Draft Financial Services (Miscellaneous) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 General Committees

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. Once again, the Minister and I are discussing a statutory instrument that makes provision for a regulatory framework after Brexit in the event of us crashing out without a deal. On each occasion, my Front-Bench colleagues and I have spelt out our objections to the Government’s approach of using secondary legislation to fulfil that process.

As the Minister has said, we are reaching the end of the process or, as Churchill might have said, the end of the beginning. This is one of the last few statutory instrument Committees that I will address before we perhaps leave the European Union at the end of the month. We have had some 25 or 26 debates—my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) has shared the burden with me. I place on record my thanks to my staff, particularly Sophia Morrell in my office and Mary Partington in the shadow Chancellor’s office, for their assistance with the process. It has been technical and burdensome, so the support of dedicated staff has been essential. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Withington and for Colne Valley for their support and attendance.

It has been a long process for us all, including the Minister and his staff. It is a source of some frustration that the Government held a vote to prevent us crashing out only last week—we wanted that to happen many months ago. Technically, we are debating secondary legislation that the Government have stated that they will never allow to be needed, but these are not normal times. I also note that we have not received a new date for the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill to return to the Commons. Will the Minister tell us whether there is any plan for it to return?

The statutory instrument demonstrates the scope of what the Government have attempted to carry out in the process. The pressure of scrutiny has been immense and, at this late stage, we seem to have been presented, in a way that is difficult to analyse, with a substantial wrap-up item that contains dozens of individual changes to previous statutory instruments. The Minister has shed some light on the source of the amendments and has been candid in saying that some reflect deficiencies in the original instruments that we have passed, but they are similar in scope to the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill and go to the core of our critique of the process.

Surprisingly, I note from the explanatory memorandum that the SI was originally tabled as a negative instrument. That decision was subsequently declined by the European Statutory Instruments Committee, or sifting Committee, hence our debate under the affirmative procedure today. I am minded to vote against it for that reason, on principle, but if the Minister agrees, a better way forward might be for him to write to me to set out, in his view, the balance between the drafting errors and the technical amendments contained in the instrument, and to place a copy in the Library so there will be complete transparency for all hon. Members as to exactly what it contains and relates to.

[The Chair]

In the absence of other hon. Members queuing up to contribute, I call the Minister to reply.