Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 1 introduces a new clause after Clause 17. Amendments 2 and 3 in this group are consequential.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Callanan for adding his name to the amendments and I am even more grateful to my noble friend’s officials, who have produced these amendments at great speed in response to the less elegant amendment which I moved on Report last week. It is a great privilege to be given the opportunity to table these amendments in my name.

The underlying concept behind these amendments is transparency about the progress that the Government are making in dealing with retained EU law. This Bill now revokes only a portion of that law, but it will remain an important task for the Government to decide what to do with the rest of the laws on our statute book and ensure that they support the needs of the UK economy and our citizens. It represents a once in a generation opportunity to achieve significant regulatory reform.

Amendment 1 builds on the retained EU law dashboard, which pulls together all retained EU law and shows progress in reforming that law. While some have criticised the dashboard because the number of items of retained EU law continues to increase, the core information that it contains, including visual representation of progress, has been a great achievement. Subsection (1) of the proposed new clause places an obligation on the Secretary of State to update the dashboard. It also requires the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament reports on the revocation and reform of EU law.

These reports will do three things: they will summarise the dashboard; they will set out progress that has been made in revoking and reforming retained EU law; and, importantly, they will set out the Government’s plans for revocation or reform. Information on the Government’s plans does not currently get reported in a comprehensive way, and so this should be a valuable data source both for parliamentarians and for those outside Parliament. The first report will be for the period up to 23 December this year, and there will be three more reports, the first two covering the years to 23 December 2024 and 23 December 2025 and a final one for the six months until 23 June 2026. The end date is, of course, the 10th anniversary of the great referendum vote and coincides with the final expiry of the powers in this Bill to reinstate or revoke EU law.

I know that noble Lords support effective accountability of the Executive to Parliament, and I believe that this new clause will improve Parliament’s ability to oversee how well the Government are delivering on their Brexit promises. I very much hope that by the time of the final report, 23 June 2026, if not earlier, the Government will have demonstrated that all retained EU law has been dealt with, whether by a positive decision to keep it intact or by revocation or reform. Last week the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, were less than enthusiastic about my amendment on Report. It is perhaps wishful thinking to think that this new and improved version will result in a change of heart, but none the less I commend it to them. I beg to move.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment, which I fully understand, places a lot of emphasis on the capacity of the retained EU dashboard, but there are some important deficiencies in its capacity, the most important of which is that it does not contain any post-devolution legislation. That can be demonstrated by looking at the schedule that has just been introduced into the Bill. There is not a single item of post-devolution material on it.

When the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, of which I am a member, invited some officials who work on the dashboard to address us and explain how it works, we asked them whether there was any post-devolution retained EU law on the dashboard. They told us that there was not, that devolution material was not there. We asked whether it was the intention that it should include post-devolution material and they said that it was not and that it was not designed to do that.

So there is a question I would like to ask, and I think it is fair to ask the Minister, about what the position truly is on this. I do not think he has ever fully acknowledged, at least in this Chamber, the fact that the dashboard does not contain post-devolution material at all. Is it intended that the dashboard should be updated, as is the obligation in the amendment, to include post-devolution material? If so, when will that be done and is it clear that the devolved Administrations are able to do that in time to meet the first deadline, which is the end of this year? They have a great deal to do already with the amount of work which is required of them by the Bill, and to have to work on updating the dashboard as well might be beyond their resources. This is a very important issue. I am not trying to undermine the amendment, but I want to understand its capacity to do what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, told us it is intended to do.