Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell]

I will continue, because I have a lot to get through. I am sure that hon. Members have worked incredibly hard on their speeches, and I would like to listen to them.

As I said, we will use the Bill’s powers to ensure that our environmental law is functioning and able to drive improved environmental outcomes. The former Secretary of State did an excellent job recently meeting representatives of environmental groups alongside the environment Minister and assured them of the work that we will do. I am sure that that will continue.

As well as maximising the benefits of Brexit across the UK economy, the Bill will enable the Government to take the necessary steps to put our statute book on a sustainable footing by removing or replacing more than 2,500 laws derived from the UK’s membership of the EU, many of which are outdated and unduly burdensome. Earlier this year, the former Secretary of State—it irks me to have to say that—invited the House and members of the public to review the mass of legislation for themselves through the retained EU law dashboard, which was published in June and is available on gov.uk. That treasure trove of reform opportunities has acquired more than 100,000 views so far. I thank the public, businesses and civil society organisations for their invaluable views and input.

Together, we have identified where retained EU law must be excised from our statute book. Now, using this Bill, we will go further and faster to capitalise on the opportunities of Brexit. We will achieve that by addressing the substance of retained EU law through a sunset which means retained EU law will fall away on 31 December 2023 unless there is further action by Government and Parliament to preserve it. A sunset is the most effective way to accelerate reform across over 300 policy areas and will incentivise the rapid reform and repeal of retained EU law.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

What is the justification for allowing Ministers to scrap legislation that currently applies simply by doing nothing because of the sunset clause? I have never seen anything like it before. What is the justification for allowing law to fall away if Ministers decide, “Well, I’m not going to address it at all”?

[Dean Russell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. He was a staunch advocate of not leaving the EU, and I appreciate that that is his view. To answer the question, the goal here is that we are looking at all those laws. It is actually public on the dashboard; there is an opportunity for everybody to engage. On the framework of the Bill, there will be a Committee stage, and the ability to have parliamentary scrutiny is huge. I would make one other point, however. At what point were we able to scrutinise these laws when part of the EU? We were not. All those laws were put in without scrutiny and without the ability for us to do the work we needed to do. We are now taking back control to this country to deliver on the promises we made to the people and on the referendum they voted in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Here we go again: another piece of legislation introduced in the name of Brexit, which we were repeatedly told was about restoring Parliament’s sovereignty and supremacy, and yet one that gives Ministers absolute control over whole swathes of legislation that impact upon our national life by cutting Members of Parliament out of the process almost altogether, and the public as well. This is what the Hansard Society had to say:

“The Bill…Sidelines Parliament because it proposes to let all REUL expire on the sunset deadline unless Ministers decide to save it, with no parliamentary input or oversight.”

This is a shocking Bill. As I see it, one of the main purposes of the Bill is presentational: it is trying to remove the words “Europe”, “European” and “EU” from the statute book. It is a form of linguistic and legislative purge, which may make those who argued to leave the EU feel better, but it does not add to the sum total of human happiness. The former Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who has just left the Chamber, made it crystal clear what the aim was when he wrote to me on 13 October and said that the Bill will require Departments

“to remove unnecessary or burdensome laws which encumber business and no longer meet the Government’s policy objectives.”

I remind the House that one person’s burdensome law is another person’s safe working conditions; it is their right to take parental leave.

At a time of great uncertainty and economic difficulty, what the Bill does is simply add to the uncertainty. This point was brilliantly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). What businesses want to know is what the rules are and what the framework is, because that knowledge provides them with certainty, on the basis of which they can invest and carry out their work. The Government are doing the absolute opposite with this Bill. They are saying to every one of those businesses and would-be investors, “We just need to point out that the laws, regulations and rules that are in place today may not be in place in the same form after Christmas 2023 if we don’t get round to saving them.” I cannot think of an approach more calculated to undermine confidence in the British economy and to deter would-be investors than the one in this Bill. I point out that we are not doing very well on inward investment—we have the lowest level of inward investment in the whole G7.

Part of the problem is that we have no idea, and I do not think the Government have any idea, which bits of EU law the Government want to scrap, which bits they want to amend and retain and which bits they want to keep in their entirety. We know that there is a list; reference has been made to it. It is not a little list—it is a jolly big list, and it is found on the famous dashboard. I echo the plea made by other Members: I really hope that the Government have counted everything. To paraphrase Lord Denning’s famous phrase, now that the incoming tide of EU law has ebbed away, have Ministers and civil servants searched every estuary, every river, every tributary and every salt marsh to make sure they have found all the bits of legislation that will be subject to this Bill? It is really important that they have done so, because if they have missed anything, that bit of legislation will fall in December next year—it will disappear from the statute book, whether Ministers want it to or not.

The next thing that is objectionable about the Bill is that, for the first time I can recall, it allows Ministers to change the law of this country by doing nothing—by simply watching the clock move and the pages of the calendar fall until December 2023 comes around. Even if Government Members agree with the aim of reviewing these laws—and there is an argument to be had for that—it is extraordinary that Ministers are asking the House to give them this power. The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell), who is no longer in his place, did a good job of moving the Bill’s Second Reading having come to it very recently, but he had no answer to the point I put to him, and I have yet to hear one in the debate, about why Ministers should be allowed to get rid of law simply by sitting on their hands.

[Sir William Cash]

The right hon. Gentleman is rather avoiding the point that the legislation came in with exactly the same arrangements and was imposed upon us by the Council of Ministers, by majority vote behind closed doors, and he knows it.

[Hilary Benn]

Well, what I do know is that I sat on the Council of Ministers for seven years as a Cabinet Minister and took part in discussions and decisions about directives. That is a point the hon. Gentleman never, ever mentions; it is like everybody was locked out of the room. He makes that argument to avoid addressing what is in the Bill. Saying that something in the past was not perfect—I happen to agree with him about the fact that we were not allowed to watch the Council of Ministers at work—is not an argument for what is proposed in the legislation before us today.

What is more, are Ministers seriously arguing that, given all the pressures and the things that the new Prime Minister no doubt wants to do, civil servants should spend time going through 2,417 pieces of legislation? I say good luck to the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whose Department has 570 pieces of legislation—the Department for Transport has 424 and the Treasury has 374—and who will have between now and next Christmas to decide what on earth to do about them. While they are valiantly trying to do that, there is absolutely no provision in the Bill for public consultation and there will be no impact assessment on any changes that they are proposing to make. It takes a particular type of genius to make an enemy of worthy organisations such as the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Green Alliance and others by threatening that which we and they value in pursuit of a headline.

What about workers’ rights? What exactly is the Government’s intention, in detail, when it comes to the working time directive? We have often heard Ministers complain about some of the consequences of the working time directive, but at other times we have heard them say, “Under no circumstances will we weaken workers’ protections.” The Minister acknowledged that we have entered into certain commitments as a country—although that does not mean that the Government will keep to them, if the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is anything to go by—and that certain employment and environmental legislative commitments are engaged by the trade and co-operation agreement.

We all know that, if we act in a way that the EU thinks gives us an unfair competitive advantage, it can retaliate. How will it help economic growth if we are inviting the prospect of that happening? I listened carefully to the commitment that the Minister made from the Dispatch Box on environmental and employment laws, but I am sorry to say that it is still not clear what he means by that. It is the detail that matters, so what will be changed and what will be kept the same?

The Bill does its best to tell the courts what they can and cannot take into account when considering cases before them. The Government tried to do that previously with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and they are back to have another go. One part in particular is extraordinary; clause 7(3) proposes to amend section 6(5) of the 2018 Act by substituting it with:

“In deciding whether to depart from any retained EU case law…the higher court concerned must (among other things) have regard to…the extent to which the retained EU case law restricts the proper development of domestic law.”

What on earth does that mean? Can any hon. Member explain what the proper development of domestic law is? I think that clause 7 is trying to kick the judiciary again into being more enthusiastic about Brexit, but Ministers know that in the end, the courts will take into account the things that they think are relevant.

I will say what I think will happen after this song and dance and all the chest beating about the wonderful new freedom. The Bill has not just one sunset clause, but three: 31 December 2023, 30 June 2026 and forever. Under clause 1(2), Ministers can decide to retain EU law in perpetuity or until such time as they choose to change it. I wager, therefore, that as next December approaches, many Ministers will find lots of reasons to use clause 1(2), because they will not have had time to decide what to do with the legislation.

In conclusion, this is a bad Bill. It threatens lots of laws that people value; it creates uncertainty; it takes powers away from the House; and it allows Ministers to repeal the law by doing nothing. For all those reasons, it should be rejected.