Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Collins of Highbury

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.