European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Robert Neill and John Redwood

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle.

This is another important debate on some key issues related to retained EU law. With no disrespect to my constituency next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who made some powerful comments, I will concentrate specifically on those matters of retained law. As one might say in court sometimes, I adopt the arguments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I was about to say that I had nothing further to add, but I will not go quite as far as that. None the less, I do entirely agree with his approach to this part of the Bill and to what we should seek to achieve in relation to retained law.

May I add a couple of other broader observations? I very much welcome the spirit of the remarks made by the Solicitor General and the other Ministers currently on the Treasury Bench. I am grateful for their constructive approach. It is a reminder that Conservative Members have far more in common than that which ever might cause us to disagree about matters on this Bill. It is also a timely reminder that our commitment to protecting social standards and protections is undiminished.

As has been rightly observed, the Conservative party has historically always been a party of social protection and social reform, from the great Christian philanthropists such as Shaftesbury through to Peel—arguably one of the greatest of all Conservative Prime Ministers—and Disraeli and up to the present day. I include a short plug for a previous Member of Parliament for a good part of the Bromley and Chislehurst constituency, the late Lord Stockton, who was, of course, the Member of Parliament for Bromley. Many of us are proud to be in that one nation progressive tradition and want to ensure that we take that forward into the future.

I now turn to amendment 356, which is in my name and is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) for adding his name to it. The amendment concerns the UK’s ability to maintain regulatory alignment in the immediate period after the UK leaves the EU, where there is EU-derived legislation that is not fully in effect on exit day. The Solicitor General was kind enough to refer to that topic when I intervened on him. I accept his intentions, but I would like to develop my view on these issues a little further.

As we already know, clause 3 will impose a strict cut-off on the law that is to be retained in that it must not only be on the books—so to speak—but must also be fully applicable and effective immediately before exit day. So far, so good; it is obviously right that Parliament should not automatically apply EU laws introduced after Brexit. It should decide whether we want to apply them, as a matter of our own sovereign judgment. There will be cases, however, where legislation is sufficiently far down the line as we leave the EU that a more flexible approach is justified. It is that limited, but important, area of cases that I will deal with.

There may be legislation that we have no problem with as a matter of policy and that businesses or other affected parties would wish to have—perhaps we were involved in its preparation when we were still a member of the EU. The European Scrutiny Committee and other parts of the House may even have had the opportunity to peruse the documents, and business and other affected parties might already be making preparations to implement and comply with that legislation. How do we deal with that? At the moment, it looks as though we would need primary legislation in those cases. That would be cumbersome for all the reasons that the Solicitor General recognised in his exchanges with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field).

[John Redwood]

I do not see the problem with that. If the piece of legislation is as benign and generally agreed as my hon. Friend says, it will go through the House quickly. If it is not actually agreed and there are lots of issues to tease out, should not we put it through a proper democratic process?

[Robert Neill]

I rather think that what I am proposing in my amendment is the use of the affirmative procedure. I never heard my right hon. Friend say that that was not part of the proper democratic process when he was a Minister and used it many years ago; nor have I heard him say that on other occasions when it has been used. It is a question of what is proportionate. I entirely accept that there has to be scrutiny and a democratic process. But, for the very reasons accepted in the discussion between the Solicitor General and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—the volume of matters that we would have to deal with, even with the sensible triage arrangements that we have to put in place—I am not sure that we need to go down the time-consuming route of full legislation going through both Houses. I am trying to propose a compromise that would get us through a limited number of quite technical cases.

I will use some examples predominantly from the financial sphere, but the amendment would also apply should we need to maintain regulatory equivalency in things such as data protection, which is important for criminal justice and legal justice co-operation. There may be no such cases when we leave, but they are always possible. That is what we need to deal with, and the principle holds generally.

We may also need to deal with the difficulties that might arise in the context of EU legislation that is only partly implemented on exit day, or legislation that is enforced on exit day but whose effective operation depends on secondary measures that will be passed after exit day, which is not unknown even in our own domestic arrangements. In that situation, it would seem sensible to have the option to domesticate that EU legislation as it comes into force in the EU, so that it is enforced with us at the same time. We could do that through a vote on an affirmative resolution statutory instrument, rather than by having to pass new primary legislation each time. That is a practicality matter, and I suggest it is important.