European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I speak as a member of the Constitution Committee to make it clear that the committee would say that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has spoken very lucidly for it in setting out the amendment. We are talking about provisions in Acts of Parliament—the Equality Act is one example—that implement EU obligations and would not be repealed by withdrawal or by the repeal of the European Communities Act. Yet Clause 2 opens up to the process of repeal and modification by statutory instrument provisions in UK statutes and in the legislation of the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments. These are provisions in law that are not nullified or made inoperative by the act of withdrawal; they would stay on the statute book. Of course, the legislation may contain features that do not of necessity arise from the requirements of EU directives or other EU obligations. We talk much about British gold-plating of EU measures. We will probably find in a number of measures which this clause would draw in features which were clearly not within the scope of the requirement placed on us by our membership of the European Union. The committee concluded:

“The effect is to inflate the range of domestic law—including primary legislation—in relation to which the ministerial “correction” powers … can be exercised”.


These are powers the extent and scope of which are extremely worrying to the committee.

As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, the Bingham Centre has produced a helpful analysis of many of the things that the committee was concerned about. In almost all cases, it agrees with the committee’s analysis, but, in some, it does not agree with the committee’s proposed remedies. In this case, it suggests that if we go down the route proposed by Amendment 15, there should be an amendment to Clause 6 to make it clear that provisions in EU case law should be taken into account when interpreting EU-derived law which is already on the statute book. The logic is that it is far better that the law is in only one place rather than in two, but we would not want by that means to take away from the court the opportunity to take into account EU-derived case law prior to our withdrawal from the EU, if it ever happens.

The committee is on to an important point. I hope that we can explore as a result of this short debate ways of dealing with it.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, while I do not want this section of the debate to be dominated by members of the Constitution Committee, I should congratulate my noble friend Lord Pannick on the way he presented the amendment despite it certainly not being in the interest of the legal profession—if we manage to get legal certainty in the Bill, the lawyers will not have their field day. However, I fear that, unless we achieve legal certainty and the clarity that my noble friend mentioned, we will be in real difficulty. Our committee has put forward suggestions, but we do not think that they are the only ways forward. It is important at this stage that the Government recognise the extent of the problem and the damage that will be done if we do not have some amendment and some concessions from them in this area. It is of course an area linked to the other parts of the Bill, because, unless we make changes here, the powers that the Government will have under Clause 7 will be completely unacceptable because of the breadth of legislation there captured.

I therefore urge the Minister to reflect carefully not only on the suggestions of the Constitution Committee but on those of others outside, because this problem will dog the Bill for ever if we do not make some changes here.