European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 23A but, before I do so, I should like to say how much I admired the clarity with which my noble friend introduced the lead amendment in the group and how warmly I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Kennedy on the issue of human rights.

I have two points to make. The first is that the anxiety out there in British society should not be underestimated. There is a great deal of anxiety among extremely good quality people who are doing dedicated work in the spheres with which we are concerned. Secondly, as a layman in no way involved in practising law, I have always understood as a citizen that what is terribly important about the law is its clarity and transparency. As we consider the amendments we must therefore not inadvertently allow doubt and misgiving as to whether there has been full transparency, and full commitment to that transparency, to creep into our future.

It is therefore very important, and I make no apology for proposing it, to get written into the Bill the fact that we seek to protect existing rights of citizens in the spheres affected. I shall read to the Committee the points that Amendment 23A says should be, and seen to be, central to the deliberations and negotiations that lie ahead. They include: human rights and equality, in which we have made great progress; privacy and data protection, which we have debated at great length in this House; and immigration and asylum protections—I am certainly one who believes there is much more to be done in that realm, but the Bill is not about that. My amendment is therefore not about that either but about protecting what we have. The other points are,

“criminal justice protections … employment protections … environment and public health protections … consumer protection … access to housing, education and health and social care”.

I want to feel confident, in the immense amount of work lies ahead, that those issues will be in the Bill as primary considerations. I hope that the Minister, for whom my admiration increases all the time with the clarity with which he responds to amendments, will be able to reassure me that there will be some way to ensure that these things are not just implied in what is proposed but are there specifically.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 21. The Bill gives Ministers what the Constitution Committee described as,

“an unprecedented and extraordinary portmanteau of powers upon which the Government could draw”.

We are now seeing growing concern that by our giving such powers, well beyond those needed to effect legal continuity, Ministers could use them to effect substantive policy changes. That is what is at the heart of this tension.

Many important protections currently enjoyed by UK citizens are not written into Acts of Parliament but underpinned by membership of the EU, which cannot be weakened by the UK Government. Once some of those protections are brought into domestic law by secondary legislation, there is no assurance that they can be changed only by primary legislation. The Bill will also allow Ministers to use the delegated powers contained in existing UK legislation to effect significant policy changes to retained EU law. The powers under Schedule 8 have already been referred to.

The merit of Amendment 21 is that it poses greater protection by enhancing scrutiny of ministerial amendments to retained EU law and restricting the modification of retained EU law by subordinate legislation to technical provisions. Such modifications could not limit the scope of or weaken standards and protections afforded to UK citizens. Amendment 21 makes a clear distinction, which the Bill fails to do, between technical and substantive policy changes—between necessary amendments to retained EU law to provide legal continuity and the wider issue of discretionary amendments that implement substantive changes to policy.

I want to refer to employment rights and consumer standards to illustrate the amendment’s merits. There are many EU-derived equality and employment protections enjoyed by the people of this country that are essential ingredients of economic fairness and social cohesion. These are rights which working people now take for granted, including rights to paid holidays, equal pay for equal-value work and equal treatment in the workplace.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I could well be tempted and I suppose that it depends on how quickly you can see paint dry. I leave it to people outside your Lordships’ House to judge the progress that we have made in the first four days, despite some of the undertakings and understandings of the Opposition Front Bench. Perhaps I may say that I greatly value and respect the Bench whose behaviour has been absolutely admirable and exemplary. I do not think that we have made fast enough progress, which is not justified. There are important issues to raise and I have simply suggested that these are some things that, as with the reports of your Lordships’ committees, could be discussed in other forums—but surely not during consideration of this little 19-clause Bill with a rather narrowly defined purpose and given all the other legislation that we have coming forward.

I oppose this amendment. It suggests a new mechanism for the Government in relation to our future relations with the EU which is unnecessary. I look forward to seeing the progress that the noble Baroness wishes to see being made.

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 89A, 129A and 157A in the group and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Burt, for their support. Many noble Lords have already referred to the executive powers in this Bill which go beyond those needed to deliver the intent of preserving and converting existing EU law into domestic law to provide legal continuity on exit day. Clause 7, for example, gives Ministers corrective powers to do whatever they consider appropriate to address a deficiency in retained law. As the Constitution Committee has observed, as wide a subjective concept as “appropriate”, applied to such a broad term as “deficiency”, makes Ministers’ regulation-making powers potentially open-ended. Ministerial assurances on their use cannot substitute for a provision in the Bill to prevent the correcting powers being used to effect substantial changes to implement government policy outwith the stated intention of this Bill.

There are many areas of substantive policy which could be impacted by these open-ended powers, a concern that is captured in the long list of amendments to the Bill. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that if the Government more quickly took action to restrain the powers in Clauses 7, 8, 9 and elsewhere, and reflected the concerns that people have, the list of amendments that the Committee is debating might actually reduce in number. I am sure that he did not intend it, but choosing his moment at 10.25 pm to express his frustration at the amount of time spent on certain amendments, just at the point when we are discussing women’s and family issues, does not help the case that there is increasing anxiety that the Conservatives want to cut back on employment rights, particularly as they are afforded to pregnant women and mothers.

The particular focus of these amendments is to prevent powers in Clauses 7, 8 and 9 being used to limit the scope of or to weaken rights relating to maternity, paternity, adoption, parental rights, the rights of pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers. Such rights are important because they affect the status of half of the population of this country. That is not a small or minority group, it is half of the population. When millions of women voted in the EU referendum to remain or to leave, I doubt that many will have done so in the belief that the result could prejudice their rights or status. These amendments reflect real concerns about the potential impact of Brexit and the application of this Bill on women, expressed by a broad coalition of women and equality organisations such as the Fawcett Society, Women on Boards, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Girlguiding and many others. Bodies such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission share an anxiety that in setting the future of the UK economy, the Government could weaken women’s status in their vision of a differently regulated country.

The treatment of women who are pregnant and who care for children is fundamental to their ability to achieve social and economic equality. The penalty paid for child-bearing and caring is at the heart of the discrimination and loss of opportunity that many women continue to experience. It affects women who have been pregnant, are pregnant, may become pregnant and, by gender association, who do not have children. They all experience the consequences of a collective stereotyping of women.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Drake]

The Minister’s reference to enforcement is very important. Is he giving an assurance that there are no government plans to cap compensation in discrimination cases when we leave the EU?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness will recognise that that is part of a discussion for another time. We have already touched on it on more than one occasion. If I may, I will focus primarily on the amendments before us today.

It is important that we recognise that the rights we have cannot be undone. That must be the fundamental guidance. For those who ask whether I can give a categorical assurance that there shall be no erosion of the working time directive, the answer is yes, I can give that assurance. We will not be eroding these rules as they come back or after they come back. It is critical that these rules become and remain functional as we begin to develop our own rulebook. It is right that we should be cognisant of the advances in the evolution of rights whether it be in the EU or elsewhere. We have heard this evening about a number of these rights which we have seen emanating from the UN. We should not be limited in that regard. Time and again we have found ourselves in the vanguard of particular rights. As we consider this suite of amendments, I do not think we should lose sight of the fact that in more than one area on more than one occasion we have pushed rights far further forward than had been the case of the median rights within the EU as a whole.