European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

This Bill, with this amendment, is the place to deal with this uncertainty. Yes, there is a lot of uncertainty over withdrawal. This amendment would help a lot towards dealing with this uncertainty by protecting much of what we have come to accept as part of our everyday life. That is why it has to be in the Bill. Our standards will be at risk unless it is. I beg to move.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I support this excellent amendment, because it would create a duty to ensure that any governance or regulatory function currently exercised by an EU institution is transposed into UK law. It is not good enough to retain EU law that protects standards and protections if we lack the complementary functions of monitoring and measuring compliance with the requirements, of reporting on compliance, of enforcement, of setting standards and targets and of publicising information, all of which is cited in the amendment.

These rights will be empty of meaning unless they are monitored and enforced. One of the concerns is where we will find the capacity to fulfil these functions to match what the EU has built up by highly expert and specialised institutions such as the Food Standards Agency, the Environment Agency, the European Chemicals Agency, the European Medicines Agency and Euratom.

The 2017 White Paper on legislating for withdrawal gives an example that raises considerable concerns. It says:

“There will be law which will, upon leaving the EU, no longer work at all and which will need to be corrected to continue to work. An example of this”—


we might not all be familiar with these regulations—

“would be the Offshore Petroleum Activities (Conservation of Habitats) Regulations 2001. These domestic regulations contain a requirement to obtain an opinion from the European Commission on particular projects relating to offshore oil and gas activities. Once we leave the EU, the Commission will no longer provide such opinions to the UK”,

which is true.

“However, this requirement in the existing regulations would prevent certain projects from taking place unless we correct it”.

The Government were positing, in what is now this draft legislation, to allow the Government to amend our domestic legislation either to replace the reference to the Commission with a UK body or to remove this requirement entirely. It is the removal of the requirement entirely that is worrying. This is about when a company wishes to build an oil pipeline in a protected habitat, so it is not a negligible issue. So there is a series of regulatory hurdles at the moment. The Government argued that abolishing this reference to the Commission would be a mere “technical” change. However, protecting habitats from potential oil spills is not a technical change. Therefore, there needs to be some substitute for the European Commission.

The powers in the Bill, including in Clause 8, which contains powers that could allow the Government to reduce the level of regulatory protection in the UK to align with international trade partners without consulting Parliament, could be of great concern. We have heard from Wilbur Ross, the US Commerce Secretary, who has specifically described the regulation and documentation of chemical exports, food safety geographical indicators—the things that protect Cornish pasties and Melton Mowbray pork pies, and so on—as presenting “key impediments” to expanded trade between the UK and the US. So this kind of thing will be very much at risk.

We have talked before in Committee about how we cannot implement things unilaterally; we have to be able to have some reciprocal enforcement. The Business Minister, Andrew Griffiths, told MPs last week that there is no,

“cast-iron assurance … that UK products will remain protected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/18; col. 711.]

They might in the UK but they will not elsewhere in the world. We need an infrastructure of regulatory enforcement, obviously on a reciprocal cross-border basis, to uphold the protection that the Government say they will give to retained EU law standards. The answers that we are supposed to understand that the Government cannot discuss this in any detail because it is part of negotiations, or that no plans are yet in place, are wearing pretty thin.

I therefore share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, and I would like to hear an assurance from the Minister that similarly high standards of regulation as well as of protective law will be guaranteed. Otherwise, if you have the law without the regulatory enforcement, it is not a lot of use.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, for tabling this amendment. I believe the intention behind it is to ensure that United Kingdom law will continue to function effectively after our departure from the European Union. This is, of course, the aim of the Bill, and so I welcome his engagement on its content. However, despite these intentions, the Government cannot accept the amendment.

The Bill will take a snapshot of European Union law—including the rights, freedoms, protections and standards it brings—so far as it applies within the United Kingdom immediately before exit day, and seek to retain it in UK law, so far as is practical. It will then be our priority to ensure it will be able to operate consistently and without deficiency within our domestic law through the use of powers given in the Bill. This includes ensuring that there is suitable provision for the transfer of existing functions and roles carried out by the EU or its institutions while we are a member. It is of course right that the Bill is able to do this.

The United Kingdom has a long-standing tradition, one that predates 1972, of ensuring that our rights and standards are protected domestically, and of fulfilling our international obligations with regard to these matters. The decision to leave the European Union does not change this. Any regulation to correct a deficiency in retained EU law, within which such rights, freedoms, standards and protections will sit, will of course be subject to the overview of this Parliament: it will be subject to the established procedures of parliamentary scrutiny and, in addition, to the work of the sifting committee that the Leader has indicated will be constructed in this House.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said that standards would be subject to Ministers. But standards, I suggest, will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I say the same in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. We will retain the law and it will not be empty of meaning because again, in so far as we implement it in domestic law, it will be the subject of parliamentary scrutiny. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, suggested that retained EU law would be worthless if there were no body to oversee it, but that body will be Parliament. No body is better equipped for that task than Parliament.

On policy co-ordination, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Liddell, of course, that is bound to be a matter of negotiation and not one for this particular Bill. We want to negotiate questions of the extent and depth to which we co-operate with members of the EU after we leave. As regards standards themselves, is it suggested that because we are in Europe—as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, observed, we still are and still will be—but not in the European Union, somehow our standards are bound to fall? Is it supposed that Switzerland or indeed Norway do not maintain rigorous standards in regard to consumers, the environment and so on?

[Baroness Ludford]

Norway is in the single market. That is why it has to uphold the same standards, and Switzerland is de facto in the single market.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Switzerland is not de facto in the single market. Switzerland has a multiplicity of agreements with the EU that have been negotiated on a bilateral basis, which is the form of negotiation that we intend to carry out in due course. Membership of the EU is not, as I say, the touchstone of rigorous standards either in Europe or beyond.

With regard to the points raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith—

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, as I did at Second Reading, and to answer some of his points. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, did not like it when I quoted the words of his current leader to him, for some reason. He said that I should quote from my own party.

[Baroness Ludford]

I remind the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, of the words of Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has said:

“Indeed, we could have two referendums. As it happens, it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/10/11; col. 108.]


The Brexit Secretary, David Davis, has said:

“Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/11/02; col. 202.]

[Viscount Ridley]

I was going to quote David Cameron because I was asked for the words of a Conservative. On 10 November 2015, after announcing the referendum, he said:

“It will be your decision … Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide … And it will be the final decision. So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave … would merely produce another stronger renegotiation and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay … I say think again … There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum … Think very carefully, because this choice cannot be undone”.