European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Ludford and Baroness Whitaker

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford]

There are several more speakers, I am afraid, including me.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, in briefly supporting those amendments that seek to retain the charter, I owe your Lordships an apology. I ought to have declared that I am a member of the advisory board of the British Institute of Human Rights at Second Reading, but I forgot.

I am not a lawyer, but I respectfully submit that law is not primarily for lawyers, any more than water is for water engineers—it is for people to implement the central values of our democracy on their behalf, and the deprivation of rights and access to justice causes harm, unfair poverty, unfair unhappiness and, in some cases, unjustly shorter lives. That is the sort of thing we should be thinking of when we look at these amendments.

I shall just give three quick examples, much humbler than those of Mr David Davis. The general principles and the charter ensured that Mr John Walker could challenge and end pension inequality for same-sex couples. The charter and the general principles supported the recent case in the Supreme Court, which found employment tribunal fees implemented by the Government were unlawful. And the charter enabled the recognition of the importance of health as a fundamental right—not in our law—when tobacco companies challenged regulations to introduce plain packaging of cigarettes.

It seems extremely clear that dropping the charter will do away with protective rights and drop safeguards that have ensured justice in individual cases of injustice. It is individuals who we ought to be thinking about, and rights that would not otherwise exist that we ought to safeguard in the charter.

[Baroness Ludford]

My Lords, the Benches opposite have been well filled to harry the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about fundamental rights. Sadly, they were not here for the previous debate to speak up for achieving a fundamental right to safety and security.

I fear that parts of this debate have displayed a fundamental misunderstanding about the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. There has been evidence of some quite muddled thinking. The charter is not a tool that extends the remit of EU law or promotes further integration; it protects citizens and businesses from abuse of the powers that EU laws confer on EU institutions and—I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—on national Governments when they are implementing EU laws. So it is not just about all the EU institutions that we might leave; it is about achieving legal certainty and continuity. Deleting the charter means discontinuity by making substantive changes to the EU law that is retained in domestic law.