Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

So it will not be the negative procedure in every case?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

And there will presumably be some that the Government are going to abolish altogether, in which case, nothing will come to this House: we will never have the chance to express a view.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for another general question. On transport, the DfT published the Aviation Consumer Policy Reform consultation in January 2022. I did not labour the Committee with all the material on that, but I am very happy to talk to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, about it separately. It included proposals relating to enforcement of aviation consumer protections, redress for breaches of consumer rights, and reforms to compensation for delays and for damaged wheelchairs and other mobility equipment—which I get postbags about—allowing us to consider what works best for the UK domestically, for consumers and industry. We are considering our responses and will respond to the consultation shortly. This is a concrete review and reform that we can look at. I am sure that we will move things forward in an appropriate way.

With the agreement of the Committee, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I do not think that the Minister gave a substantive answer to the point that I raised. I am happy that there should be no substantive answer now provided that we get one at some stage today. I asked what parliamentary procedure, approval and scrutiny will be available where, having done the sift and the consultation, a Minister decides—perhaps because he is interested in removing obstacles to efficiency, productivity or profitability—that a piece of our law should be abolished? What procedure will enable Parliament to debate that decision? The idea that the gentleman in Whitehall knows best, to coin a phrase, was one that I thoroughly approved of when I worked in Whitehall; I have slightly gone off it now.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is the gentlemen and ladies in Whitehall and in the European Commission. If I may, rather than prolong this discussion, I will reflect on the point that the noble Lord has made.

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We have amendments on the environment here which have been presented very well, and, as I said, that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, lists a number of regulations. That list is not exhaustive; she made that plain herself. It may well be that my noble friend says that his default position is to keep on the statute book things he is not very confident should be taken off. But the fact is that my noble friend is not immortal and is well worthy of promotion, so he may not be in charge very much longer. The sensible thing to do here is to take the example of the Prime Minister yesterday and, at the very least, pause the Bill and, at the very best, get on with some more sensible legislation and drop it entirely. I really believe that Parliament would be doing the nation a great service if it did not let the Bill go through.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I very much agree with the noble Lord. I will simply make two small points at this stage of the debate. The first is about the public resonance of our discussion. In the House of Commons, the Bill went through under the radar; the public did not really notice what was going on. When the public get to hear of the considerations we are discussing, they will pay a huge amount of attention.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, was quite right to point out that the environmental laws in the European Union were largely there as a result of British initiative. The animal welfare declaration attached to the Maastricht treaty, the Garel-Jones declaration, was there not actually to annoy the Spaniards, as some said; it was there because the postbag that the Major Government got on animal welfare was enormous. I was Permanent Representative when a lot of the environmental laws were going through, and my postbag was packed with demands for more from Britain. When I was working on the constitutional treaty in 2002-03, the biggest single lobbying on Giscard’s convention was done by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which brought about an immense postbag, largely from Britain.

The issues we are discussing are not arcane matters for lawyers and parliamentarians; they are of real concern to real people out there. The Government ought to think hard about that aspect of the Bill. The public resonance has not started yet but, when it does, I do not think it will be about an obstructive House of Lords resisting the will of the House of Commons; it will be about the protection of birds, animal welfare, the habitats directive, and sewage in the rivers and on the beaches.

I turn to my second point. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, whom I welcome here, will be able to tell us that the Government have absolutely no intention of taking some of these laws off the statute book or watering them down. If he is able to do that, he would be very wise to encourage his colleagues in the Government to accept these amendments. If the Government have no intention of watering down or eliminating particular categories of law, that should be stated in the Bill. It seems to me that the logic of a reassuring response to the debate from the Minister, whom I hope will give a reassuring response, is that he should end by saying that the amendments will be accepted.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

I join the tributes to my noble friend the Minister—an excellent Minister who is passionate and knowledgeable about his brief. I also thank him for the briefing yesterday. I have no doubt that he was sincere in his reassuring words that the default position will be to retain, and I have no doubt that that is his intention, but this is not the reality of the Bill. As my noble friend said yesterday on REACH, the water framework directive and habitats, the Environment Act set up a clear process for change, and yet now we find that the Bill overrides all that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, stated.

If a carve-out is possible for financial services, surely this is one of the other areas that must be excluded from the Bill. I am sure that there has been an extensive effort to find all the various regulations involved in protecting the environment and involved in REACH and so on, but the only reassurance we had yesterday was that the department is confident that it has found the vast majority. This is about protecting the public.

We are also told that, if Ministers see fit, or decide that it is in citizens’ best interests, they will make the relevant and necessary changes as they decide. But what if Parliament disagrees? It will have no power. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, indicated, were the public to be asked themselves, they would disagree. They are not consulted and they have no say; this will be happening by default.

In my view, it is not possible to improve environmental protections without tightening regulations in some way, yet the Bill works against all that. If you want cleaner water in our rivers, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, so rightly focused on, will you have to have more dirty water in the sea? How will you offset that? Who will decide where regulations must be relaxed to be able to tighten in other areas as we move forward with the intention we clearly have—and rightly so—to improve environmental protections and protections for the public? If it is discovered that a whole family of chemicals or pesticides are more harmful than previously recognised and need to be banned, will other harmful substances have to be allowed into public circulation because we must not tighten regulation?

The Bill seems to be driven by ideology and politics. I have concerns that the sunset is clearly politically driven, and that it cannot be in the national interest. Surely the ideology that regulations can only be weakened cannot apply to something as precious as the environment and all the issues covered by Amendments 10, 11, 12 and 37.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

I am most grateful to the Minister, and I admire his excelsior position that we are aiming at higher and higher standards. If he was to follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and put these exemptions in the Bill, he would have set a floor; he would not have prevented himself from moving up to higher standards over time. However, I am sceptical whether he carries the whole government with “excelsior”—ever upward—because we have Clause 15(5), where there is an absolute ban on amending or replacing any of these Acts in a way that might increase the regulatory burden, and that burden is defined as including putting up the financial cost or creating

“an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”.

That does not seem to me to fit terribly well with a drive for ever-higher standards.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We can get bogged down in a philosophical debate about what regulation is for. Some people come at it from the direction that it should always stop people doing things that others might define as growth. Other people look on it as assisting legitimate businesses in functioning in a way that disadvantages bad people doing bad things. There needs to be flexibility in legislation to allow the right sort of regulation to encourage good behaviour. You will find that your greatest supporters in doing that are businesses and interests that not only are keen to be seen to be doing the right thing but want to benefit from the fact that we have the right kind of regulation in this country.

I will just finish the point about water. This Government are the first to tackle sewage overflows in the way we have. In the summer we published the most ambitious plan to tackle sewage discharges from storm overflows in water company history. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, about the River Parrett is entirely understood; the base of that river covers a huge catchment area and agricultural activities over years have seen soils washed away into the river. The problems that have occurred as a result of that are being tackled in a combination of ways: first, through regulation; and, secondly, through incentives in our environmental land management schemes.

The noble Baroness also talked about siloed protections. We now have probably the most united approach to this through the 25-year environment plan, the Environment Act, the environmental improvement plan, what we are doing to encourage tree planting along rivers and many other things. I hope noble Lords agree that our plan will require a huge change in attitude now among the range of people involved in the management of our waterways. With this in mind, I hope that the noble Baroness might not press her amendments.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, made a very good intervention. He spoke about the “green crap” point. I was in that Government and in that room; it was not the Prime Minister who said that. I am glad to correct him on that. The Environment Act is not just warm words. I hope that, like me, the noble Lord feels that the hard yards in this Chamber to improve that Bill really made a fundamental piece of legislation, the like of which other countries will look at to see how to make proper environmental legislation.

The noble Lord is right to raise human health, as I said earlier. There is a lot of mapping going on around noise; he will be pleased to know that we include noise levels typically not required by statutory obligations. This will allow for the consideration of health impacts regardless of legal obligations.

I will address noble Lords’ other points. I really want to nail the point about this Bill’s impact on the habitats regulations. We have been clear about the importance of environmental protection across the United Kingdom —not least through the Environment Act, which includes a legally binding target to halt the decline of nature by 2030. We are committed to meeting this target and will not undermine our obligations to the environment in pursuit of growth. Defra published a Green Paper consultation on nature recovery in March last year; the reforms explored in that Green Paper have fed into the Government’s environmental improvement plan, and nothing in this Bill will allow that to be put at risk.

On pesticides, I want to assure noble Lords about REACH; this addresses the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. There are no specific provisions in the Bill relating to UK REACH, so it will have no direct impact on current UK REACH policy. Defra has two key activities under way that aim to improve UK REACH: an alternative transitional registration model to reduce the cost to industry of transitional registrations while keeping high levels of protection. We will extend the transitional REACH deadlines in the meantime to allow time to continue the development of the alternative transitional registration model. Defra and the devolved Administrations are considering ways to improve and better tailor UK REACH to a GB-only setting while keeping the overarching framework of UK REACH in place.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, raised pesticides. The United Kingdom upholds strict food safety, health and environmental standards, and our first priority regarding pesticides is to ensure that they do not harm people or pose an unacceptable risk to the environment. We will not allow the Bill to put that at risk. We will continue to ensure that decisions on the use of pesticides are based on careful scientific assessments of the risks in order to achieve a high level of protection for people and the environment while improving agricultural production.

The UK has an independent national regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, that assesses the risks of pesticides and undertakes the necessary scientific evaluations. If the noble Baroness has specific points on that, I am happy to talk to her at another time. It is necessary to ensure that UK legislation can be updated to reflect future advances in science and technology. Sometimes this debate is very much in net present value terms. Science is fast moving. We want to make sure that science is at the heart of policy-making.