Industrial Action

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

That was a slightly stretched question, but I think the basis of it was quite straightforward. As I have mentioned, it makes perfect sense to have a situation where we can guarantee national minimum safety standards for our constituents, and I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman would say to his constituents tomorrow when they may or may not be able to call an ambulance, depending on the trust he is in, about the failure to support such standards. I do not think his constituents should suffer from a postcode lottery, and I am prepared to legislate to make sure that does not happen, even if he does not want it.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

In the five years I had the privilege of leading the third largest council in Scotland with a workforce of 20,000, we had our share of industrial disputes. Every single time the unions came to us well in advance, and they told us what parts of services they wanted to exempt from industrial action, because they cared as much for the welfare of vulnerable people as we did. Is it not the case that if the Government cared half as much about education as teachers do, if they cared half as much about the health service as nurses and ambulance drivers do, and if they cared half as much for a decent public transport service as train drivers do, this bullyboy legislation would not be needed? The enemies of the health service are not on the picket line; they are on the Government Front Bench.

[Grant Shapps]

SNP Members make it sound as if they did not have any industrial strife. I think it is fantastic if the unions and the management get together to resolve these things—that is exactly what we want to see happen—but the reality is that, where it does not happen, strikes evolve sometimes. This legislation is about making sure those strikes are less damaging, particularly when it comes to people’s health and the security of the nation. The hon. Member makes his point as if they do not have strikes in primary schools and as if secondary schools in Scotland, where this is devolved, are not going on strike on Wednesday. The reality is that sometimes strikes do break out and, when they do, we want to make sure the public are properly protected.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Sobel]

I take on board what the Minister says, although that last comment on the environment is slightly galling considering that on 31 October the Government were meant to bring forward, under their own domestic post-Brexit legislation—the Environment Act 2021—targets on a whole range of areas, including air quality and water quality. It is now 24 November and we still have no targets. If I am a little concerned about the Government’s performance here, she should not be surprised, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Scope of powers

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 50, in clause 10, page 11, line 12, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—

“(b) for sub-paragraph (2), substitute—

(2) Power may only be exercised by virtue of sub-paragraph (1) if—

(a) a written statement explaining the modification has been published by the Secretary of State,

(b) the Secretary of State has made an oral statement on the modification to both Houses of Parliament, and

(c) the Secretary of State has published an assessment of the impact of the modification.”

The intention of the amendment is to do what Brexit was supposed to do: restore some parliamentary oversight to the way in which the Government make and change legislation in this place. The amendment is pretty self-explanatory. It is not ideal that Ministers are giving extensive powers to chop and change laws as they see fit. If, in exceptional circumstances, it is necessary for them to have those powers, the very least Parliament should expect is that Ministers will be held to account and will explain to Parliament—ideally beforehand, but certainly afterwards—why they have done what they have done and what the impact has been.

If the Minister genuinely believes in improving accountability in this place, she will accept the amendment. In saying that, it is clear that all Ministers—nothing against this Minister—in all Public Bill Committees are under instruction not to accept anything from the Opposition. If we moved an amendment that said, “Today’s Thursday”, the Government would keep talking until it was Friday and then vote it down.

[Ms Ghani]

I recognise that none of that was directed at me personally, but rather collectively at all Ministers. I beg hon. Members to reject the amendment. The Government recognise the significant role that Parliament has played in scrutinising instruments to date and we are committed to ensuring the appropriate scrutiny of any secondary legislation made under existing delegated powers. We must end the restriction that some existing powers may only be used to amend retained direct principal EU legislation or rights under section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 if they are also capable of amending domestic primary legislation.

The hon. Member for Glenrothes suggests that a written ministerial statement made by a Secretary of State is accompanied by an oral statement when an existing power is exercised. I remind him that all statutory instruments that are subject to parliamentary procedure must be accompanied by an explanatory memorandum. These memorandums provide Parliament with the information and explanations required. When powers are exercised by virtue of paragraph 3(1) to schedule 8, explanatory memorandums would be laid as appropriate. Any statutory instrument that reforms retained direct EU legislation made under existing delegated powers will be subject to the proper processes for impact assessments. However, a blanket requirement for impact assessments is not appropriate as some reforms could fall below the de minimis threshold set out in the “Better regulation framework” guidance.

Now that we have left the EU, it is only appropriate for retained direct EU legislation that was not scrutinised or approved by Parliament to be treated in the same way as domestic secondary legislation, which is amendable by existing delegated powers that this Parliament has approved. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member to withdraw his amendment.

[Peter Grant]

The difference, of course, is that any secondary legislation—even if it is done by the affirmative procedure—goes through a Delegated Legislation Committee in which, at best, three or four of the parties in this House are represented. For the last seven and a half years, the Scottish National party has been represented in those Committees because of the exceptional level of support that it enjoys in our country, but there are Members of Parliament, who collectively represent the interests of a lot of constituents, who never get on to Delegated Legislation Committees. The only chance they get to question the Minister about secondary legislation is if the Minister makes an oral statement before the House. Publishing something is all very well, but Members of Parliament who are not in one of the big three or four parties do not get the automatic right to question Ministers on a written statement—they do get the automatic right to questions Ministers on an oral statement. It is quite clear which way this is going, so I will not detain the Committee by pushing the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 10, page 11, line 18, leave out from “paragraph 3” to the end of line 23 and insert

“may not be so made, confirmed or approved unless a draft of the legislation has been laid before, and approved by resolution of, (as the case may be) both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru or the Northern Ireland Assembly.”

The amendment is in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes. As we have argued since the date of publication, the Bill not only undermines the devolution settlement, but puts at risk workers’ rights, product safety, food labelling, the future of the agricultural sector, and the natural environment. Clause 10 allows for all that to happen with the bare minimum of parliamentary scrutiny, allowing everything to be dealt with via secondary legislation, and thereby conveniently avoiding the intense parliamentary scrutiny that these measures most certainly require. Clause 10 would make it easier for the Government to remove our rights and protections by using delegated powers, and therefore circumvent parliamentary scrutiny, avoid transparency and evade accountability to all Members of Parliament. This is the Executive power grab people have been talking about since the day the Bill was published.

When the Bill was published, the Government told everyone who would listen that this was all about the United Kingdom taking back control and asserting the sovereignty of this Parliament, as opposed to—in their words—shady deals being agreed in small committees in Brussels, but it does not feel like that. Who exactly is it that is taking back control here? It is not this Parliament, and it is not Members of this House, because the Government have already gleefully announced that when it comes to retained EU law,

“the amount of parliamentary time that is required has been dramatically reduced.”

It seems that for the Government taking back control means putting a group of hand-picked party loyalists on to a Delegated Legislation Committee—a Committee that, as we know, has a built-in Government majority—which will bulldoze through change after change after change, as instructed. The history of DL Committees is not particularly encouraging; in the past 65 years, only 17 statutory instruments have been voted down by a DL Committee—and that has not happened since 1979.

Although there is certainly a role for DL Committees, I do not believe that that extends to them making wholesale, fundamental changes to vast swathes of the law—on matters covering everything from the environment, nature and consumer protection through to workers’ rights, product safety and agriculture—just to help the Government avoid proper parliamentary scrutiny. The reason they are avoiding parliamentary scrutiny is that, in their fervour to get rid of any lingering European influence, the wide-eyed zealots at the heart of this dysfunctional Government have arbitrarily imposed a sunset clause for December next year. This is not just the view of the Opposition; it is a widely-held view. Professor Catherine Barnard warned against the lack of parliamentary scrutiny afforded, saying:

“Although there is a process for parliamentary oversight, it will be difficult in the timeframe to ensure that that oversight can be exercised in a manner that enables Parliament properly to scrutinise the measures as they come through.”––[Official Report, Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Public Bill Committee, 8 November 2022; c. 16, Q27.]

In his evidence, George Peretz KC warned,

“One of the problems with the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny is that although one hears that Parliament has powers… the background against which it is being asked to approve legislation means that if it votes against that legislation, the sunset clause will apply and regulations disappear completely, rather weakening Parliament’s ability to do anything.”––[Official Report, Retained EU Law Public Bill Committee, 8 November 2022; c. 32, Q61.]

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[Ms Ghani]

I ask hon. Members to reject the amendment. Clause 10 ensures that appropriate parliamentary scrutiny is applied to the use of existing delegated powers when they are used to amend retained direct EU legislation or section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 rights. It is this Government’s view that the appropriate procedure applied when amending retained direct EU legislation should be the same as the procedure applied to domestic secondary legislation. Any additional procedure, such as that proposed by the hon. Member, would be disproportionate given the type of legislation retained direct EU legislation is composed of.

It would be wholly inappropriate if, for example, updating individual provisions adding cheese and honey to the simplified active substance list required the approval of both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Parliament. Making it easier to use pre-existing powers to amend assimilated retained direct EU legislation, while ensuring it receives the most suitable level of parliamentary scrutiny, will ensure our regulations can be kept up to date, supporting growth across the whole UK.

[Peter Grant]

The Minister referred to domestic secondary legislation. Does she not understand that if a piece of secondary legislation relates exclusively to, for example, a devolved power of Senedd Cymru, as far as this place is concerned that is not domestic law—it is somebody else’s domestic law—and this Parliament should keep out of it?

[Ms Ghani]

I think we have covered the point of domestic law, law in Westminster and the role of Attorneys General. At the moment, we are forced to treat some retained direct EU legislation as equivalent to an Act of Parliament when amending it. It is no longer appropriate for retained direct EU legislation to keep the status of primary legislation when most of it has not had anywhere close to the same level of UK parliamentary scrutiny. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to withdraw the amendment.

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[Peter Grant]

I stand to speak in favour of the amendment, although, at best, all it seeks to do is take an entirely unacceptable clause and make it slightly less unacceptable. Clause 11 is about a Henry VIII power; it is about removing protections for this House that were, ironically, forced on the Government by Members of the other House. I am not a great fan of unelected legislatures anywhere—I certainly do not want my country even partly ruled by one—but I have to say to Conservative Members that when the House of Lords is keener on protecting the rights of this House than Government Back-Bench and Front-Bench Members are, the Government really do need to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves: are we a democratic Government or are we not?

I support the limited improvements to the clause, but if the amendment falls, I will seek to divide the Committee to exclude clause 11 in its entirety.

[Ms Ghani]

I ask hon. Members to reject the amendment. Unless I was in a different Committee Room, or on a different planet, I think Opposition Members have had every opportunity to raise their voices, because we have heard much from them today and on Tuesday, and we have had much scrutiny as well. Our constituents know exactly what we are doing because it is all noted in Hansard.

The amendment would render clause 11 without purpose. Subsections (1) and (2) ensure the removal of additional parliamentary scrutiny requirements, established in the EU withdrawal Act, in relation to the amendment or revocation of secondary legislation made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. Subsections (1) and (2) will ensure that when secondary legislation made under section 2(2) ECA is being amended or revoked using other delegated powers, the only parliamentary scrutiny requirements that will apply are those attached to the power being used. These delegated powers have their own parliamentary scrutiny procedure attached, which has been approved by Parliament, ensuring suitable scrutiny will continue to occur.

It is imperative that additional scrutiny requirements are removed, because it is clearly inappropriate that legislation created solely to implement our obligations as a member of the EU enjoys this privileged status. What is more, no tangible benefit has been identified as a result of these scrutiny requirements; as was mentioned, that was referenced in the evidence session by Dr Ruth Fox of the Hansard Society. In practice, they add a layer of complexity that makes it difficult to make amendments to legislation containing section 2(2) ECA provisions.

Removing these requirements reflects the main purpose of this Bill, which is to take a new approach to retained EU law, removing the precedence given in UK law to law derived from the EU that is no longer considered fit for purpose.

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Member is not being wholly honest. The level of scrutiny of any piece of legislation, not only in Committee but on the Floor of this House and the Floor of the other place, takes place for all items of legislation.

The hon. Member will be well aware of the evidence session we had just a few weeks ago, when we had a number of people from environmental agencies who previously had Green credentials or who were previously Green or Lib Dem candidates. So it is not as if those voices are not heard.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Brendan O'Hara]

rose—

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Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Peter Grant]

I oppose the inclusion of clause 11, as I indicated earlier. I will give the Minister credit and assume that she just got confused. She has attempted to justify removing the requirement for full parliamentary consideration of a Bill to revoke European legislation and turning it all into secondary legislation. Not content with insisting on a sunset clause that means that if that secondary legislation does not get approved, nothing gets approved, she then attempted to justify removing the requirement to use the affirmative process for the vast majority of that legislation and instead use the negative process, which we all know is an even weaker form of parliamentary scrutiny. She completely missed the point. In fact, I think she confused the status of a Public Bill Committee such as this with that of a Delegated Legislation Committee, which she thinks is an adequate way for some of these important regulations to be considered.

The reason this Public Bill Committee exists is that the legislation was approved—not unanimously, by any means—by the House of Commons. The only requirement that anybody had to speak and vote on Second Reading was that the people of their constituency chose them to represent them in Parliament. Every member of the Committee is here because our party Whips chose to put us here. We were not elected to it by our people. We had to be elected to be in the Chamber of the House of Commons, but it is the Whips who decided who got to serve on this Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute has said, Northern Ireland Members never get the opportunity to have their voice heard on a Delegated Legislation Committee, though they do have a voice on Second and Third Reading. There is also no automatic right for Wales to be represented. Wales is represented in this place by four political parties, but there is only one voice from Wales on this Committee. That did not have to happen; the Whips could easily have put someone else on it instead.

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[Dr Evans]

If Scotland were to be independent and part of the EU, the European Council uses majority voting so members have to like or lump whatever they are given at the end of the vote. At the end of the day, someone has to make a decision and Government have to decide. How would that fit if Scotland were independent?

[Peter Grant]

I cannot speak about what decisions the Scottish Parliament will take after we are independent, but I look forward to seeing that day before any of us are very much older. I am confident that it is a modern, democratic Parliament with much improved scrutiny procedures. For example, in the Scottish Parliament it would have been impossible for us to have two changes of Prime Minister without the explicit approval of the Parliament. Nobody can become a Minister of the Scottish Government without being approved by the Scottish Parliament. There is much greater parliamentary accountability for the Executive than there is ever going to be here.

My confident expectation is that when an independent Scotland goes back into the European Union, the Scottish Parliament will have a much greater role in scrutinising the actions of our Ministers, acting on our behalf, at the European Council than this Parliament has ever had. As I have said to the Committee before, the problem with lack of accountability and scrutiny of European legislation is not because the European Union’s processes are flawed, but because parliamentary accountability in this place is fundamentally flawed.

If I intended to be part of this establishment for much longer, I would be attempting to improve its processes in order to bring it into line with proper democratic Parliaments, such as the one in Scotland. Given that neither I nor any of my colleagues from Scotland are likely to be here for very much longer, I will have to leave it to those who remain to sort out the mess of a Parliament that they have created.

[Ms Ghani]

Our objective is not to remove power from Parliament. Our objective is to ensure that amendments or revocations made to subordinate legislation made under other existing powers receive the most appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny. Fundamentally, people need to accept the Brexit vote and appreciate that we have to have sovereignty here. I do not think we are going to win that argument—we are too far apart.

When the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 was agreed, additional parliamentary scrutiny requirements were agreed in relation to the amendment or revocation of secondary legislation made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. It is clearly inappropriate that legislation created solely to implement our obligations as a member of the EU enjoys that privileged status. We therefore seek to remove those requirements. This reflects the main purpose of the Bill—removing the precedence given in UK law to EU-derived law—which is no longer fit for purpose now that the UK has left the EU. I recommend that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[Ms Ghani]

The overarching aim of the Bill is to define retained EU law as a legal category, and the power to restate such law must be viewed with that in mind. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute said that he wants to help the process, even though he is fundamentally trying to block it. The power to restate has been designed to allow the Government to restate domestic law where it is considered appropriate for the UK in a post-Brexit setting. However, the resulting legislation will no longer be retained EU law, as subsection (3) makes clear. The restated legislation will be ordinary domestic UK legislation that is subject to traditional domestic rules of interpretation. In particular, the supremacy of EU law will no longer apply, and section 4 rights and the general principles of EU law will cease to be read into the legislation.

[Peter Grant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ms Ghani]

If I can make a bit of progress, I will give way later.

The power will enable the Government to clarify, consolidate, codify and restate REUL to preserve the effect of the current law, while removing it from the category of REUL. It will be used selectively and is not a way to simply continue the broad concepts of EU law. Retained EU law was never intended to sit on the statute book indefinitely, although I believe that hon. Members wish it did. It is both constitutionally anomalous and politically challenging. Subsection (3) is therefore a crucial part of clause 12, and is necessary to ensure that the Government can deliver on the overarching aims of the Bill.

Let me turn to amendment 54. The power in this clause will expire at the end of 2023, with good reason. The Bill will sunset the majority of retained EU law, so that it expires on 31 December 2023. Following that date, all retained EU law will have either sunsetted or been preserved and assimilated into the domestic statute book. It is therefore entirely appropriate that the power to restate REUL should expire at the same time as the sunset of retained EU law. Following that date, there will no longer be any secondary REUL for this power to operate on. The power in this clause will give way to the power outlined in clause 13, which will allow for the similar restatement of assimilated law up until 23 June 2026.

[Peter Grant]

Can the Minister explain the difference between restating and amending? At what point does a restatement of a piece of legislation become either an amendment or a completely new piece of legislation? Who will be the arbiter of that? Will the courts decide?

[Ms Ghani]

I did not hear the end of that question, but each Department will be in charge of the Bills in its portfolio. We have the Brexit opportunities department helping as well. I have already mentioned the processes in place to ensure that scrutiny happens, and how Ministers will work to ensure that we assimilate, amend or update.

[Peter Grant]

I am sorry if the Minister did not understand my question. I am talking not about the political, democratic scrutiny, but about the legal interpretation of restated legislation, which will fall to the courts. My question is: who decides whether what has been done under clause 12 is simply a restatement of EU retained law or an amendment to law, which requires a different process?

[Ms Ghani]

I hope I am not failing to understand the question. As I mentioned, each of the REUL Bills is assigned to a Department, and it will be for the Ministers responsible for the REUL Bill to make a decision on whether they need to assimilate, repeal or update.

I ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to withdraw his amendment. I ask the Committee to accept the Government amendments. They are simple clarificatory amendments that ensure that the restatement powers in clauses 12 to 14 cannot be used to bring back EU law concepts, such as the principle of supremacy, or general principles that the Bill aims to sunset.

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[Stella Creasy]

Ronseal, that’s it; I am showing my age. This should be a Ronseal moment—it does what it says on the tin. I have a horrible feeling that the Minister will reject the amendment. I hope that she recognises that the concern comes in when the Government reject relatively benign proposals, such as the suggestion that they should simply say, “Yep, this legislation is like-for-like; it does not water down protections.”

As we saw on Tuesday, the Government have already started to decide, in private, which pieces of EU retained law they will not continue with, so we know that some things will change. Some legislation will fall, and we understand that; the whole point of leaving the European Union was to have the power to reject things. Knowing what will or will not be taken out is surely the epitome of taking back control. Each of us should be able, in our constituency surgeries, when we are inevitably asked about a piece of legislation and its impact, to say, “Ah, yes. Well, that is where this decision came from, and this is what we were told at the time.” Parliamentary scrutiny, done well—even done at all—is taking back control, so let us see some of it in this Bill, for a change.

[Peter Grant]

I rise to speak to amendments 55 and 56 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute. This is an attempt to, once again, restrict the Executive’s power grab and to limit, to some small extent, the extent to which the Government are taking powers away from this Parliament and for themselves. It is an attempt to limit the use of Henry VIII powers.

First, the amendments seek to remove subsection (5) to clause 14. I make no apology for raising this point every time I see such a provision in any legislation. It is a bad idea to allow a Minister of the Crown to change any Act of Parliament that they fancy without having to present a Bill in the House of Commons that amends it. The whole House should need to approve the change, after giving it appropriate consideration, and after every single Member has had a chance to comment on it. Subsection (5) essentially seeks to do that. Interestingly, its text is now fairly standard in Bills featuring the Henry VIII powers that the Government are putting through. At some point, the Government spotted something that worries them. They have discovered a part of an Act of Parliament that they are terrified a Minister could ever change, so they have tabled Government amendment 14 to stop that happening.

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This amendment and Amendment 14 clarify that the powers under Clauses 12 and 13 may not be used so as to codify or reproduce the principle of supremacy of EU law or a retained general principle of EU law.

[Peter Grant]

Sorry, but have amendments 55 and 56 been disposed of?

[The Chair]

Does the hon. Gentleman want to press those amendments to a vote?

[Peter Grant]

I had intended to press both to a Division, Sir George, but to save time, and given that the Government Whip already has her great big no vote ready to hang up to make sure that Conservative Back Benchers know what they are supposed to do, there is clearly no point. We know the result already, so to save the Committee time, I will not press either amendment.

[The Chair]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. We would have been in a bit of muddle otherwise.

Clause 14, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 15

Powers to revoke or replace

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I know that Conservative Members want to be able to tell their constituents that they will bring in better standards now that we are free from the yoke of the European Union. If they vote for clause 15, as unamended, that would not be the right thing to say, because it would not be the truth about the Bill. I hope that even if amendments are not made to clause 15 now, they will be in the other place, to take away that push and that threat.

[Peter Grant]

A long time ago now, it seems, I was a member of my local planning authority for a number of years. We used to get dozens and dozens of planning applications for consideration, and there was often a lot of discussion about whether councillors who were uncomfortable with an application should attempt to draft conditions that had to be honoured before the application could be approved. A lot of those conditions were perfectly reasonable; we would put in conditions to ensure that housing development was road-safe, for example. An important piece of national guidance that certainly applied in Scotland—I do not know if there was an equivalent in England—was that if someone had to burden a planning application with a huge, complex set of conditions in order to make it acceptable, the application should be refused and the applicant invited to come back later with a better one. That is where we are with clause 15. The official Opposition clearly feel that the only way to make clause 15 even vaguely acceptable is to restrict it in so many ways, and with so many amendments, that it would effectively tear the heart out of the clause.

Although I certainly will not oppose any of the amendments that the hon. Member for Leeds North West wants to press to a vote, we will oppose clause 15 when the question on it is put, whether it is amended or not. It is an utterly dreadful piece of legislation. Can Members imagine any circumstance in which it could be considered good governance to give an individual or a national authority the right to repeal 4,000 pieces of legislation, knowing perfectly well that they have no intention of bringing anything forward to replace them? That is what clause 15 effectively aims to do.

As the hon. Member for Walthamstow pointed out earlier, subsection 5 of clause 15 gives the lie to the entire argument about why the Tories wanted to be allowed to regulate for themselves. It was never about being allowed to have better standards of employment law than the rest of Europe, and it was never about being allowed to apply better standards of environmental protection, consumer protection, animal welfare or anything else. It was always about pandering to what my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute has described as the wide-eyed enthusiasts of the European Research Group, and those who are so far to the right of the ERG they cannot even get elected to this place. In clause 15, and particularly in subsection (5), theirs is the agenda we are being asked to follow.

I am really interested to hear the Minister explain why she feels it is necessary to have an Act of Parliament that potentially allows a national authority to tear down 40 years of protective legislation, with the intention of replacing it with nothing, and with the extreme risk that we will run out of time to replace it with anything. We should remember that we have barely a year from now, never mind from when they start to tear apart the legislation.

When we look at the restriction in subsection (5) and then look over the page at what some of the terms in the subsection mean, we find that they are hair-raising. Legislation that imposes a burden that could include a financial cost is not allowed. There is no threshold and no limit on how many people would need to be affected by that financial cost. For example, the personal protective equipment non-provider PPE Medpro—it was slated in The Guardian this morning and in the Chamber earlier—made a profit of £76 million by supplying to the Government PPE that was not fit for use. If the Minister had been minded to bring in replacement legislation, it would have reduced PPE Medpro’s overnight profit from £76 million and tuppence to a mere £76 million. The Bill would say that was a financial burden. It would therefore be an increased regulatory burden, and it would not be allowed.

Subsection 10(b) refers to “an administrative inconvenience”. Well, good luck to the lawyers who want to decide what is an inconvenience and what is not. Again, there is no threshold and nothing about proportionality. There is nothing to say whether it imposes a disproportionate administrative inconvenience on a substantial section of the economy. That would be a reasonable protection to want to build in, but anybody who claims that that is inconvenient administratively could then challenge it in court. In fact, there is nothing written into the clause that says that the burden has to affect the private sector in order to make it unlawful.

If the burden applies to the civil servants that are trying to administer the new legislation, that is an administrative inconvenience to the civil service, especially if there will be 90,000 fewer of them than we had last year. I am talking about improving legislation that allows one person out of 60 million in these islands to say, “That’s a bit inconvenient for me”, and an entire piece of secondary legislation can be struck down. Despite some of the things I have seen from the Conservative party in my time, I genuinely do not believe that that is what it wants, but I know that that is what some people want.

My fear is that people who cannot get elected to this place are pulling the strings of those who did. Those people are looking to use the clause, and particularly subsection (5), to achieve their dream of a tiny bit of the world where all regulations can be struck down at the stroke of a pen, and once they are struck down it is impossible to replace them with anything. There are people who, at times, have been very close to the seat of power in this place—their donations have helped to change the course of political history in the last 10 years—who do not want there to be any workers’ rights whatever.

A former member of the Government, on whose watch this Bill was drafted, is on the record as saying that he does not think workers have an automatic right to paid holidays. That is the kind of ideology we are dealing with here.

Clause 15 is not about achieving a reasonable objective; it is about completely tearing down 40 years of legislation, some of which we might not welcome but much of which has helped to make the four nations of the United Kingdom more modern and democratic. For that reason, I can understand why some people would happily see all that legislation torn up and replaced with nothing. I genuinely do not believe that is what the Minister wants, I genuinely do not believe it is what the majority of Conservative party members want and I can say with absolute certainty that it is not what the people of Scotland want, and it is not something that the people of Scotland will accept.

I will support any amendments that the Opposition are minded to press to a vote but, amended or unamended, I will seek to divide the Committee on removing clause 15 from the Bill.

[Ms Ghani]

I beg that the Committee rejects amendment 84 and does not press new clause 9 or amendment 87.

It may surprise the Committee that English is not my first language—I was not born in this country—but it has never occurred to me that the words “regulation” and “standards” are the same. Members can look them up in a dictionary, but they are definitely not the same.

Clause 15 is about ensuring we have the right regulations in place, by removing those regulations that are unduly burdensome, outdated or not fit for purpose in the UK. How about swapping them for proportionate, high-quality and agile regulations that help the UK economy, and all of us who work in it, to be nimble and competitive?

I remind the Committee that Departments will be able to maintain the current level of regulation where it is considered appropriate. Only where existing regulations are considered to be unnecessarily burdensome and not fit for purpose may a lower level of regulation be introduced. I will validate that in a moment.

The concerns of hon. Members regarding the scope of the Bill’s powers are unfounded, as the powers to revoke or replace are important cost-cutting enablers of retained EU law reform. The dashboard has identified more than 2,500 pieces of retained EU law, and it is therefore right to have a power of this scope that is capable of acting on a wide range of REUL covering a variety of policy areas. The powers have several safeguards that mitigate their use, namely any legislation made under clause 15(2) that recreates a delegated power or a criminal offence present in REUL is subject to the affirmative procedure. Legislation made under clause 15(3) is specifically subject to the affirmative procedure, which will ensure that changes to policy objectives can be actively approved by Parliament. In addition, a sifting procedure will apply to legislation where Ministers choose to use the negative procedure.

The clause 16 power is intended to facilitate technical updates to retained EU law, to take account of changes in technology or developments in scientific understanding. This ongoing power is not intended to bring about significant policy change. It is instead designed to ensure the UK keeps pace with advances in science and technology over time.

The amendments would add a significant amount of time to the process and, ultimately, could risk Departments being unable to maximise the use of their powers to revoke or replace retained EU law across all policy areas, until such powers sunset. The Bill has been drafted to ensure that legislation made under these powers is subject to robust scrutiny procedures that are proportionate to the scope of the powers, as highlighted above.

I ask the Committee not to press amendments 85, 86 or 94. As I mentioned, the Bill is an enabling Act. Amendment 94 would place a number of environmental requirements on UK Ministers or devolved authorities when they intend to use the powers to revoke or replace, irrespective of the policy area. This amendment would therefore preclude Departments making reforms in policy areas unrelated to the environment, which would significantly impact the opportunity to use these powers.

On amendments 85 and 86, we have sought to ensure that the powers to revoke or replace cannot be used to add to the overall regulatory burden on this subject area. In her evidence to the Committee, Professor Alison Young noted that combining

“a number of earlier burdens, turn them into one burden with a higher standard, that is also not increasing the burden.”––[Official Report, Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill Public Bill Committee, 8 November 2022; c. 19, Q33.]

The requirement not to add to the overall regulatory burden has been drafted to allow the relevant national authority to determine how best to achieve the desired policy outcome. For example, removing regulations or administrative requirements that are deemed unnecessary or unsuitable will make it possible to add new regulations with a higher standard—shock, horror—where it is deemed necessary or desirable, provided that the overall regulatory burden is not increased. The reforms that these powers will enable are vital to allow the UK to drive genuine reform and seize the opportunities of Brexit.

We had a repeat of the debate about animal welfare. As I mentioned the other day, the Government remain focused on how best to deliver the “Action Plan for Animal Welfare” published in 2021, which builds on our existing high animal welfare standards. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Leeds North West to withdraw the amendment.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is clearly not for me to comment on the best way for a Department for domestic English affairs to rule on what English courts and English Law Officers can do and must do. Equally, it is not for anybody here, including those of us from Scotland, to change the rules on what the Law Officers and courts of Scotland can do and must do—that is exclusively for the Parliament of Scotland.

Given the importance that the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland repeatedly attached yesterday to the need for consensus when considering any change to the relationship between our two nations, will the Minister confirm that the consensus principle works in both directions, and that no changes will be made to the powers and responsibilities of Scotland’s Law Officers or Scotland’s courts without the explicit consent of the Scottish Government?

[Ms Ghani]

As I just said, the structure of the Law Officers’ powers is consistent with the established position of the Lord Advocate within the Scottish Government, as in other contexts the structure rightly allows the Lord Advocate to represent the Scottish Government’s views on the interpretation of devolved legislation, but not legislation that is reserved to Westminster. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to withdraw the amendments.

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the Minister fully understood the significance of my question. We have not tabled the amendments because we think that the power is being given to the domestic Law Officers and courts of England—that is not for us to comment on. It is not even that we think that what is being proposed is wrong for the domestic Law Officers and courts of Scotland. However, what is completely wrong is for the domestic Parliament of England to legislate on the legally separate legal system of Scotland against the clear objections of the domestic Parliament of Scotland, which speaks on behalf of the sovereign people of Scotland.

If the Minister is convinced that what is proposed in the Bill is in the best interests of justice in Scotland, and if she can persuade the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Law Officers that that is the case, there is no question but that the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament will legislate on those terms. However, on the day after the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland insisted that the relationship between our nations must be based on consensus, the Minister is proposing to drive a coach and horses through that consensus by insisting that this Minister and this Parliament have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of another nation in this Union. That is a serious breach of the guarantees contained in article 19 of the Treaty of Union, and it is not acceptable.

I invite the Minister to come back, should she so wish, and advise the Committee. In preparation for the Bill, has she had any advice whatsoever on the application of article 19 of the Treaty of Union? Does she know what it says?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I absolutely associate myself with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes. It is for the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Law Officers to decide what they can and cannot do and it is not for this place to impose that. I have always imagined that, in a partnership of equals, each partner has their voice listened to and their opinions respected. Clearly, the Union is not the partnership of equals that we have been led to believe it is. Scots law has always been independent, and it ill behoves the UK Government to try to ignore the democratically elected Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Law Officers, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will speak briefly about the amendments, which will remove any restraint the Bill would place on Scotland’s Lord Advocate in making reference to retained EU law.

As it stands, the Bill restricts the Lord Advocate’s power to make reference only to points of law that relate to the meaning or effect of relevant Scottish legislation. There is no corresponding restraint on the power of any other UK Law Officer regarding the law of England or Wales on matters that are reserved. Again, I understand that the message has been communicated directly to the Government by the Scottish Government. On the basis that we take the issue so seriously, I ask that the Government accept our amendments.

[Peter Grant]

The comments I made in relation to the last group of amendments are equally, if not more, applicable here. I appreciate that many members of the Committee would not have thought that the submission from the Law Society of Scotland was relevant to the interests of their constituents, nor should it be. The legal systems of the two nations are entirely separate. They are required to be in perpetuity by the Treaty of Union. That is not my favourite piece of legislation, but while it is there it is incumbent on this Parliament to comply with it.

The Law Society of Scotland wanted the whole of proposed new section 6B to be deleted in its entirety. It raised a number of serious concerns in principle, many of which will apply to the application of the legislation to English courts and Law Officers as well. Proposed new section 6B changes the way in which some civil law can be challenged in the courts without changing the way in which other civil law can be challenged in the courts, so the concept of the unity of a single body of civil law starts to be weakened. The legal profession will be extremely concerned about that.

The legal profession is also concerned about the idea that after a civil case has been concluded, when the time for any appeal has passed and the case is settled, Law Officers who are not a party to the case can then intervene, effectively to act as an appellant in a case in which they have no direct interest. That process rightly applies in relation to criminal law, because almost every criminal prosecution involves the Law Officers acting in the name of the Crown on behalf of the public interest.

In fact, in Scotland nobody but the Law Officers is allowed to take a prosecution in the public interest. Bodies such as the Post Office and the Health and Safety Executive are not allowed to prosecute cases in Scotland’s criminal courts. After a case has been concluded, it is perfectly in order for the Law Officers to appeal against the leniency of a sentence, for example, because they were an interested party in prosecuting the case in the first place. That does not apply if it is a civil case, so there is a legal precedent created here that the Law Society of Scotland has raised serious concerns about, as well as very possibly the Law Society of England and Wales.

The clause again threatens compliance with the Treaty of Union—that is how serious it is, Mr Howarth. Passing the clause threatens to be in breach of article 19 of the Treaty of Union, because it makes the Law Officers of England superior to the Law Officers of Scotland. It makes the domestic courts of England superior to the domestic courts of Scotland. Why do I say that? It explicitly allows the Law Officers of England to step in and interfere in a civil case that applies only in Scotland, between two parties who are resident in Scotland and subject to the law of Scotland, where a case has been considered through due process in the domestic courts of Scotland and settled with finality as a matter of Scottish law. At that point, the Law Officers of England are allowed to wade in and interfere in a legal system that has nothing whatsoever to do with them—not on a matter of reserved legislation or one that is within the remit of domestic law in England.

The equivalent power does not apply to the Law Officers of Scotland. There are no circumstances in which Scotland’s senior Law Officers can come in and interfere in a civil case that has been heard in English courts. However, there are circumstances in which the Law Officers of England can interfere after the event in a domestic case in Scotland’s court. That is not equal treatment of the two legal systems. That is not recognition of the right of the Scottish legal system to operate independently of interference from this place. I will take advice on that and I will be interested to hear if the Minister has. That would appear to me to be a deliberate breach of one of the articles of the Treaty of Union. As many will be aware, when one article of a treaty is broken, either party has the right to consider the treaty to have been brought to an end.

I expressed my concerns in the previous sitting of the Committee that the Minister might be about to accidentally repeal hundreds of bits of legislation by mistake. I am tempted to say that we should not interrupt our opponents when they are making a mistake. If this place wants to take the risk of repealing the Treaty of Union by mistake, I will not stand in its way. However, I think I should bring it to hon. Members’ attention so that at least they cannot afterwards say they did not know what they were doing.

[Ms Ghani]

I will try to address all the points raised because I know how seriously they are taken by Opposition Members. The Committee should reject amendments 35, 36, 37, 48 and 93 as they would give Law Officers of the devolved Administrations the power to intervene in reserved matters, which is not constitutionally appropriate.

Amendments 35, 36 and 37 concern proposed new section 6B, established by clause 7 of the Bill, which provides UK Government Law Officers and Law Officers of the devolved Administrations with the power to refer points of law arising from retained case law to the higher courts, when proceedings have concluded, for consideration against the new test for departure set out by the same clause.

Amendments 48 and 93 concern new section 6C, which gives Law Officers the power to intervene in cases before the higher courts and present arguments for them to depart from retained case law following the new test for departure in the Bill. It is right that references and interventions by the Lord Advocate are restricted to the points of law within the devolved competence of the Scottish Government. The provisions are framed so that Law Officers may exercise the reference and intervention powers on behalf of their respective Governments in cases where other Administrations have a particular view on the meaning and effect of a relevant piece of retained EU law for which they are responsible.

The powers allow Law Officers to bring the matters before a higher court, in the light of the new test for departure from retained case law, for a decision after hearing the relevant Government’s view on the correct interpretation of a relevant retained EU law. That will allow Law Officers and the Lord Advocate to ensure an appropriate development of the law as we move away from the influence of EU case law and the rules of interpretation. It would consequently be inappropriate for the Lord Advocate, on behalf of the Scottish Government, to exercise the reference and intervention powers where the points of law relate to reserved legislation. That includes points of law that concern the retained functions of the Lord Advocate as a prosecutor, as those functions concern legislation that is reserved to Westminster.

We consider the structure of the Law Officer powers to be consistent with the established position of the Lord Advocate within the Scottish Government. As in other contexts, the structure rightly allows the Lord Advocate to represent the Scottish Government’s views on the interpretation of devolved legislation but not legislation reserved to Westminster. For those reasons, we ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to withdraw his amendment.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

If the right hon. Member wants to give the public reassurance that there is no intention to sweep away the rights, this is the perfect opportunity to do so by voting for the amendments. I remind him that over the past 12 years the Government have doubled the qualifying period for unfair dismissal, introduced employment tribunal fees and cut down on consultation requirements for collective redundancies. The track record is a mixed one to say the least. A number of prominent Brexiteers have talked extensively about the need to reduce red tape and do away with employment rights, which I will discuss shortly.

If, as the right hon. Member says, there is no intention to remove employment rights, that is welcome news. It would be more welcome if the amendments were supported, because that would be consistent with the manifesto that Conservative Members stood on in 2019, which says on page 5 that

“we will legislate to ensure high standards of workers’ rights, environmental protection and consumer rights.”

This is the chance to legislate for that, starting with amendment 76 on workers’ rights.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am possibly anticipating what will be said later, but for clarification will the hon. Member confirm that retaining all this EU legislation in domestic law does not in any way prevent the Government from deciding that they want to legislate for a greater level of workers’ rights or environmental protection than is currently the norm throughout Europe? They would only need to repeal this law if they intended to weaken those protections.

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Member is exactly right. If there is no intention to do away with these laws, the Government simply have to accept the amendment with no further question or debate about it. We will be very pleased to be able to report to our constituents that their rights are protected.

We are sceptical about some of the intentions of the Conservative party. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), the architect of the Bill, has gone on the record with what can only be described as a Victorian attitude to workers’ rights, with such classic lines as “there is no moral right to annual leave.” There were reports in The Times only a couple of months ago that he was planning to scrap both the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the Agency Workers Regulations 2010. Amendment 76 would protect both measures, putting the issue beyond doubt. The Minister does not need to the follow the right hon. Member’s lead any more; she can act today to show that she is on the side of workers, that she understands the value and importance of workers’ rights and that she can do the right thing by supporting the amendment.

When discussing these amendments it is important to acknowledge that there will almost certainly be a disproportionate impact on women if these laws are scrapped, as many of them have been of great benefit to women in the workplace. Fifty years after this country legislated for equal pay between men and women we still have not quite got there. Women face far greater challenges of discrimination at work. Let us not make an unacceptable situation any worse by reducing some of the measures that protect them.

The Bill’s own impact assessment recognises that it contain threats to equality, particularly in paragraphs 11, 25 and 41. Unison has said that the Bill will

“deliberately wipe the slate clean and create confusion around the principle of precedent that UK common law is premised on. It places ideological principles above the lived, practical needs of the UK.”

Perhaps the Minister will tell us, as the right hon. Member for Clwyd West has already suggested, that we are being melodramatic, and that the Government do indeed intend to honour their manifesto commitments to improve workers’ rights. We know what we need to do if that is the case.

As I say, I am a little suspicious about what is going on with the Bill and why it has been drafted in such a way to squirrel away debate and discussion about workers’ rights. If the Government truly intended to maintain these rights, they could have put something in the Bill along the lines of the amendments from Labour or the SNP. Better still, as we have touched on, they could have done the Bill the other way round, so that we knew what was going to be removed. The fact that they have not done that raises concerns.

When the review of retained EU law commenced, Lord Frost said that the Government were in the position to ensure that retained EU law could be revoked, replaced, restated, updated and removed or amended to remove burdens. Of course, he could have added to those comments and said that, while we want to do that with retained European law, we respect and support workers’ rights and do not need to change them. Instead, we have the language of attack—of revocation, of removing burdens—not the language of a Government intent on upholding workers’ rights.

I urge Members to consider what the Minister’s colleague, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, said on Second Reading on the subject of workers’ rights:

“In line with the UK’s track record, we will seek to modernise our regulations, including on workers’ rights, ensuring that unnecessary burdens are minimised”.—[Official Report, 25 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 252.]

I am not sure what he meant by “modernise”, given that the Government have yet to implement the vast majority of recommendations from the Taylor review that sought to bring in new regulations to protect workers in the gig economy, but it is the latter part of that sentence that I want to examine further.

We hear far too often from those on the right of politics that employment rights are an unnecessary burden on businesses. Of course, for many, the visceral hatred of workers’ rights was a huge motivating factor for wanting to leave the EU. However, I would say that workers’ rights are not a burden, but an essential ingredient of a civilised society. If we want our citizens to play an active role in the country moving forward and in future economic growth, our citizens have to be rewarded fairly and treated fairly. Security and respect at work are the cornerstone of any success we may have as a nation. A secure and happy workforce is a productive workforce. Giving people dignity, certainty and fairness in the workplace is not a burden on businesses, but is what good businesses want to do, what good businesses will see the fruits of, if they implement it properly, and what we as Members of this House should want to see in every workplace.

We view the Government’s approach to the amendment with scepticism. I urge all members of this Committee not to pass up the opportunity that this amendment gives them to say to those who may see the Bill as a chance to weaken workers’ rights that we are not going to let that happen: these rights are not up for grabs, they are non-negotiable and they will not be dumped at the end of 2023.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Industry and Investment Security (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

You will not be surprised to hear, Sir George, that I wish to reject amendments 73, 76, 67 and 60, and new clause 4. While the speeches were taking place, I was reflecting on the level of scrutiny we had when we were governed and subjugated by rules coming out of Europe. I do not recall transcripts from those meetings, or opportunities for Members elected to represent constituents and their businesses to get involved and offer up what they thought was needed for those businesses domestically. However, here we have an opportunity to assimilate, review and potentially improve rules and regulations, and to ensure that we are governed by rules that we enact here in the United Kingdom.

[Peter Grant]

I may be mistaken, but I distinctly remember being a member of the European Scrutiny Committee in this place for several years. The explicit job of that Committee was to scrutinise proposed EU legislation and to express whether it, on behalf of Parliament, was content for Ministers to either support that legislation or oppose it. It was not the fault of the European Union that very often that Committee had no teeth. It was certainly not the fault of the European Union that as often as not, Ministers ignored the views of that Committee. Is it not the case that the difficulties with parliamentary oversight of European legislation for the 40 years that we were in the EU were nothing to do with the failings of the European Union, and everything to do with the failings of scrutiny in this place?

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Gentleman is honest about his position when he says that there was no problem with the European Union; that is the core of many of the arguments put forward by Opposition Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

On new clause 4, it is right that the public should know how much legislation is derived from the EU and the progress that the Government are making to reform it. This is why on 22 June 2022 we published an authoritative public record of where REUL sits on the UK statute book in the form of the REUL dashboard on gov.uk, which catalogues more than 2,400 pieces of legislation derived from the EU. The information is there; asking that we cut and paste it somewhere else is slightly ridiculous and over-bureaucratic.

[Peter Grant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ms Ghani]

The Government have no intention of abandoning our strong record on workers’ rights, having raised domestic standards over recent years to make them some of the highest in the world.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow raised the issue of maternity rights. She has done a huge amount of work for women’s rights, as have I. I just find it incredibly unfortunate that both she and I have been defending and promoting women’s rights but that we might create an anxiety based on fiction and not on fact. The repeal of maternity rights is not and has never been Government policy. The high standards of maternity rights that I mentioned earlier have never been dependent on, or even mirrored, those of the EU; we have always gone a lot further.

Taking all that into account, I ask the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

It is not taking back control, is it? Anyone who has read the Bill will understand that Parliament’s role will be severely restricted, and that is why the Opposition are worried about what will happen. The Minister cited a long list of measures that strengthened employment rights, many of them introduced under a Labour Government of course. Not all of them came from Europe—the minimum wage is not derived from European law. We want to see such rights protected.

I think the Minister is sincere in her desire to support equality, but her exact words were that there is no intention to remove any necessary equality law. I just question whose definition is used to decide what is necessary or unnecessary. What does that mean? That is why it is so important that we have a proper scrutiny process. If it is decided that no equality laws are unnecessary, they should be removed from the terms of the Bill all together.

[Peter Grant]

I will ask question that the Minister chose not to hear. The Bill runs to 37 pages, and we do not know how long the Government have taken to put it together, but we know that they had a month between First and Second Reading. In that time, at least 15 mistakes were identified in the Bill, because the Government themselves have tabled 15 amendments to correct mistakes in a Bill of 37 pages. The items of legislation subject to the hon. Gentleman’s amendment run to something like 360 pages. The legislation relating to this amendment alone is nearly 10 times as long as the Bill we are currently considering, yet the Government have so far identified 15 amendments that are required to the Bill. What confidence can we have that 360 pages of revoked legislation will have been properly gone through and assessed, and all properly put back into law in just over a year from now?

[Justin Madders]

We do not have a lot of confidence. The hon. Member is right to point out the amount of legislation to which just this amendment relates. We are trying to do the Government a favour by attempting to remove various legislation from the Bill. The Minister spoke about an over-bureaucratic process, and we can help with that by removing some regulations from the Bill so that they are retained in law. There is therefore no need to go through any bureaucratic exercise.

The Minister spoke about modernising health and safety law. To me, modernising can mean any number of things, and it does not always mean that law will be improved or rights increased. As we know, the Bill specifically prevents an increase in the legislative burden, and I think a lot of people may say that health and safety is a burden, although I certainly do not think it is; I think it is an absolute essential, but we know how it is characterised in some quarters.

I want to address head-on the claim that we are scaremongering, worrying people and causing anxiety by raising the issue. In order to remove such anxieties, the simple answer is to vote for the amendment, because then there would no question about those rights being protected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

As hon. Members know from this morning, the clause is the backbone of the Bill, ensuring that EU-derived subordinate legislation and retained direct EU legislation will all be removed or reformed by 31 December 2023. Specifically, the amendment will ensure that the Bill’s sunset does not impact on amendments to primary legislation inserted by retained EU law that is now in scope of the sunset. As drafted, the Bill provides for that to be the case only where an entire instrument is revoked by the sunset. This Government amendment provides that the revocation of a particular provision of an instrument does not affect any amendment made by the provision to any other enactment. Sunsetting amendments to primary legislation is not our aim with the Bill. We clearly rule that out of the Bill’s scope. I ask the Committee to join me in voting for the amendment.

Turning to Government amendment 3, further clarity is required to ensure that, where the preservation power under clause 1(2) has been exercised, it is REUL as it exists at the time of the sunset that is preserved. Without amendment 3, there is a risk that modifications to a piece of REUL made after it has been preserved, but before the sunset date, would unintentionally be subject to the sunset. The amendment will ensure that the modification is also preserved. As such, it is minor and technical but ensures the necessary clarity that REUL is preserved as intended, with necessary amendments or restatements.

[Peter Grant]

The Government have admitted that, even before we decide on clause 1, three important parts of what the Minister described as a fundamentally important clause need to be amended, because the Government got it wrong. How can we be confident that, in less than a year, 4,000-plus statutory instruments will be amended, revoked or replaced without similar mistakes being identified when it is too late and the defective legislation is already in place, with no other choice but to amend them in a Public Bill Committee?

[Ms Ghani]

The hon. Gentleman might have been in Parliament longer than I have and might have sat on Committees longer than I have, but it is not unusual to amend pieces of legislation in Committee. I have known that in legislation from many Departments. It is not unusual; it is just the process that we are in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister is not allowing questions, so will she provide clarification? It is absolutely normal to have amendments to legislation, but it is not normal to delete all the legislation and then try to amend in a lacuna. Will she clarify whether she recognises that these amendments need to be put forward because the legislation, as currently drafted, is not correct? She will know of other legislation that has had to be drafted—indeed, statutory instruments have come forward. What provision—what backstop or safety net—is in place, should something be deleted and should a change need to be made by this legislation in that absence? Will that law remain on the statute book, or will we simply see potentially thousands of amendments needing to be made but no legislation to be amended? If the Minister could take questions, she could probably reassure all of us on these questions. I do not think they are unreasonable ones to ask—she has raised the point.

[Peter Grant]

Before the comments from the hon. Member for Walthamstow, the Minister thought she was winning the argument. She said that there was nothing unusual in legislation having to be amended by the Government in Committee. That is exactly the problem. It is not unusual; in fact, it is almost inevitable. It is happening so many times in this 23-clause Bill, which runs to 30-something pages, but we are expected to believe that anything up to 4,000 pieces of legislation can be wiped out and that they will all be properly and adequately replaced, when this Public Bill Committee stage, which is allowing the defects in the original Bill to be corrected, will be removed from all of them. That is why this is such a reckless and cavalier way to go about changing the laws of these islands. We are not talking about one or two pieces of secondary legislation being introduced to replace or amend what was there before. We are talking about thousands of pieces of legislation needing to be enacted to replace a blank set of paper—in order to replace complete anarchy. Does the Minister now understand that that is why, with the best will in the world, the civil servants will not get them all right? If we go ahead with clause 1 and the rest of the Bill, as the Minister insists, there will be defects in the legislation that is put in place. Bits will be missed out that no one wanted to miss out. Businesses will suffer as a result.

[Ms Ghani]

Another question about scrutiny. Thank goodness that we are having this debate and legislating in the UK, where there is an opportunity to scrutinise and have everything on record in Hansard.

Let me go through the process again. Departments will be expected to develop a delivery plan, which will outline their intention for each piece of retained EU law. They will be supported by the Brexit Opportunities Unit. There will be a huge amount of outreach and stock-take process in place. To go through the process further, the Bill will obviously go from here to Report stage and then to the House of Lords. There will be a huge amount of scrutiny throughout. Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, work on reform will continue in Departments. They will review their retained EU law, prioritise areas for reform and lay statutory instruments where appropriate. That process may include designing policy and services; conducting stakeholder consultations; drafting impact assessments; or supporting individuals who may be impacted by any such reform. That is the level of work that we always conduct when we are legislating.

On the question about the statutory instrument programme, and how the House will have sight, the Government recognise the significant role that Parliament has played in scrutinising instruments to date and are committed to ensuring the appropriate scrutiny of any legislation made under the delegated powers in the Bill. The Bill will follow the appropriate scrutiny procedures as it progresses through Parliament. It is right that we ensure that any reforms to retained EU legislation receive the proper scrutiny from the relevant legislatures and are subject to the proper processes for consultation and impact assessment.

Once the Bill receives Royal Assent, work on reform by Departments will continue. They will review their retained EU law, prioritise areas for reform and lay SIs before Parliament where appropriate. A sifting procedure has been included to ensure that Parliament can assess the suitability of the procedure used for SIs. Parliament can recommend stronger scrutiny procedures as needed. I hope that is thorough enough.

--- Later in debate ---

Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

[Peter Grant]

I do not want to detain the Committee much longer, but I cannot support clause 1. It is not just about me not accepting that this Parliament has the right to take my people out of an international union that they voted to be part of. It is about the fact that even if we accept that there is no way back into the European Union—even if we accept that Brexit has to be a process of substantially distancing ourselves from it—this is not the right way to go about it.

It is perfectly possible, as others have said, to set up a process that allows retained EU law that gets in the way to be revoked, repealed or amended, but that allows good EU law to be maintained and adopted into domestic legislation, without running the risk of having to start from a blank sheet of paper and replace 40-years of legislation in the space of a few months.

The briefing paper to the late Queen’s Speech that the Government produced to set out the background to the Bill talked about using the Bill to assert the sovereignty of Parliament. Well, quite clearly, the Government do not understand that this Parliament never has exerted, and never will exert, sovereignty over the people of Scotland. If the Bill was to progress with clause 1 as it is, it would not be asserting the sovereignty of Parliament; it would be asserting the sovereignty of the Prime Minister and the Government Chief Whip. They will decide what goes in the legislation, they will decide who presents that legislation to Parliament and they will decide what Minister gets the boot if they do not support the necessary changes. That is not about the sovereignty of Parliament; it is about the sovereignty of the Executive—of the Prime Minister and Chief Whip in particular.

If we look at that briefing on the important aspects of the Bill, we see red flags all over the place because it is about short-circuiting the parliamentary process. The Government’s own assessment is that, if we were to take this retained EU law through a proper process of parliamentary scrutiny, it would take decades to get through. I am not necessarily saying that we should wait decades for the process to be completed. But taking a process of decades—by implication, that is 20 years at least—and squeezing it into a single year, and especially a single year when the Government are dealing with the impacts of the war in Ukraine, the after-effects of covid and the worst cost of living crisis in living memory, is not a responsible way for the Government to make legislation.

I will be opposing clause 1. If people believe that that will wreck the Bill, then this is a Bill that has to be wrecked. The Government have to be told to go back and bring forward a Bill that achieves what most Members in this House now seem to want, but that does so in a way that does not expose all of us—and those who elected us—to risks that we cannot yet even identify because they could come out of legislation that nobody here knows exists. It would be madness to repeal a piece of legislation that we do not even know is there.

[Ms Ghani]

The people of the UK voted in overwhelming numbers for an end to undue EU legal influence. The clause establishes a way to finally excise that influence. I move that it stands part of the Bill.

Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.

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[Ms Ghani]

Well, it was not a simple question, and it was full of contradictions. During debates on previous amendments, we have spoken to the high levels of animal welfare that we have here in the UK, and the level of scrutiny that will take place.

To the point that the hon. Gentleman raised, conferring the extension power on the devolved Governments would introduce additional legal complexity. Specifically, it might result in different pieces and descriptions of retained EU law expiring at multiple different times in different Administrations across the UK. Those pieces of retained EU law may cover a mix of reserved and devolved policy areas, and policy officials are still working through how the extension power will work in practice, but we are committed to working collaboratively with devolved officials. I am keen to discuss this policy as it progresses to ensure that the power works for all parts of the UK. The amendment would work against everything we are trying to achieve through the Bill, which is why I ask the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston to withdraw it.

[Peter Grant]

The Minister’s clarification in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute’s questions has been about as clear as mud. On the basis of that response, I sincerely hope that my hon. Friend will stick to his guns, move his amendment and push it to a vote. Either the Minister genuinely does not get devolution, or she gets it and is trying to roll it back, because the whole point of devolution is the recognition that there are four distinct identities, at the very least—four distinct sets of needs and priorities—within the four nations of this Union. Arguably, England could be split into several autonomous regions as well if the people of those parts of England so desired.

I think the fault line is that the Minister continually expects the people of Scotland to be reassured when she says, “This is not what the Government intend to do with this new power. This is not what the Government intend to do with this new legislation.” I mean nothing personal against this particular Minister when I tell her that the people in Scotland do not trust this Government. The people in Scotland have never trusted a Tory Government and never will, so if the reassurance that the Minister wants to give my constituents and constituents of other colleagues in Scotland is “We promise you that although we’ve got this power, we will not do it to you”, that will not be enough. The one way to make that promise credible is to say, “We are so determined not to do this to you that we are not going to take the power that would allow us to do it. We are going to make a law that would prevent us from doing that.”

The Minister still has not answered my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute’s questions, so maybe I can ask them in a different way. Who does she believe should have the right to decide whether chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-injected beef should be allowed to be sold in shops in Scotland? Is that a decision that rightfully belongs with the Parliament of Scotland, or does it belong to this place?

[Justin Madders]

To follow on from what the hon. Member for Glenrothes has said, I think the Minister misunderstands the point of devolution if her main argument against these amendments is that we cannot have different deadlines and laws in different jurisdictions. The whole point of devolution is that each devolved nation is able to decide the laws that sit within its devolved competence. I will not push our amendment to a vote, but the answers we have received this evening are pretty inadequate.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Third sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Like my hon. Friend, I have been puzzling over why the Government are so determined to die in a ditch over this 2023 date. Does he think it is because instead of admitting to the public that they made promises in 2019 they could not possibly keep— having realised that the promise in 2019 to get Brexit done was completely unrealistic—they are prepared to crash the economy in order to go into a 2024 election saying they have got Brexit done?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say by way of explanation. I agree with my hon. Friend. It makes absolutely no sense, unless the arbitrary deadline is purely ideologically driven and there to appease the true believers, who have now resumed languishing on the Back Benches.

In response to the sunset clause of the Bill, the Scottish warned that it

“carries an unacceptable risk that vital law, on which the smooth functioning of sectors of the economy and society depends, simply drops off the UK statute book.”

If the Government will not listen to us, perhaps they will take heed of the warning from the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), who said that the Australia and New Zealand trade deals were so poor because of the Government’s self-imposed arbitrary targets. Of course, Members on the Government Benches will say that there are extensions available if they are applied for, but that ignores the fact that the relevant Departments still have to go through and identify at least 3,800 pieces of pertinent legislation, and then someone has to decide what happens next.

Even then, it is far from clear. Does the Secretary of State get to decide that an extension is allowed? Will a decision be made by the Cabinet or at a Cabinet Sub-Committee? Will a separate body be set up to specifically to examine which legislation can and cannot be granted an extension? Let us not forget that if this is not all done and dusted in 13 months, every piece of EU retained legislation will by default fall off the statute book, leaving huge holes in our domestic legislation.

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[Ms Ghani]

If the hon. Member gives me a moment to expand a little more I can explain; I will then take interventions from the birthday boy. Officials have catalogued retained EU law across Government, which has been collated, as part of the cross-varietal substance review of retained EU law, into the dashboard that was published on 22 June. Crucially, powers in the Bill have been drafted to ensure that the current date is workable. The preservation power enables UK Ministers and devolved authorities to keep specific pieces of legislation that would otherwise be subject to sunset where the legislation meets a desired policy effect, without having fully to restate or otherwise amend the legislation.

The power to revoke or replace the compatibility power and the power to restate assimilated law will be available until 23 June 2026, while the power to update will be a continuous power. These powers have the ability to amend assimilated law once the sunset date has passed and retained EU law is no longer a legal category; that means that Departments can preserve their retained EU law so that it becomes assimilated law after the sunset date, and amend it further beyond that date if required. In addition, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will be working closely with other Government Departments, as well as devolved Governments, to ensure that appropriate actions are taken before the sunset date. Finally, the extension mechanism in clause 2 ensures that, should more time be required fully to review the changes needed to retained EU law, the sunset can be extended for specific provisions or descriptions of retained EU law until 23 June 2026.

[Peter Grant]

The Minister has tried heroically but unsuccessfully, I am afraid, to argue that this arbitrary deadline will not place enormous strain on a civil service that is already under enormous strain. Can she look at it from the opposite direction? Can she explain why it would be bad to set an absolute deadline of 2026? If Departments and Ministers are able to sort things out by the end of 2023, they can do so in a safe environment where they are not under pressure to get it done quickly, with the possible consequence that it would then be done wrong.

[Ms Ghani]

I simply do not recognise that the added burden means that the programme of work cannot be deliverable. I mentioned the fact that we have an ability to provide an extension, depending on what that piece of legislation is. What we do not want to do is undermine focus on delivering the bulk of the work by the sunset date that is in place at the moment.

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[Justin Madders]

We have some sympathy with amendment 68. From what we can determine, it tries to equalise the approach to the current anomaly whereby under clause 1(2) the power to remove the sunset is granted both to Westminster and to devolved authorities, but the power to extend the sunset under clause 2(1) is just for Ministers in Westminster. I do not know the reasons for the difference in that approach.

I suggest that the evidence sessions did not reveal a particular state of readiness in the Scottish Parliament for the administrative burden that the Bill will leave it with. That is not, by the way, a criticism of the Scottish Parliament; it is a reflection of the timescales that we face. The current powers in the Bill leave the Scottish Parliament in a position in which it would have to remove the sunset entirely, whereas perhaps an option could be for it to extend the sunset for reasons of capacity. That would be a much more measured approach.

[Peter Grant]

My recollection, which may help the hon. Member on his first point, is that Angus Robertson said they had not had a chance to begin to quantify the amount of legislation. He was saying not that it was because there was not very much but because there was so much of it. Can the hon. Member be clear as to what Labour’s current position is? If a piece of retained EU law related exclusively to one of the devolved competences—either the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru or the Northern Irish Assembly—is it Labour’s position that that retained law should be removed from the devolved legislatures only with their explicit consent, or does Labour support the Government, who think this Parliament can legislate away in fields of devolved competence without the consent of the devolved Administrations?

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[Ms Ghani]

The Committee should reject the amendments, which would exempt devolved legislation within Scotland’s legislative competence from the sunset, and amend the territorial extent of the Bill so that it does not extend to Scotland. A sunset is the quickest and most effective way to accelerate the review of the majority of rules on the UK statute book by a specific date in the near future. That will incentivise genuine rule reform in a way that will work best for all parts of the UK.

The territorial scope of the Bill is UK-wide. It is therefore constitutionally appropriate that the sunset applies across all four sovereign nations in the UK. That approach is consistent with other EU exit legislation, and will enable the devolved Governments to make provisions for addressing retained EU law in areas of devolved competence. Every nation of the UK should have the opportunity to review the retained EU law and have the powers to reform the legislation in a way that is appropriate and best suited to its citizens and businesses. Nothing in the sunset provision affects the devolution settlement. It is not intended to restrict the competence of either the devolved legislatures or the devolved Governments.

[Peter Grant]

I put it to the Minister that rejecting the amendment very much affects the devolution settlement. It means that the priorities on which the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland civil service work will no longer be those set by their democratically elected Parliaments and Governments, but the policies set by the UK Government. Angus Robertson made it clear that the Scottish Government believe that there will be a substantial burden of administration on the Scottish civil service. What gives Ministers in this Parliament the right to tell the Scottish civil service to do what they tell them to, not their elected Ministers?

[Ms Ghani]

We are delivering. A crucial part of Brexit was ensuring that our law is the most sovereign law in the land. That is what we are delivering. It is not a diversion from any other policy.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Ms Ghani]

I will continue.

A question was raised earlier, as the hon. Member raised just now, about a power grab. When using the powers under the Bill, the Government will use the appropriate mechanisms, such as the common frameworks, to engage with the devolved Governments. That will ensure that we are able to take account of the wider context and allow for joined-up decision making across the UK. If any disputes arise, we are committed to using the appropriate processes set out in the review of intergovernmental relations.

Nothing in the sunset provision affects the devolution settlement. It is not intended to restrict the competence of either the devolved legislatures or the devolved Governments; rather, it will enable the Scottish Government to make active decisions about the retained EU law within their devolved competence for the benefit of citizens and businesses throughout Scotland. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute to withdraw the amendment.

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Finally, the statement must also set out the likely effect of the revocation of that instrument on the operation of the protocol on Northern Ireland in the EU withdrawal agreement. I think that is fairly self-explanatory.

[Peter Grant]

I have a great deal of sympathy with amendment 90, but amendment 91 seems to be telling the devolved Administrations how to do their job. Does the hon. Gentleman not think that if we want to allow the devolved Administrations to decide whether to vote for a particular piece of retained EU law, we should also leave it to them to decide the process by which they do it?

[Justin Madders]

If the hon. Member does not think that doing proper consultations is the way the Scottish Parliament wants to go, that is a matter for him, but we would like consistency of approach across all Departments and nations of this United Kingdom. Subsections (2C) and (2D) in amendment 91 would effectively create a failsafe so that any attempts to frustrate the will of the devolved nations cannot be made by the inaction of a recalcitrant Secretary of State. I hope the hon. Member can at least take some reassurance from that—any exercises of the devolved nations would, under the amendment, be honoured by Westminster.

We have already heard arguments that some of these laws were not brought into force in a truly democratic manner. Therefore, they do not need the same level of scrutiny that would ordinarily be afforded to other laws passed by this Parliament. Frankly, I find that argument nonsense. It is like saying, “I object to my neighbour planting leylandii in their garden, so I am going to do exactly the same.” If the complaint is that the level of accountability and scrutiny was insufficient when the laws were brought in, surely those making that argument would want accountability and scrutiny when those laws are reviewed. Is taking back control not about us—this Parliament—having a fuller role in the legislative process?

As it happens, I do not accept that characterisation of how these laws were introduced in the first place. In its written evidence, the Bar Council said that

“the EU legislative process, whilst certainly capable of much improvement, contains a number of democratic checks and balances: for the vast bulk of EU subordinate legislation, the co-legislators, both of whom must adopt the final text by (normally weighted) majority, are the Council, comprised of elected Ministers from the Member States, and the European Parliament”,

which is democratically elected, of course, and whose membership included until 2020 Members who were democratically elected from the UK. It continues:

“Important Commission legislative proposals are preceded by impact assessments and so-called roadmaps, and often accompanied by Staff Working Documents, all publicly available and setting out the policy intent. In addition, public consultations and stakeholder meetings are frequent features of the process, whether concerning binding or non-binding measures.”

I do not know whether the criticisms of this process are about the quality of representation that we had over there. A number of former MEPs are now Members of these Houses of Parliament, and they all seem pretty capable people to me. Let us not forget that once the EU issued its directives, we in this place had the European Scrutiny Committee and other Select Committees to examine any proposals. It is simply wrong to say that our politicians, stakeholders and policymakers did not have ample opportunity to exert influence on the development of EU policy and secondary legislation.

There are many examples where EU legislation was supported, and even promoted, by the UK Government of the day. One example—I am sure you will remember this, Sir George—was the social chapter. That was clearly telegraphed by the Labour party as something it would introduce if it got into power back in the 1990s; it was in the manifesto. Of course, Labour won that election and those laws were introduced, including rights on parental leave and working hours. Nobody can say those rules were forced on us without our consent. It should therefore be a matter of agreement for everyone who wants to see democracy prosper that the replacement legislation under this Bill should be made by Parliament after proper consultation, public debate and scrutiny, not simply a ministerial decision—or, as the case may be, ministerial non-decision.

The best idea we have at the moment regarding how the Government intend to approach this mammoth task is a statement from Lord Frost, who said the policy intention was

“to amend, replace or repeal all retained EU law that is not right for the UK.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 September 2021; Vol. 814, c. 1533.]

“Not right”—is that the best we can do? This centuries-old Parliament, taking a historic decision to wrestle back control from those unelected Brussels bureaucrats, finds itself in the ludicrous position of having another unelected person tell us that laws will be changed if they are “not right”. Surely the Minister can see that could mean absolutely anything. That is the equivalent of a dictator waking up one morning and saying, “I don’t think it’s right that people in my country are allowed to wear hats, so from today we will outlaw that.” Clearly that is an extreme example, but that is the consequence of having a Government who have the power to dispense with laws with no consultation or scrutiny because they do not think those laws are right. Surely as a Parliament we can do better than that. Surely we should hold ourselves to a high standard when we want to change legislation. We should not legislate on a whim, and Parliament should not hand powers to Ministers that enable them to do just that.

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[Peter Grant]

I note that the hon. Gentleman’s incredulity is almost as great as mine with respect to a Minister who a minute ago said that we can deal properly with 4,000 bits of legislation in just over a year, but then said that the Government cannot take stuff from their own dashboard and transpose it somewhere else.

Am I correct to think that, essentially, the purpose of the amendment is to give the Government some insurance cover to prevent them from revoking useful legislation by mistake? What does it say about the arrogance of a Government that they refuse to accept such an offer of help and prefer to see legislation that could have unintended damaging consequences, rather than simply having the humility to accept such a proposal, which they seem to reject purely because of where it comes from, rather than any benefit it might contain?

[Justin Madders]

I hope the Minister will learn that I always try to be helpful with my amendments. We are genuinely trying to get the Bill into some kind of shape whereby it might restore faith in parliamentary democracy. We will not be the ones to bear the consequences of accidental omissions; it will be our constituents. They will rightly ask, “What were you doing? Where were you when the Bill was passed?” It will be clear that we raised our concerns and pointed out the terrible potential consequences of not doing this correctly.

Britain’s Industrial Future

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

How interesting to hear the SNP take issue with—[Interruption.] The hon. Member asked the question, so I will answer it. We are determined to make sure that, unlike parties on the Opposition Benches, we invest properly in new nuclear in this country, so that we have a resilient, clean and secure energy system. If that means an active industrial strategy to ensure we are able to do it, we are doing it. It would be nice to hear the SNP Government in Scotland take a similar approach to their future and to nuclear in this country, which is vital for the next few years as we get through this global tightening in energy.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

[George Freeman]

No, I shall make some progress on this point about the automotive sector, which is also mentioned in the motion. The UK’s auto sector is hugely competitive globally. It is export-focused and has a very strong research and development base. In the last 20 to 30 years, it has transformed from what it was in the 1970s to a highly competitive and technologically advanced R&D-based sector. It is also in the vanguard of the transition to net zero, and the UK is well placed to seize those opportunities because of the Government’s efforts, as we are pursuing an active industrial strategy for net zero in industry.

The automotive-related manufacturing sector is worth £58 billion to the economy and typically invests around £3 billion each year in R&D—£3 billion in R&D from the sector alone. There are 155,000 people employed in automotive manufacturing in the UK in 2021. That is 6% of total UK manufacturing. [Interruption.] Opposition Members may laugh about the success of the British automotive sector, but this is a tribute to business and industry adaptability and the Government’s partnership in setting out a framework for the net zero transition.

Decarbonising transport is already starting to create thousands of jobs in green industries. The production of net zero road transport vehicles is on track to support the development of 72,000 jobs worth up to £9 billion to the economy. The Government have proven loud and clear that we can deliver a green transition and growth—something that all Opposition parties bitterly insisted was not possible.

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[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate on Britain’s industrial future. It gives me great pride once again to talk about my city of Peterborough, a city whose tradition of manufacturing, engineering and all sorts of other industries makes it crucial to Britain’s industrial future. I also want to pay tribute to the Minister, who is not in his place on the Front Bench at the moment—the Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). The Minister did, quite rightly, refer to how Britain is the ninth biggest manufacturing economy in the world, something that is all too often forgotten about in this country. We constantly hear messages that we do not manufacture and do not make anything any more as a country. Well, that is evidently not true if we are the ninth biggest manufacturing economy in the world.

I would like to return to a theme I have raised in this House before, because the truth is that in Britain we have too many jobs that are low-skilled, have too low productivity and are too low-paid, and we need to replace those jobs with highly productive jobs, highly skilled jobs and, of course, highly paid jobs. The truth is that this country for too long has been addicted to what I would call cheap migrant labour, and so many people in cities such as Peterborough—

[Peter Grant]

Oh, come on!

[Paul Bristow]

It is absolutely true. If productivity and wages were somehow linked to migration, Britain would have been one of the richest countries in the world over the last 25 years. It simply does not work. We have been addicted to cheap migrant labour, and far too many people in cities such as Peterborough—far too many young people when they leave education—are referred to as a failure if they do not go to university or do not excel in academic subjects. What we need to be doing is valuing those children who excel in manufacturing and in practical and technical skills. That is exactly why we are building a university in Peterborough—a university that focuses on engineering, on manufacturing and on technical qualifications. That is really important, because that will attract other companies to come to our city, invest in the skills that we have in Peterborough, invest in those new people and ensure that we create those highly paid, highly productive jobs in the future.

There are just a couple of things I want to say about how, other than in Peterborough, we can transfer to that high-skill, high-productivity and high-wage economy. The first is that we have to invest seriously in R&D in this country. We have to continue to commit to that, and encourage private sector organisations to invest in research and development, backed by Government incentives on tax and regulation. That is absolutely crucial. No longer can we rely, as I said earlier, on cheap labour to drive economic growth, because it simply does not work.

The second thing we need to be doing is investing in skills, and I am really delighted to see our committing ourselves to lifelong learning. For places such as Peterborough, lifelong learning is absolutely crucial, and I hope we can do more and that we can invest in the talented people we have in cities such as Peterborough and across the country.

Thirdly—and I say this knowing that it will not always make me as popular with Members on the Conservative Benches as it will with those on the Opposition Benches—I went to Lancaster week to speak to my old university Conservative association, and what fun I had too. I was led to believe that all young people were socialists; well, that certainly was not the case at Lancaster. What they told me was that the one thing they felt could unlock their potential and their future is a relaxation on planning. We really have to focus on and invest in building the houses and the industrial units of the future. We need to create an environment where we can free up, not logjam, our planning system when it comes to industrial units, business and other areas, as well as homes for the future. No longer can we have a situation where new homes and new industrial developments are blocked for nimbyish reasons. That is not the way to long-term economic growth, and it certainly will not give a step up to young people in my constituency and elsewhere. Frankly, I do not think Labour Members get or understand this; they are still locked in a mentality of continuing with a low growth, cheap labour type economy and— [Interruption.] Their party believes in open borders and wants to import people into this country to do low productivity, low skill jobs. If we had continued with a system like that, Britain’s economy would have grown faster than that of any other country in the last 10 years. If we follow that advice, we will continue down the same route.

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[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I do not often start my speeches by directly addressing the constituents of another hon. Member, but may I say something to the constituents of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow), who is no longer in his place? If his constituents who have travelled to Peterborough from outside the United Kingdom are as appalled as I am that they have been denounced as cheap foreign labour by their own Member of Parliament, and if they no longer feel welcome in Peterborough, they can come to Fife or to Scotland. They will be made welcome. They will find thousands of businesses desperate to give them work: not “cheap foreign labour” work, but well-paid work that will keep the Scottish economy going.

The motion is about the Government’s failures on industrial strategy, which are nothing new for my constituents. A hundred years ago, Methil docks exported more than 3 million tonnes of coal per year. Vast amounts of money were made by the lairds and the earls; a lot of it found its way into the Treasury, but almost nothing was left behind for the benefit of the local community. All that remains of that vast fortune is the memorials, in almost every town in my constituency, to the men and boys who went underground and never came back.

Methil docks then became the RGC construction yard for oil rigs. Again, the people of Levenmouth did their part, and more, to fill the pockets of the Treasury and the shareholders; again, when the downturn came, they were abandoned by Westminster. As the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), who is no longer in his place, mentioned, the yard was then taken over by BiFab, which made jackets and platforms for offshore wind turbines. Once again, the people were let down by the British Government, who set up contracts for difference in a way that allowed south-east Asian companies to compete on cost with my constituents at BiFab. Other European partners, through European legislation, were able to protect their own supply chains, but this British Government made a deliberate choice not to do so. They sold BiFab down the river at Methil, Burntisland and elsewhere, whereas other European countries fully appreciated the need to protect their own supply chains.

Look at the ludicrous scheme for the Rothes pit just outside Thornton in my constituency. It was opened under a previous Tory Government by no less a person than Her late Majesty. We were promised that it would last 100 years and produce 5,000 tonnes of coal per day. A new town, Glenrothes, was even built to house all the miners who would be needed. The pit lasted five years; the total cost to the taxpayer, in today’s money, was half a billion pounds. The list goes on and on: grandiose schemes, grand words and wild promises to my constituents and others by successive Governments in this place, of all hues. None of them has stood the test of time.

I hope the House will understand why neither I nor my constituents can have any confidence that any UK Government can be trusted to ensure that Fife or Scotland is well placed to take full advantage of the current revolution in industry, particularly in energy technology. We already produce more energy in Scotland than we need, and we are very close to being able to meet our entire needs from clean, renewable, non-nuclear sources. That is the answer that the Minister did not want to hear to the question that he asked: the reason the SNP does not want Scotland to invest in nuclear power is that we dinnae need any. If the UK Government think England needs nuclear power, they are welcome to it. They can build the power stations in England and pay for them with England’s share of the funding, but they cannot expect Scotland to bail them out.

Scotland can be self-sufficient in energy despite the determined efforts of British Governments to put obstacles in our way: the disastrous cuts to renewables in 2015, the decision to make carbon-free renewable energy subject to the carbon tax, the continued refusal to support the groundbreaking Acorn carbon capture and storage project, a whole decade of obsessive and ideologically based opposition to cheap onshore wind power, and the obsession with foisting on Scotland an unwanted share of the colossal but as yet unquantified cost of equally unwanted and unnecessary nuclear power.

It has become clear to a great many people in Scotland that we have what it takes to have a successful industrial economy, but that cannot happen when we are governed by any party in this place that wants to keep us away from our friends and neighbours in the European Union. It cannot happen when we are governed by any party in this place that wants to shut us off from the labour markets of Europe with an overly restrictive immigration policy. It cannot happen for Scotland as long as we remain part of this failed and discredited Union.

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[Chi Onwurah]

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman has just illustrated yet again how Conservative Members cannot answer the challenge of well-paid jobs across our country and a pay rise for our working people.

We have had 12 years of low growth; low productivity; austerity a-go-go; broken promises and abandoned manifesto commitments; spiralling inflation; the NHS at breaking point; the Home Office broken, and that is according to the Home Secretary; higher taxes; and higher bills for working people. What a record. At the heart of their ideology, Tories do not believe Government can make a positive difference. They do not want to get stuck in; they just want to get out of the way. It is just one long season of “I’m a Tory MP, get me out of here” where British business is concerned.

However, as my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) so ably laid out, the state working in partnership with the private sector can shape and create markets. That is what industry needs: a partner to help plan for the future, provide investment and certainty, skills and infrastructure, research and development, trade and market access. The reality is that our great industries will never get the partner they deserve under Conservative Governments. It is much easier to destroy than to construct. They can crash the economy, but they cannot build the economy of the future.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) emphasised, net zero and growth are not in opposition. Partnership between the market and the state presents the opportunity to build world-leading industries that will last for decades and spread wealth across the country. Labour believes the UK has huge potential for new green industries, such as clean steel, as championed so passionately by my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).

With our world-leading research base and universities, skilled workforce and deep capital markets, the UK is also well placed to create new clusters of manufacturing from Bolton to Birmingham. Labour has committed to an additional £28 billion of green capital investment a year until 2030 through our green prosperity plan as part of our British wealth fund.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) said, this country has enormous untapped potential when it comes to electric vehicles. In my constituency, Newcastle University is a leader in research to overcome the challenges of current battery technology. Under Labour, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) emphasised, we will have eight gigafactories to ensure that the next generation of electric cars is made here in Britain. Labour also recognises that hydrogen could modernise heavy goods vehicles and public transport. These are long-term projects, so we will ensure certainty for business with our industrial strategy council to end the farce of long-term plans that do not survive the political cycle.

Science is the foundation of future success, but not content with crashing our current economy, the Tories seem bent on destroying our future economy. They simply are not serious about science. As well as their catastrophic trickle-down experiment with the nation’s economy, they are now trialling Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” for science. For the past few months, it has been impossible to know both the role and the number of science Ministers at the same time. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who is not in his place, resigned over the previous—times two—Prime Minister’s behaviour. Then he asked for his job back, but that Prime Minister preferred to keep the position vacant. Then the previous Prime Minister gave the brief to the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), but barely had she got her feet under the table when the current Prime Minister gave it back to the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk. Two weeks later, though, we still have not seen any ministerial responsibilities published. The rumour is that the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk has the brief, but the hon. Member for Wealden has the furniture—you could not make it up.

British science is no joke. Labour sees a clear path from world-leading British science to the jobs on which people can raise a family. That is why Labour will aim for 3% GDP investment from public and private sources into research and development, almost double the 1.7% that we have been seeing under this Government, supporting the jobs of the future—in life sciences, artificial intelligence, clean energy, satellite applications, semi-conductors, quantum technologies and marine autonomous technologies, as championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard).

Labour would maintain our membership of the world’s largest science funding programme, Horizon, and we will ensure that the wealth and opportunity that science brings are spread across our country more fairly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) called for so passionately.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

I cannot give way, as I must make some progress.

We will help to champion clusters of businesses and universities as engines of regional growth, providing them with the levers and resources to collaborate and innovate together, rather than slashing regional science funding as this Government are doing.

British cities lag behind our European counterparts across productivity metrics. Newcastle, famous for its industrial heritage, is less productive in GDP terms than Gdansk, Lille and Valencia. Unlike the previous Prime Minister, I know that that is not because British workers are the

“worst idlers in the world”.

It is because the Government are not supporting them to reach their potential. Labour will work in partnership with businesses, civil society and trade unions and finally put an end to 12 years of Tory low growth, low wages and low productivity.

Labour’s industrial strategy will deliver clean power by 2030. We will create an economy that cares for the future and that harnesses data for the public good. Labour will build a resilient economy so that we can not only protect jobs in our British automotive, steel and shipbuilding industries, but provide the investment and long-term strategy that we need to be competitive on the world stage. Labour will grab hold of the national prosperity of which Britain is capable and deliver a fairer and greener future.

Today’s debate has shown that the Tories are out of plans and out of ideas. So, here is an idea for them: call a general election and let us put our industrial strategy to the country.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (First sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Ghani]

Q You have already talked about the conflict between domestic law and laws made to harmonise across Europe, but, for the record, does not the fact that the EU legislates in a very different way from the UK create tensions between retained EU law and other domestic law?

Sir Stephen Laws: Yes, it does. The major difference between the way the UK traditionally legislates and the way the EU—and indeed lots of other countries—legislate is that under a parliamentary system the Government take responsibility for the effect and quality of the law. That means that when law is made, it is made to do something that people have agreed on. Very often, law made in Europe—in different languages as well—was a matter of agreeing words, irrespective of what the words achieved. If you could agree on the words, that was the best that you could hope for; that may happen very occasionally in my experience, and very rarely indeed in the UK. In the UK people agree on the substance, so you know what the law does. Retaining all this law that was there because it was a compromise on words is making life difficult for those people who have to use it.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Q Good morning, Sir Stephen. One of the things that we were told about leaving the European Union was that it would return powers to Parliament. What does this Bill do to the balance of powers between Parliament and Ministers?

Sir Stephen Laws: Well, most of the law that this relates to—certainly the early clauses about subordinate legislation—is not law that Parliament made; it is law that Parliament enacted or approved because it had to. The law that will be made under the Bill will be made by a Government accountable to Parliament. The powers in the Bill are equivalent in some ways to the power under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, but in that case there was no choice about the substance of how you exercised the power; the argument was all about the means. Under this Bill, Parliament will have an opportunity to look at the substance as well as the means.

[Peter Grant]

Q You said that Parliament enacted all this legislation because it had to. Is it not the case that, for every single piece of legislation that we are talking about in the Bill, a United Kingdom Government Minister was present at the time that the legislation was agreed in Europe?

Sir Stephen Laws: Yes, but that does not mean that Parliament agreed to the substance of the legislation—nor, in some cases, did the Minister. They are all part of compromises. In the end, the European law had to be enacted because it was European law.

[Peter Grant]

Q You say that Parliament did not agree. Is not it the case that the European Scrutiny Committee, which existed throughout the time that we were members of the European Union, had the power to call in Ministers and put a stop on ministerial approval of European Council decisions until the Committee, and therefore Parliament, were satisfied that it was the right thing to do? Whether or not Parliament exercised that authority, is it not the fact that there was a Committee of Parliament that could prevent Ministers from acting against the will of Parliament?

Sir Stephen Laws: There were mechanisms to feed in the UK view, but the UK view did not necessarily have to prevail.

[Peter Grant]

Q If enacted as drafted, what difference will the Bill have on the application of EU law in Northern Ireland, in particular in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol and the Good Friday agreement?

Sir Stephen Laws: Frankly, that is not a question that I have prepared for, so I cannot say much. What I can say about the Good Friday agreement is that I am not sure that the protocol is relevant, because the law by which the protocol applies is the law of the things that are not retained just because we were carrying over the old law, which is what this Bill is mainly about. I am sorry; I have not looked specifically at the Northern Ireland aspects of the Bill.

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

Q Good morning, Sir Stephen. The Bill abolishes the principle of the supremacy of retained EU law. Do you think that that is the right course?

Sir Stephen Laws: Yes, I do. I think that that is part of the confusion. If we are going to work out what the law means, it is important that the system for retained EU law should fit the system that we have for all other law, which is that the latest views of Parliament should count.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

Q Professor Young, when you gave oral evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee in its inquiry on retained EU law, you explained that EU law is drafted differently from UK law, and needs to be interpreted in the light of what type of retained EU law it is. What challenges do these drafting differences pose to both amending and interpreting retained EU law?

Professor Young: Thank you, Minister. It is a matter of recognising that EU law tends to be drafted by setting out the purposes that it is meant to achieve in certain circumstances. Directives have a different format from regulations; they set out the aims and purposes, and allow member states discretion in how to implement them, which is why so much of retained EU law is secondary legislation that was enacted by the UK to implement particular provisions of directives. In that sense, it tends to be drafted in a slightly different style. You also have to recognise that its main aim was harmonisation, so that might influence how it was drafted.

While the UK was a member of the European Union, we got used to understanding how EU law was drafted, and to interpreting it in line with background EU law principles, including the general principles of EU law. Obviously, one of the things this Bill will do is switch that off. You then have to think about how, without those general principles, we will interpret any of the retained EU law that becomes assimilated or is retained by regulations. We might have to think about not just retaining particular provisions through regulations, but whether we need to add elements to amend them or make them clear, so that we have a fuller understanding of how they are meant to apply in certain circumstances.

[Peter Grant]

Q Good morning to both witnesses. Professor Barnard, as we heard, this Bill sets an automatic date by which several thousand pieces of legislation will disappear off the statute book unless they are specifically left on. The number of such pieces of legislation, as we have just heard, is about 1,400 more than we thought this morning. Are you aware of any previous incident, either in the UK or elsewhere, where that approach has been taken successfully with such a large amount of legislation at once?

Professor Barnard: The simple answer is no; I am completely unaware of any precedent for this. Of course, that does not mean that we cannot try to adopt this approach, but we need to be extremely mindful of the associated risks. That is one of the reasons why we have proposed carving out areas, such as environment and social policy, that are already subject to obligations under the trade and co-operation agreement. That will ensure that we do not accidently turn them off but not turn them back on again through the powers in clauses 1(2), 2 or 12 to 15, and so will ensure that we are not subject to the trade and co-operation agreement’s dispute resolution mechanisms, which may result in tariffs being imposed on us.

[Peter Grant]

Professor Young, I saw you nodding. Is there anything you want to add? Do you agree with Professor Barnard?

Professor Young: I agree. I too am unaware of any process that has tried to make such a big change to so many laws in such a short period. That is why it could impose so many practical problems. In most systems, when you have a change of legal system or regime, there is this element of what we did originally, which maintains legal certainty by retaining the old provisions. Then, step by step, in what we often call a sector-specific approach, there is a detailed assessment of whether we should keep those laws or change them. As far as I am aware, this is quite a novel way of doing this with such a large amount of law.

[Peter Grant]

Q Thank you. I do not know whether you heard Sir Stephen Laws’s evidence immediately before you came on screen. He suggested that the concerns raised about the uncertainty that the Bill might create can be partly explained by the traditional resistance of the legal profession to change of any kind. He said it is wrong to assume that changing the law makes it less certain. Professor Young, how do you respond to that?

Professor Young: It is not necessarily that I am reluctant to change or am concerned about change. We need to think about what this is asking against the backdrop of what we are aiming for in the Bill. You have to recognise that the difficulties of uncertainty will be not for lawyers, but for those trying to carry out business. Those carrying out business and trade need legal certainty, so that they have an understanding of the rules, now and going forward. As for the elements and problems of uncertainty, we do not necessarily think that things will be uncertain because they are changing; the issue is that those carrying out business will not necessarily be 100% sure whether things will be retained in the long term. If so, how they will be retained? Has everything that might be revoked been listed? They are not 100% sure whether it has been revoked or not.

Other provisions in the Bill might further that uncertainty. For example, under the Bill, legal officers can refer an issue to the court if they think that a decision should have changed the interpretation of a particular piece of retained or assimilated EU law but did not. That can happen after the agreement has been included and the decision has been made by the parties. You might think, “Well, the Bill says that is not a problem because it won’t affect the result between the parties,” but you have to recognise that others in the legal system will have seen that case, and that interpretation of the law, and will have perhaps planned their business on that basis. They will suddenly find that there is a reference to the court that might change how the law is interpreted or what it means.

That is why we are concerned about certainty. We are concerned about the consequences for those carrying out trade, because they need legal certainty to plan their business activities.

[Peter Grant]

Q Thank you. Professor Barnard, the concern about uncertainty was a significant element of your written submission to the Committee. Is there anything that you want to add?

Professor Barnard: I would just say that the business of legal academia is forever to be making proposals to change the law, to try and improve it in some way. The idea that lawyers are hostile to change is just not correct. The way in which the legal system has worked and has run successfully over the decades is on the basis of incremental change rather than this really quite remarkable slash and burn approach proposed by the sunset clause.

[Peter Grant]

Thank you.

[Stella Creasy]

Q We have talked a little bit about the content, but could we talk a little about the process? You have just highlighted that there are actually another 1,400 pieces of legislation affected. The process then gives ministerial—not parliamentary—control about what happens next. Could you give us your reflections on that process and the scrutiny of it, and some of the practicalities? For example, which Ministers will retain responsibility for which pieces of legislation?

It would be quite helpful to know, with the extra 1,400, who has drawn the short straw? Are they all in one particular Department or across the Departments? A previous witness claimed that there would be adequate parliamentary scrutiny, and if Parliament did not like what Ministers were doing, it would intervene. What would this process mean for our ability to influence the content produced as a result of the Bill?

Professor Barnard: On the first point, as you rightly point out, there are provisions in the Bill to allow Ministers, by regulations, to keep retained EU law, which will eventually be called assimilated law, but what is not at all clear is the process by which the Minister decides to engage in that process. Remember, if the Minister decides to sit on his or her hands, the default kicks in, which is that those all those provisions will go. In reality, we understand that Government Departments have a reasonable idea of the law in their area, and civil servants will need to go through that law statutory instrument by statutory instrument.

There is a real issue about capacity in Government Departments. Jacob Rees-Mogg himself said that his own Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had identified that it needed 400 civil servants to be working on the 300 or so pieces of legislation that had then been identified. Presumably, now they have discovered an extra 1,400 that number will increase. It is a huge amount of civil service time. The issue is even more acute in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is the Department most affected by retained EU law. The question is, what is the internal process? Even if the Secretary of State in DEFRA decides that he or she wants to retain all the legislation because it is so important in different forms, what happens? Does it go to the Cabinet? Is there some sort of star chamber that looks at what is being proposed by the Departments? We know none of that, and we know none of the detail about whether there will be any consultation with external stakeholders, which is particularly important in the field of agriculture, where a large number of stakeholders are affected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

Q Thank you. Returning to Mr Sharpe, does the Bill, as drafted, strike the right balance between providing safeguards and enabling the removal of outdated retained EU law from our statute books?

Tom Sharpe: I see the Bill as a framework Bill. Of course, it gives Ministers and Departments very considerable powers—powers of proposal, as you know, to amend, revoke or replace existing legislation.

As Martin has just said, an Act of Parliament, which was probably passed—if I may say so respectfully—before many of you were born, provided an enabling power to enact legislation of some quite sweeping character. Despite all the things that law students learned about how Parliament needed to approve legislation, not one single regulation—this is one of the bits we are discussing—has ever been debated, approved or amended by the House of Commons or Parliament. That is a striking statement, but it is absolutely true. We were forbidden, in law, to debate or amend such legislation. I suspect you all know that, but it does not hurt to be reminded.

As for the directives, of course they, too, were approved by Parliament—or, more accurately, not disapproved—but the power of Parliament was utterly residual because the objective of a directive had to be observed. If it was not, the UK would be subject to proceedings from Brussels—and it was, on occasion, but not as often as many other countries.

We are now debating a system of revocation, amendment and replacement, and giving it far more formality than we gave the creation of the laws themselves. That ought to give us pause for thought. That is the background. As far as parliamentary scrutiny is concerned, yes, most of it will be subject to negative resolution, and it is easy to make what I will disrespectfully call a good debating point about the times when statutory instruments have fallen under the negative procedure. But here, we are dealing with a sea change. We are dealing with masses of legislation, as we know, all of which will be subject to significant scrutiny within the House of Commons by parliamentarians and by the press. It seems to me that those issues have to be given notice. There is also the sifting procedure that we adverted to earlier, which I think could be quite a powerful brake on Ministers’ discretion.

[Peter Grant]

Q The evidence submitted by the Bar Council, which I assume you are familiar with, says very firmly that it has profound concerns about the Bill, and that its preference would be for the Bill to be withdrawn in its present form. Why has the Bar Council got it so wrong?

Tom Sharpe: Where do we start?

Martin Howe: I am concerned by the attitude taken by the Bar Council. As a subscribing member, I fear that it is trespassing rather too far into political issues. Unfortunately, I think there is a sort of small “c” conservative lawyer’s mentality, which has led over time to various things, such as counsel saying in the “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” trial, “Members of the jury, would you allow your wives or your servants to read this book?” Since so many members of the Bar are imbued with the system of working with European Union law—it is all part of their practice and the way they operate—there is a natural mental attitude towards keeping it. I do not think that reflects the necessities of the democratic process following the referendum result.

[Peter Grant]

Q Mr Sharpe, do you have anything to add?

Tom Sharpe: It is our trade union, and it does not speak on my behalf on this political matter, very obviously, and it should not have done that. I think there is a broad issue here. If you look at the criticism of the Bill by the Bar Council and by members working with it—the Hansard Society, which got a mention, and various leading members of the Bar whom I know very well; they are my friends and I respect them—the dominant theme is one of extreme pessimism. That is to say that if we have a mendacious Government, a supine Parliament and a lazy and ignorant press, all sorts of things can happen. Now, I do not think that is true. I have far more respect for this House, and even for Ministers and the press. If Ministers are getting out of hand, they will be put in check. If they are not, the judiciary has a role in reviewing the exercise of these powers. We can ignore the judiciary in this context, but it has an important residual role.

We can call it benign or naive, but I do not think that is right. I think that by and large the House of Commons does a pretty good job, and I see no reason at all why it will not continue to do so in relation to this important Bill.

[Peter Grant]

Q You suggested that if a Minister gets out of hand, Parliament can act. You will recall, though, that quite recently a Secretary of State was found by an inquiry to have been guilty of severe bullying of civil servants, and nothing happened to her because a Prime Minister did not want her to lose her job.

To go back to the comments you made earlier about the difference between primary and secondary legislation, when was the last time Parliament amended a piece of secondary legislation?

Martin Howe: It does not. The procedure is a yes/no procedure either by affirmative resolution, in which case there has to be a positive vote or it fails; or by negative resolution, in which case, unless it is prayed against and there is a vote against it, it stands.

[Peter Grant]

Q Does that not mean there is significantly less opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny if all that Parliament is allowed is: we do this or we do not do it? Does that not mean that, almost by definition, there is less opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny with secondary legislation than there would be with a Bill?

Martin Howe: Indeed. By its nature, there is much less opportunity than with a Bill, which you go through line by line, but all the legislation that is within the scope of the Bill to be potentially corrected, changed or left out by secondary legislation was introduced by secondary legislation. The primary legislation is not covered by the powers.

Tom Sharpe: Remember what we are discussing. I think it is very unlikely that there will be a wholesale slash and burn—to use the academic term that we heard earlier—of all EU retained legislation or assimilated legislation; a good deal of it will remain. I do not recognise the gloomy picture of businesspeople clawing their way to the bottom. I understand the theory, but in the course of a year I advise dozens of CEOs and chairmen, and not one has said: “We have a terrific opportunity to make extra money out of the consumer.”

What is missing here is public scrutiny and reputation, and we have to be balanced and less shrill about this: not everything will change; not everything will change at once; and some things will be changed—in particular under clause 15(3) where, respectfully, the real issues arise for parliamentary scrutiny. There, as you heard, some will be determined by affirmative resolution and others will go through the sifting procedure, which requires the Minister to come to Parliament to justify the choice of a negative procedure. You will have an opportunity to deal with that.

[Stella Creasy]

Q Martin, I was interested to hear you talk about how you were happy with the scrutiny mechanism in the Bill, because I note that in your evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee you argued for the need to have a delegated power to revise retained law and then suggested a commission to propose what should be done. That would be much more scrutiny than you are talking about now. What made you change your mind about the requirement for scrutiny that you previously advocated? I thought that the argument you made before was compelling.

Martin Howe: The argument I was putting forward was for a practical way to speed up the process. Frankly, it was a suggestion that I floated, a possible—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Ghani]

Mr Fenhalls, you said you are not hostile to change, but you have been nothing but negative about the Bill. You also mentioned a democratic process. There was another democratic process in 2016—just for the record.

[Peter Grant]

Q Good morning. In your submission from the Bar Council, Mr Fenhalls, you suggested that the Bill should be withdrawn. You have also accepted that we need to do something about the huge volume of retained EU law that we still have. What would be a better way to deal with all that law, rather than the way it is being dealt with in the Bill?

Mark Fenhalls: I am not a parliamentarian or a politician. The short answer to that is that I do not know, but I do know that every single stakeholder and lawyer I have spoken to—who are simply thinking about their clients’ business interests and the rights of the people involved—wants to know what the alternative proposals are before they take a view. The difficulty with this Bill is not change, because change in itself is fine; it is the fact that we do not know what the proposals will be. We have suggested what we suggested in our submission and we have put in fall-back positions saying that if the Bill is to proceed, we should put in place scrutiny measures or duties on Ministers to come to the House and say, “This is what we propose to do,” and not run the risk, for example, of the sunset causing us to crash into the wall at the end of next year.

[Peter Grant]

For the record, there are two lawyers sitting behind you who quite clearly do not share the view that you just expressed about the various lawyers you have spoken to. Some of us think that lawyers argue with lawyers all of the time; that is what they are there for.

[The Chair]

Before we continue, I think Mr Peretz wanted to come in on that point.

George Peretz: I wanted to come in in response to the Minister’s question about section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. There are two points here. One is the point, developed by Martin Howe, that it considerably underestimates the degree of democratic scrutiny that EU law actually had, particularly in the European Parliament and on the reform of EU law. It also understates the mechanisms that Parliament had to scrutinise how Ministers acted in the Council of Ministers.

I suppose one is getting slightly political here, but perhaps the more important point is that one of the arguments for Brexit, as I understood it, was that it would strengthen democratic accountability for legislation. It is slightly disappointing that the argument put forward for the Bill is sometimes, “Well, the EU was undemocratic in this, so you cannot complain that this is equally undemocratic.” We can do rather better than that.

[Peter Grant]

Q This question is for all three witnesses. Would the Bill be less of a concern if there was not a sunset clause, or if the sunset clause was later than the end of 2023? Are your concerns partly about how little time there is for the process to be completed?

Eleonor Duhs: I would still have some concerns, because the end of 2026 is not far away and that is what people are saying would perhaps be the revised timeframe.

There are some really significant things in this Bill in terms of changing the way in which the law works. I will give an example from data protection law. Clause 4 would change the relationship between retained EU law and domestic law. To show what that might mean in practice, I will give the example of a conflict between the UK general data protection regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018. This is not addressed by the provisions that Mr Madders asked about; that is simply about how data protection legislation as a whole interacts with the domestic statute book and is not overridden by it. In a conflict between the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, if we remove the principle of supremacy, for example—which is what the Bill seeks to do—we could end up reducing data protection standards in the UK. That could cost UK businesses up to £1.6 billion and significantly increase red tape, so this is really important.

Last year there was a case called the Open Rights Group case, which was to do with exemptions in the 2018 Act that were overly broad. The Court of Appeal said that the UK GDPR had precedence—so this was decided under the retained principle of the supremacy of EU law—and that the provision in the 2018 Act was unlawful. If we had not had that retention of the principle of supremacy of EU law, and had had this new section 5(A2), the 2018 Act would have had precedence and the broader exemption would have applied, which would have reduced rights in the UK.

Why is it helpful for rights in the UK to remain as they were before? Because our current standard of protection of personal data has been deemed by the EU to be essentially equivalent to their standards of protection. That allows a data adequacy decision and, at the moment, the free flow of data between the EU and the UK. If we did not have that—if we lost data adequacy, which could happen under proposed new section 5(A2) in clause 4—UK businesses would have to spend time putting in place contracts and would have to do transfer risk assessments.

The New Economics Foundation and University College London wrote a paper entitled “The cost of data inadequacy”, which they published in November 2020. It stated that losing the free flow of data could cost UK businesses up to £1.6 billion in extra red tape, and it would have other economic implications, including a reduction in UK-EU trade, especially digital trade; reduced domestic and international investment in the UK; and the relocation of business functions, infrastructure and personnel outside the UK. So the Bill could have really significant implications for trade.

[Peter Grant]

Q Mr Peretz, do you want to comment on my previous question? How much of the concern about the Bill is simply down to the very short time provided by the sunset clause? If we moved that clause further back, would it ease your concerns?

George Peretz: The short time is clearly a concern given the enormous work that will need to be done both in Whitehall and by Parliament if it intends to scrutinise any of this properly within a very short timeframe. A lot of this law is very important, a lot is very complicated, and quite a lot of it is both, so one should not underestimate the resource implications. Obviously, if you have a longer timeframe—until 2026, say—that resource could be spread over a longer period, and perhaps more efficiently.

There are other, wider concerns about the Bill and how it amends the application of some EU rules to retained EU law as it continues to operate, and about Ministers’ power to revoke and replace. Those are separate from the sunset clause concerns, but the sunset clause does interrelate with the question of Minister’s powers. One of the problems with the effectiveness of parliamentary scrutiny is that although one hears that Parliament has powers—in some cases via the negative or affirmative resolution procedures—the background against which it is being asked to approve legislation means that if it votes against that legislation, the sunset clause will apply and regulations disappear completely, rather weakening Parliament’s ability to do anything.

To take an example, if Ministers decided to keep the working time rules but rewrite them to make them less favourable to employees, and came up with the new regulations in November 2023, those rewritten regulations would probably be introduced under the affirmative procedure. However, when the House of Commons voted on them, Ministers would say, “You may not like these revised regulations very much, but if you do not vote for them, the alternative is that we will not have any regulations at all.” That weakens Parliament’s ability to control the exercise of ministerial power.

[Alex Sobel]

Q I will put this question to you, George, as it is something of a follow-up. You just gave a qualitative response about the sunset-clausing, but this is more of a quantitative question. I was not aware until Catherine Barnard and Professor Young pointed it out earlier that 1,400 additional pieces of legislation have been found. I have now found the article in the Financial Times, which states that

“A plan…to review or repeal all EU laws on the UK statute book by the end of 2023 has suffered another setback after the discovery of 1,400 additional pieces of legislation.”

We were aware of 2,100 pieces of legislation, but that is another 1,400, so we are now seemingly aware of 3,500, with a sunset clause at the end of 2023. Is that the end of it? Will it be 3,500 pieces of legislation or could there be more? How are we going to find and define all these pieces of legislation so that we know what law we are acting under? You have just described qualitatively how pieces of legislation will fall under the negative resolution procedure because they are going to be sunset-claused out. Quantitively, where do you think we are going to end up by December 2023?

George Peretz: One does not know. On your point about the legislation being discovered, like you I have read the story in the Financial Times. I do not know the background to it, but we drew attention in the Bar Council paper to the risk of things simply being forgotten. As that story shows, that is not a hypothetical risk. That is one reason why we suggested as a possible amendment to the Bill that the Government add a schedule that simply lists all the regulations that are going to be affected and if it is not on the list, it does not fall. It is very difficult to see the argument against that. Presumably, the Government want to know what is being repealed. One does not want to repeal things one does not know about. What would be the good of not evaluating the risk? It is very difficult to see why there would be an objection to listing everything out. Then everyone would know precisely what goes and what stays. That was one suggestion we put forward.

It is very undesirable to have the sunset clause—for all the work that is going to have to be done to be done effectively with a gun pointed at everybody’s head saying, “Unless you’ve done all this analysis within a very restricted time period, the rules will fall.” There is just endless room for mistakes.

One of the points we discovered when we were rewriting a lot of EU rules for the purposes of the withdrawal Act—which Eleanor knows very well about and can speak about in more detail—was that, as the legislation was being rewritten, it was discovered that there were problems with it. If we look down any of the lists of amended rules, as one might experience in practice, one normally finds that over the 2018 and 2019 period there were frequent amendments. As one version was done, it was found that there was a problem with it or something needed to be added, and another amendment was made. There just is not time within the process of this Bill for that amendment process.

There is also a technical problem. It is not clear that there is the power once a regulation has been rewritten for Ministers then to say, “Oh dear—we realise that this regulation contains the following defects; we would quite like to amend it now.” I am not actually sure that the Bill contains a power for Ministers to do that. That is a bit of a problem.

Mark Fenhalls: I agree with what George just said. You will know far better than we do the stresses and strains on you as individual constituency MPs attempting to deal with those issues, and what in truth MPs can do as individuals scrutinising material like this. Ministers will know how pressured their civil servants are. I know from my dealings with civil servants how afraid they are of the possible forthcoming cuts. It is very difficult as an outsider to contemplate how the civil service can begin to cope with an assessment of what all this law involves.

The concluding point would be that if you have the list that George spoke to, that is a foundation for a proper ministerial division of responsibility as to who is doing what—which regulations affect which ministries and therefore what should our plan be? By the time we get through the end of next year, we might have dealt with financial services, perhaps, and with regeneration and levelling up, perhaps, because that covers environment and habitat and planning, but with that list and that firm foundation, you can make sensible evidence-based decisions about what to do. The frightening thing about the FT story—again, I know nothing about where it has come from—is the thought as to the unintended consequences, which nobody can possibly want, of not knowing what is out there. That is why, in a sense, a framework Bill is so flawed in its approach, because we do not know what we are dealing with.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Second sitting)

Peter Grant Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Ghani]

Q Which particular area that is devolved will they be taking control of?

Angus Robertson: They can in any area they like—that is the problem. That is the concurrent nature of the powers for UK Ministers and devolved authorities. It is clear to be read: it is a power that can be used. I cannot foresee exactly which Minister would seek to use such a power or for what purpose, but they would have that power. That should surely be a concern for everybody. Is it not?

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Q Good afternoon, Angus. To be clear, the Scottish Government have a fundamental objection in principle to the fact that this Bill, as past Acts of Parliament have, creates the possibility of a UK Government Minister ruling in devolved areas. That is your objection, yes?

Angus Robertson: Yes.

[Peter Grant]

Q Is that concern shared by the Welsh Government?

Angus Robertson: Yes, it is. I believe the Welsh Government are withholding legislative consent, as are the Scottish Government. If the UK Government are true to the word of the erstwhile Minister with responsibility for this legislation, Jacob Rees-Mogg—when I met him on 28 September he said to me, in terms, that the UK Government would respect the Sewel convention—it is a moot point because they will not proceed. I hope they do not.

[Peter Grant]

Q If, as the Minister appeared to suggest a few minutes ago, nobody in the UK Government has any intention of ever acting in the way you fear, would it be reasonable to expect them to support an amendment that explicitly prevented UK ministerial interference in devolved matters?

Angus Robertson: Indeed. First, the Bill could be drafted in such a way that it did not apply to Scotland or Wales. That would be the easiest solution: just limit the scope of the Bill to non-devolved areas. That is suggestion 1. Suggestion 2 is to amend it now to do that or to have a similar effect. Why proceed, given the serious concerns that have been raised by both the Scottish and Welsh Governments? I do not understand why the UK Government seem to be ploughing on regardless, given that there has been a dialogue and these concerns have been enunciated for quite some time now.

[Peter Grant]

Q We have heard from a number of witnesses today concerns about the capacity of the UK Parliament and the UK civil service to properly scrutinise all this legislation, potentially before the end of 2023. Have the Scottish Government been able to put any kind of figure on how many hours or days it would take?

Angus Robertson: We know that the scale of the challenge is significant first, for the reasons that I have pointed out: we already have a legislative programme and a Government legal service involved in all the legislation currently going through the Scottish Parliament.

Now we have this additional challenge, which has not been properly quantified by the UK Government, who cannot even tell us what they believe to be the split between reserved and devolved. As I have outlined, we know in broad terms what devolved powers are—they cover very significant areas. Our estimation, which is still to be gone through with a fine-toothed comb, is that this will have an extremely serious impact on the ability of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to scrutinise legislation that would need to go through our process to ensure that legislation does not fall over the sunsetting cliff edge. That is very significant.

Should the retained EU law dashboard identify whether retained EU laws in scope of the Bill are devolved or reserved? Absolutely. Do we have any sense that that is going to happen? No, we do not. A lot of work will have to be undertaken, and it is a massive displacement effort from what we are trying to get on with. If the UK Government really want to respect the devolved settlement and listen to the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and do not want to break the Sewel convention, they should bring forward an amendment that disapplies the legislation either in whole or specifically in devolved areas. That would be the most sensible and, given what the UK Government Ministers have said to me personally, the most pragmatic way of going forward. If not, one can only conclude that what was said was not said in good faith.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. We have one minute left. I am keen to bring in Stella Creasy for a quick question, and then Angus for a quick answer, please.

Energy Prices: Support for Business

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think we have covered most of that already, and the answer is broadly yes.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State admitted a few minutes ago that we have all known for at least six months that urgent and major Government intervention would be needed. Why has it taken so long? To call on his experience and knowledge of the way things work from his previous post as Leader of the House, who should the House demand come to the Dispatch Box to apologise to our constituents for six months of unnecessary delay?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Most energy is used during the winter. We have plans ready for the winter.

Shale Gas Extraction

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House is present, and I think that was very much a business question. I would say that I will make sure it is passed on to her, but I hope that she will feel that it has been passed on in any case.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I have been listening to Members on both sides of the House gradually teasing out what the Secretary of State really meant when he said that “compensation and consent” are

“two sides of the same coin.”

Why does he not just come clean and tell it as it is: the Government intend to change the payment of bribes for planning consent from a criminal offence to the official policy of His Majesty’s Government?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is a wise and good man, but that point is completely fatuous. Paying people for inconvenience is a perfectly reasonable and commercial thing to do.