Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think exact groupings of the regulatory area will be a judgment for the relevant Minister. The letter was trying helpfully to point out that there was the possibility of some increase in burdens in some areas, provided there were compensating decreases, because what we are trying to do, following our exit, is to implement regulations that work better for the UK, while maintaining our high standards. People seem to have forgotten that there can be problems with regulations.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I am two sentences behind the Minister in what she says permeating my consciousness, but on this business of the regulatory burden, how will we know and where will the discussion take place about the Ministers weighing up comparative regulatory burden—the apples and pears—and coming to a conclusion about what can be increased, enhanced and improved and what must go as a result? As she said, we will see statutory instruments for changes but, for things that simply drift away, get amalgamated and disappear, where do we see them and how do we judge whether the Minister has come to a good decision about comparative regulatory burden?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

To make progress, I should make it clear that Clause 15 is the main clause and that there are a number of amendments on that group, on which we can no doubt have a longer discussion, but I should like to make progress on transport.

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[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, has found time to join us for the debate on this group of amendments. If he will permit me, I would like to take advantage of his presence here to ask him two questions.

The first relates to the dashboard, and I think he was present for at least some of the debate about that. One of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, in concluding was that there is no mention in the Defra section of the dashboard of any legislation relating to Scotland or Wales. She was not entirely right about that; I was looking at the dashboard today and I detected 30 entries that refer to Scotland and 15 to Wales, but they are all in the section of the Defra list that deals with agricultural policy. There are many other areas that Defra covers, but, so far as I can detect, none of the legislation from the devolved Administrations has yet been listed on the dashboard. Is Defra still making efforts to discover from the devolved Administrations whether they have legislation relating to the other areas for which it is responsible? It is very important that we have a complete list, at some point, of the legislation in the different policy areas.

My noble friend Lord Krebs suggested that the figure that he gave, which I think was 1,781, was slightly doubtful. The figure can be arrived at by simple arithmetic because each item in the list is given a number, and you can work down the list. The total list at the moment contains 3,746 items. I made the number of Defra items 1,780—although perhaps my arithmetic was a bit defective—so that is a major part of the list so far, which is why the Minister’s presence here is so important. Completing the list at some point is important, so is the Minister aware of other areas where the devolved Administrations are working to complete the list to include their legislation as well?

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, suggested the great pressures that Defra officials were under to achieve what they are being asked to achieve, but what she said applies equally to the devolved Administrations. I understand that for Scotland to try to grapple with the Defra area so far as it refers to it, its manpower—or its workforce, I should say, to avoid gender problems—is at most 10% of that which Defra enjoys, and they have pressures of their own. They have work already going on which is under extreme pressure. Now, on top of that, we find that they have to detect where the retained EU law measures are that have to be looked at, so there is an immense problem for them. My supplementary to the dashboard point is: is the noble Lord satisfied that the devolved Administrations can achieve what they need to in order to identify the legislation in the other policy areas, and in a reasonable time to achieve the sunset? My impression at the moment is that they are under such pressure that it is highly unlikely they will be unable to do that.

The second question is rather different and relates to common frameworks. The Minister may be aware that of the 32 common frameworks that the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee has been dealing with, under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, 14 are Defra-related. At least some of them seem to deal with areas that are within the list that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman has concocted—“concocted” is the wrong word; I should say “put together”—including chemicals and pesticides; animal health and welfare; fertilisation regulation, which of course affects water quality; and the whole area of organic farming, agricultural support and so on. Can the Minister identify for us which of the items on the noble Baroness’s list fall within a common framework?

We have amendments later dealing with the need for special treatment of common frameworks because of the way in which they are organised and the system that exists for amendments to frameworks that are achieved by consensus. It is important that we know what we are dealing with. At some point we will have to know which of the various regulations on the Defra list are within common frameworks and which are not. Is it possible for the noble Lord to conduct an exercise to look at his list to identify which are common frameworks-related and which are not? I do not expect him to be able to achieve that today, but it would be extremely helpful to us on the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, to know what we are dealing with, particularly with regard to the amendments that we will discuss later on.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chairman, president or vice-president of a broad range of environmental NGOs. I too welcome the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, and look forward to his responses.

I support Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, on excluding the habitats and species regulations from the sunset clause. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, the habitats and species regulations are fundamental to protecting sites and biodiversity in this country and environmental protection generally, and cannot be put at risk at any price.

Protected sites under the habitats regulations are the special areas of conservation and special protection areas. They are really the jewels in the crown of nature conservation in this country. They cover a tiny proportion of the land surface, less than 5%. I would be of the view that the jewels in the crown deserve a high level of protection. The regulations have been very effective in reducing loss and damage to protected sites over the last 20 years. It used to be that on average 17% of our protected sites were damaged every year. We are now down to 0.17%, which is admirable.

Those regulations were developed by Brits in the EU. The RSPB, BirdLife International, the WWF and Stanley Johnson, the former Prime Minister’s father, all worked with the Dutch and other member states. This is not unwelcome EU regulation that was forced on us but proper, welcome protections that were crafted by Brits, and rightly so, for those important sites.

Proper protection for that small number of ultimate sites and species is vital, because they make what we care about in the countryside, and what is special in the countryside, safe. If all noble Lords think of the natural and wild places that they cherish, many of them will be special areas for conservation or special protection areas under the habitats regulations.

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[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 26 and 27. Amendment 26 moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, is about consultation. You can have your views on the value of consultation, the amount of time taken up by it and so on, but it is a normal practice in legislating in our time. To move away from it, which is what the Government will do with the replacement provisions they may move forward, seems aberrant and contrary to all normal practice.

The trouble is that the two amendments are a bit linked, because if you accept Amendment 26 it is even clearer than it is now—it is clear beyond peradventure—that you are not going to get through all that by the end of this year. I can see why the Government are driven to refusing to commit themselves to consultation, because it simply cannot be done in the time available. In my view, that is an argument in favour of Amendment 27 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I hope the Government can give some ground on the consultation issue; otherwise, we will probably get some legislative proposals that not only are very hasty but have not been tested by the people to whom they will be applied. That seems entirely contrary to our practice these days in bringing forward legislation.

On Amendment 27, I find it very odd that the Government are clinging to the sunset of the end of 2023. It seems unrealisable—some would say suicidal—and it will bring nothing but discredit on the Government when the chaos that is caused actually supervenes. In any case, whether you think that or not, just reflect on something that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, said to us in the debate on the last group of amendments. He told us that four teams of officials are working on deciding which of the instruments to be caught by the cut-off should be postponed until 2026 and which should go ahead. If you removed the 2023 sunset, you would save those four teams all their work; all they would need to do is work out what to do by 2026—or, as the noble Baroness suggests, by 2028. I am less sure of that; to my mind, it would be quite sufficient simply to remove 2023 and to leave 2026, as it is in the legislation. That offers a reasonable amount of time to carry out an exercise.

It also demonstrates that those of us tabling or supporting these amendments are not refusing to replace European Union law. Quite the contrary—we understand the basic logic behind what is being done, but we find that the timing is absurd and damaging to our economy. I hope that the Minister will respond positively, both on consultation and on removing the 2023 sunset, even if he does not find 2028 very beguiling.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 46 and 47 to the Minister’s Amendment 45, which no doubt he will speak to soon. My amendments add environmental measures to the Minister’s amendment, which exempts financial services measures. Tabling the amendment was rather a flight of mischief, because I thought that, as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and since the Minister had tabled a fine amendment to get financial services out of the Bill, perhaps I could just follow his good example. I thank him very much for giving me that good idea.

I am sure that the Minister will say he tabled his amendment because the Financial Services and Markets Bill provided a considered and more sensible approach, which it did—but we perhaps need a considered and more sensible approach for all the important issues covered by EU legislation and caught by this Bill. I am talking not just about environmental issues but about consumer and trading standards and workers’ rights. Do they not justify a more considered and sensible approach, rather than this wholesale gallop towards a self-imposed deadline for a constantly shifting number of pieces of law, as listed on the dashboard, which continues to change and presumably will do so right up to the arbitrary deadline? It is a gallop that is diverting huge amounts of civil servants’ time, and all because a few Conservative MPs are allergic to anything that has “EU” in it.