Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in an earlier debate the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, pointed out precedents whereby the Government relied on regulations to give meat to a Bill and they had been published by this stage, so that we had some sight of what we were signing up to.

I am interested that on this occasion, on this group of amendments, my noble friends on the Democratic Unionist Benches have been strangely silent. Given what we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in moving the amendments and from others who supported him, to me, this amounts to a democratic deficit. All the conditions that would normally be put in place, involving a review of the regulations before they came up, appear not to be in play at this time. I hope my noble friends will find common ground with me, recognising that this could be a democratic deficit the likes of which they would not like to see.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, set out this group of amendments, he rightly said that Clause 4 is at the heart of the Bill, and the debate has really encapsulated that point.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. We will have several debates about the scope of the delegated powers proposed, but as this is the first group dealing with the reports by the DPRRC, it is worth recalling just how unprecedented these were. The DPRRC has chosen on a number of occasions to publish a report while a Bill is still in the Commons—there is nothing unusual in that—but rarely has it been so scathing, labelling the Bill

“unprecedented in its cavalier treatment of Parliament, the EU and the Government’s own international obligations”,

as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said.

The committee was unable to propose tweaks to various powers in the Bill, including those in Clause 4. Instead, it recommended gutting several key clauses. As mentioned in the debate, the Government opted not to respond to the DPRRC before we moved into Committee, even though they had from July to do so. It is hard to see how the two sides can meet in the middle, so, if we proceed to Report, it is quite possible that this House will have to strip out several clauses.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made interesting points when he talked about the previous level of scrutiny of EU law, in which this House played a very prominent part. I am sure many Members of this House served on those committees. The EU Committee scrutinised legislation, as did this House and a whole series of committees, and the House of Commons, of course. That was a far higher level of scrutiny than anything being proposed at the moment.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, asked an interesting question—and he was fair in saying it was a genuine question—about the alternatives to this multitude of Henry VIII powers. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response. It seems to me that the alternative is to go through things in detail, as the old EU committee structure in this House used to do routinely. I will be interested to hear the answer to the noble Lord’s question.

We are sympathetic to this group of amendments. I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is going to do but we are happy to support him.