Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell]

I will come back to the hon. and learned Lady in a little while.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed, as I have, that Opposition Members seem to think that the only place that can possibly regulate, possibly have high standards and possibly deliver laws for this land is the EU? Does he agree that, actually, we have created much better regulation and far stronger standards that are much more flexible and suited to these islands than the EU and that we should carry on doing that?

[Dean Russell]

I thank my right hon. Friend—she is a very good friend—for her comments. The Bill is ultimately about making sure that we continue to do what we have done for decades, if not centuries: exporting high-quality products, exporting doing the right thing and exporting making sure that the world is a better place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am not giving way again. Otherwise, my hon. Friend would not have intervened at this stage, because I was setting out the issue of supremacy before coming to the crucial point about why the Bill is now necessary and how it works in practice.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I give way to my right hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for all the work that he has done. I was actually hoping to clarify the point that our hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) was making. Having myself held the role of Leader of the House during that attempt to leave the EU between 2017 and 2019, I recall that the House was able to get through some 800 or 900 pieces of secondary legislation. In my opinion, it is very much within the realms of possibility that this amount of legislation can and will be dealt with by the House very successfully.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has made an excellent point. The ability of the House to get through its business is exceptionally good, and it is able to do so in an orderly way, as my right hon. Friend showed in dealing with the no-deal Brexit legislation.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and for his reassurance, I do not think that either he or criminal lawyers are in any way inelegant. However, I think there is certainly something to be said for greater and better scrutiny, and we should always in this place be looking for ways to improve the scrutiny we offer. As he knows, my concern about Lords amendment 6 is that I do not think we yet have sufficient clarity about whether it achieves the objectives it sets out to achieve without also causing some fallout in other respects. I do not close my mind to the way in which it seeks to do its work, but I am concerned that we need extra clarity before we could conceivably support it.

I want to say something about the benefits as I see them of the Government’s new approach and why they will help with some of the legitimate concerns expressed in the debate. The benefit of the Government setting out, as they have in the schedule, the measures they propose will lapse at the end of the year unless further intervention is taken is that that allows all Members of the House to pay attention to that list and reach their own conclusions—early—about whether they think there is anything troubling in it, exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone described that he and his colleagues have done. That is a better and more conducive way to good scrutiny than the one previously seen. It helps to offer the necessary reassurance that we will not simply stumble into a position where we lose from our statute book good and valuable things that happen to have their origins in the European Union. Parliament will not be caught by surprise by anything that the Government seek to do in that way.

It is important to remember that if the Government seek to make a change to our law, they will have to do so through the normal routines of passing legislation. True, that may be through secondary legislation, but that is still a way in which Parliament scrutinises legislation and has done so for a long time under Governments of multiple colours. There is nothing particularly radical in the Government proposing to take a measure through Delegated Legislation Committees that it seeks to use to make a change in the law.

I return to friction. It seems to me that the friction that is sought to be added to the processes we use is undesirable. That is partly because it is unnecessary—the reassurance that the Government can offer by the new course they seek to take is adequate—and partly because we must see this specific discussion in the context of the broader discussion that has happened about our membership of the European Union. In the interests of full disclosure, I should make it clear to the House that in the 2016 referendum I did not vote to leave the European Union, and I urged my constituents not to do so, either—in some cases, they paid little attention—but I accept, and have accepted consistently since, that the decision was none the less taken that we should leave the European Union, and certain things flow inexorably from that. It must be right that if we leave the European Union, we also leave European Union law behind us. That should not be in a rush or in a flurry of activity that might cause us to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but inevitably that is what should happen.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I apologise to the House for being late to the debate; I was in a Select Committee meeting. I want to put on the record how, as somebody who did vote to leave the European Union and urged my constituents to do so, I entirely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that we need clarity. What does he therefore think about Government amendment (b), to which I have put my name, which calls on the Government frequently—on a quarterly basis—to put forward further ideas for retained law that is unhelpful or unnecessary and could be revoked or reformed?

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and support the amendment. It is sensible, because the public have an expectation here, and we should not forget that. They believe that, having had a vote some time ago—in 2016—to leave the European Union, we would do exactly that. For them, that includes European Union law no longer holding sway in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone talked about the disadvantage of having two sets of law—pre-Brexit and post-Brexit—that the courts must look at separately forevermore, and that disadvantage is considerable. Despite the fact that I did not vote for Brexit, the consequence of it is that we absolutely must have a Bill of this nature, and we must have the measures that flow from it.

I fear that the public will spot that if that extra friction is unnecessary—I believe it is—it is a consequence only of seeking to delay the point at which Brexit has meaningful impact. I do not think it is good for our democracy or for the contract we made with the electorate, which is that if we offered them the chance to decide this question, the political classes would honour their judgment—and that is what we must do. From that, it follows—it seems to me, at least—that the Bill is necessary and that amendments that seek subtly to undo its effect are profoundly undesirable and should not be supported.