Our Health: Prevention in the 2020s, which was due in January this year.

Why is this relevant to these amendments? Currently, the internal market within the UK has the flexibility, through exclusions, to allow different parts of the UK to move at different speeds on public health. England was able to lead the way on restricting tobacco displays in shops; Scotland and Wales are currently ahead on policies such as minimum unit pricing for alcohol. However, the internal market Bill may limit future innovations, as the exclusions are both narrow and narrowly applied to only part of the market access principles.

While policies similar to those I just mentioned might be allowable, it is not difficult to identify future public health policies that would not. For example, in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, the Government describe how these rules would allow a packet of crisps produced in or imported into any part of the UK to be sold in any other. However, this leaves little space for Governments within the UK to pursue future legislation that aims, for example, to restrict the salt content or size, or even to improve the labelling, of crisp packets. The justification for this is unclear, as articulated in a blog by the Institute for Government.

My view is that leaving the EU should not remove the ability we currently have for different parts of the country to move at different paces. This has meant that we have not had to move at the pace of the slowest, and the different parts of the UK can benefit from the experience of the market leader. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, made this point well. The Government have failed to explain why their list of exceptions is so much more restrictive than that of the EU or, indeed, the WTO. While the justifications are unclear, the risks are anything but. Unless the Bill is amended, some of this ability to innovate would be lost. This would be a step back for the UK, not a maintaining of the status quo.

The background over the last few years has been to give Holyrood and Cardiff more autonomy, not less. The Bill conflicts with that trend, helping to increase demands for independence and undermining the devolution settlement. It would not limit the ability of just the devolved nations to act, but that of England too. As part of its obesity strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care will consult on requiring calories to be included on alcohol product labels. The mutual recognition principle could hamper this legislation if alcohol produced in the rest of the UK was not required to display calories. Further, if overseas companies wished to avoid displaying calories, they could simply ensure that their imports arrived in another part of the UK before moving them to England for sale. When other noble Lords and I raised our concerns about this in Committee, my noble friend Lord Callanan, responding for the Government, was unyielding. Indeed, he said that the exclusions from market access principles were

“intentionally narrowly drafted, to ensure that there are no unnecessary trade barriers that would ultimately increase costs to businesses and consumers while reducing choice.”—[Official Report, 28/10/20; col. 339.]

The Government have demonstrated that they are willing to listen to the concerns of the House—for example, with the removal of the Secretary of State’s powers to change the scope of the mutual recognition principle—yet in other parts of the Bill they have suggested a relatively small adjustment, with the need to “consult with” but not “gain consent from” the devolved nations before using these powers. There has still been no movement on the limited nature of the public interest exceptions in the Bill, nor am I aware of any discussions on that, as I called for in Committee. That is why the amendments have been brought forward again on Report.

These amendments are supported by a wide range of health organisations: the British Heart Foundation, the British Lung Foundation, Asthma UK, Cancer Research UK, the Faculty of Public Health, the Mental Health Foundation, the Royal Society for Public Health, Action on Smoking and Health, and the Alcohol Health Alliance, for whose briefing I am most grateful.

I very much hope that, even at this late stage, the Bill might be amended and the Government might reflect the concerns that have been so widely shared on this subject.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I support the general thrust of all the amendments in this group, and I have added my name to Amendments 10 and 21, which relate to goods. I should also have put my name to the services amendments, because both I and my group support those as well.

As was debated in Committee, we already worked under a more generalised public policy, legitimate aim regime while in the EU, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, that provided safety valves, which have now been taken away. In Committee, the Minister argued that the UK internal market was different, and for some reason that meant that it needed to be narrower. I cannot understand why—perhaps because we are closer together—we have to have fewer freedoms because we have left the EU. Therefore, I agree entirely with the drafters of the amendments that there are many more legitimate aims that need to be spelled out.

Realistically, differences will not be introduced into the market without a lot of thought. As my noble friend Lady Humphreys said in Committee, Wales is a good size to experiment with. The noble Lord, Lord Young, gave examples of various nations progressing at different speeds. Differences will survive only when they are practical and when matters of good public policy all deal with specific problems within a particular area, but they should be allowed to be put to a proper test and should not be undermined from the start by immediate get-arounds.

These are important amendments, and I hope that the Government will consider carefully why it is necessary for the Bill to undermine the freedoms currently enjoyed. That is not how Brexit was advertised, whether you were for or against it.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 39A, 47A and 52A are in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. They have the support of Cancer Research UK, the Faculty of Public Health and the British Heart Foundation along with Action on Smoking and Health and the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, for whose briefing I am grateful.

The amendments address some of the concerns expressed by the Scottish and Welsh Governments over the Bill, regarding a risk of a race to the bottom in relation to public health. They also complement amendments in earlier debates that sought to restore the flexibility that exists under the common framework for legitimate variations in approach within the component parts of the UK—a common theme that has run through our debates this week—so my amendments are another pair of braces for the belt of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, in a remarkable speech, mentioned public health. Public health is an essential part of this debate; Covid has finally brought home to us the importance of what was previously the Cinderella service of our healthcare system. To quote the Secretary of State for Health:

“The first responsibility of any government is the protection of its citizens, and threats to public health are among the most important of all.”


So it is critical that the provision of market access is balanced against the ability of Governments to protect the health of their citizens.

With regard to goods, the Bill describes exemptions in two places: Clause 8(3) and in the list of legitimate aims, including the protection of human, plant or animal health, public safety, along with a number of other more specific exclusions in Schedule 1. In both instances the Secretary of State can amend the core principles of the Bill, which are quite rightly enshrined in primary legislation, and he can do so by regulation. Again, that has been a consistent theme throughout our debate.

The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised serious concerns that the power included in Part 1 to amend, repeal or otherwise modify legislation by regulation is inappropriate as drafted and should be removed from the Bill. The Marshalled List is full of amendments raising objections to these powers. My amendments focus specifically on the impact on public health.

The ability to alter these regulations matters. Take, for example, minimum unit pricing for alcohol, as currently exists in Scotland and Wales. The Government have argued that new policies similar to minimum unit pricing would be possible under the Bill because they are covered by the non-discrimination principle, so there is a pathway through which they might be justified. Minimum unit pricing might be a necessary means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting human health. In future, though, through a simple affirmative resolution procedure the Secretary of State could modify that list of legitimate aims to remove the justification of protecting human health so that that was no longer the case. That is an insufficient safeguard for future legislation to protect our health, and the amendment would prevent that. The reach of market principles is so broad that a number of other potential policies, including regulations to restrict the availability of alcohol, attempts to raise the age of purchase for cigarettes, restrictions on children buying sugary drinks and other legitimate public health measures, could all be similarly vulnerable.

I turn briefly to Amendment 52A, which aims to expand the reach of the public health exclusions listed above. The proposals contained in the initial White Paper would have posed more potential risks for public health, but the Government have listened and have put in the protection of being a

“necessary means of achieving a legitimate aim”,

as I mentioned earlier. This is very welcome, but the protections are unevenly applied, allowing legislation that aims to protect our health and safety to be justified in some instances only. This is because the Bill contains two market access principles, non-discrimination on the one hand and mutual recognition on the other. Currently, only non-discrimination can be overridden by a policy that is shown to be necessary to pursue a legitimate aim. Mutual recognition contains no such clause. This is different from the status quo, where a general exclusion for the protection of human health against a broad range of other aims exists. It is in that respect a step backwards, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. This difference is significant, as mutual recognition covers characteristics of goods such as packaging, content and labelling, all key areas of public health.

To take one example, 40 years ago, when I was a Health Minister under Margaret Thatcher, I argued for a health warning not just on cigarette packs but on individual cigarettes. If, for example, the Welsh Government legislated to do exactly that, I would be delighted to see it implemented but, because this is subject to mutual recognition, Wales would be unable to require it for cigarettes coming into Wales from other parts of the UK, even if they were originally produced overseas. A range of similar examples includes calorie labelling on alcohol, as proposed by the Department of Health and Social Care; including information about the medical officer’s low-risk guidelines, something that Scotland has expressed some interest in legislating on; improved front-of-pack warnings on cigarettes; or even policies such as restricting the amount of sugar in goods sold in Scotland. That was an example given in the Scottish Government’s legislative consent memorandum.

Finally, this could also impact on England. Let us take, for example, the current plans of the Department of Health and Social Care to consult on requiring calorie labels on alcohol products to help reduce obesity in England. Once more, if England implemented this requirement, it would not be able to enforce it on alcohol sold in England but produced, or even first imported, into other parts of the UK.

We have made great strides forward in public health, in part because the swiftest moving parts of our union have been able to lead the others. England led the way on restricting tobacco displays in shops. Scotland and Wales are ahead on policies such as minimum unit pricing. This lack of a broad public health exclusion risks this advantage being inverted and our pace being locked into the slowest moving of our constituent parts. I know that the Minister will have taken note of the concerns raised by noble Lords in this debate and that he will endeavour to meet them, but I hope that between now and Report there will be discussions with a view to finding acceptable amendments that do not prejudice the key pursuit of legitimate public health objectives.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am in sympathy with the words just uttered by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, but I wish to speak to my own amendment, Amendment 36, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her support.

My amendment is concerned with the meaning of words and, to some extent, achieving compatibility, as far as possible, with devolution legislation. It is directed to the definition of the expression “legitimate aim” in Clause 8(6), which sets out two aims, one of which is

“(a) the protection of the life or health of humans, animals or plants”.

If the draftsman of the Bill was to look at Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, under heading C5 he would find similar words set out in one of the exceptions to the reserved powers; that is, exceptions which mean that the things described are within the devolved competences of the Scottish Parliament. It refers to the

“protection of animal products, plants and plant products for the purposes of protecting human, animal or plant health, animal welfare or the environment.”

My point is that what one finds in subsection (6)(a) takes part of what is found in that provision but misses out some other important words. The phrase I quoted from the Scotland Act draws a distinction between animal health and animal welfare. There is some basis for that distinction because there are things that are designed to achieve the welfare of animals that are not directly related to their state of health. So there is some force in considering the addition of “animal welfare” to the formula in that provision. It also refers to the environment, and nowadays, thinking of all the concerns we have about the environment, I would have thought one could, without damaging the purposes of the Bill, include the words “protection of the environment” within the formula of the clause.

These are drafting points. I draw them, if the Minister will forgive me, more to the attention of the Bill team and the draftsman of the Bill to see whether he can find room for including words in my amendment. It is to make sure that they cover what I take to be the broad aim of the language; it is the kind of discussion we might have had, had we been given time, around a table, discussing how those particular provisions should be framed.

I am not trying to damage the Bill or adjust it in any more significant way; I just want to see that the language used covers the aim of the provision fully and completely. It is on that basis that I brought forward this amendment.

Emissions: Housing

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan [V]]

I note the noble Lord’s impatience but cannot go much further, beyond saying that we aim to get the strategy out this year.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con) [V]]

My Lords, in its report on energy efficiency last year, the BEIS Select Committee recommended that the winter fuel payment, which costs around £3 billion per year, be refocused and the savings invested in energy-efficiency programmes for fuel-poor households. Before the pandemic, the last Government rejected this, but can the Minister encourage the DWP and the Treasury to have another look at this proposal, which would help to achieve our zero-carbon commitment, tackle fuel poverty and promote a green recovery?

[Lord Callanan [V]]

As always, my noble friend asks a very good and pertinent question, but we continue to believe that the winter fuel payment gives reassurance, particularly to poorer pensioners, that they can keep warm during the colder months, so we will continue to pay £200 for households with somebody who has reached state pension age and who is under the age of 80, or £300 for households with somebody aged 80 or over.