Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

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

It is a positive delight to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and it was refreshing to hear that strong defence of his position—to say that we will make Brexit work is frankly ludicrous for all the reasons he set out.

In the midst of a climate emergency, a nature crisis and a cost of living scandal, this reckless Government are introducing a Bill that is not only a bureaucratic nightmare, sucking away limited time from civil servants who should be able to address the critical issues that the country faces, but is purely ideological and can set alight vital environmental, worker and consumer standards in a bonfire of regulations.

All of this is happening because the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), was so obsessed with purging our statute book of the European Union, but that is legislation that UK MEPs will have scrutinised, amended or supported. I know that because I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years. I can tell the Government that UK MEPs will have had a big part in shaping that legislation. After listening to two of the Government Members who spoke, I am not sure where they have been over the past 20 or 30 years, but it is almost as though they do not know that we had UK Members of the European Parliament. It is almost as though they did not know that environmental legislation, for example, was made through co-decisions, so we had a real say, or that the UK was a leader in some of this stuff and that we had a big role to play in the Council of Ministers, too.

All of that is now being thrown out. REACH, for example, controls or restricts the use of hazardous chemicals and ensures that manufacturers and importers not only understand, but manage the risks associated with their use. Although those regulations are directed at businesses, they are crucial for protecting human and environmental health while also setting rules on, for example, animal testing. What is more, REACH has already been amended through secondary legislation to make it operable in a domestic context. It has already received huge input from the UK through its MEPs and the Council of Ministers. The Bill fails to recognise the importance of that regulation. The Government are prepared to see it fall. That threatens public health, diverges from the EU system of approval and could lead to yet more, for example, animal testing in proving the safety of chemical products for export. This is bad law-making.

The former Secretary of State said in his ministerial statement on the Bill that it would

“fully realise the opportunities of Brexit”.

If he were here, I would ask him, in all seriousness, to tell me for whom those opportunities would be, because all I can see from where I am standing is the opportunity for Ministers to unilaterally strike out legislation that offends their sensibilities—potentially taking us back decades—without giving any indication of which laws will stay and which will go, underlining all the uncertainty for business, which others have mentioned. Simply being derived from the EU does not make laws bad, so this is irresponsible lawmaking of the highest order.

First, as other hon. Members have said, the sunset clause at the start of the Bill will automatically revoke legislation on 31 December next year if it is not already explicitly being retained, replaced or amended. That will create a totally unnecessary cliff edge and could lead to significant gaps in our legislative framework if laws fail. In other words, it is legislative vandalism. I assume that the Government do not actually intend a legal vacuum come January 2024, although who knows? However, that is what will happen as a result of this clearly unreasonable timeline, as many of the Government’s own Members have emphasised. It is simply not a sensible approach to mobilising Departments to act.

Furthermore, although the Bill sets out that there can be a later deadline of 2026 for some laws, neither the threshold nor the process for arriving at that point has been outlined. It is not clear, for example, whether it will be a decision for Secretaries of State to make for themselves. Worse still, the power appears not to be available to the devolved Administrations.

Secondly, clause 15 will allow Ministers to revoke or replace legislation with similar or alternative provisions that they consider “appropriate”. These are far-reaching provisions that have been described as conferring a “do whatever you like” power on Ministers. The Bill will fundamentally undermine parliamentary scrutiny because its role in revoking secondary legislation will essentially become discretionary. As hon. Members have eloquently said, if the Government choose to do nothing, the legislation will simply drop off the statute book.

Thirdly, there are wide-ranging impacts of the Bill that we simply do not yet understand because the Government have utterly failed to produce an impact assessment on the environment, on workers’ rights, on businesses or indeed on devolved competences.

Fourthly, as I have said, the Bill will come at a huge cost to the Treasury and create a massive burden for Departments at a time when they are already under enormous strain to provide basic services and are being warned by the Chancellor that they will have to make so-called efficiency savings when we know that there is nothing left to cut.

In that context, it is hard to imagine how the Secretary of State can possibly think that launching this deeply complex and totally unnecessary programme makes any sense at all. As other hon. Members have said, the Government’s retained EU law dashboard contains more than 2,400 pieces of law across 300 distinct policy areas and 21 sectors of the economy. This is an enormous piece of work that will take a herculean effort to deliver. The Government seem to be relying on a “trust us” mantra, but giving huge powers to Ministers on a “trust us” basis is a bad way to legislate.

The Bill will entrench the Government’s move towards deregulation. Although Ministers can replace laws with alternative provisions, the Bill states explicitly that they cannot increase what it calls “the regulatory burden”. I simply point out that one person’s regulatory burden is someone else’s protection of human and environmental rights. “Burden” is defined as including

“a financial cost…an administrative inconvenience…an obstacle to trade or innovation…an obstacle to efficiency”

and so on. An administrative inconvenience? I mean, come on! The protection of people, our environment, animal rights and human health has to be more important than something that the Government themselves define simply as an administrative inconvenience.

I was reflecting, as one does, on the 2019 Conservative manifesto, which included a clear commitment to “maintain high standards”. Hon. Members have repeatedly reassured us in this place that the Government will not weaken those standards post Brexit. Our concerns have been dismissed, brushed aside and ridiculed, yet the famous clause 15 absolutely makes the thrust of the Bill clear. Eroding regulations, or at least not increasing them, is built into it because they are not allowed to be strengthened, for all the reasons I have set out.

These are laws that have a very real impact on the lives of our constituents, ensuring that they are safe at work, that they are not subject to discrimination, and that they are able to spend time with their children—time that we know is fleeting and precious. The former Secretary of State has often made known his disdain for workers’ rights, but I think he has failed to understand the meaning of rights in the sense that they are universal and for everyone to enjoy, whatever their job is. It is not, as he has said, about some rights for some people but not for others.

The Bill constitutes the most significant threat to environmental law in recent history. As I have said time and again in this place, nature is at crisis point. The latest “Living Planet Report”, published just a few weeks ago, reveals that wildlife populations have plummeted by almost 70% globally in the past 50 years, a decline so severe that the World Wildlife Foundation warns that it

“puts every species at risk, including us.”

In the UK, we have lost almost half of our biodiversity since the industrial revolution—more than any other G7 country. That horrifying decline is blamed on our kick-starting intensive agriculture and industrialisation, or what Professor Andy Purvis describes as

“the mechanised destruction of nature in order to convert it into goods for profit.”

Hundreds of species are at risk of disappearing from our shores altogether. It is essential that we change that picture as a matter of urgency and restore our natural world, on which all life depends, but the Bill is going in the opposite direction.

I want to say a few final words about animal welfare, because it has not been mentioned much today. I am deeply concerned about the status of our major animal welfare laws, 80% of which are EU-derived and which the UK played a leading role in negotiating. These laws include bans on rearing hens in battery cages, the use of hormones in cattle and the import of products made from dog and cat fur, as well as covering the hunting and trapping of wildlife. Those are all deeply emotive issues about which we know our constituents feel hugely strongly.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am glad that the hon. Lady is raising the issue of animal welfare, which is extremely important. I hope that the Minister, when he sums up the debate, will assure us that the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill will return to the House, and that some of the other Brexit commitments that were given—for instance, that we would ban the export of live animals for slaughter and fattening—will indeed be realised.

[Caroline Lucas]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I hope very much that the Minister will give us that guarantee.

The Environment Secretary reportedly told the Conservative party conference that his Department would become an “economic growth” Department. That, I think, is a ludicrous statement, because it fails to understand that the economy is reliant on and embedded within nature, not external to it. Indeed, as the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review makes clear,

“Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature.”

In the light of that, I urge the Government not only to drop this dangerous Bill, which prioritises deregulation and reducing administration for businesses above our environment, but to drop their entire attack on nature. What we need right now is positive action. The leaders’ pledge for nature needs to be honoured, and the COP26 presidency needs to go forward into COP27 with positive measures, not the kind of aggressive policy that is summed up in this Bill.