Draft Jurisdiction, Judgments and Applicable Law (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 General Committees

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I thank the Minister for outlining his proposed changes in considerable detail—I am pleased that he did not go through all 13 of the pages that he claims to have prepared for the occasion. This statutory instrument corrects technical defects in several SIs made in relation to the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. The amendments are extremely technical, as we have just heard, so I will not go into the detail again.

However, it is important to recognise that we would not be in this mess if the Government had anticipated these defects when the original instruments were drafted. We all understand and accept that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU necessitates a large volume of legislation, some of which will of course be delegated, but just because the legislation is being dealt with in significant volumes and at pace does not mean that it should not be dealt with properly and diligently.

It is worrying that these defects slipped through the first time, but even more worrying is the fact that in at least once instance the defect had to be brought to the attention of the Ministry of Justice by an external legal expert. I am talking about the amendment to the civil regulations that corrects an error relating to the grounds on which an employer can be sued by an employee—a very important piece of legislation.

It is also pretty disgraceful that the Government have to rely on external experts to bring such defects to their attention. That should simply not be the case. Even one such defect would be cause for concern, but unfortunately Government incompetence goes further. In this SI alone we are fixing defects in the civil regulations, the family regulations, the mediation regulations, the Rome regulations, and even the rules regulations. Is the Minister satisfied that all the errors have now been ironed out, and that we will not find ourselves back here in a few weeks’ time trying to correct further errors?

At least we on the Opposition Benches are keen to provide the public with as much stability and certainty as possible as the transition period comes to a close. I wish that the same could be said of the Government, as we are drawing ever closer to 31 December and still so much is up in the air—a far cry from the promised “oven-ready” exit deal.

Although it is regrettable that these defects were not picked up by the Government when the original instruments were being drafted, we accept that these changes must be made in order to provide legal certainty at the end of the transition period, and therefore we will not oppose them.