Draft Environment (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 General Committees

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The Minister and I are here to discuss the statutory instrument that will make provision for the regulatory framework in this area after Brexit in the event that we crash out of the EU without a deal.

As several of my Back-Bench colleagues have done, I want to point out our challenge in ensuring proper scrutiny of the sheer volume of legislation passing through Committees. Secondary legislation ought to be used for technical, non-partisan, non-controversial changes, because of the limited accountability that it allows for. However, the Government continue to push through contentious legislation with high policy content via this vehicle. The frustration that we must spend time and resources creating a framework that might never be used is a point that has already been made in Committees. Public money has been spent on planning for what should not be viewed as a potential eventuality.

As a result of the reckless approach by the Prime Minister and her Government, statutory instruments that are being passed in Committees may well disappear on 29 March 2019. Alternatively, they could represent real and substantive changes to the statute book. As such, they need proper and in-depth scrutiny. Equally, in the event that the Government allow a no-deal scenario to materialise, we must bear in mind the stress that financial markets will be under. Statutory instruments must also be considered against that backdrop.

I understand that the devolved Administrations have been consulted on this particular SI and are content that there is no divergence in policy. In future, how will the UK and devolved Governments work together to ensure high standards across the four countries so that every citizen has full access to environmental justice that is not prohibitively expensive, as the UK is committed to via the 1998 Aarhus convention? Unlike a great many SIs that the Government are hurrying through this place, the measures contained within this particular SI are not contentious, as colleagues in the devolved Administrations have said. What we have here is an SI that, in fact, does much of what the Minister said: it does not make great changes.

Although we have great concerns about the SI process and using that legislative mechanism for many of the SIs that are being introduced—the Minister knows, because we have discussed it, that one of my particular concerns relates to the REACH regulations—we do not intend to oppose this particular SI, because it does not make great changes. However, we urge the Minister to take back to her colleagues in the Government our deep concerns about the way this legislation is being used.