Brexit: Legislative Timetable

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their proposed timetable for the passage of all remaining (1) primary, and (2) secondary legislation required for Brexit by 29 March 2019.

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, we have already put in place many of the legislative building blocks to deliver our exit from the EU. Five exit-related Bills have been passed and six more are now making their way through Parliament. We are also making good progress on the secondary legislation needed to ensure that we have a functioning statute book on exit day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I welcome my noble friend back from his holidays, albeit for a particularly difficult and busy period for his department. Can he give the House an assurance today that the six remaining Bills before this House and the best part of 1,000 statutory instruments to prepare for Brexit will be given full and proper scrutiny in this House? Further, does he yet have a date for when directives such as the European falsified medicines directive will be scrutinised in this Chamber?

[Lord Callanan]

I can certainly give the noble Baroness an assurance that we will allow for proper scrutiny. Perhaps I may correct her statement on the number of SIs. As we wrote to the sifting committees just before Christmas, we now estimate that the number of SIs we will need by exit day is slightly fewer than 600, of which we have already tabled more than 300.