Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between David Davis and Emma Hardy

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

One of the loveliest plaudits I have had since becoming a Member of Parliament is to be named as a species champion for the brimstone butterfly. If I had longer, I would tell the House about what a beautiful butterfly it is and how it can be conserved.

This debate reminds me of my daughter’s favourite film, “The Lorax”, which I have seen many, many times. The Lorax stands and speaks for the trees. Today I am speaking not only for the trees but for nature. There are very legitimate concerns about the impact of revoking all retained EU law, and those concerns come from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Butterfly Conservation, Buglife, Plantlife, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the Bat Conservation Trust and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust. These are not radical or militant groups. They are not interested in the rights and wrongs of Brexit, and many were in existence long before the UK even joined the EU. Their intervention is unprecedented. These are mainstream conservation charities that rely on their membership, which I know personally is comprised of people with completely different political beliefs who share a common desire to improve and support nature. When the RSPB calls this Bill “an attack on nature,” we have to listen.

The Government created the category of retained EU law to ensure continuity after leaving the EU, and their deadline is arbitrary. Anyone would think the Prime Minister is more concerned about the upcoming local elections and the impending general election than about doing the right thing. The Bill flies in the face of common sense. Rushing to get rid of legislation without the time or the capacity to consider properly what we might want to keep does not make sense. As has been repeatedly pointed out in this debate, the Minister is not even aware of all the legislation that we might be getting rid of. It feels as though the Government are intent on cutting their nose off to spite their face. This is childish and it is another example of the Prime Minister putting the needs of his Brexit extremists ahead of what is right for our country.

The Environment Secretary had told the Environment and Climate Change Committee that 1,000 pieces of legislation were possibly involved, but we know that that figure has doubled, and the Minister is unable to give a final figure. If we do not know how much legislation is impacted, how can we possibly consider what we want to keep? Let us look at what is at risk. The environmental protections at risk include the highly effective habitats regulations, which protect some of most threatened and rare species and their habitats from the impacts of inappropriate development and persecution; the water framework directive, which regulates water pollution prevention and drives forward quality improvements in rivers and lakes; and the plant protection products regulations, which provide protection for all the environment and human health from pesticides.

Of course, what we want is to strengthen and not destroy, but this Bill makes a nonsense of the country’s environmental targets and commitments, and the Environment Secretary knows it. The confusion in this Government is shown by the fact that, on the one hand we have the new statutory English biodiversity targets published under the Environment Act 2021, which add to the pre-existing target of having 30% of the country protected for wildlife by 2030, while on the other hand DEFRA is consumed by a scramble to redraft regulations that have taken decades of work and expert consultation to evolve, under the direction to “lessen environmental burdens”. Like the rest of government, DEFRA is pulling in two directions at the same time.

Clause 15 prevents redrafting by precluding any that would “increase the regulatory burden”, even if these burdens that we are so worried about increasing amount to only an administrative inconvenience. It is crystal clear that the only outcome can be a weakening of environmental protections for our air, soils and water, and an increase in the loss of biodiversity. I believe that the public really care about this. The membership of all those organisations, right across the whole of our country, in every constituency, care too. We are a nation of animal lovers and we want the air we breathe and the waters around us to be clean. If we do not know what we are getting rid of, how it may have an impact and what difference it might make, how can we be sure we are doing the right thing? I was always taught that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. So will the Government just calm down, focus and get it right? Our country will pay the price if they do not.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will be brief. My arguments will be simple and they will go straight to amendment 36.

When the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) spoke, I had a flash of déjà vu, back to the days when I co-operated with his father, thwarting the Blairite attempts to bypass Parliament some years ago. It came back to me that his father and I also shared a view on the European Union, with both of us knowing that it was undemocratic. We knew that both from ministerial experience and because we had read out history; Monnet and Schuman had designed it to be undemocratic, which was why we wanted to leave.

I say to the Minister, given what was said before from the Front Bench, that I come at this as a convinced and campaigning Brexiteer. I remind the House, given the substance of this Bill, that I resigned from Cabinet to preserve the right to diverge from the EU. So I agree with the aims of the Bill, but I also agree with the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith), about its effectiveness in delivering those aims. I voted and campaigned to improve democracy; I wanted to take back control in order to give it to Westminster, not to Whitehall. However, that is what we have here.

When the Minister was speaking earlier, she talked about the consultations, but they were not with us—they were with the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Departments of State and not with us. But we are the people who are responsible for this legislation. What is more, we are being asked to sign a blank cheque—one might almost say a pig in a poke—because we do not even know how many pieces of legislation are going through on the back of this Bill, let alone what they are. That, of course, is not democratic. We have heard the anoraks talking about this SI Committee, that sifting Committee and so on. That is not the Floor of this House. These issues are sufficiently important—some of them, not all of them—to be debated in the Chamber. Just glancing down the list, I see: aviation safety; compensation rules; insider trading; protecting a pensioner’s payout when a company goes bust—I cannot think of anything more significant to our constituents than that; and preventing the trafficking of illegal weapons. These are substantive issues that need to come to us.