Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Scottish Parliament has been reluctant to give legislative consent motions to any Brexit-related legislation because of the politics of the SNP. That is a view that it has taken because it wanted to remain in the European Union—as the SNP, to its credit, argues for firmly and clearly on these Benches. The SNP is rather clearer about this state of affairs than the socialist friends we have in here who like to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. That inevitably means that, in my discussions with the devolved Administrations, there has not necessarily been a meeting of minds with the Scottish Parliament. But that is to be expected. This Bill in fact returns powers to the devolved Parliaments, because it gives them the authority to reform and repeal EU law too. They will be the decision makers over those areas that are devolved, so we are increasing devolution.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

The right hon. Gentleman will of course accept that the Welsh Government have similar concerns to those of the Scottish Government. The Welsh Government are run by the Labour party, which is a Unionist party. Indeed, the Counsel General of the Welsh Government, Mick Antoniw, has said:

“As currently drafted, this legislation could see UK Government Ministers given unfettered authority to legislate in devolved areas.”

These concerns are being expressed not just on the nationalist Benches but among Unionist colleagues.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I know from my previous experience that His Majesty’s Government will observe the Sewel convention in relation to this. There may be occasions on which, for simplicity, the devolved authorities want the Westminster Parliament to move ahead with something on which everybody agrees, but what is devolved is devolved and the devolved Administrations will have the right to pursue it.

This Bill is not only one of constitutional importance that will get our statute book tidied up but one of massive opportunity. It presents an opportunity, not necessarily to do any one big individual thing—like the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which can change Solvency II involving billions of pounds for the economy—but to go through every single individual issue in detail, one by one, so that we can see, bit by bit, those rules that have made our businesses less competitive, those regulations that have put our businesses under more pressure and those intrusions that have made people’s lives less easy. We will be able to sweep those away, and we will be doing so in a proper constitutional process.

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[Brendan O’Hara]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I could not agree more with what he says. He is right to say that the way Scotland has been treated by this Government is disgraceful and it cannot continue, and this power grab will be called out for what it is.

Let me ask the Minister this: what would happen if the Scottish Parliament decides that we will remain aligned to the European Union and we ban the sale of chlorinated chicken, but this place decides that cheap, imported, chlorine-washed chicken is acceptable? Exactly what power will the Scottish Parliament have to stop lorryloads of chlorine-washed poultry crossing the border and appearing on our supermarket shelves? Similarly, what happens if the UK agrees a trade deal that sees the UK flooded with cheap, factory-farmed, hormone-injected meat but our Scottish Parliament decides to protect Scottish consumers and Scottish farmers by adhering to existing standards and protections? Can he guarantee that the Scottish Government will be able to prevent that inferior quality, hormone-injected meat from reaching Scotland’s supermarkets? What happens if the Scottish Parliament decides that it will stick by long-established best practice in the welfare and treatment of animals but Westminster chooses to deregulate? Can he give a cast-iron guarantee that the Scottish Parliament will be able to prevent animals whose provenance is unknown and whose welfare history is unaccounted for from entering the food chain?

Can the Minister guarantee that should this Government decide to “relax” the regulations on the labelling of food packaging but the Scottish Parliament decides to remain aligned to the EU’s rules, that this place, using the provisions in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, will not force labelling changes on Scotland and have Scottish consumers unwittingly subjected to chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-injected beef, genetically modified crops and animals of questionable provenance?

There is a genuine fear that this Bill and the power it confers on this place is a potential death sentence for the Scottish agricultural sector, which in my constituency requires a hefty subsidy to in order to manage the land, keep the lights on in our hills and glens, provide employment and stem the tide of rural depopulation, while producing high-quality, high-value beef, lamb, and dairy products. My Argyll and Bute farmers know that the lowering of food standards, the relaxation of rules on labelling and animal welfare, and the mass importation of inferior-quality products will be an unmitigated disaster for Scottish agriculture.

I know, as the Minister does, that Angus Robertson, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, has already raised these serious concerns directly with the Government. The Minister knows that if the UK Government choose to act in policy areas that are wholly devolved, they will do so without the consent of Scottish Ministers or the Scottish Parliament, and that that will represent a significant undermining of the devolution settlement.

This Bill is the starting whistle on a deregulatory race to the bottom; one in which individual citizens will surely lose out to the spivs and the speculators and, no doubt, to the “politically connected”, who will be fast-tracked into making a quick buck at our expense. Because despite the Government’s assurances, which we heard earlier, that the UK will have the opportunity to be bolder and go further than the EU in securing consumer and environmental protections, there are clauses in this Bill that will prevent Ministers from imposing any new “regulatory burden” on anyone. To me, that suggests strongly that this is headed in one direction only: to deregulation. That deregulation will make it easier to circumvent our existing legal obligations on labelling food for allergens; to row back on safe limits on working hours; to change those hard-won rights on parental leave; or to avoid paying holiday pay.

The Government will be aware of the fury that will follow should they move to weaken the existing controls on polluting substances being released into the air or to lower existing standards for water and in any way dilute the protections and defences of our natural habitats and our wildlife. It seems that for some Conservative Members there is no price too high in their desperate, deluded pursuit of the mirage of Brexit. They are prepared to put at risk our natural environment, food quality, animal welfare standards, consumer protection, workers’ rights and even our natural environment in order to achieve it.

As I said earlier, this is not a road that Scotland has chosen to go down—rather, this is a road that Scotland has been dragged down. Our nation rejected this Tory Brexit fantasy, but our democratic wishes have been ignored at every turn. This is not Scotland’s doing, but because of the constitutional straitjacket in which we find ourselves, we are having this done to us by a Government we did not elect. Thankfully, Scotland has a way out and will, as soon as possible, rejoin the European Union as an independent nation. I sincerely wish the people of the rest of the United Kingdom well in finding their way back, too.

The Government should be under no illusion that SNP Members will oppose the Bill every step of the way. Not only are the Government coming for the rights and protections that we have all enjoyed for decades, but they are coming for our Parliament as well. I urge them, even at this late stage, to perform another of their trademark, almost legendary, U-turns and abandon this disastrous Bill. Not only does it undermine the devolution settlement, but it diminishes the role of MPs, with a plan to deal with everything via secondary legislation, conveniently avoiding scrutiny measures by Parliament. A former Secretary of State said that this was taking back control, but we have to ask who is taking backing control. It is not Parliament, as the Government have gleefully announced to the press that

“the amount of parliamentary time that is required has been dramatically reduced.”

Taking back control for this Government appears to mean finding a group of a hand-picked party loyalists and putting them on a Delegated Legislation Committee, which has a built-in Government majority, so that they can bulldoze through change after change after change, as required. In the history of DL Committees, in the past 65 years, only 17 statutory instruments have been voted down—and that has not happened since 1979. While there is a role for such Committees, it is not to make wholesale and fundamental changes to vast swathes of the law, covering everything from the environment and nature to consumer protection.

As we have heard, parliamentary scrutiny is being avoided because, in their desperation or fervour to rid themselves of any European influence, the zealots at the heart of this collapsing Government have arbitrarily included a sunset clause, meaning that 2,500 laws will be removed and not be replaced. Unless the Government grant themselves an extension, those laws will simply disappear from the statute book.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the Institute for Government’s view that the time between now and the date of the sunset clause is completely insufficient, so Parliaments and the Government will be consumed with trying to replicate those laws by 2023?

[Brendan O’Hara]

That is a very good point, and it is something that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are extremely concerned about, because doing something that is utterly unnecessary will take up a great deal of their time.

The tactic is fraught with danger, as it introduces another totally unnecessary Brexit cliff edge, which will be welcomed by no one outside the inner sanctum of the European Research Group. It is further evidence of panic at the heart of the Brexit project. They know the wheels have come off and their Government are disintegrating before their eyes.

Finally, I repeat: this Bill should be withdrawn. It is a throwback to different times, and if the new Prime Minister is serious about making a fresh start and resetting relationships with Edinburgh, Brussels and the people of these islands, then abandoning this ill-judged piece of UKIP-ery would show that he is serious.

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[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), who is no longer in his place. He did a jolly good job of having to step in at short notice. I also pay my respects to the retiring Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), with whom I share Somerset in common.

I rise to support using our Brexit freedoms to design better regulation and unlock economic growth as appropriate. Regulations are obviously there for a reason, but it is right to periodically analyse them to ensure that they are doing what they were designed to do—or indeed, what we would like them to do as things change. We have that opportunity now, so as many hon. Members have highlighted, we need to ensure that the regulations that have been rolled over from the EU are bespoke to our nation. The Minister stressed this himself, saying that they really need to be working in the UK’s interests, and I agree. A lot of very sound points have been made by Conservative Members on that very matter, but I want to focus my comments on nature and the environment, which probably will not surprise Members in the Chamber.

I want to thank the Minister for meeting a group of us earlier to discuss how there are quite clearly concerns and to have open discussions. I, too, have met many outside organisations on these issues—the Green Alliance, the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Better Planning Coalition, Greener UK—but also many businesses and farmers, because these issues affect all those categories. All of those people and, I believe, Conservative Members as well—particularly those of us from the Conservative Environment Network, which is doing really good work in this sphere—are just seeking assurances that the Bill will not weaken the UK’s environmental protections.

I was reassured by what the Minister did say at the Dispatch Box, because he openly commented that environmental protections will be maintained. I take that as a signal that he means it and, indeed, that the door is open to work on this—and maybe our Green party Member, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), will be working on it, too—so that we get to a place that everyone is happy with.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am sure the hon. Member will realise that some of us are less happy than she is about this approach. Would it not be better for the British Government to bring forward alternative proposals on a sector-by-sector basis, as the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), said in his remarks, and then the whole House can discuss and scrutinise those alternative proposals, as opposed to giving the Government a blank cheque?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for that, but we have had assurances from the Minister that he is going to engage with us. I think it behoves us all to get involved in that, and to represent all the people who are coming to us, because there is a great deal of knowledge that I am sure the Minister will be open to discussing with us.

I particular want to set out for the House this Government’s record on the environment. We are the greenest Government we have ever had. We have moved further and faster on environmental issues than any Government, not least through our Fisheries Act 2020, Agriculture Act 2020 and Environment Act 2021, which is a groundbreaking piece of legislation. The rest of the world was watching us as we brought this through our Parliament, and they are still watching us now to see how we are going to implement all its measures, because it does put us on a sustainable trajectory for the future. Indeed, we on the Conservative Benches did all vote for it.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I listened to the new Prime Minister’s speech this morning, in which he promised to fix “mistakes”, acknowledged that work was needed to “restore trust” in the Government, and said that his Government would be marked by “integrity, professionalism and accountability”. One problem with the Bill, however, is that it will hugely remove the Executive’s accountability to Parliament. That is one of the mistakes that need to be fixed by the new Prime Minister, because it was prompted by ideology and desperation to point to some so-called Brexit benefits, when the overwhelming body of opinion—from business to the trade unions—says that it is a mess that will lead to legal uncertainty and more chaos. The author of the Bill has gone; I think the Bill should go with him.

Let us make no bones about it. The departing Prime Minister has left an almighty mess behind her because she pursued an economic policy that the vast majority of people, including the incoming Prime Minister, advised her against. The vast majority of people are advising against the Bill, including the majority of parties in this House, business, the trade unions, legal experts, all sorts of third-sector bodies and the devolved Governments. My plea to the Prime Minister, given the promises that he made this morning, is not to make the same mistake with the Bill that his predecessor made with the economy.

There are so many problems with the Bill that it is hard to know where to start. Other hon. Members have outlined some of them, but there are seven that I want to raise.

The first problem is that the Bill represents a huge transfer of power from Parliament to the Executive. That is hardly taking back control. Taking back control was supposed to be about the people of the United Kingdom and this Parliament, not the Executive. The Bill will give Ministers incredible powers to legislate on areas that affect our everyday lives without any meaningful democratic input.

The second problem is that the Bill means that if Ministers want retained EU law to fall away, they need take no action at all. The decision to take no action is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, meaning that very important rights and protections could be lost, including the right to equal pay as between men and women—a pivotal change in our society—as well as food safety standards, which other hon. Members have mentioned, and workers’ rights such as a certain amount of paid holiday per year and a 48-hour maximum working week for road hauliers. Those are not the sort of rights that should just fall away, perhaps even by accident.

The third problem, which I raised in my intervention early in the debate, is that far from creating new high standards in our regulatory frameworks, the replacement legislation cannot increase standards; it can only leave them as they are or lower them. That is what clause 15(5) says. [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, but in my opinion that is what it says, and many other legal experts think so. It is not a minor detail; it is a major problem with the Bill.

The fourth problem is that reducing standards or allowing key pieces of legislation simply to lapse could risk the UK’s trading relationship with the EU at a time when we can ill afford it. I know that it was several Prime Ministers ago, but will the Government please remember the trade and co-operation agreement and their obligations under it?

The fifth problem is the fact that the proposed speed and scale of these changes—as we have heard, the Government’s retained EU law dashboard includes more than 2,400 pieces of legislation in 300 policy areas across 21 sectors of the UK—are completely unrealistic, and will inevitably result in mistakes.

The sixth point concerns the problems that the Bill poses for the devolution settlement. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) went into those in some detail so, given the constraints of time, I will not go into them in the same detail myself. The fact of the matter is, however, that in its current form the Bill will allow UK Government Ministers to act in policy areas that are devolved, and to do so without the consent of the Scottish Ministers or our Parliament, because secondary legislation does not need consent. Primary legislation needs consent, but that rule is more honoured in the breach than the observance.

[Jonathan Edwards]

As usual, my hon. and learned Friend is making a forensic speech. She will be interested to learn that more than 10,000 people marched for independence in Cardiff recently. I never thought that that would happen in my lifetime, but it is happening because of Bills like this. The people of Wales are seeing the British Government supplanting the devolution settlement, and are concluding that they have a choice between direct Westminster control and independence. That is what is happening in Wales, and I am sure it is what is happening in Scotland.

[Joanna Cherry]

Indeed, and I am pleased to say that I spent the weekend in Cardiff. It was my first visit, and I found it to be a beautiful city. I was attending the FiLiA feminist conference. I will certainly go back to Cardiff, and I should quite like to join one of those independence marches some time. Whether one is a Unionist or a nationalist, the fact remains that the mess that the Bill will create will only cause problems between Westminster and Holyrood.

That brings me to my seventh point, which concerns Northern Ireland and the impact of the Bill on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. The Government have not yet conducted a full and comprehensive assessment of retained EU law, and they have also failed to analyse which areas of retained EU law interact with or have an impact on the commitments made in article 2(1) of the protocol or, as I pointed out earlier, on the level playing field provisions of the trade and co-operation agreement. The removal of key frameworks for interpreting retained EU laws and settlement agreement legislation—including EU general principles, in clause 5, and retained EU case law, in clause 7—may have an impact on the “keeping pace” commitment associated with article 2(2). That is another area in which the Government need to go back to the drawing board.

As Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I can say that we will be scrutinising the Bill very carefully for its rights implications, and will table amendments. However, I must add that I think it is pretty much beyond amendment, and that, as I have said, the Government need to go back to the drawing board. I say to them, “Please do not pursue another dangerous ideological experiment at the cost of our constituents’ rights, and at the cost of their livelihoods.” The Bill will have a big impact on business and a big impact on workers’ rights. This is absolutely not about people, or this Parliament, taking back control; it is about executive fiat, and the sidelining of democratic scrutiny by this Parliament.

In his speech when he took office this morning, the Prime Minister said that he would put the country’s needs above politics. Well, the country does not need this, and, in fact, there is more than one country in our Union. The Government need to respect the wishes of Scotland’s voters, the wishes of Welsh voters and the wishes of Northern Ireland voters, as well as the devolved settlement.

My message to the Government is that the Bill is a mess. Yes, it is embarrassing to ditch Bills, but let us face it, the Government have had a lot of embarrassment recently and they are getting used to it. They have already ditched one Bill, the Bill of Rights; I believe it may be bouncing back soon as a result of the Cabinet reshuffle, but it is certainly possible to ditch a Bill at this stage. This Bill needs to be ditched, and the way in which we deal with retained EU law needs to be revisited completely.