Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

26: Clause 5, page 3, line 36, leave out paragraph (e)

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group concern the Henry VIII powers in the Bill. Without going into the details of the drafting of my amendments, because they hang together, I make one central point. It is my contention that, given the breadth of the powers as they currently appear in the Bill, the only Henry VIII powers enabling the Secretary of State to make regulations amending, repealing or revoking primary legislation or EU retained law should be those that are limited to consequential, supplementary, incidental, transitional, transitory or saving provisions. That is quite a wide category for these powers in any case. If when the Bill comes back on Report the Government have changed their position, and the Henry VIII powers in the Bill are limited to those which they can justify in accordance with what I might call a conventional approach to permitting secondary legislation to amend, revoke or modify limited categories of primary legislation, we may change our position.

For the moment, however, we stand by the position taken by the Delegated Powers Committee, which described the Henry VIII powers in the Bill in trenchant terms:

“The Bill contains a Henry VIII power to amend or repeal any Act of Parliament ever passed”.


The power may be used for the purposes in Clause 5(3), but those powers are no narrower than the purposes of the Bill as a whole:

“Regulations under section 2 may amend, repeal or revoke primary legislation (a) for the purpose of conferring functions on the Secretary of State or on any other person (including conferring a discretion); (b) to give effect to a healthcare agreement”.


These purposes are scarcely narrower, and to describe them as limiting is to misuse the English language. The committee pointed out that the Minister does not give any indication of what primary legislation might in future need to be amended. She said that there may be a need to confer functions on healthcare bodies at some stage in future, to which the committee’s robust and, I suggest, accurate response was that the time to confer functions on such bodies is when those bodies are created.

We should all remember why such powers are called Henry VIII powers. Their name is a reference to the Statute of Proclamations of 1539, which effectively enabled the Crown to govern by decree, ordering that proclamations should be obeyed as though they were made by Act of Parliament. Writing in the 18th century in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Sir William Blackstone—after whom the great human rights set of chambers of which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is a member is named—described the Act as a statute,

“calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny; and which must have proved fatal to the liberties of this kingdom, had it not been luckily repealed”.

Those words are as true now as they ever were.

I suggest that when it comes to primary EU retained law, the principles are the same. The Constitution Committee report draws attention to the distinction specifically drawn in Section 7 of the EU withdrawal Act between retained direct principal EU legislation and retained direct minor legislation, on which less stringent conditions are imposed for its modification. In this Bill, the Government have simply ignored the distinction.

The Constitution Committee said:

“One of the purposes of drawing this distinction was to make it possible for subsequent Acts of Parliament to afford greater protection to retained direct principal legislation, such as by requiring delegated powers that amend it to be subject to the affirmative procedure”.


It continued, in bold:

“We recommend that clause 5 be amended to reflect the distinction drawn in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 between principal and minor retained direct EU legislation”.


The report drew attention to the fact that the committee had made the same recommendation in its report on the Trade Bill and that the Government, in their response to that report, had accepted it. It went on:

“We recommend that the Government ensures that all future bills that provide for the amendment or repeal of retained EU law include the distinction between principal and minor retained direct EU legislation”.


First, why have the Government not accepted the committee’s recommendation on this occasion, and, secondly, will the Government commit to complying with the committee’s general recommendation in the future?

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[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord is right to expect that I will take these questions away and consider them.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for assuring us that she is listening to the criticisms, that the Government have seen the point of them, and that she will consider them before Report. In those circumstances, I invite the House to accept my withdrawing the amendment. It is not enough to give assurances on how the Government intend to use the powers, for all the reasons we canvassed on Tuesday. It is important that the Government consider how far the powers need to go and how far they can be limited, in order to achieve the object that the Minister seeks to achieve—and only the object that she seeks to achieve. If the Bill comes back limited in that way, the Minister may well get a much more favourable wind when she seeks to put such a power through on Report.

I also suggest that the Minister asks the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, whether there is now a parliamentary barrister acting as parliamentary counsel who will take the same rather tough view on the extent of powers that are taken as that consulted by him when he was a junior official. It is that kind of rigour that is necessary and must be brought to bear upon the powers.

Regarding the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the response by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, it seems that a greater use of appropriate conjunctions, making clear when “and” is meant and when “or” is meant, would help in Clause 5 and Clause 1. A little bit of English grammar might go a long way to improving this and other legislation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 26 withdrawn.

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Then, apart from affirmative and negative procedures, other expedients might serve to reduce the perceived anomaly or imbalance that from the Bill the Secretary of State has too many powers and Parliament too few. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, has already referred to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and all other noble Lords who have collectively expressed concern about this. Therefore, might the Minister be able to say in what way and to what extent she could achieve some accommodation between now and Report?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 35 and 36 in this group, which are in my name. What I say is entirely without prejudice to what I said on the last group: changing the procedure does not make it acceptable for statutes to include fundamentally inappropriate delegations such as are included in the Bill. Nevertheless, we are now considering the Bill and the breadth of the powers as currently drafted, particularly those in Clause 2.

In that context, I draw attention to the use of the ghastly phrase “for example”, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, drew attention on Tuesday. To allow for the widest possible powers, and then to introduce them in a clause that starts:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may, for example”,


showing therefore that the powers are entirely unlimited, is completely unacceptable. However, that is the background against which we are considering the question of the appropriate procedure.

I do not believe that any regulations should be made under the Bill unless they are made by affirmative resolution. Should the Government come back on Report with a Bill in which the powers of the Minister are appropriately circumscribed, there may be a case for some regulations of a minor nature to be amenable to the negative resolution procedure.

In particular, I listened with care to what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said when he drew a distinction between rolling over agreements that already exist in the regulations in relation to the EU-EEA-Switzerland agreements and others that we already have, and making new agreements and regulations in relation to them. That may be a point on which a distinction can be drawn, and no doubt the Minister and her colleagues will consider it as a possible distinction. Generally speaking, however, regulations of this type ought to be by affirmative resolution.

If, later on, we are looking at a very different Bill, I ask the Minister and her colleagues to consider the Delegated Powers Committee’s Guidance for Departments when determining how the procedures should be adopted, which procedure should be adopted, and the criteria that should be applied in choosing them.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendments 27 and 41. Noble Lords will know that because of my role as a Minister up until the end of last year, I find some of the provisions in the Bill rather more defensible than do other noble Lords, and I know that that is a minority opinion. Nevertheless, the Minister has said that she will reflect on the House’s strength of feeling, and of course she has much greater wisdom than me on these matters.

I was struck by some comments made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern on the last group, when he talked about the scope of the Bill; that is relevant to the context of the amendments laid by my noble friend Lord Lansley. That is the point I was trying to make on Tuesday: there is no reason a priori why the Bill should not have a broader scope. As my noble friend pointed out, in other contexts, the House is arguing that similar Bills ought to, but it follows from that that the functions carried out as a consequence of the Bill are of two distinct types. One concerns what my noble friend called rollover Bills, to provide continuity with the EEA and Switzerland; the other concerns new arrangements—not necessarily with new countries but of a new and deeper kind. Clearly, that will be taking on a relationship that does not have precedent when it comes to dealing with individual countries, even if it has precedent as modelled on those available with the EEA and Switzerland.

My noble friend’s logic in thinking about how the regulation-making power ought to reflect that distinction is therefore sound. Clearly, there needs to be sensitivity. That is reflected in the timeliness and urgency of what we need to do for one set of circumstances and what we might want to do with the longer-term global role.

I am sure that the Minister will reflect carefully on the amendments. If the goal of the Bill should be to give us the broad scope, as I still believe, not only to deal with the consequences of leaving the European Union but to build a different, broader, more global set of relationships, which I think is the kind of network the House supports, there is a compelling case for my noble friend’s argument for a differentiated approach. Whether the specifics are right, I do not know; others will be in a position to judge. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on the amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

32: Clause 5, page 3, line 43, at end insert—
“( ) Not less than 28 days before laying any regulations pursuant to subsection (1) the Secretary of State must publish a draft of the proposed regulations, and not less than 14 days before such regulations are laid, Her Majesty’s Government must give both Houses of Parliament the opportunity to consider and debate the draft.”

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, for years many of us have believed that the procedures for considering statutory instruments have been unsatisfactory. Whether any statutory instrument is to be passed by the affirmative resolution procedure or the negative resolution procedure—a question we have discussed today—is not the fundamental point. That distinction merely determines the way in which the instrument comes before Parliament to be debated—if it does so.

The more fundamental problem, which we all recognise, is that SIs are unamendable. They are “take it or leave it”—every paragraph or none. We were reminded on Tuesday by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that it is exactly 40 years since the House of Commons rejected a statutory instrument. In this House, we too have the power to reject statutory instruments by fatal Motions. The last time we did so—at least, it was said by some that we did—was over tax credits in 2015. Indeed, it was on the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, when she was on this side of the House.

On that occasion, the right-wing press railed against us for exceeding what it thought our powers ought to be and advocated our abolition. Anyway, the Government set the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on us, after which the fuss rather died down. However that may be, fatal Motions are very rarely passed by this House. I think that is partly because they are seen as disrespectful of the primacy of the House of Commons and partly, perhaps, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, because the Whips discourage fatal Motions in case they, too, will face such Motions when it comes to their party’s turn in government.

I suggest that the power to reject delegated legislation is an important power and ought to continue. However, it is a residual power to be used very sparingly and when the objection to an SI is very substantial indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said in debate on the first group that we should use the power to reject SIs more often to achieve amendment by sending them back for review and reintroduction. That is a way of doing it, but it runs into the difficulty that it may be too cumbersome and, for the reasons I have mentioned, I doubt that it would be a politically workable approach. Regret Motions, which we often use, are useful, but they come too late in the process and the Government do not have to take any notice of them.

However, under my amendment, the Government would have to publish a draft 28 days before laying the regulations and give both Houses a chance to debate the draft, and to do so before it is actually laid. That would give us an opportunity in a relatively informal way to identify defects in instruments or particular provisions that ought to be removed. Amendment 32 would avoid the need to go through the super-affirmative procedure, which many would advocate for some of the provisions in this Bill, but it would improve scrutiny.

Under our existing arrangements, the power to scrutinise secondary legislation is weakened by the lack of any provision for Parliament to point to particular provisions in an SI and ask the Government to think again. Mine is of course a probing amendment. I suggest that it is particularly relevant to the provisions of the Bill because the regulation power, as we have all considered—many have made this point—is so general, so unrestricted and so unpredictable in its likely or possible exercise.

This amendment may be of more general relevance—I do not suggest otherwise. It is intended to offer a way for Parliament to have an early opportunity of considering proposed delegated legislation in draft before it is laid; to give MPs and Peers an opportunity to consider and express concerns about a proposed statutory instrument, or particular provisions within it; and to give the Government an opportunity to respond to issues raised in such exploratory debates. The amendment is expressed in the terms of a requirement on the Government to make those debates possible, because it is intended to emphasise that statutory instruments, though made by Ministers, are made under powers vested in Ministers by Parliament and are subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

I do not suggest that this amendment, or this type of procedure, ought to apply to every piece of delegated legislation, but I do suggest that it is worth considering. Many of us believe that scrutiny has become too weak and the power of Ministers too strong. This amendment is intended to explore a way of tilting the balance back in favour of parliamentary scrutiny and would, I suggest, offer us one path to better and more carefully considered secondary legislation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the strong arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on this issue, and I await the Minister’s response. We have every sympathy with the intention behind the amendment, and the noble Lord’s frustration that the House can either accept or reject a statutory instrument but cannot amend it, while parliamentarians can and often do take note of or reject Motions. However, Parliament is ultimately at the mercy of the Government to withdraw regulations and bring forward a revised draft, which may or may not adequately address the concerns that have been expressed. Fatal Motions are quite rightly used rarely, in exceptional circumstances.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, says this is a probing amendment. However, I fear that, in this circumstance, it would be counterintuitive to the Bill’s primary objective of implementing reciprocal health agreements after Brexit. As my noble friend Lady Thornton said on Amendment 33 in an earlier group, time is not on our side, and I fear that the approach contained in this amendment would lead to delays in implementing reciprocal health agreements. In the event of no deal, when millions of British citizens will lose their current access to healthcare treatment overnight, any delay while Parliament debates and considers draft regulations would be catastrophic. Obviously the delay that would occur from the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, suggests would have to be taken into consideration in any future changes, and would certainly need to be discussed.

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However, I recognise the experience and intentions of the noble Lord, and the concern of the House, and so I would like to make an offer to discuss, in advance of Report, the issue of scrutiny of the regulation-making powers in the Bill—on the general point, not relating to this particular amendment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for raising this vital issue, but I hope that, after reflection, he will feel that he is able to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames]

My Lords, I do not need to reflect very hard to withdraw what was plainly a probing amendment. I raised an idea and I accept the point that, in the context of many of the regulations, particularly those to replicate the European agreements that we have, my amendment might not be appropriate. In the context of the wider issue of any other new healthcare agreements, if they are persisted with, it may be appropriate, and it is something that we would consider.

I would like to say how grateful I am for the offer from the noble Baroness to consider the question of scrutiny. I would like to accept that offer now, and, in so saying, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 32 withdrawn.