Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think I referred to that in an earlier part of my speech. I addressed Amendments 42 and 43, but it all comes back to this central point of the so-called accidental sunsetting that noble Lords have raised. The noble Baroness’s amendments propose to remove the sunset entirely and replace it with systems to individually revoke each piece of EU law. I did refer to that earlier, but I will look back at what I said and if I did not refer to that directly, I will write to her. The Government think that the sunset is appropriate. I entirely accept that many Members of this House do not, but the elected House of Commons certainly did, by large majorities.

I think that I have covered most of the points now. Noble Lords might not like the answers very much but that is the Government’s position.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

One issue that I have not understood the Minister to have dealt with is the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on democracy.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I had a political difference on that point. He seems to think that secondary legislation is somehow undemocratic. If those making this complaint were to look back through Hansard to see whether they made the same complaint about the way that the law was introduced into UK law in the first place, I would have a little more sympathy with their argument. This is an essentially political disagreement about which is the most appropriate way to proceed. The Government have been elected with a big majority. One of the backbones of our programme was to get Brexit done.