European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 31st January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. I could not agree with him more on what he said about the Constitution Committee. It has done a lot of the Government’s thinking for them. I hope that the Minister may be inclined to bring forward his own amendments on that basis.

Like so many noble Lords, I deeply regret the necessity of this Bill, but I feel we have no choice but to do what only we in this House can do. I believe we are engaged in an historic act of self-harm, but by amending the Bill we may be able to mitigate some damage and make the future a little more predictable. We are awash in a sea of legal and political uncertainties, about which many noble Lords have already spoken brilliantly. They make a nonsense of the constant mantra we hear from the Government about the need for certainty and control. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, who is not in his place, made a most powerful speech yesterday when he spoke about the “normalisation of lies”, to which I would add the normalisation of delusion. The greatest delusion of all is that, after a year characterised by denial and bluster, the Government can magically achieve a deal that has never been on offer that will enable us to retain all the benefits of being in the EU with none of the obligations. We need to get rid of the culture of infantilisation—the fear of reality—that has so reduced the debate we should have had on Brexit.

We have an opportunity to reassert the constitutional balances of power that are so dislodged by Clauses 7 to 9 and 17. They give unprecedented delegated powers to Ministers and Whitehall—justified, as they always would have been, by the need for speed and flexibility. The transposition of EU law into UK law presents unique challenges but does not require draconian powers never before seen in peacetime. These clauses are, frankly, opportunistic. The first task is obviously to take control back from Ministers and put it back into the hands of Parliament, where it belongs.

The second task, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and many others in this House have alluded, is to prevent the constitutional car crash that is heading towards the United Kingdom in the potential failure of the devolution settlement and the deferred model. The challenge is technically complicated but politically extremely simple. If Clause 11 is not amended, the constitutional equalities will disappear as the devolved Governments are locked down, subject to a new set of restrictions and required to wait for their partial release while Westminster and Whitehall fix up the post-Brexit world.

After seven months in which little urgency has been shown, little regard for consultation with the devolved Administrations and no sniff of amendments, can the Minister give a guarantee that the amendments to Clause 11, which are badly needed, will be presented before we debate it in Committee and after consultation with the devolved Administrations? That is the least that they could expect.

The third task is, of course, to ensure that Parliament has the decisive vote, not just simply on the terms of exit but including on the real possibility of no deal, on the nature of the transition and on the framework of our future relationships.

The parties in the other place have shown us how to proceed by example. They made common cause to win a number of very welcome concessions around scrutiny and the notion of deficiency in retained law. I know that we can work together across this House to build on that to ensure not least that Ministers do not have the carte blanche to decide on the use of regulations to prevent, remedy or mitigate the failure of, or deficiency in, the retained law as they see appropriate—for which read “desirable”. Those powers are as wide as the definitions are boundless. Rather, as my noble and learned friend Lord Goldsmith said so powerfully, Ministers should be required to justify this as of necessity to achieve the limited object in question. This is not just a constitutional point; it goes to the heart of what our country will look and feel like after Brexit. The way those powers are used brings the possibility of greater risk, lower standards and the loss of opportunities. Anyone who is concerned about the fate of public and health services, the science base, the safety of the environment, the prospects of our children, and whether our inequalities continue to grow or shrink has a huge amount to lose by the winning or losing of that debate.

The Government constantly ask us to trust them not only to know what they are doing—I will be glad to park that—but to use their powers to change laws that they do not like. No Government could be trusted with these powers; they are irresistible. Time and again this Government have tried to take more power and diminish scrutiny. Remember our battles over the then Public Bodies Bill and the then Deregulation Bill; and the creeping use of secondary legislation to make policy and not merely correct technical errors? We should add that to a whole year spent trying to exclude Parliament, even in the courts, from having a say in the decision to leave, and a toxic obsession with secrecy that has kept under wraps any evidence of impacts which might inform, let alone change, public opinion. We end up with a Government who do not trust the people with evidence, let alone truth, and who have, I believe, forfeited the right to be trusted themselves.

We are already being bullied and we will go on being bullied, but the enemies of the people are those for whom all evidence is rubbish and all argument treason. I am sure that, just as has been done in the other place, we can work together in this House not just to make this Bill constitutionally acceptable but to restore trust in the democratic and parliamentary process itself. I believe that will be possible because, no matter where we stand on Europe, we all stand together in defence of parliamentary sovereignty.