European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The trouble is that there is a huge gulf between the lovely statements that the Environment Secretary has made and the reality of this amendment. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) has already pointed to some of the criticisms of it, but there is also a major criticism that it only focuses on the role of central Government; it does not cover local authorities or arm’s length bodies, and moreover it seems to address only policies, not day-to-day activities. Those are two big problems.

[The Solicitor General]

The hon. Lady deals with the nub of the issue, and I shall address those particular points in turn. While she makes an important point about the reach of this provision, my main intention is to try and replicate what were general EU principles in the same way, to create the framework in domestic law that both she and I would embrace and which will allow the development of statutes here in Parliament and the policies that will I think in very large measure deal with the issues she is concerned with. [Interruption.] I am sorry that she is shaking her head; I am doing my very best and I will explain in further detail.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we will bring forward an environmental principles and governance Bill in draft form in autumn of this year to deliver those proposals, with the introduction of a Bill early in the second Session of this Parliament. For this reason we warmly welcome the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in lieu of the amendment tabled by Lord Krebs. Despite the good intentions behind Lords amendment 3, we cannot accept it. It would create legal uncertainty; it does not take into account that a significant proportion of environmental legislation and policy is devolved.

That is one of the issues I wanted to address directly to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). As we have seen today, we have already had a number of tensions about devolution, and the Government therefore tread very carefully in the field of domestic law before expanding too widely upon policy areas that are rightly the province of Edinburgh, of Cardiff and indeed, when the Assembly sits, of Stormont.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

My right hon. Friend is right. He was an outstanding Minister in the Department and I am grateful to him for his continued passion for the causes he represents so eloquently.

The amendment in lieu provides further reassurance for the House and sets out that the Government will publish draft legislation no later than six months after Royal Assent to this Bill.

[Caroline Lucas]

On that point of timing, there is a real problem, particularly if we end up with no deal, because then we would not have a watchdog and the principles in place fast enough; we would have a yawning governance gap. What measures is the hon. and learned Gentleman planning to put in place as a contingency in the event of no deal, and in particular will he look at having a shadow body, just as there was a shadow climate change committee, that would get up and running as soon as possible?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Djanogly]

I accept that business wants consistency and answers, and that it wants to know which way it is heading. However, even under the amendment it would not have that, so I still say that we should stick with the Prime Minister, who has her plan.

The Lords amendment on the customs union is a more complicated scenario, as it does not mandate us to join a customs union, as the amendment to the Trade Bill would. Rather, the Lords’ proposal in this Bill is simply that a Minister should lay a report outlining the steps taken to negotiate a customs union. In theory, therefore, the Minister could comply simply by reporting that steps had been taken, even though they were leading nowhere. On the other hand, I appreciate that having this amendment would give some comfort that the Government had not written off a customs union as a fall-back if Brussels were to reject the Prime Minister’s proposals. It also makes a statement that this House rejects the concept of a hard Brexit—a lesson that needs to be understood by many Members of this House.

However, it has been put to us by the Prime Minister that any vote on this issue will, in her opinion, seriously undermine her negotiating position in Brussels. I was told directly that such an amendment could lead Mr Barnier to throw out the Government’s negotiating proposals on the basis that the EU could say that it was being manipulated by them. I would dispute that interpretation, but I also accept that it is ultimately the Prime Minister who is going to negotiate for us on what I believe will be a fair basis.

Furthermore I recognise the Government’s concession a couple of days ago, after no little debate, in allowing the Lords amendment if the words “customs union” were changed to “customs arrangement”. That also needs to be put into the context of the Government’s concession on Northern Ireland in the amendments to Lords amendment 88. Importantly, those amendments require everyone to act with regard to the December 2017 UK-EU joint report. So I suggest that, if we add the “customs arrangement” wording to the Irish compromise in the joint report, which will need to be applied throughout the UK, and throw in the Irish backstop proposals for good measure, we will be much closer to a customs arrangement resembling a customs union than we were before. I note that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and various other hon. Members have made the same point.

For all those reasons, and despite all the confusion, the lack of policy and the Brexiteer antics, I have decided to back the Prime Minister in her June EU meetings, and I will vote with the Government on these amendments.

[Caroline Lucas]

I rise to put on the record my support for all seven still contested Lords amendments, but given that we are so short of time I will primarily focus on Lords amendment 3 and the environment. I am surprised that the Government have not accepted the amendment given that all it does is seek to give effect to the Government’s own much-vaunted environmental ambitions. In a written statement to the House in January, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explained that the Government’s 25-year environment plan will be underpinned by

“a world-leading environmental watchdog, an independent, statutory body, to hold Government to account for upholding environmental standards.”

To me, that means at least a watchdog with a bite as well as a bark, not a toothless, neutered, three-legged mutt of a watchdog that cannot even impose financial penalties, much less launch legal action. However, that was all that the Environment Secretary’s overhyped and deeply underwhelming consultation was able to offer when it was belatedly published on 10 May.

Lords amendment 3 seeks to give the watchdog at least a few teeth by giving effect to the claim repeated by Government Members that withdrawal from the EU will not lead to any dilution of environmental standards. Given that, I genuinely do not understand why the Government are objecting to the Lords amendment and instead supporting amendment (a) in lieu, which represents a significant watering down of what the Lords amendment contains.

The amendment in lieu makes no provision to guarantee the independence of the environment watchdog, so we may well end up with a green poodle, not a green watchdog. We need clear guarantees that the replacements for the Commission and the European Court of Justice will be protected from Ministers’ whims. The amendment in lieu massively limits the watchdog’s remit. By deleting the overarching subsection (1) of the Lords amendment, we will lose all the essential requirements for the Government not to remove or reduce any of the rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, remedies and procedures that currently contribute to the protection and, crucially, the improvement of our environment. For example, there is no explicit guarantee that we will have a freely accessible citizens’ complaint mechanism. All such things are all vital components of an effective governance system for protecting the environment. They are not optional add-ons to this lazy attempt at standing up for nature.

As I mentioned earlier, the amendment in lieu limits the scope of the watchdog to central Government, which is absurd given that local authorities are so much responsible for areas of compliance. Ministers would be compelled only to have regard to vital environmental principles, not to act in accordance with them. All those things are good reasons to have grave concerns about this weakening of Lords amendment 3 and to say to the Government that we are running out of time to get the joined-up approach to the environment that they have promised us.

In the minute I have left, I want to make a comment about the single market and customs union. It is notable that every single economic scenario that the Government have produced shows a country that will be worse off by leaving the EU. The only real protection for jobs and the economy is staying inside the single market and the customs union, which is also the only way of achieving a frictionless border in Northern Ireland. It is quite extraordinary to see the Government proudly and loudly leading the country to a poorer future, and it is almost as extraordinary to see the shadow Front-Bench team pretty much complicit in that. The Opposition’s amendment (a) to Lords amendment 51 would not be accepted by the EU and they know it, so I make this plea: do not give this shambles of a Tory Government a free pass to a hard Brexit. It is not too late to reconsider and to back Lords amendment 51. History will not judge kindly those who put party politics first at this crucial moment, when it is precisely those with the least who most need their politicians to be brave.