European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, together with many noble Lords, I have always fought for the rights of children, to protect children, to engage children and to empower children. I have to declare an interest now that I am chair of the Council of Europe Sub-Committee on Children. I am also active in children’s issues in the UK.

The amendment explores the potential impact of Brexit on children. I thank the Minister for Children, who along with his staff met me a couple of weeks ago. I hope the Government are listening today. I do not intend to call a vote on this amendment but I want to strongly draw attention to how important it is to consider children in all aspects of our discussions on Brexit. I hope that after this debate we will have further talks with Ministers about the rights of children, and that they will guarantee that children’s issues are monitored throughout the discussions.

Despite the Government’s stated commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and their reassurances that children’s rights will not be affected by the departure of the UK from the EU, it is clear that both the foreseeable and unforeseeable impacts of the UK’s withdrawal on children’s lives have not been thoroughly considered in the Government’s proposals as contained in the withdrawal Bill. This has already been raised as a concern by MPs, Peers and children’s organisations alike, given that the legislation and protections derived from our membership of the EU affect so many aspects of children’s lives, from consumer and environmental protections to cross-border safeguarding and anti-trafficking measures.

We have already drawn attention to the need to ensure that we do not go backwards in the protection of children’s rights during and after Brexit. This is about preserving existing rights and protections for children and making sure that our exit from the EU does not erode or undermine them. We have heard many assurances from the Government that they are fully committed to children’s rights and protections and to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They maintain that their ability to safeguard children’s rights will not be affected by withdrawal from the EU and that these issues will go into domestic law. However, it is a serious matter that we know that decisions taken at central government level, which have a significant impact on children’s lives and well-being, are not taken with the principles and provisions of the UNCRC in mind. For example, assessments of the potential and expected effects on children’s rights are not yet routinely carried out, and we know that in 2016 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors the implementation of the UNCRC, recommended that the UK ensure that all the principles and provisions of the convention be directly applicable in law in the UK, which is currently not the case.

That is why I have tabled an amendment requesting a government commitment, in the form of a ministerial statement, to consider the UN convention when making legislative changes as a result of EU withdrawal. Despite assurances to the contrary, our current domestic legislation is not comprehensive enough to ensure the full protection of children’s rights after our exit from the EU. The Human Rights Act and the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004 provide important but insufficient protections. While retaining the Charter of Fundamental Rights would be extremely useful and welcome, the amendment would ensure additional protection for children and their rights.

In preparation to leave the EU, as the statute book is amended, we should be wary of any changes that affect children in a contrary way. There is a real risk that children's rights will not be considered. That could have serious implications for children in a number of areas, namely data protection; cross-border co-operation in child safeguarding and anti-trafficking efforts; paediatric clinical trials; food safety and labelling; TV and media advertising; environmental standards and protections; the rights of migrant children to access healthcare and education; and cross-border family law.

Currently, under EU law, trade in goods and services between EU members has to ensure that children’s welfare is protected. Any new trade deals that the UK embarks on after Brexit must include adequate safeguards to ensure that children are not put at risk.

As things stand, the Government’s proposed delegated powers would allow them to make important decisions on EU withdrawal, decisions that could have a significant impact on children, with little or no parliamentary scrutiny. This makes it even more imperative to have a ministerial statement of commitment that government departments will consider the UNCRC in their EU-related decision-making during and post Brexit. Such a commitment would demonstrate and guarantee a clear willingness by the Government to ensure that there will be no going backward in children’s rights protections after leaving the EU.

Current efforts by the Department for Education to develop training for officials on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and UNICEF’s child rights impact assessment template to be used as a development tool across government departments are welcome, and represent a useful resource, but they are not sufficient by themselves. I also seek from the Government a guarantee that the training of officials on the UNCRC and the impact assessment tool on child rights will be used across government departments to secure and ensure that children’s issues will not be solely the responsibility of the Department for Education. Cross-departmental working is very powerful, but how will it be ensured?

A precedent for an audit to protect children’s rights has already been set by the Scottish Government. I urge the UK Government to do likewise. I hope to continue discussion with the Government about this and to convince them that this is an important issue which cannot be overlooked. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on having put the amendment before us. I am sure the Government will take it seriously; I cannot believe that they would do otherwise. I want to make only one point. The convention is terribly important. It is clear time and again that, in our affairs in the UK, it is not yet fully operative. If there are ways in which we have been enjoying the strengthening of its operation by our membership of the European Union, it is doubly important, following any exit from the European Union, that those issues are covered closely by our own arrangements. I am sure that an audit is a realistic and practical suggestion which also deserves attention.

Britain played a very important part, as it so often has in international affairs, in the construction and drawing up of the convention. Many distinguished Conservatives were behind the operation. Because of that commitment—it was not just a matter of getting something on paper; it is how it is actually applied—what my noble friend has proposed and the way she has emphasised it this evening shows that the Government need to give the issue serious attention and to give her the assurances she seeks.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, we discussed two key aspects of protecting children’ rights post Brexit in Committee.

The first is the need to guarantee that our present level of cross-border co-operation should not diminish. Here, my noble friend gave me an assurance, for which I am grateful, that the United Kingdom’s current security arrangements in Europe will continue; and, in particular, through the effective agencies now deployed, including Europol, the European arrest warrant, Eurojust and ECRIS.

The second matter, focused in the amendment before us, is that, post Brexit, UK domestic law and its deployment should manage to reflect and be guided by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. My noble friend also gave a commitment on this in Committee: that UK domestic law would always reflect and be guided by UNCRC. Following that resolve, it should not be necessary that UNCRC be incorporated within UK law. Yet perhaps my noble friend the Minister may be able to support what this amendment implies: that a Statement to the House should be made at another time, as convenient, setting out more broadly the Government’s commitment to children’s rights, while also indicating the work that is going on across government and in the United Kingdom to promote and protect these rights.

My noble friend the Minister might possibly agree as well that such a Statement such could usefully include an undertaking to offer on certain relevant policies impact assessments on children’s rights.

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[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 60 seeks to maintain opportunities for young people to travel, work and study freely within Europe and to ensure that these opportunities are not diminished. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for adding his name to this amendment. I should say now that I am not going to divide the House on this because of the late hour.

Consideration for the young people of this country should be a major—perhaps even, it could be argued, the major—consideration of the negotiations, because young people are the future of the country, a point that was made in a different context this evening. This amendment is fundamentally about equal opportunities for young people. If the Government cannot guarantee, or at least pledge to try to achieve as far as Europe is concerned, opportunities for our young people which are at the very least equal to those of the majority of young people in the rest of Europe, our withdrawal from Europe will be worthless on that count alone.

I was struck by the forcefulness of some of the comments that were made in Committee, and it is worth repeating a couple. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, who is in his place, said:

“The feeling of dismay and disappointment among young people is hard to overestimate”,


while the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, talked about her eldest grandson being,

“incandescent with anger that he is about to be deprived of the right to look for a job anywhere across Europe”.—[Official Report, 14/3/18; cols. 1741-42.]

I find those observations, which are representative of how young people feel—the huge uncertainty and, yes, the anger—difficult to square with the lack of urgency in the Minister’s reply in Committee in which he tried to conflate the wishes, as he put it, of young and older people. Those needs, rather than wishes, are not necessarily the same. For many young people, travel, work and study are bound up together as part of the experience of broadening horizons, of exploration as well as career development. It needs to be understood that, while the young have energy, they will very likely have neither the financial resources nor, as yet, the standing of established professionals. Of course professional people have their concerns as well, but if opportunities are diminished, including those afforded by Erasmus+, it will be young people from less privileged backgrounds who will be the first to suffer from increased costs, restrictions, bureaucracy and indeed the loss of those opportunities themselves. It has to be added that changing attitudes and expectations will invariably be reduced and narrowed if these opportunities are diminished.

I will not repeat the detailed and passionate arguments that we heard from many Peers in Committee about Erasmus+. I will say simply that we absolutely need to remain a member of a programme that is of benefit not just academically but for sport, apprenticeships, schools and even budding entrepreneurs—and, significantly perhaps, for the intercultural skills that all study, work and travel abroad at their best develop. I hope that the Minister will agree that we should continue to be involved in the development of Erasmus+ and not act as though this is something that we may be withdrawing from.

I have two questions on this for the Minister. If he cannot answer them today, perhaps he could put his answers in writing. First, universities, including in the Russell Group, are worried that the message that we are fully involved at least until the end of the 2020 programme, which the Government have said we will be, is not getting through to everyone, students at home and abroad included. The Government can be more proactive in spreading that message. Accordingly, will the DfE put out a document outlining its position on Erasmus+ akin to that put out in March by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Horizon 2020? That would be extremely helpful.

Secondly, in reply to this amendment in Committee, the Minister said on participation:

“We will take a decision when we see what the successor programme is”.—[Official Report, 14/3/18; col. 1747.]


That was a very worrying answer. The Government should be helping to influence the shape of the programme to make it even better than the current one already is. Frankly, surely we know already that what it will have to offer will be well worth our participation. The universities know this, as does every expert in this House who spoke in the Erasmus debate in Committee. So will the Government now indicate when they will negotiate our participation to ensure the smoothest transition between the current programme and the next?

I repeat that travel, work and study for young people within Europe is a question of equal opportunities. I remind the Government that, despite the result of the referendum, 75% of under-24 year-olds voted to remain across every section of society. If Brexit is to be successful, we should realise that a Brexit that ignores the needs and demands of young people will be a failure and the Government ignore those needs at their peril. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad to support the amendment. The world is totally interdependent. Any future for Britain will depend on working out a relationship and practical participating role for Britain within that international, global reality. The young understand this, and this is why there is so much disillusion and disaffection among the young in particular with the whole process of Brexit. The young want to belong to the world and they want Britain to be part of the world.

If we are to have a future as a nation, our educational system depends—it is not an add-on—on the international dimension in which, from the youngest age through to postgraduate degrees, people understand that they are part of a world community and see the world dimension of the study that they are undertaking. The presence of students from other countries and their sharing of experience and perspectives is part of the educational process. It is not just a matter of whether there is more income for universities, it is a matter of the educational process itself and the quality of education. That matters.

Travel is terrifically important, because people want to form relationships. That must start with our immediate neighbours in Europe, and we want people in Britain who will understand and instinctively see the implications of what may be happening in Europe and how Britain can play a part in meeting the challenges that arise.

The amendment is vital in bringing home that reality about the young. The young have a great sense of betrayal—that is the word that has been used to me—by having their futures put, as they see it, in jeopardy as a result of what we are doing with the Brexit legislation. Here is a chance for the Government to redeem the situation, to redeem their reputation and to show that they will take second place to no one in their international commitment.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I was pleased to speak to a similar amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, in Committee, and I am equally pleased to support the amendment now. At this point in the evening, I do not intend to detain your Lordships longer than necessary, so my intervention will be short.

All that the amendment asks is that the Government, as part of the withdrawal process, negotiate a continuation of the EU rights that my generation has enjoyed for those under 25. The vital point at the basis of this issue is that the EU passport that we all hold is not just a passport, it is a visa. It is a right to live, work and study in any of the current 28 countries in the EU and to move between those countries at will.

The Government underestimate the frustration and anger that some young people feel at the removal of their rights to freedom of movement and, under Erasmus, to study abroad. On more than one occasion during debate today, Members of your Lordships’ House have referred to the divisions caused by the Brexit vote, but there is no greater potential division than that between the conflicting visions of our country’s future: our young people seeking to move forward in the openness of the EU and some older people seeking the comfort of the past.

Is it not time that the Government showed young people that they understand their concerns? The Government have recently been accused of institutionalised indifference on many issues. Perhaps the amendment affords them the opportunity to disprove that description.

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[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, let me say that the Bill does not in any way alter the Government’s long-standing commitment to proper consultation, a concern articulated by the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Jones of Whitchurch.

Amendment 64 would effectively place a statutory requirement to consult, for a period of three months, on all legislation which will affect EU-derived domestic legislation, whether from the Bill or elsewhere. This would effectively reduce the time available to prepare the regulation by three months. I suggest that that could be profoundly undesirable. As we have previously detailed in this House, departments are keen to engage with stakeholders on current matters and on the progress of the negotiations, and will continue to do so where this is possible and where it does not negatively impact on the negotiations in any way. To be fair, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, did acknowledge that.

The consultation process requires resources and time from government and stakeholders. To be frank, we want to focus the energies of those inside and outside government on the most important measures, rather than having them occluded by the sheer volume of consultations on minor matters that could arise under these amendments. I appreciate the concerns that we have heard throughout this debate, but I hope the House will accept at the least that a great many instruments will be technical and minor and designed to ensure continuity. A specific legal requirement to consult, as the amendment envisages, could affect our negotiations with the EU by forcing our legislative plans to pre-empt those discussions. It also risks consulting on a legislative proposal that does not accurately take account of ongoing negotiations.

The noble Baroness’s amendment focuses on the legislation we have made in the UK to implement our EU obligations and the changes that might be made to that legislation in the period immediately after our exit from the EU. This is a point I know many are concerned by and I know that some noble Lords have not yet been completely satisfied by the Government’s commitments on the protections that will apply to that legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to the government amendments: the amendments to Schedules 7 and 8 will ensure that the exercise of the powers under the Bill are transparent to Parliament and to the wider world. Indeed, our provision in Schedule 8 will also go further than the 2021 deadline in the noble Baroness’s amendment and will require, for all time, Ministers making amendments by powers in other Bills to explain any changes they make to regulations made under Section 2(2) of the ECA and set out the good reasons for them. These statements will have to be laid before Parliament and will have to explain the impact of the amendments and any relevant law, including EU law.

It is clear from this that there will be no evading transparency when future Governments divert or update the legislation they will inherit from our EU obligations. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, that I think that that is a formula for very robust parliamentary scrutiny. I hope the noble Baroness understands why the Government cannot accept this amendment.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has referred to the fact that many matters will be minor and technical. This is exactly the point. What may seem minor and technical to administrators and government may be very big issues indeed for some of those who will be affected, particularly in the environmental sphere, and whose co-operation in making a success of whatever is being done is vital.

I also ask the Minister: is it not true that the whole point about so many environmental issues is that they cannot be resolved within the context of the UK alone, but have an international dimension? Fisheries is a very good example. It is for that reason, which plays right into the community here, that we have to be very careful about referring to things as “minor” or “technical”. Sometimes they are life-and-death matters to people who really are on the front line.

[Baroness Goldie]

The noble Lord makes a perfectly valid point, with which I have some sympathy, but I am endeavouring to deal with the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in the context of her amendment. I am pointing out that it is not that there will not be consultation or robust parliamentary scrutiny. There will be an opportunity for parliamentarians in both Houses to identify the very sorts of concerns to which the noble Lord has referred.

I have set out the Government’s position. I hope the noble Baroness understands why the Government are unable to accept this amendment, and I urge her to withdraw it. I confirm that the Government do not propose to reflect further on this issue between now and Third Reading, so if she wishes to test the opinion of the House, it would be appropriate to do that now.

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[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the issues raised and, if I may say so, powerfully argued in her speech by the noble Baroness are grave. People came to live here in the expectation that they would be welcome, of course, and that they would contribute to our economy, which would be appreciated. But most importantly they came here in the context of European citizenship, understanding that as part of being a European citizen they had every right to move here and establish their lives here. We, by our moves to leave the European Union, have circumscribed the rights of citizenship. This is in history a dramatic and grave event. We really have a responsibility to ensure that what people did in good faith—and in terms of citizenship—is preserved. If we have any claim at all to being a responsible nation in the global community, citizenship must be regarded as one of the most precious elements in human life. The need to be certain beyond doubt about what the position of these people will be is therefore essential.

The other point is that we are already seeing the consequences of not having settled the issues. The health service is having still more problems because people feel unable to commit their families to living here. I am involved in several universities and there is evidence that people who wanted to come and make a contribution in our universities as academics are thinking twice about it because they are not sure what their status will be. That applies also and not infrequently to people who are already here and considering promotion or some other job within the university environment. These are just examples, but these matters are urgent.

I remember absolutely clearly that when we had just had the referendum, the response from the Government was quite encouraging because it was said by the Prime Minister and others that, without any doubt, this matter would be given priority above all others. Where is the evidence of this priority above all others? We really need some convincing answers from the Minister this evening.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spent this weekend with a couple whom I have known for a long time. She is German and he is British. They have children and she taught at a European school for 20 years. She said, “You know, ever since the vote two years ago I’ve been looking for an answer. I haven’t had one and I’m just fed up”. She has lived in the UK for 20 or 30 years and her conclusion was that the Government are now so untrustworthy, so devious and so unwelcoming that she is thinking of taking her family back to Germany, or perhaps Holland or somewhere. That is a common message that we have heard from many noble Lords and it is disgraceful that these citizens have been used as bargaining chips for the last two years. I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort that this period of real worry for their families will soon come to an end.