European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I offer congratulations to our two powerful and fascinating maiden speakers, the noble Lords, Lord Barwell and Lord Mann.

The Government now have a working majority, but it must not be wielded the way Andy Capp’s wife used to wield that rolling pin. I would caution against them using their new majority to bypass parliamentary scrutiny in the difficult coming months. The stakes are too high, the issues too raw and the future of our judiciary, our citizens and our environment too precarious.

The Bill before us is a stripped-back version of the pre-election withdrawal agreement Bill. This tells us that the Government think that they can chop away through the old plan, chopping out the best bits. For example, as other noble Lords have said, the commitment on unaccompanied child refugees has been removed. Instead of the Government being obliged to negotiate an arrangement with the EU on family reunion, they are now obliged only to lay a statement on policy in this area before Parliament. Our own esteemed Member, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, spearheaded a highly successful cross-party campaign on this, and it is shaming that it is no longer part of the Bill.

The Government have also used their new majority to swiftly remove Clause 34 and Schedule 4, as found in the pre-election Bill, which specified that a Minister introducing a Government Bill would be required to make a statement of,

“non-regression in relation to workers’ retained EU rights.”

Instead, the protection of workers’ rights will be shoved into another Bill, the main elements of which do not refer to the protection of workers’ retained EU rights. This new employment Bill will be coming to a committee room near you sometime soon, possibly.

So all that talk over the last four years of how the Government will not only keep up with the EU but also go above and beyond EU standards on employment rights was just that: talk. Given the opportunity to officially measure their progress with the EU in this Bill, the Government are ducking it. I would ask why, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. In the pre-election Bill, the Government would also have been required to make regular Statements to Parliament on whether the EU had published any new workers’ rights, whether domestic law conferred similar rights and, if not, whether the Government intended to take steps to implement the new EU rights. None of this has survived into the Bill before us today. Call me Mystic Meg, but this looks like a clearing of the decks to bring about a workplace deregulation agenda. Our rights are being thoroughly chlorinated.

Do the Government think that British workers are doing so well that there is no need to heed international comparisons and progress officially? I suggest they look at the latest ONS figures for British women presently in the workplace. The ONS’s stark conclusion is that there are no areas of the modern British workplace, across all its nine economic groups, where a substantial pay gap does not exist in favour of men, full-time or part-time, be it among solicitors, factory workers or medical staff—with one exception, and that is full-time receptionists, where women are paid slightly more than men. Women at work in this country are not enjoying equal pay and conditions. Certainly, they need the opportunities and the active comparisons that our continuing closeness to our EU neighbours should present.

I want this country to prosper and to meet its many challenges, and I accept that the decision to leave the EU is behind us, however much of a mistake I still consider it. But we need the strongest possible relationship with the European Union in order to prosper. So a stripped-down, stripped-out withdrawal Bill, weakened protections, a Parliament sidelined, along with a highly unrealistic timetable for a transition period, could all add up to—far from getting Brexit done—getting Britain done for.