European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Angela Smith and James Heappey

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. It is a real privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). I rise to speak primarily to new clause 18 and to new clauses 24 and 27 and amendment 124. I will also speak more broadly to a range of amendments that have been selected for today’s debate.

Clause 7, which today’s proceedings are primarily concerned with, stands as a significant extension of the powers available to Ministers of the Crown. The speech by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) went to the heart of the debate we have had today in relation to what he called the principle of necessity. His test for whether clause 7 stands worthy to pass through to the next stage of the legislative process is, “Does it meet the principle of necessity or go beyond the test necessary to meet the principle of necessity?” I would suggest that, as it stands, the clause does not meet that test.

The right hon. Member for Loughborough made a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) made at the beginning of today’s proceedings: one of the key questions relating to that test is whether Members of Parliament in the future will look back at what we do today and over the next few months and determine that we gave Ministers too much power in this Bill. For me, that is one of the real questions at the heart of the principle the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare outlined earlier.

As it stands, the only pieces of legislation safeguarded in the clause are the Human Rights Act 1998 and some aspects of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. As has been pointed out many times this afternoon, not even the Bill is safe from the hands of Ministers once enacted. As drafted, the Bill will give Ministers flexibility way above and beyond what is necessary, allowing them to create or amend any legislation on the UK statute book to mitigate any failure or deficiency in retained EU law.

I am not convinced that my constituents—even those who voted to leave the European Union—possess the sort of blind faith the Government seem to be asking for, and I certainly do not have that blind faith at the moment. Indeed, a number of parliamentarians on both sides of the Chamber clearly have significant reservations. Further, of course, I am not persuaded that such sweeping powers are necessary.

I understand that the time constraints associated with the article 50 process and the volume of legislative amendments required to implement Brexit put pressures on the Government—I totally acknowledge that. I also understand that putting all the corrections into the Bill at this stage would be entirely impractical and that the Government do require flexibility to respond to all eventualities as negotiations with the European Union take place. In that sense, the spirit of the debate today has been very helpful, and the Government have to concede that most of the contributions have been made with the intention of improving the Bill and ensuring that it works in protecting the legislation we want to transpose into UK law.

Even so, as I have said already, the powers the Bill asks for are too broadly defined and risk undermining the sovereignty of Parliament. There is a balance to be struck between giving the Government the necessary tools to implement Brexit and not forgoing parliamentary scrutiny. What the Bill proposes does not strike that balance, which is why I support new clause 24 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), which stands as a really serious attempt to define properly the principle of necessity.

Just last year, the Brexit Secretary told the Commons Select Committee that he did not foresee any major or material changes being made by delegated legislation. If that is not necessary, what possible justification can he have for including such sweeping powers in the Bill?

In its recent report, the Lords Constitution Committee outlined a number of requirements of Bills granting Henry VIII powers. In essence, it recommended that the breadth of any powers given should be as narrow as possible, which is clearly not so in this case. This point is furthered by the Supreme Court justice, Lord Neuberger, who says that

“the more general the words used by Parliament to delegate a power, the more likely it is that an exercise within the literal meaning of the words will nevertheless be outside the legislature’s contemplation.”

In other words, the broader the powers given, the more likely that, if exercised, litigation will follow. That point was made very powerfully by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), and the Government do need to respond to it.

In their March 2017 White Paper, the Government said that their proposed procedures represented

“the beginning of a discussion between Government and Parliament as to the most pragmatic and effective approach to take in this area.”

I am afraid that so far, despite the concessions made, we have not got there. There are issues relating to the scope of the Bill that have been very clearly articulated today. Amendment 392, accepted by the Government, represents progress, but it does not go far enough because it deals only with part of the problem.

Triage is fine, but at the end of the day the scrutiny process does not allow Parliament to amend or send back a statutory instrument for further consideration by the Government. That is a real weakness in the scrutiny system that must be addressed, as the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield said. That is why I support new clause 18, which gives Parliament the chance to look properly and in depth at what is needed to ensure that Parliament has proper powers of scrutiny over the delegated legislation process in relation to this Bill. The Hansard Society report gives us a really good start in that process. The Government have no need to be alarmed about new clause 18. This can be done reasonably quickly, and Parliament has the right to expect it.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is not here to speak to her new clause 27, which is a shame, because the environment is at the very heart of the Brexit process, yet so far it has been fairly peripheral to the debate. If we are going to get Brexit right, the Government need to understand that environmental standards are the one thing that matters to every citizen in this country. Everybody who voted in the referendum, whether leave or remain, will expect the Government to maintain environmental standards at least to the level where they are now.

[James Heappey]

The hon. Lady says that the environment has been peripheral to the debate so far. I am sure that she will have seen the comments from the chief executive of Greener UK and the enthusiasm of that organisation regarding the debate that we had in this Chamber one evening two weeks ago when we spent four hours debating the environmental parts of the Bill.

[Angela Smith]

The test of whether the Government are committed to maintaining environmental standards—and indeed to improving them, as the Secretary of State continually tells us—will be whether their approach to our future outside the European Union allows those environmental standards to be maintained. If we fall back on World Trade Organisation rules, it will be extremely difficult for this country to maintain environmental standards at the level we enjoy now.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee is currently looking at this issue. People in every single aspect of the agricultural sector—whether beef, lamb, poultry, pork, cereals or grain—have said that if we fall back on WTO rules, environmental standards may have to fall because we will lose our competitive edge and we will not be able to compete within that scenario. Environmental standards are not being taken seriously enough by the Government.

It is all very well for the Secretary of State to make populist claims about what he wants to achieve—when, indeed, what he was claiming he had already achieved has not been delivered—but he has to put his money where his mouth is. He cannot be a hard Brexiteer and a champion for environmental standards. The two are completely contradictory. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) can shake his head, but every sector in the economy is making this point.

The chemicals industry wants to stay within REACH, as does the water industry. Every major industry in this country likes the environmental standards that we enjoy now and wants to maintain them but worries about the impact on our environmental standards of not having a deal and not staying in the single market. It is all very well to live in a wonderful cloud cuckoo land and think that we will continue to enjoy in future everything that we have got now and that we will be able to do trade deals across the world, while ignoring the reality that we live next door to the European mainland. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks we can deliver that, but those on his side of the argument have so far failed to tell us how we will do so.