Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the very witty speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Whenever I negotiated laws in Brussels, my ministerial brief usually began, “We don’t want this measure, Minister, but we cannot stop it. The best we can hope is to negotiate one or two amendments from the long list we have proposed to you”. I therefore fully support the need to revise, retain or repeal EU law and I urge Ministers to rake out these old negotiating briefs, which will reduce the burden of work on departments when deciding what revisions to propose.

That said, I largely share the concerns expressed by noble Lords about the constraints on parliamentary scrutiny and the limited time to complete this process. I understand their fears that this could result in poor revision, and even wholesale repeal of necessary legislation. However, I also understand the fears that led the Government to adopt this tight timetable, and I think the latter fears negate and should dispel the former. Let me explain why. As parliamentarians, especially in this Chamber, whose only power is to make the other House consider our amendments and arguments, we are bound to want the maximum time and strongest procedures to fulfil that function. It is true that almost all these 4,000 laws went through Parliament under the biggest Henry VIII clause of all time—the European Communities Act 1972—with little debate and without a vote, and they would have become law even if every Member of this and the other House had voted against them.

Many noble Lords now calling for more scrutiny never complained about that lack of scrutiny in the past. I rejoice in their damascene conversion to the supremacy of Parliament—there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than 99 just men who need no repentance—but when they suggest that taking back control is meaningless without maximal parliamentary scrutiny, they are exaggerating the purpose of Brexit with the zeal of converts. Brexit was, above all, about the British people getting back control. As my referendum leaflet put it:

“In a democracy, if the Government does not deliver ... the people can throw them out.”


The Government will be accountable to the British people at the next election, not least for how they handle these 4,000 laws, and that is the accountability that lies behind the timetable the Government have set for getting this done. I was surprised by the timetable and when I asked Ministers to take it at a more leisurely pace, they explained that it is essential to complete this process before the next election, not because we promised to get Brexit done but, above all, because this is the only way we can prove to the electorate that the scare stories about the process that we heard today are false. Completing the process will show that the Bill was not about removing workers’ rights or demolishing environmental protection or safety standards; nor will it result in huge gaps in our law book. The fact that the Government intend to complete this process in time to face up to their accountability to the electorate makes most of the scare stories ring hollow.

If we had world enough and time, we would undertake this process in a more leisurely fashion, but we do not, so I entirely support my noble friend’s wish to get it done as speedily as possible by processes that are as rigorous as those by which the legislation was introduced, and thereby demonstrate that all the scare stories are untrue.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

It is slightly unfortunate that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is not in his place, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, and all the assorted Ministers we have had responding to the Bill, will commit to publish a weekly or fortnightly list of regulations which have been amended, repealed or replaced—and, I hope, also some which have simply been assimilated. That will allow us all to see how this work has progressed—not just in Defra but in other government departments; the MoD has claimed that it is practically finished—and enable us to judge the progress of this work and, indeed, to take a position and a view on the effectiveness of this review of EU legislation. I ask for that as a parting gift from Ministers as we come to end of Committee, at some stage this evening, we hope.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Young, with whom I share the honour of serving on the Environment and Climate Change Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, whose amendment I wish to address. However, before I do, I say that I do not think that anybody in this Chamber wants to tear up necessary environmental protections that maintain the standard and beauty of our environment. Certainly I do not, and I do not think that the Government have any such intention.

However, some of us want to change those regulations in a way which would improve them and make them less onerous and less burdensome. I fear that the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, would prevent that, because it says in proposed new subsection (2):

“No provision to which this section applies may be made … unless … the provision … will contribute to a significant improvement in environmental protection.”


Therefore, no change may be made unless there is some improvement—even to a regulation which could be made less onerous but where there is no scope for improving the standard of environmental protection or where any additional environmental protection would be unnecessary and not cost effective. This could freeze the whole thing.

If the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, interprets her amendment in a way that she did not in her speech, that improvement can be making a law less onerous, then that would be an excellent and wonderful thing, because there is considerable scope for making environmental protection less onerous than it is now. Current rules can be cripplingly expensive, mind-bogglingly complex and hugely time-consuming. Moreover, those failings can prevent environmentally desirable developments.

My eyes were opened and the scales fell from them when I read an article by Sam Dumitriu—you only have to Google it and you will find it. He points out that the proposed Norfolk Boreas offshore wind farm, which is necessary and desirable for environmental reasons, as I am sure all noble Lords would agree, to reduce our emissions, needed to produce 1,961 documents just to get approval, with a total of 13,275 pages. That is more words than the entire works of Tolstoy and all seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. That probably could be streamlined and made easier without undermining the protection of the bit of sea where that windfarm is proposed to be.

Let us take Sizewell C nuclear plant. Some people object to nuclear plants, but those who want to reduce carbon emissions think that they are a very necessary part of our energy mix. It will be built alongside an existing nuclear plant, so you would think that most of the environmental obstacles had been overcome. It is desirable to reduce CO₂, but it had to produce environmental applications running to 44,260 pages, most of which referred not to land but to any impact that it might have on the sea and maritime areas nearby.

It is difficult to put a cost on, because the people who have had to go through these processes are in the private sector, but a freedom of information request by New Civil Engineer magazine revealed that the highways agency, when applying to build a 23-kilometre road, had to produce 30,000 pages of environmental application, costing £267 million. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, does not want any extra roads, and I respect that, but I think that she would agree that if you are not going to build the road, then just stop it, save £267 million and spend it on something worth while rather than on a process of applying for environmental protection which is just mind-bogglingly expensive.

For each of those cases, I do not know how much regulation was imposed on us by the EU and how much by our own volition. From listening to noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have spoken in these debates, almost all assume that all environmental protection of a worthwhile and onerous kind comes from the EU. I would be grateful if the Minister, not necessarily in the reply to this debate but subsequently, can tell us to what extent EU law is feeding into these hugely onerous, costly and time-consuming things that prevent us doing what is necessary for the environment and would help us to meet net zero.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

No, it is not appropriate.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, the case for what we are doing was put best by the noble Lord, Lord King, former Governor of the Bank of England. He said that there was a case for remaining in the EU to retain some influence, albeit small, over European legislation and there was a case for leaving to enable us to revise EU laws. There was no case for leaving and not using our opportunity to revise those laws.

A paradox arose in previous stages whereby those who, apparently with no problems at all, had allowed laws to be passed with little or no say by Parliament for 44 years became, overnight, welcome champions of full parliamentary process. Those on the pro-Brexit side of the campaign found themselves in the difficult position of arguing for rather streamlined and inadequate processes of parliamentary scrutiny, partly because there was a trade-off: there was a case for taking more time to maximise the thoroughness of scrutiny and a case for seeking speedy completion of the process to minimise uncertainty.

Amendment 2 gives us the opportunity for a degree of more thorough parliamentary scrutiny, which I think both sides welcome, but I would like an assurance from the Government that it will not prolong uncertainty for too long. The fewer the measures in the schedule, the more measures are outside it and could be liable to a process of reform or even removal over a longer period, therefore prolonging uncertainty. I would like to know before Wednesday why the some 2,000 laws that the Civil Service did not know existed have not been put in the schedule. If no one knew that they were there, what harm can there be in removing at least some of them?

More seriously, part of the process of this Bill is surely to enable us to transform legislation that we retain on the statute book into a more common-law process, more suited to Britain and our procedures. I would like some assurance that that will happen and an explanation of why, given that in most common-law countries there is little or no product legislation—they must be of merchandisable quality, safe and not harmful, but the law does not specify how or why they are made, in the way that the EU rules that we inherited do, largely for protectionist reasons—there is no removal of product legislation in this schedule. Surely it would be possible and bring us into line with much of the world.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very extensive debate. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned churlishness in a different context; it would be very churlish for these Benches not to welcome the government amendments in this group and the fact that the Minister has co-signed Amendment 9 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman.

We owe the Minister a debt of gratitude. All through the grinding Committee, he stuck poker-faced to the party line, but then it seems he sprang into action; he took the spirit of what he heard in your Lordships’ House and, using his not inconsiderable powers of persuasion on the Secretary of State, he ensured that the whole government position flipped by 180 degrees. We need to thank him for listening to your Lordships in Committee.

We heard some concern about what is in the new schedule, which we will debate on Wednesday. Some of us received at 2.40 pm some explanation as to why particular regulations were put in. Clearly, that was late—we should have had it a lot earlier—but Amendment 2 takes the place of our having to work through the night on that spreadsheet. Should the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, seek the opinion of the House, we on these Benches will support him. Part of the road can be travelled with this group, as long as the noble and learned Lord’s amendment is included.