European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Swire Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I speak in support of the amendments to clause 7 in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and other hon. Members. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) has already mentioned, they are amendments 264, 222, 73, 233, 234, 239, 240, 266, 269, 272 and 161. They are important because they go to the heart of the debate on democracy—whether so much power in so many important areas should be exercised by Ministers without substantial oversight by Parliament. I have not been reassured by the Minister’s lengthy response.

Particular importance has to attach to protecting the rights of consumers and of workers, and I was disappointed at the Minister’s rejection of the amendments we suggested. We have heard some rumblings from Government Back Benchers and fellow travellers that leaving the EU is an opportunity to strip away protections from workers, consumers and the environment, and to cut supposed “red tape” from manufacturers and producers. The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) reminded us of the previous views of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on this. The Foreign Secretary has also been one of these siren voices in the past, and the Brexit Secretary wrote an article during the EU referendum in which he said:

“The continental response to competition is, rather than trying to compete, to make sure that regulation tilts the playing field in their favour.”

He also said that:

“while the single market may seem like a good idea, in reality it has distorted market incentives, reduced competition and burdened European economies with unnecessary regulations.”

So there are people at the very heart of the UK Government who seriously believe that regulations designed to keep us safe and to prevent us from being ripped off, and regulations to ensure that the environment gets a break and that workers get paid and protected properly, are bad things. There are Cabinet Secretaries of the opinion that these things were invented by European bureaucrats as a weapon against UK productivity—that truly is health and safety gone mad.

I mention the current Government members to make it clear that there is a clear and identifiable danger to our continued safety, to the standards we expect in goods and the services we buy, and to the rights that workers enjoy—and it occupies Whitehall today.

As has been said by other Members, the extent of the power aggregation is such that it would leave Ministers, in effect, changing primary legislation by fiat. This is a coup, a very Tory coup, that is seizing power from this place—the power to create and amend legislation—and centralising it in the hands of a few who would have nothing to do with these protections and who would claim that we did well enough without them before.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady believe that the British electorate were better protected when these powers resided in Brussels, as they indeed still do? Does she think the people making these decisions in Brussels were more accountable than Ministers will be in this House after we leave?

[Deidre Brock]

This is exactly the point, is it not? Under this form of legislation Ministers will not be as accountable to this House. I am also of the view that environmental legislation, for example, has been well served by the European Parliament, so I have to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman.

Parliamentary scrutiny would be severely limited by the form of statutory instrument being proposed, but the sheer volume of secondary legislation that is likely to be washing through the system will render effective parliamentary scrutiny almost impossible. We need checks and balances inserted into the system to ensure that there is not legislation made in haste for which we all repent at leisure. I welcome the fact that at least a sifting committee has been accepted by the Government, but it does not go far enough. It would be a sensible argument for this secondary legislation, where it is necessary, to be subject to the super-affirmative procedure. I would like to hear from Ministers why that has not been considered or, if it has, why it has been rejected. Such an approach would not solve the problem, but it would, at least, nod in the direction of solving it.

We also have to recognise that other Administrations have a substantial interest in these decisions, and a degree of co-operation and respect is required. Therefore, “taking back control” has to have an element of that good, old-fashioned, EU principle of subsidiarity. Decisions that have large impacts on the devolved Administrations should be co-decisions. That is why the Joint Ministerial Committee should be involved in making them; it is why there should be proper consultation across the Administrations before changes are made to social security provisions; and it is why there should be consent from the Welsh and Scottish Administrations for any changes to the law that affect provisions within devolved competences.

We have heard the opinions of parliamentary Committees and of outside bodies. I know that experts are not viewed particularly favourably on the Government Benches, but they do have an important role to play, and many experts, including the Law Society of Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, have expressed serious concerns. Those concerns should be heeded in this place and heard by Ministers. It is clear that the furious Brexiteers who drove on when sensible voices were urging caution have ignored this advice:

“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself.”

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Swire Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

I want to make a bit of progress as others want to speak.

We in the UK are thinking that we must replace a lot of these treaties. When we leave the EU, our exit will affect not just us but the EU, because a great many of its treaties, obligations and agreements with third countries around the world were predicated on the existence of 28 members. Minus the UK, the other members may need to renegotiate their treaties as well. Ministers might not give two hoots about the implications of that, but those on the EU side of the negotiating table probably do care about it, and that will have ramifications for our negotiations.

Of course, the Foreign Secretary was always telling us that all the other countries around the world were queuing up to do deals with us. He had to fight them off as they asked, “Please may we have a new trade agreement with you?” I have not personally seen that particular queue, but perhaps when the Minister winds up the debate he will be able to tell us how many countries have been knocking on our door seeking new trade agreements.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman obviously thinks very little of this country if he feels that other countries around the world do not want to do trade deals with the United Kingdom. Why does he think that?

[Mr Leslie]

Those countries already have very good trade agreements with us by virtue of our membership of the European Union, and they are worried about losing the opportunity to have good trade arrangements not just with us, but with the rest of the EU, if those agreements are ripped up and thrown up into air, creating uncertainty. I will be the first person, as a member of the International Trade Committee, to go around the world and try to get those trade agreements, if indeed we do have Brexit, but until that point, I want the right hon. Gentleman to say whether he explained to his constituents before the referendum that all these international treaties were going to be ripped up. Did he say that to them?

[Sir Hugo Swire]

The hon. Gentleman needs to answer the question that I asked him first, with all due respect. He said there would be concern among many of these other countries—he did not say which—about what kind of trade agreement there would be, and about access to markets and so forth. Of course they will have concerns; we will also have concerns—that is part of any bilateral trade negotiation. Why does he think, despite these concerns, that they will not wish to do deals with us?

[Mr Leslie]

I hope that countries do, and we will need them to, otherwise we will literally be planting carrots in our back gardens. If we do not have trade deals with the rest of the world, we will have to produce more domestically, rather than having the living standards we have previously enjoyed. I am a very pro-trade Member of Parliament, and the right hon. Gentleman should know where I stand on many of these questions. That is why I am asking what the consequences will be not just if we move away from the trade arrangements we have—the finest, frictionless free trade agreement of anywhere in the world that we have right now with the single market and the customs union—but if we then rip up the free trade agreements with non-EU countries that we have enjoyed by virtue of our EU membership. That is another 12% of our exports. Some 50% of our exports are with the EU through our existing trade arrangements, and then there is another 12%—actually, there is another 14% because there are other territories of those non-EU countries as well. That is a big chunk of our trade. I am very concerned about how effectively we can carry out the grandfathering of those FTAs with the rest of the EU.

We must also bear in mind that there are 164 members of the WTO, and they have rights of veto and objection on many occasions. In fact, we recently tried to lodge a suggestion on dividing tariff-rate quotas. This is getting technical, but that is basically dividing up the EU’s share of low or zero-tariff allowances when countries such as New Zealand or Australia try to import lamb. Amazingly, Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America have lodged an objection to the British divvy-up of those tariff-rate quotas. Of course, apparently America should have been knocking on our door, as we were at the front of the queue, supposedly, but it still lodged an objection to our very first relationship with the WTO.