EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, there are many gaps and unknowns in this welcome treaty. It is essential that Parliament be kept up to date with every meeting under it, every change, challenge, dispute and new agreement. I have in mind, inter alia: the partnership council and its 18 specialised committees; the parliamentary partnership assembly; the civil society forum; the panels of experts on non-regression and the level playing field; the arbitration panel on rebalancing; and the bodies settling professional qualifications and financial services. The membership, agenda and minutes of all these bodies should be made available, and Parliament needs to be updated constantly. The European Affairs Committee will be insufficient if it is fed decisions ex post facto. The House needs staff to ensure constant monitoring, and we should be given the opportunity to debate in good time before decisions are reached.

In addition to its flagrant breach of human rights when the EU made its agreement with China, we must also worry about the European Court of Justice, which we are fortunately escaping: a court whose judges’ qualifications, tenure, perks and re-nomination rules would be unacceptable in this country as lacking judicial independence. A court that does not know the difference between gene editing and genetic modification, that keeps expenses secret and bans the Jewish and Muslim methods of killing animals, has capped its ignominy by sacking Eleanor Sharpston, an advocate-general of the court, one of the UK’s most distinguished lawyers, whose post was not linked to her British nationality and whose contract should run until this October. She is going to the European Court of Human Rights about it. The point is that the European General Court ruled that a collective decision by member states was not subject to judicial review, meaning that the states of the EU could sack any judge and not be challenged. Fellow lawyers here should be protesting about this meltdown of judicial independence, as should all lawyers, and we must welcome the end of any control by such an improper court.