Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 6th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

The noble Viscount is absolutely right, and I agreed with every word of his earlier contribution.

What the amendments do, instead having of a one-way impetus to the judges, is to introduce some balance to the exercise. Both these amendments would introduce two factors—they are repeated for the two scenarios—which might incline the judge in favour of caution:

“the consequences of disturbing a settled understanding of the law”

and

“the importance of legal certainty, clarity and predictability”.

The amendments give the judges more space for their judgment, which is—I am quoting the notes of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson—“after all what judges are for”. What is the point of having judges if all they have to do is read the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill? Good luck with that.

Then the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, says of the quotation and reference in the Explanatory Notes to the Court of Appeal case of TuneIn Inc v Warner Music Ltd that “this, I am afraid, is disingenuous and I do hope the Minister will not repeat it from the Dispatch Box”. I am looking at the Minister—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy—and hoping that he does not do that, because TuneIn was a case in which the Court of Appeal decided not to depart from the jurisprudence of the CJEU for a number of reasons which were carefully enumerated. One decisive factor was that to

“return to the drawing board and start all over again … would create considerable legal uncertainty”.

So, the judges are stressing continuity, predictability, being able to weigh up factors and not being constrained. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, with respect, that he has got this wrong: if you say that the judges must do something and allow them to take into account only certain factors, it does not allow them to exercise their training and judgment. That is what we pay them for: to continue the law to provide the predictability that we need.

I finish by conveying that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, wanted to register his strong support for Amendments 90 to 93 in the names of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope, Lord Judge and Lord Thomas. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said: “They know a thing or two about the pressures of business in the highest courts, and this Bill is going to create a tsunami of business for lawyers. A sturdy floodgate is needed if those courts are not to be swamped, and these amendments provide one.” I respectfully recommend these amendments to the Committee.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, your Lordships may have noticed that there is a rather cruder amendment in my name towards the end of this group: Amendment 99A. I am not a lawyer, but much of my life in politics and trade unionism and as a consumer champion has been defined by decisions of the British courts—some of the most important of which have been influenced by European law or by the judgments of the European courts. The advances we have made on equalities, employment rights, a number of consumer items and the environment, and indeed on issues such as intellectual property and digital protection and so forth, have been in large part—not entirely; I will not overstate the case—affected by European law, now called retained EU law, or the European courts’ own judgments which have been followed by the British courts.

In the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—he is not here at the moment; I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy—and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said that the courts will go on interpreting cases as they have done from time immemorial. However, from time immemorial, the courts have interpreted the law on the basis of what is on the statute book at that time. They continue to do so until that law is changed by this Parliament. The implications of parts of Clause 7 are that that will no longer be the case; that the courts will need to have less regard to the types of cases that arose because they were influenced, at least in part, by European law; and that European decisions will not need to be held in the same regard in future. That is the purpose of Clause 7, which is why my amendment would delete it.

I largely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that it could be rewritten—we do need some guidance on case law—but this is taking it in entirely the wrong direction and destabilising what has, from time immemorial, been the basic role of the British courts in interpreting legislation. If the Government and Parliament change the law, that changes it; some of those cases no longer have the same effect as they do at the moment. However, if we take Clause 7 as it stands, we are undermining a number of improvements in the conditions of our people and, at the same time, undermining the credibility, consistency and historical role of our courts. I therefore suggest to the Government that they should remove this clause. If the Bill proceeds—noble Lords know that I am not in favour of it—the Government could come back with a rather more sensible Clause 7. However, as it presently stands, it is one that we ought to oppose root and branch.

The role of our legal system is being undermined by a political doctrine that has yet to find its way into the legislation and the statutory law of our land. That is a dangerous road that we should not go down; I therefore suggest that we remove Clause 7 and think again.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have no legal training, so I going to rely on noble and learned Lords to tell me whether I have understood this whole section properly. It seems a bit odd.

In contrast to the first clauses of this Bill, which have been designed by the Government to take power away from Parliament—all the decision-making process and scrutiny—Clause 7 seems designed to outsource the task of making sense of the huge legal mess in the Bill. It is wrong on many levels but, in particular, it calls on judges to make political decisions that Parliament ought to take instead. The Bill is potentially going to create a huge legal mess; it does not seem fair for the Government to outsource this issue. That is worrying enough on its own, but it is all the more worrying because of the way in which this Government have demonised lawyers and judges over the past two or three years. They have been scapegoated at every twist and turn of the Brexit process. It has been a nightmare to see people who clearly have our best interests at heart being demonised in this way.

Clause 7 seems to have a very specific purpose. Forgive me if my language is oversimplified but, quite honestly, the Government are making a huge legal mess and are going to ask other people—judges, lawyers and the courts—to sort it out for them so that those people will take the blame when it all falls apart. Can the Minister explain whether I have understood it properly?