European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

Instead, great play is made in the document of it being the role of Parliament, including Select Committees, to hold the Executive to account—a point echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford. But of course that is what we have now, and it would be without any of the additional benefits of oversight from Europe. It is that additional oversight we are now seeking to replace in UK law.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I will not support the amendment at this stage; I will probably support it or something similar at the stage when the Bill—the primary legislation—reaches us. However, to help the noble Baroness’s argument and to address the excellent points made by my noble friend Lady Byford, should she not address the fact that we are seeking that the European regulations have the force of law after we have left, and how that goes to the heart of the amendment to which she is speaking? She is not addressing those points as forcefully as she might.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thought that I had addressed that. If after Brexit day we are to have the same powers and enforcement as we had prior to it, we need to have a green watchdog with those enhanced powers that Europe has given us in the past—as we heard from the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Smith, and other noble Lords. That is the need. If we do not replace that in some way with an independent body that can achieve that, we will have no way of enforcing the regulations to which the noble Baroness referred.

The key thing in our amendment is that we have an independent body with the powers to ensure compliance by public bodies with environmental law. There will be a governance gap, a power gap, if that does not occur. I say to all those people—including, again, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford—who say that the consultation is the right way to deal with this, that the idea that a consultation will deliver a new watchdog with some teeth when it is not included in the consultation is magical thinking. We all know that the reality is that the opposite is the case with government consultations and, inevitably, further compromises tend to occur before legislation is finalised. I do not think that to hold that out as a hope and an offer is going to give us much reassurance.

Finally—and this is also a really important point—Michael Gove has already acknowledged that there will be a governance time gap. This consultation proposes a Bill in the next Queen’s Speech. That would not be enacted until, say, the end of next year at the earliest. A lot can go wrong before then. As we have discussed before, a rather large number of Defra Bills have been promised and are already in the queue for enactment. Timescales are already slipping. Even with the most optimistic projections, the current plans mean a time lag where environmental protections will not be—as promised in the Bill—the same as we had before exit day.

Our amendment addresses that gap. It addresses those omissions and requires that the legislation would be produced within six months of the date on which this Act is passed and therefore fill that gap. This is the only way to maintain both the spirit and the substance of continuity with EU rights which the Bill promised and the only way to protect the environment for future generations. I hope that noble Lords will see fit to support it.