Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I will speak as a trade unionist, taking up the point made by the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). From the trade union point of view, I have been inundated with briefings from individual unions, including my own, which is Unison, the TUC, etc. All of them have the wishful hope that any legislation that comes before this House would be about improving standards and moving to the best possible, as he said. Unfortunately, all the briefings I have received are about the risks, rather than the benefits, that accrue from this legislation.

The list is almost endless; other hon. Members have mentioned them, but I will run through a few: risks to the right to paid annual leave, limits to working time, health and safety protections, prevention of less favourable treatment for part-time workers, guarantees and protections for parental leave, TUPE rights, discrimination laws, equal pay and maternity, paternity and adoption protections —it goes on and on. There is fear out there about what this legislation can do.

Many trade unionists voted for Brexit. They will have voted on the basis of the slogan “taking back control”—that is the reality of it—and they will have been convinced by some of the arguments about reasserting national sovereignty and the argument that decisions should be taken by this Parliament rather than the EU. However, I do not by any means think they voted for a massive transfer of powers to Ministers on the scale seen in this legislation.

This Bill asks trade unionists for a leap of faith. It asks them to put trust in Ministers on both the sunset clause, to be able to include continuation of or improvement on all the existing legislation, and the scrutiny process in this legislation, which is largely based on delegated legislation. Even in the best of worlds, particularly when the Government are revoking the Lords’ amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 on the use of the super-affirmative process by which delegated legislation can be amended, that is a leap of faith too far.

That leap of faith relies on trust in a Government and a party that has been attacking trade union rights for 40 years and now seeks to introduce a new wave of anti-trade union legislation to undermine the right to strike itself. It also asks trade unionists to put their confidence in Ministers who in many instances do not survive a fortnight in office, and to put trust in Government and Ministerial decisions in the current industrial climate, with the Government cutting trade unionists’ pay and about to introduce another round of austerity.

In all the briefings I have received, there is a complete lack of trust in the Government’s competence to administer that transfer of legal powers. Mention has been made time and again of the 2,700 individual instruments. I agree with hon. Members who spoke of their lack of confidence in the Government even being able to survey the full range of instruments comprehensively. To put it in context, this is a Government who have announced the cutting of 91,000 civil service jobs in the coming period. It is very difficult to have confidence in the Government administering this whole process when they are decimating the civil service and removing that administrative expertise.

I urge the Government to think again about the detail of this Bill. I will vote against it today, because it is just not viable at the moment. Concern has been expressed on both sides of the House about the unrealistic sunset clause. The hard and fixed deadline of the sunset clause will not work. Even with the elements of flexibility contained in the Bill, it is hard to see how we can give assurance to our constituents that all their individual rights will be protected.

I have mentioned the concern within the trade union movement. I cannot see it having any confidence in this Government meeting those deadlines without some element of either malevolently undermining trade union rights or, following the cock-up theory of history, missing individual pieces of needed legislative reform.

We now need to look clearly at the legislative scrutiny process. I am sure the House of Lords will introduce amendments, as it did on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in 2018. We want this House to be able to have thorough scrutiny, with not just the ability to reject but the ability to amend and, in answer to the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, the ability to improve legislation through delegated legislation. That means the super-affirmative process included in the EU withdrawal process.

I re-emphasise what others have said: this Bill is transferring from Parliament to Ministers a scale of decision making, authority and sovereignty that we have not seen happen in this country’s peacetime history. This is fundamental to the rights of Parliament. Members on both sides of the House should take it extremely seriously and say to the Executive, “This is too far. You need to think again.”