Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been given permission to speak in the gap, which I will do very briefly. I will start with how I come into this issue. When I first arrived in the House of Lords in 1972, there was the European Communities Act. I served on the European Community Committee, which later changed its name to the European Union Committee. Your Lordships will remember the brief intervention at the beginning of this debate by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, when the Minister was speaking. He might find it more awkward, now that he is on the Woolsack, to intervene when the Minister speaks again. However, his intervention drew attention to the work of the European committees, in this place and the other place.

What did we do? We were given drafts from the European Union of directives and regulations. We were then given the opportunity to comment. We called evidence, we wrote a report, we sent it back to the Commission in Brussels and surprisingly, you may think, a lot of our recommendations were accepted. Therefore, when the Minister said that the European committees had no power to veto the drafting—I have forgotten his exact words—that got missed out, because we did have a good opportunity to do so in looking at the drafts.

Where are we now? I have heard every speech except one. I begin by giving the score. Only 10 speakers have spoken permanently pro Bill. One or two others have hesitantly spoken pro Bill, out of a total of 58 speakers. That gives a message, does it not? My noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone said that we should not pass this Bill. I suggested to my Front Bench that we should oppose the Bill—that we should not allow it to go any further. I am afraid that I was told that this was not the policy. I then moved towards the Liberal Democrat Benches. I got more favourable noises but certainly not “We should not pass this Bill”.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

The noble Lord did not talk to the Front Bench.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I am sorry. I was tempted then to move over to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and his flock, the Cross Benches. He did not say that to me, but I am a former Cross-Bencher and I think that his answer was, “I have no control over the Cross Benches”. I even thought that, under the generalship of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, there might be a cohort from the Government Benches to move that this Bill do not pass. I am afraid that I failed in all those endeavours, but that is clearly my wish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an absorbing and long debate and I will not extend it more than a few seconds. I did not expect the Minister to embrace my regret amendment and I am pretty sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, did not expect him to embrace hers either; however, noble Lords around the House picked up on all the issues set out in both amendments and amplified them in a very strong way. The scale of the disquiet over the Bill has really been emphasised in this debate, and if the Minister was in any doubt as to the level of disquiet the Bill is generating, then that has been dispelled. But the extent of this concern is itself an opportunity for all of us to work across the Chamber to produce the amendments and the changes that the Bill needs to make it fit for purpose. We on these Benches undertake to work with everybody, across parties and across Benches, to try to make sure that in Committee and particularly on Report, those changes are brought forward to your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Lord Fox’s amendment to the Motion withdrawn.