Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, “Take back control” was a tempting offer. EU processes are often slow and frustrating; Brexiteers call them undemocratic but, if anything, they suffer from democracy overload—layers of decision-making subject to repeated democratic checks and balances. On the plus side, so many cooks stirring the broth rarely get the recipe wrong. However, with this Bill, all pretence has been dropped. The DPRRC calls it a “hyper-skeletal” Bill giving “extraordinary powers” to Ministers and, importantly, says:

“Ministers, not Parliament, will be responsible for determining what stays, what goes and what, if anything, is to replace what goes.”


I wish to touch on two issues, the first of which is devolution. The Bill does not just take powers from Parliament; it also takes powers from the devolved Administrations. It un-devolves powers. Clause 2 allows UK Ministers to defer the guillotine until 2026, but Ministers in the DAs, which have previously held powers over many of these areas, are not able to defer the guillotine. I realise it will not worry the Government, but it is almost certain that the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament will not grant legislative consent.

On transport, this massive clearance sale of EU laws creates uncertainty. We do not know which will go and which will stay. The dashboard currently has 424 transport laws. When will the full list be published? Businesses must know where they stand: lack of democracy is compounded by a lack of transparency. How can we be debating a Bill which gives Ministers powers to change or repeal thousands of pieces of legislation, but we do not know how many and we do not know which ones. Clearly, the Department for Transport does not have the capacity to deal with this avalanche. This is the department that got 20 years behind in updating maritime legislation in line with our international treaty commitments. Rail cancellations and delays are at an all-time high, but the department does not have the time to introduce the Williams-Shapps reforms. It cannot find the time for long overdue legislation to regulate e-scooters. Our vehicle manufacturing industry risks terminal decline, but the Government cannot find time to update our vehicle standards legislation to bring it into line with the suite of EU vehicle safety regulations introduced last year. Those regulations save lives, and they help our manufacturers who need our standards to mirror those in the EU, which is their main export market. Over 4,000 pages of this legislation relate to aircraft safety, and I have yet to find anyone in the aviation sector who wants a comma of it changed. But the Government did find time last year to consult on their proposal to reduce our right to claim compensation for cancelled internal flights—an example, I think, of one of our Brexit freedoms.

Three years ago, the Government embarked on creating 32 common frameworks to regulate the way this legislation is dealt with alongside devolved Administrations. It was supposed to take a year; it has taken more three years. Finally, transposing EU law into UK law over a period of years is a reasonable aim; dealing with 4,000 pieces of legislation in 10 months by ministerial diktat is not. Either this Bill is a result of massive incompetence, or this is what totalitarianism looks like.