Draft Electronic Commerce and Solvency 2 (amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 General Committees

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I apologise to the Minister—apparently he missed me last week in Committee when I missed an SI. I will make sure not to disappoint him today by asking a question. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East said, we are coming to the end of the long series of SI Committees that we have served on. What a waste of parliamentary time they will have been if we, hopefully, get a deal. I also pay tribute to the civil servants who have spent hours and days of their valuable time on them, rather than their day jobs. A lot of the SIs are formed in the Treasury, but from speaking to former civil servants who I knew as a Minister, I know that civil servants across Whitehall are focused on these matters, so it is affecting their day jobs.

I will make a couple of points. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East raised the issue of overseas territories. In paragraph 4 of the explanatory memorandum, “Extent and territorial application”, it says:

“The territorial extent of this instrument is the United Kingdom…The territorial application of this instrument is the United Kingdom.”

Could the Minister touch on the overseas territories, such as Gibraltar and others, and how they will be affected or covered by the regulations?

I accept that the regulations are in preparation for a no deal, but in terms of their extent, what evaluation has the Treasury made of the number of contracts that will be caught by the regulations? In that context, what information has been put out to those companies, businesses and individuals about their possible effects when they come in? Many people will obviously want a deal, and are assuming that we will have one, but if we do not, the regulations will hit them straightaway if they are not careful. I wonder what preparation the Treasury has done for that. Some numbers would perhaps give us an understanding of the possible effects.

The Minister used the phrase “a limited period of time”. I am not sure that that is a legal definition. What evaluation has the Treasury made of how long the period would last, and what did he mean by “a limited period of time”?