Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. His was a general question; I was not going to seek to reply to it. Obviously, the extent of divergence that we might or might not have depends on different areas.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

May I suggest an answer to the noble Lord’s question? One way of avoiding regulatory divergence would be to remove every common framework from this Bill because, if common frameworks are included and we lose part of the SIs that underpin them, the invitation to diverge in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be pretty impressive.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Again, we come back to individual decisions, although we have an amendment on the devolved Administrations later on; I hope we will reach it today. To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, assimilation will be discussed fully in our debates on later groups.

On the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, about whether the dashboard is authoritative, I can confirm that it is. This is because it has gone on an extensive, cross-Whitehall process and has been agreed at ministerial level. It is not comprehensive because, as noble Lords will know, the process is still ongoing. We have made a promise to update the dashboard accordingly as we go along; the next update is planned for spring 2023.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

The presence here of the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, is a good indicator of what we will get in the next group: the appropriate department covering the appropriate amendments. These amendments were not put down yesterday. This is not a letter that you receive from a Minister—we gave warning of these amendments. A Minister from the relevant department, the Department for Transport, should and could have been here to answer the questions, instead of a Minister saying, “It’s not my department. I can’t answer”. I am pleased to welcome the noble Lord for the next group but perhaps, as a lesson going forward, we could have the right Ministers here.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

We have been searching for some clue as to the criteria for what will be retained and what will be revoked, but we have not had any clarity—hence these hours of debate on safety of seat belts and so on. The Minister used the term “unnecessary” regulations and, in the famous letter, we have the line:

“For example, through removing unnecessary or unsuitable regulations or consolidating multiple regulations into one, it will be possible”,


and so on. Can we have a definition, in writing, of what the Government consider to be an unnecessary or unsuitable regulation? That may give us a clue as to the direction of travel on which regulations will be kept and which will be lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Having laboured through many of the details of this, I can assure the noble Lord that it is a good thing for a Government to be doing. We are tackling some areas of law that have no relation to this whatever. They are about fishing arrangements between Denmark and Norway in Svalbard or export policy in olives. There are many areas that we can get rid of, but there are other areas of regulation—this point was made very well earlier—that we would be updating even if we were in the EU. So it is a good thing for the Government to make sure that we have proper regulation that is up to date and tied into our ambitions in the 25-year environment plan, the Environment Act and the environment improvement plan.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Benyon, is a good Minister who is genuinely doing his best, but we have a fundamental contradiction here. He has said that his department’s default position is to retain; the Bill says it is to revoke. What is the Government’s position on this?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

As the Secretary of State said at the launch of the environment improvement plan, we will retain by default. Then we will examine every single item and decide which to put back in. Noble Lords will see, when we publish the list, that we have done a good job on this. We remain committed to our ambitious plan set out in the net zero strategy and the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023. They set out the comprehensive action the Government will take to reverse the decline in species abundance, achieve our net-zero goals and deliver cleaner air and water.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I am terribly sorry to noble Lords, I really am. We have not heard the expression “retain by default”. Does the Minister sitting beside the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, agree with “retain by default”? We did not hear anything like that in the first day of Committee. This is news to us and it seems to turn the Bill on its head.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am quoting what Ministers have been saying for some weeks now, so it should not be a great surprise to noble Lords. With that, I hope that noble Lords are prepared to withdraw or not move their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

Perhaps we can ask the Minister to stop the arbitrary gallop and tell us how a more considered and sensible approach will be introduced. I suggest that it needs to prioritise review of legislation when that legislation actually requires review, rather than in a wholesale fashion. It needs to involve a process that introduces wide and effective consultation with businesses, civil society and the public—those who will be impacted by this legislation. It needs to have proper parliamentary involvement and give proper protection to case law and interpretive effects. After all, if I remember correctly, that was the normal and sensible way in which we used to do things.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I support the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and Amendment 26. The point about consultation is extremely important, especially as it seems obvious that a lot more SIs will not fit easily into the dispose or retain buckets, and arrangements have to be made for that. One thing that has struck me forcefully as we have gone through this process so far is the whole scope of this Bill—the enormous numbers of interrelationships between EU retained law, domestic law and international law, and with the devolved Administrations as well. It is growing more and more complex by the amendment.

Throughout the debate we have heard a lot of different arguments as to why this arbitrary deadline is simply not going to work. Possibly it was understood that it would never work when it was proposed, but it may have been a sort of discipline to focus the mind. Either way, it is disingenuous, and I would have thought that by now the Minister would have had so much weight of evidence that he would find it an honourable position to say that he would be prepared to consider accepting an amendment to extend the sunset clause. I sincerely hope so, as it is very hard to envisage what those 14 civil servants would have been doing otherwise. They might have been tackling, for example, the cleaning of our rivers and many other things.

We now come on to the issue raised by Clause 2. In the famous letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, which I am sure was sent with positive intent, I am named because I asked a question about powers in the Bill. I literally cannot understand the reply in that paragraph, and I would be very grateful if we could have some sort of case study that exemplifies the way in which those powers will actually be used. I know that there are some excellent officials in the department working on this part of the Bill. Can we have a simple exemplar of how that would actually work?

That brings me to Clause 2. Again, all I am seeking at this stage is clarification and simplification of what we can get. When the Minister winds up, can he explain to the Committee the exact circumstances under which Clause 2 would come into effect? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has raised this issue, and I want to reinforce it. Can he tell the Committee what a specified instrument is likely to be? Does this mean a statutory instrument that has to be amended rather than kept intact or removed? Are there any other categories that might fall into the scope of this clause and, if so, what? We cannot take comfort from the idea that this exists and therefore we will be able to resolve many different problems that will suddenly find themselves being able to be passported into next year and beyond, and therefore we can stop worrying about it.

Finally, I put this question to the Minister at Second Reading: it is a really important question, but I did not get a satisfactory answer. Why is the power to modify the sunset clause not extended to Ministers in Wales and Scotland, particularly when a disproportionate burden of effort is falling on the ministries in those countries? They do not have the capacity and they need some help and some flexibility. I ask the Minister to think again, particularly about Wales, where the effective deadline will be the end of October: it will not even be December. They will be three months short of the deadline with the flexibility that we have. Can I have an answer to that specific question tonight?