Draft Road Vehicle Emission Performance Standards (Cars and Vans) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Road Vehicles and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (Type-Approval) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 General Committees

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Howarth. I certainly hope that Punxsutawney Phil will be along soon, because if this is not “Groundhog Day”, it is just a failed and unfunny joke that is being practised on the people we represent. We are once again debating legislation that we need and already have, but that we are going to get rid of and replace with identical legislation, except for the wee bits we have to change because we are doing something utterly bonkers with the constitution. There are still about 300 of these pieces of legislation to come from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs alone, so we will be spending an awful lot of time doing very similar things to achieve something that is not sensible in the first place—taking back control by doing exactly the same thing but giving it a different name.

That is an incredible use of the millions of pounds spent on consultants, the thousands of new civil servants hired, and the hours and hours spent here doing the legislative equivalent of watching paint dry. This is all for the sake of a last hoorah at the echoes of global significance. We lost an empire, could not find a role and decided to dive off a cliff, all because of a sense of British exceptionalism that is unsupported by evidence or analysis—an empty, cracked and broken bell that peals only in the imagination of fervent Brexiters.

But let us pass this legislation, which we already had but did not like because some people suspected that it might have been imposed on us. Let us prepare for a chaotic exit from the EU that was brought even closer by yesterday’s manoeuvrings by a Prime Minister who cannot control a Government that barely exist, and that are surviving only because—

[The Chair]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, but she is making a speech about the process rather than the regulations that we are considering. She is perfectly entitled to do that, but the Committee would be grateful if she moved on to the substance of the regulations.

[Deidre Brock]

I will. Forgive me, Mr Howarth, but I sometimes get to the point where I need to vent my frustration at the nonsense that goes on in this place.

Let us pass this legislation so we continue to have some standards on the emissions of vehicles and some control over the quality of motor vehicles, for a while at least, until some maverick Minister decides to remove them all. To cut to the chase, this is rushed legislation with no impact assessment and, like so much of what we are doing, it is needed only because of the chaos caused by the mad dash to Brexit.

There is no impact assessment, because the Department reckons that one is not needed, but the Transport Secretary’s track record does not instil confidence in that judgment. Without a proper policy trail or proper thought about what we are doing, we are asked to nod this legislation through. Proceedings in this place are descending into full-blown farce, so the SNP will abstain on the two statutory instruments.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Deidre Brock]

I have finished my speech.