Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I chose to speak on these amendments because I want to talk about the reality of the Bill, which is best exemplified here, rather than later when we will talk about the environment, when I will talk as chair of the Climate Change Committee.

First, I want to understand how a Conservative Government could produce the Bill. As far as I believe, in the Conservative Party we believe in continuity and evolution rather than revolution. Evolution means that you take what you have and improve it; you do not throw it out hoping that you will have time to put something else in its place. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, made about case law is crucial here. If you do not retain all that you want, you do not retain the case law, so you do not know what it is that you are doing. That is a very un-Conservative thing to find oneself doing.

The second issue, as a Conservative, is that I do not understand the explanation about regulation. As things are defined in this letter many of us have just had, it suggests that all regulation, by its nature, is somehow wrong. We have a regulation which says that you drive on the left-hand side of the road. That is a sensible regulation. It would be a mistake to cast it into doubt. There are many regulations which are essential for civilised life. Indeed, you cannot imagine civilised life without regulation. Conservatives, I thought, believed in civilised life. Therefore, regulation is an essential part of that.

When you come to judge regulation, you do not judge it by its weight or the number of phrases or words; you judge it by how effective and appropriate it is, how much it fits the present, and how it grows out of the past. If you are a Conservative, that is what you do. I believe there are many who think differently, but as a Conservative that is how I think of regulation.

We are now told that the regulation burden must not be increased. I do not mind that—if we define “burden”. It does not seem to be a burden to have to drive on the left-hand side of the road. That seems to be a necessity.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Perhaps my noble friend could address the amendment he is talking to specifically.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I hope the Committee agrees that I am addressing the amendments.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am talking about the left-hand side of the road and the first amendment is about motor vehicles. The second one is dealing with the rules of the compensation system for passengers. I say to my noble friend that this is a series of amendments to draw attention to the fact that the Bill does not follow a sensible programme of defining “burdens”. We have just had a letter about it, and I intend to talk about that letter. The fact of the matter is that this is not a sensible way of defining “burdens”. “Burdens” should be defined by whether they are a burden or not.

I come to the examples here. It is inconceivable that the Government will remove the requirement for a child to wear a seat belt, so why do we have to consider it at all? Why do we not accept that we should keep many of the things that we have? We have now thrown into doubt a whole detailed series of regulations that, if I may say so, will not be changed. But we do not know that, and we do not know which ones will be changed. We are now suggesting that this discussion will be conducted by civil servants and, in the end, Ministers.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My noble friend is making a serious point—namely, that we do not know the identity of the regulations that will be in doubt. But the point here is that, if you do not know the identity of the regulations, you cannot consult the stakeholders, which is a very serious deficit.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

It is a very serious deficit. I will apply it to this amendment, as my noble friend the Whip insisted. I have chosen this amendment because it is so obviously true that the Government will not change that requirement, so why do we throw this into doubt? Why do we say to civil servants that they have to go through all this in a very short period of time, including requirements that we will not change? As chairman of the Climate Change Committee, I am aware that almost all departments are struggling to do what they have to do anyway. If we add this, they will do it rather than what they ought to do—and what I, as chairman, am desperate for Defra, for example, to do—because this has a sunset clause.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

We talked about the regulations that might fall off after the sunset and those that might be thrown out by a Minister, but the last part of the letter that the noble Lord referred to also says that

“the powers in the Bill could be used to preserve, extend and reform retained EU law”,

and then that:

“Anything preserved will be subject to clauses 3-6 of the Bill which repeal retained EU interpretive effects”.


What does the noble Lord think about that? Even when a Minister says that we will keep a law or regulation, does everything that has built up, in terms of case law, get thrown out?

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I almost dare not go down that line because it has been suggested that what I have been saying is not applicable to these amendments. I think it is applicable, and we have to talk about this principle if we are to discuss the Bill properly. On what the noble Lord rightly put forward, all this throws everything into doubt, and it is very un-Conservative. I have never known a Conservative proposal to throw aside all the interpretation that has grown up over the years, because that is exactly what life is about: learning through the years. Citing the fact that it happens to be interpretation of European Union laws is to ignore the history. We have been a member of the European Union, and we are no longer; I am sorry about that, but I am one of those who wants to draw a line underneath that and behave sensibly from now on. I do not want this appallingly reactionary approach, which says, “Because it’s got ‘EU’ on it, there’s something wrong with it”. Let us consider it properly and separately.

So if we are not going to get rid of the first point about motor vehicles and seat belts for children, let us therefore have a different way of doing it. Let us decide that we will have a reform of the laws in general and that we will bring before this House proposals for what those changes will be in a timetable which is sensible and which the House can deal with. Therefore, we would not do the last non-Conservative thing, which is so outrageous as to be almost inconceivable: taking the power over law from Parliament and giving it to Ministers. I can think of nothing less Conservative than that.

Let me put it like this: we are not even giving it to these Ministers; we are going to give it to whichever Ministers are there—and they may not be the same lot. All I want to say is that no Conservative in my knowledge of history has ever proposed that the decision on something as important as, for example, children wearing seat belts shall not be our job in this House and in the elected House, but the job of Ministers alone.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I support every word that he said. I too will react to the letter we got minutes before we started this Committee debate—if I am allowed to do so without an intervention from the Government Front Bench. My noble friend Lord Fox referred to how the letter says that the dashboard

“presents an authoritative catalogue of retained EU law, not a comprehensive list of retained EU law”.

So I hope that the Minister, in her response, can give us a precise explanation of the difference between “authoritative catalogue” and “comprehensive list”, because, for my part, I cannot really understand how it can be authoritative if it is not comprehensive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think my noble friend sent the letter to try to be helpful, following the discussions that were had on the first day of Committee. I hope that others will look at the letter at leisure. I am sure there will be further discussions and debates in Committee, so if I may—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My noble friend was kind enough to mention me and our work together in the European Union. We have now read this letter; evidently, we are to do something which we would never have done in the European Union. In other words, we are going to decide what will remain on the basis of whether there is room, in weight, for the legislation on seat belts for children, as compared against other legislation. That is what this letter means. It is not surprising that we have moved into a rather wider explanation, because what my noble friend and I did in the European Union we are now doing totally differently here.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not think it was entirely different. As I recall, in those days we were trying to cut red tape and regulatory burdens being imposed by Brussels. We will come to Clause 15, where I think the regulatory reference appears, in due course.

I would like to make progress, because we have lots of amendments to get through today, and return to Amendment 7, which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, was sponsoring. To make a general point on motor, in reviewing our retained EU law, the Government will make decisions in the best interests of UK citizens, and the Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts by Children in Front Seats) Regulations will be no exception. I agree that this is an essential element of our law, and one that we intend to retain and to assimilate into UK statute.

The seat-belt wearing requirements are crucial to the safety of our roads; we are agreed on that. We know that even though seat-belt use is high, it still represents a disproportionately high impact on the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. The noble Baroness gave a figure for those who were killed not wearing seat belts which was very arresting. Therefore, this law is clearly still necessary.