Law Enforcement and Security (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

At the end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations cover policy areas that are individually of such significant concern to the House that they should not be considered together, and that Her Majesty’s Government have provided insufficient information in relation to the statutory instrument’s policy objectives and intended implementation”.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I start by apologising to the House that I was unable to take part in the debate in Grand Committee last week. Sad to say, I did stream the proceedings live to my sickbed, so I followed proceedings contemporaneously. The words of my amendment are not my own but those of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s Sub-Committee A. I intend, first, to give an example of how important the areas are that are covered by this SI; secondly, to question the reassurances given by the Minister in Grand Committee on the area of extradition; thirdly, to examine the impact of losing access to crucial EU databases on securing our borders and how that jeopardises the Government’s immigration strategy post Brexit; and finally, to highlight the muddled thinking of the Government that resulted in their putting too many important legislative changes into one SI.

The regret is about the way the Government are showing contempt for proper scrutiny of this statutory instrument by the House, by accident or design, not about the content of the instrument itself. As the Minister acknowledged in Grand Committee on 12 March at col. GC 195, these regulations which cover some of the most important areas of leaving the EU—law enforcement, security and judicial co-operation—have been “under-debated”. Yet despite this, the Government cram every necessary legislative change in these important areas into one statutory instrument. Not only does this make the SI impenetrable to mere mortals, even the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s Sub-Committee A concluded in its 17th report, published on 20 February, at paragraph 5:

“We were not persuaded that so wide-ranging an instrument, covering policy areas that are individually of significant concern to the House, can be justified. Effective scrutiny is inhibited by the wide range of issues included”.

--- Later in debate ---

I think I have answered all the questions. I thank all noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for again bringing this matter to my attention. I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lady Ludford and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

The Minister kept on about the regulations not containing any major policy areas. We have not said that they provide major policy changes—we accept what the Government say about that—but what we and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee are complaining about is that far too much legislation is contained within one statutory instrument. I specifically criticised what the Minister said in Grand Committee about the three policy areas and the common legal framework. In response to that criticism she simply repeated exactly what she said in Grand Committee.

I am grateful that the Minister admits that the contingency arrangements will result in a mutual reduction in capability of the UK and the EU, but it leaves an important question unanswered. I accept that she cannot speak for other individual EU states, but one of the purposes of the statutory instrument is to ensure that the alternative extradition arrangements under the 1957 convention can legally operate—that is, that the UK can extradite people to EU states or other signatories to the convention. However, we do not know whether EU states’ domestic legislation will allow them to extradite people to the UK.

As the Minister acknowledges, they may have to redesignate the UK as a Council of Europe member rather than as an EU member state in their domestic legislation in order to make the 1957 convention work. However, we still have no reassurance that the contingency arrangements the Government are relying on will work in practice. I accept that they are doing what they can on their side of the agreement, as it were, but we still do not know whether EU countries will be able to extradite people to the UK under the 1957 convention.

We are getting into the detail but the point is that it does not matter how long or short the Explanatory Memorandum is: if there is too much content in the statutory instrument itself, you will never get an Explanatory Memorandum that will assist the House because it will be either too superficial or too detailed to enable sufficient scrutiny. I believe the Government accept that and hopefully we will not face this situation in the future. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.