Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think the noble Baronesses for their interventions and understand their depth of feeling. I should explain that this is a framework Bill, and it has been presented as such. The regulatory process will be gone through, and this House will then get a chance to look at the SIs.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I follow up the impassioned speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. We were given a very good example yesterday of what to do with a lousy Bill. Why cannot we follow that example today?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, mentioned asbestos as another example, and of course we dealt with that area yesterday: we have been going carefully through in a reassuring manner. I have been trying, in this transport debate, to respond helpfully where I am able to do so. I feel that this is not being appreciated, so I shall try to make some further progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very unsatisfactory and frustrating Bill in which to take part. I am sorry that I missed most of the first day of Committee—I was on a committee visit—but I have listened to a great deal of the debate, and I was present in the Chamber on Thursday to hear the remarkably idiosyncratic triage description of my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone. Like other Members, I listened to some of the exchanges on the previous group, which show that the Bill is being done in the wrong way and should be withdrawn. At the very least, the deadline should be put back several years so that we do not inflict upon ourselves the harm that we are about to.

I point out that the Environment Minister, who is with us today and for whom I believe there is an enormous amount of good will around the Committee, will nevertheless have a very difficult job to persuade the Committee that his department has the sheer capacity to process the large number of regulations that are covered by the Bill.

I will speak strongly in favour of Amendment 37, ably spoken to by my noble friend from the Front Bench. Of course, that list is very good—she said it was not exhaustive, and that is certainly the case. I add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who is not in his place but lurking, on the importance of the REACH regulations, for example. For Members who do not know, this is an enormous and substantial body of work that was in fact the largest piece of legislation ever considered by the European Parliament, for a very good reason: it is really important and covers such a wide range of areas. To adapt the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, it is about human health as much as anything else.

I would be happy to vote for Amendment 37 but, to be quite honest, even if I did and it passed, would it be the complete list of all of the environmental protections that we want to see retained? Would it fulfil the Minister’s own commitment, which I am sure that he will make from the Dispatch Box, that the Government remain committed to supporting environmental legislation? The best thing that the Minister can do, apart from withdrawing the Bill, is get up at the Dispatch Box and say, “Amendment 37 is very good and I support it, but it leaves out all of these other measures that I have unearthed by Google-searching the National Archives. If we want to be a Government and Parliament that fully support the environmental legislation that we are so proud of, I would like to add the following range of other matters to the amendment”. We could then perhaps make a better attempt at improving what is, I am afraid, a very bad Bill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present for very much of the Second Reading— I had other parliamentary duties.

We have had some very wise, brief speeches just now, from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and my noble friend sitting behind me, who made a very good brief speech. Various things stand out. It is never good to legislate by deadline. When you are dealing with such a vast amount of regulations—some complex, some simple —to say that all of them have to be effectively expunged by the end of the year, apart from some that may be retained, is not a sensible way to behave. It places an enormous burden upon Parliament and places enormous power into the hands of Ministers.

I share the respect and affection that people feel for my noble friend Lord Benyon, whose father and I entered the House of Commons on the same day, way back in 1970, along with my noble friend, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who is with us this evening. He was an environmentalist par excellence, and I know that his son has inherited his love for the countryside and his determination that it should be properly preserved and used.

Many of the directives listed in Amendment 37 are of great importance. We have to remember—I do not want to cross swords with my noble friend Lady Lawlor, who made one very good point about the selling of caged birds—that we do not have the best record in this country. On loss of species, you have to look only at what were very common birds when I entered the House of Commons, such as the starling and the sparrow and many others. Some of them are hanging on by a thread. The wonderful counterexample of the red kite is not unique, but not many fall into that category. It seems very silly to decide that the Bill has to go through in this form.

We had a very good example yesterday of the Prime Minister realising, after painstaking negotiation, that the protocol Bill, which many of us in this House opposed and were determined not to let through, should be dropped. He achieved more than that Bill would ever have achieved, and not only that but he achieved a wonderful improvement in our relations with our European friends and neighbours, which is a very good example to take.