Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

George Eustice Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake]

Lords amendment 15 stops regression on environmental standards and it is really important that it stands tonight. At the exact moment when we should be strengthening regulation to protect nature and biodiversity, the Bill does the complete opposite. I remember the debates on the Environment Bill and how we were repeatedly assured that there would be no regression on environmental standards. Without Lords amendment 15, the Bill will put all that at risk. The Government have refused to legislate to provide any guarantee that they will be protected.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is right to mention the Environment Act 2021, but is it not the case that the Act, which came after leaving the European Union, actually gives us all the powers we need to improve our environment and sets a whole new framework of targets that makes the legacy EU ones redundant?

[Olivia Blake]

I am not sure I totally agree. When I asked officials about the number of laws affected without the sunset clause, they could not give me an answer on even the number that would be affected. There is a lot more that underpins all the regulatory frameworks we work under when we are protecting our environment. I accept that the Act passed after we left the EU, but I do not believe that we are protected at the moment and that is why Lords amendment 15 is so important. If we do not act tonight to ensure we have those safeguards in place for our environmental protections, we will be undoing a lot of the good work that may have been done by the Environment Act.

However, the nature emergency is not the only one that the Bill will potentially make worse. For over a decade we have seen a decline in workers’ pay and conditions, and we have seen a cost of living crisis. People have rightly had enough, which is why we have seen rather a lot of strike action recently. Rather than address the root cause and improve pay and conditions in the workplace, the Bill puts basic workers’ rights, equality rights and paternal leave rights in the firing line.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The point my hon. Friend misses is that there is still some time between now and the end of the year. This work could be pushed through if there were the desire to do it.

This Bill is a tremendous missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity not because of Brexit per se. It is not a missed opportunity because those of us who voted for Brexit expected the will of the British people—expressed in 2016 and 2019—to be pushed forward, although that is important. It is not a missed opportunity because the unelected House has decided to try and block a Brexit-related reform, as it has consistently done. Interestingly, the amendments passed in the unelected House are all designed to frustrate the progress of the Bill and its operation, and are, by and large, although not exclusively, supported—lo and behold—by people who never wanted Brexit in the first place. It is noticeable that the overwhelming majority of people in this House who do not want the full revocation of EU laws always opposed Brexit. However, it is not about that. The missed opportunity is in not achieving supply-side reforms that would get growth for the UK economy.

We had the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box this morning—the Leader of the Opposition missed a trick here—saying how marvellous it was that the IMF had said the UK economy would grow by 0.4%. Now, I happen to think that the IMF is absolutely useless and that its forecasts are valueless—it gets them wrong the whole time—but the idea that 0.4% economic growth is a success, when inflation has only just come out of double digits, is not factually accurate. This Bill was the opportunity to get growth, but instead we are changing laws on anchovies. That seems to me to be pretty fishy, because there are other things that we could have done. That is the point.

The challenge that has been put down—it was put down by the Secretary of State herself—is what people like me would do instead. Well, there are a whole swathe of laws that it would be a good idea to remove. If we look at the EU’s basis for regulating, it takes a process approach rather than an outcome approach. This Bill was an opportunity, even with a cut-and-paste scheme, to move from a process approach to an outcome approach.

What am I talking about? I am talking about product specification regulations, of which there are dozens. No country does that; only the EU specifies products in that way. We are now keeping all those regulations, whereas we should have been getting rid of them and saying that what we want are safe products, which encourages competition and innovation and encourages us to import goods at lower cost from places other than the EU.

We should have been looking at the absolutely lunatic emissions trading scheme that we have. We heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), and Sheffield is famous for its steel. However, we have made life for steel producers in this country completely impossible. Why have we done this? Because we have very high energy costs and a mad ETS that then tries to wind round some subsidy to help lower producers’ costs. If we just had lower energy costs in the first place and got rid of the ETS, which came out of the European Union, we would do better. Where could we have done that? We were going to do it in the Bill until a Lords amendment was so unwisely brought forward.

There are also the working time regulations. It might be possible to say that some people in this Chamber, when dozing off while listening to speeches that are intolerably dull, are in fact working—it seems heroic that our Doorkeepers never doze off, considering some of the things they have to listen to. However, under the working time directive, hours when people are asleep count as work. That is an enormous burden on the NHS; it has been calculated that the working time directive costs the NHS £3 billion. We could have dealt with that in the revocations under this Bill, had the Government not lost their nerve.

What about new opportunities in food and the regulations that stop us having novel foods? You may not wish to eat novel foods, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not wish to eat novel foods. However, if there is a market for them, surely the UK should be regulating in a way that opens it up. We had a Bill in front of us that, unamended, would have allowed us to deal with novel foods swiftly by getting rid of EU regulations.

[George Eustice]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Of course I will give way to the expert on foods.

[George Eustice]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because he has made many references to the Department in which I was once Secretary of State. I have a great deal of sympathy for the argument he is advancing, and I do understand that he wanted to ensure that the concrete did not set around these EU regulations so that they just stayed in place. However, as he will know, I was a bit more sceptical than he was about the idea of a sunset clause.

In a Department such as DEFRA where 80% of the legislation is legacy EU law, there would be three broad categories. The first would be the trivial regulations involving olive oil labelling and so on, whose removal would require considerable effort but would not help business. The second category would be regulations that were a bit contentious; we would probably not want to do anything about them. The third would be the big things such as the habitats directive, which ought to be addressed, but everyone would say, “It is too difficult to do it just now.” I think it right to prioritise the bad law that needs attention, rather than getting bogged down in some of the more trivial laws when it would probably cost businesses more to remove them than to leave them in place.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

It must be said that my right hon. Friend was an excellent Secretary of State who was enormously co-operative with me, when I was in the relevant role, in trying to get DEFRA to be positive about this at a time when, as he rightly says, it was carrying a huge burden of work.

The problem is that we cannot shy away from the difficult decisions. That is what government is about, as in the old cliché “To govern is to choose.” Nature Britain, or Natural Britain, or whatever it is called, has prevented 160,000 houses from being built because of the nutrients rules resulting from a decision made by the European Court of Justice in 2018. It is all very well for Opposition Members to say that we should keep every environmental rule we have ever had, but I want my constituents to have houses, and I want other people’s constituents to have houses. We should be making those choices and putting the case to govern. That, I am afraid, is at the heart of this: a lack of decisiveness, of drive, of backbone to get things done.

I agree with my right hon. Friend that there would have been some things that were difficult. That is why the Bill contained provisions to roll things over and to say, “If you can make a good case for why this must stay, it will stay”, but the default was that it would be removed. I have mentioned the nutrients problem, and the habitats regulations are another example of rules that stop us doing things that are environmentally friendly and would benefit the environment because there may be some habitat nearby. I had to delay a decision on using waste to provide energy because of the common seal. Well, the very name of the common seal demonstrates that it is common, and that we should not be worrying about it too much when we could do something that would be enormously environmentally beneficial. The habitats directive is too dirigiste, too continental in its approach to regulating how we operate and how our economy runs.

I have already mentioned novel foods, but what about the other advantages for a modern, knowledge-based economy? What about clinical trials? I cannot tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, how pleased I am to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) lurking by the Chair, because he produced a brilliant report explaining how some of these things could be done. Why have they not been done? Did the Bill not offer a perfect opportunity for us to do them? Instead, people are appealing against rules relating to anchovies, and that really seems to me not to be the Gentleman’s Relish that we would desire. This is a loss of opportunities—an opportunity for economic growth, and also an opportunity to move away from the civil code approach to law to the common-law approach, which is fundamental.

We see this in other emerging legislation. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for a brief digression. The monstrous Energy Bill is all about regulating rather than allowing. What the repeal would have done, had it gone through, was to allow rather than regulate. This is based on the principle that wise bureaucrats—I praised civil servants earlier—really understand how business can best operate, if only people will follow the rules of those bureaucrats. What we want, according to our tradition, is an approach that says it is legal to do something unless it is specifically dangerous.

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[Stella Creasy]

This piece of legislation and the Government’s approach to these amendments are a masterclass in misdirection. Members across the House have been talking about the sunset clauses, but the honest truth is that if they are going to burn somebody’s house down, it does not matter whether they do it at the end of this year or give themselves the matches to be able to do it next year; they are still going to burn down the house. This legislation, as it is still currently drafted, gives Ministers those powers. It does not take back control from Brussels, but gives it to No. 10 and the Executive.

I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) is not in his seat, because in responding to the amendments, I want to set out a few very clear issues that I am sure Conservative Members will be thinking about having heard my initial comments. While I might be the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, I know that Brexit has happened and I know we need this piece of legislation. However, I am a democrat as well as an internationalist, and my concern is the way this legislation drives a sledgehammer through this place and through British democracy.

Let us not look at these amendments through the prism of whether we voted in a particular way in 2016, or even how we voted in the various long-drawn-out Lobby nights we had up until 2019. Let us look at what is before us: the question of how to deal with retained EU law. I am sorry the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is not in his place, because I like to think that in his mind it is like Japanese knotweed and must be rooted out at every opportunity. Whether we agree with that or not, if we are democrats, we believe that the final decision on those changes that affect our constituents should be made in this Chamber, by us, the people who were elected by our constituents to represent them in those decisions. This Bill removes that basic principle.

If the hon. Member for Stone wishes to argue that this piece of legislation somehow promotes Brexit, I have a timeshare to sell him, because it is not taking back control; it is doing the reverse. I listened to the argument he made about Lords amendment 16, that somehow bringing a list to his Committee as opposed to the Committee that will actually be looking at the legislation is somehow a win for him. I wanted gently to ask him what he will do if a law he believes should be deleted is not on that list. Will he complain bitterly? He tried that with the Secretary of State, and look where that got us.

There is a basic rule in life, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me again, shame on me.” I wish the hon. Gentleman would listen to that. Everyone in this country has been fooled by Brexit. The British economy has been fooled by Brexit. Oddly enough, Brexit has not brought the benefits that we were told it would. We have seen exports collapsing, food prices increasing, our children sitting in coaches at the border for hours on end and businesses saying that trade with Europe is now almost impossible because of the amount of paperwork that they have to deal with.

This Bill kills the idea that Brexit was somehow about taking back control and kills the claims that were made—claims that the Government, under the last but one Prime Minister, were still making in 2022—that somehow Brexit was

“returning democratic accountability to our own institutions”,

and that it had restored

“democratic control over our lawmaking”,

and given

“the power to make and scrutinise the laws that apply to us back to our Parliament.”

The Bill does the opposite.

The Government have already shown in their approach to this piece of legislation why it would be so dangerous to pass it without the amendments. Ministers have refused to appear before Committees; they have failed to respond to questions; they have been evasive about how they might use the powers—but they have already decided how they will use them. We have already seen in this place what has happened to the use of statutory instruments, which is why our colleagues in the other place are so concerned—colleagues who are passionate defenders of Brexit. The Government have used statutory instruments to push through unpopular changes on student loan charges and welfare reform, and the entirety of the covid regulations that many in this place objected to. This Bill is that process on acid. It will apply to 5,000 areas of regulation.

[George Eustice]

Is the hon. Lady not missing an important point? The tertiary legislation that came down from the European Union was largely put in place using section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972, and that provision could even, with no scrutiny at all, amend domestic legislation—Acts of Parliament; primary legislation—made in this House. The bulk would be either implementing Acts that came from the European Union or delegated Acts, about which there was no real democratic process—not even within the European Union. Where was her voice when section 2(2) of the European Communities Act was running riot with the laws made in this House?

[Stella Creasy]

I was lobbying our elected representatives in the European Union—our Members of the European Parliament—to challenge that. I am sad that the right hon. Gentleman was not in his place when I had this very discussion with the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam. Two wrongs do not make a right. Those who claimed that they wanted to wrest back control from Brussels cannot then give it away to “the blob” in Downing Street, but that is exactly what will happen.

Anybody who has sat on a statutory instrument Committee knows full well that they are the Henry Ford of democracy. MPs are chosen by Whips to sit on those Committees, like it or lump it. A Member may have concerns about the statutory instrument before the Committee, and although the Minister nods approvingly and talks about writing to them afterwards, the legislation still goes through. The most a Member might be able to do is rail against the dying of the light. The Bill will extend that process.

The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) talks about what it will apply to: not just to EU delegated legislation, but to all legislation that gives effect to it. That is a massive power grab by the Government. The amendment tabled by colleagues across the Commons and the Lords represent not anger about the outcome of Brexit but concern for the future of democracy. That is why I urge colleagues, no matter what side they were on in that debate, to proceed with caution and look at what the House of Lords is trying to do in this process. In the light of how willingly the Government have used SIs to bypass this Chamber when they have had such powers—as with covid, for example—it is not unreasonable to be concerned about how much more that process could happen.

[Stella Creasy]

As a Back Bencher who expects to continue being a Back-Bencher under whatever Government, I want power to be in this place—I believe that that is good. Giving Ministers unfettered power without appropriate checks and balances is a bit like giving a 17-year-old the keys to a Porsche and asking them just to polish it: it always ends in a democratic car crash. That is what we see before us.

The right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who is also no longer in his place, was at least honest about how he would like the Government to use those powers: to bring back chlorinated chicken, remove paid holidays and destroy the habitat directive. I do not know what he has against seals, but clearly he believes that we should be able to build houses on them. Wherever we stand on those debates, surely it is right that, if our constituents come to us about those issues, we have levers that allow us to represent their concerns, beyond trying desperately to grab a Minister during votes— there might only be one or two left if the legislation goes through—to ask them to think again.

The democratic powers that each of us was elected to exercise were our ability to table amendments, to scrutinise and to hold Governments of any colour to account. That is what the amendments would do. After all, we have already seen in how Ministers are proceeding with the powers that they believe the Bill will give them how little respect they have for their colleagues.

[George Eustice]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I am very conscious of time, so I will give way briefly, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman understands that I want to make progress.

[George Eustice]

Another point that the hon. Lady is missing is that there is already a lot of domestic legislation in these areas. Seals have been mentioned twice, but the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 is what gives seals protection in this country, not any legacy EU directive.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Stella Creasy is the last Opposition speaker, so I will give her a little latitude.