EU Retained Law

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for being here to answer questions on this Statement. We wonder about the Government’s priorities in the light of it. After all, yesterday was the day on which the Office for National Statistics announced that inflation had reached 9.1%—the highest level in over 40 years. We think that is of far greater concern for the country than anything in the Statement.

However, perhaps with today being the sixth anniversary of the EU referendum and the Conservative Party desperate not to lose its safe seat in Tiverton and Honiton, we can see why Jacob Rees-Mogg was deployed. The Government have long stated their intention to review retained EU law, and we await further details about the so-called Brexit freedoms Bill, which I am sure many across your Lordships’ House will take an active interest in. It was suggested that this was to be done via a default sunset clause that would delete laws unless Ministers prevented it. Has this madcap plan now been dropped?

Although there will be areas where it will make sense to amend or repeal retained EU law, we should remember that the framework in the 2018 withdrawal Act fed into negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and the TCA. We should have flexibility, yes, but we should also act in good faith.

In another place, the Minister failed to answer questions about the cost of this project, so could the Minister confirm what the costs are? Was the build of the dashboard put out to tender, for example? If so, have details of the contract been published in the usual manner?

In recent years, we have passed the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, the Environment Act, the Subsidy Control Act and many other post-Brexit pieces of legislation. Each of these Acts presented the ideal opportunity to strip away retained law, but Ministers repeatedly chose not to do so. Is that not a sign that much of that body of law is actually highly technical and therefore not as contentious as the Government would like to make us believe?

The Statement speaks of identifying “supply-side reforms” to combat inflation. Have the Government calculated the likely economic benefit to be derived from this programme? If so, perhaps the Minister could share that figure with us. How does it compare to other measures the Government could take to support the economy?

Finally, could the Minister explain how the Government will balance economic and other considerations, such as animal welfare, consumer and environmental benefits? What principles would be applied? The Government lack direction, so how will Ministers know how to approach this task? This whole exercise looks like a gimmick. There is no detail about the Government’s intentions. All we have is a list—calling it a dashboard is stretching it. The best advice we can give Ministers is to focus their energy on interventions that would make a tangible difference to people who are struggling every day to make ends meet.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read the Statement. It takes us into a surreal world of fantastical Government, in which, as the Minister for Brexit Opportunities declares,

“our country will achieve great things.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/22; col. 866.]

That is like Donald Trump promising he will make America great again—just as windy and as empty of content.

There is no evidence behind this Statement. I challenge the Minister to find any. A great deal of evidence was gathered and analysed on exactly this issue between 2012 and 2015 in what was labelled the balance of competences exercise. Eurosceptic Conservatives in the coalition Government believed that an extensive survey of business, sector by sector, would produce a long list of unnecessary Euro regulations that the UK Government could then demand to be renegotiated.

Three Ministers oversaw this exercise: David Lidington, Greg Clark and myself—two Conservatives and a Liberal Democrat. Sector by sector the responses came in, saying that companies were happy with the current balance between domestic and European regulation. Several transport companies argued for greater emphasis on common European regulation rather than less of it. The Scotch Whisky Association, whose then chief executive was David Frost, now the noble Lord, Lord Frost, was particularly enthusiastic about the advantages of common regulation with the European single market. Of course, that was before the noble Lord’s damascene conversion from evidence-based argument to embittered opposition to everything European.

Can the Minister tell us what consultations the Government have conducted in the past year with large and small companies before committing themselves to diverge from EU regulations in the way Mr Rees-Mogg plans? My understanding is that UK exporters, both large and small companies, would much prefer the Government to maintain close alignment between UK regulations and those in our largest overseas market. Does the Minister have any recent evidence to the contrary? Does he understand that the Government have any recent evidence to the contrary?

The chimera of making a bonfire of regulations has appealed to the ideological right ever since Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Belief in the superiority of unregulated markets has survived through stark evidence to the contrary, as in the loose regulations that led to the Grenfell fire. Margaret Thatcher understood that a well-regulated market is fundamental to a thriving economy, which is why she pushed for the common regulatory structures of the European single market. British Ministers and officials played a major role in creating that common single market. Many of the regulations that Mr Rees-Mogg is now denouncing were shaped by UK efforts, not imposed by foreign Governments on a powerless UK, as he is now suggesting—but Mr Rees-Mogg’s career has been entirely in finance rather than the real economy of production, marketing and exporting, and much of it offshore in Hong Kong, Singapore and other low-tax financial jurisdictions.

Mr Rees-Mogg is also the Minister for Government Efficiency. He notes in his Statement the extra work that Whitehall officials have undertaken to grasp these “Brexit freedoms”, as he puts it. He does not note that leaving the EU and setting up a range of national regulatory agencies to replace those we shared with our European partners has required a substantial increase in both the number of officials and the costs involved. Part of our contribution to the EU budget went towards funding those common agencies; some of them, such as Europol, were led by British officials. Yet at the same time as being Minister for Efficiency—that wonderfully odd phrase—Mr Rees-Mogg is pushing for a sharp reduction in Civil Service numbers, without regard to the additional tasks that it is taking on. Can the Minister explain how the Government propose to manage this additional effort while slashing the number of staff?

There are more windy comments in the Statement about restoring the sovereignty of Parliament, followed by the declaration that most of this will be pushed through under secondary, even tertiary, legislation, without effective parliamentary scrutiny. The illusion that we now stand imperially sovereign in the world, freed of the European yoke, is punctured by the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, circulated yesterday, announcing that we are opening trade negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council—in which we will not mention civil or political rights so as to avoid offence. This Government are willing to negotiate and compromise with the GCC but not with our democratic neighbours. Can the Minister explain how giving concessions to the Gulf autocracies avoids limiting UK sovereignty while Mr Rees-Mogg insists that any compromise with the EU infringes on UK sovereignty?

Last night, I wondered whether the Minister might revolt as he attempted to justify this irrational ideological waffle and follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, by walking out of the Chamber and the Government mid-Statement. However, I fear that he has not yet reached that point, despite the nonsensical Statement that he is forced to defend.