European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

Yes, and we all presumed that some of the £3.7 billion of preparations money would be spent on tarmacking fields around those areas in preparation for lorry parks and the overflow from the possible queues on the motorways.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are failing to understand the deep complexity of supply chains in the EU? He is talking about the finished product of a car, but there are also many automotive components that go backwards and forwards between the UK and mainland Europe. Sometimes within a single company, one part is made on mainland Europe, fixed into a car in this country and then exported back out to Europe. I also believe that the planning application for the lorry park was rejected because the council failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment.

[Mr Leslie]

We will have to see what happens there. I think that about 2.5 million lorries a year go through the port of Dover; just think about the volume of traffic we are talking about.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

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

[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.

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend rightly raises the issue of these countries objecting to any changes to quota, because they will first and foremost seek to protect their own economies, not our economy. In the event that we get a percentage of the EU quota but for whatever reason—customs barriers; non-tariff barriers; the withdrawal of purchasing power—that quota of goods cannot be sold into the UK, those countries’ flexibility to then sell those goods to the EU is lost. That is why they are digging their heels in so early on this issue.

[Mr Leslie]

That is a real worry. This will not get media attention or airtime, but it is a big chunk of our economic footprint. It is not just a trade issue with the EU; it is a trade issue in respect of all the free trade agreements with the rest of the world.

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[Mary Creagh]

I thank the Minister for rushing through his speech so that I get the chance to have my five minutes to talk about amendment 292.

Clause 8 allows Ministers to make any regulations to prevent or remedy any breach in our international obligations as we leave the EU, but it also contains a Henry VIII power allowing for those regulations to do anything that an Act of Parliament can do. That includes amending or repealing any Act of Parliament ever passed. It is the most extraordinary and unusual power. I was going to raise the Northern Ireland Act 1998, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) for getting the Minister on the record on that.

The Government have been very scant on the details about the sorts of international obligations that may be affected. They have also been unable to say—I was listening carefully to the Minister—why regulations under clause 8 can impose or increase taxation. We do not want to end up in a situation where the Government can raise tax-like charges by statutory instrument. That gives away the supremacy of this place on taxation. The “appropriateness” test is too broad, and it undermines the supremacy of Parliament. We cannot have taxation by the back door.

Crucially, I did not hear the Minister say anything about tertiary legislation. We have focused a lot on SIs—the secondary stuff. Tertiary legislation enables a new public body that needs to be set up, such as a chemicals body, to charge fees. This may not be controversial at first, but there may come a time when such bodies want to increase the fees, as happened when the Ministry of Justice wanted to increase probate fees by, I think, 1,500%. Why is there a double standard in clause 8 as regards secondary and tertiary legislation? We want tertiary legislation to be given the same parliamentary control and the same time limits as secondary legislation. My amendment 292 seeks to restore the supremacy of the House on financial matters.

I want briefly to deal with the environmental regulation that the Minister talked about. The Government currently have a “one in, three out” rule. Many of our environmental regulations come from international mixed agreements signed and ratified, as he said, by the UK and the EU; some are bilateral and some are multilateral. The Environmental Audit Committee has been looking at our progress in reducing fluorinated gases. These are very powerful greenhouse gases with a global warming potential 14,000 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. They are in commercial refrigeration systems, in our car air-conditioning systems, and in 70% of the 60 million asthma inhalers that we use in this country every year. Targets for reducing those gases are set and monitored by the European Union, but we are also a signatory to the UN framework, so it is a mixed agreement. We have just ratified the Kigali amendment to reduce F-gases by 85% by 2036. That agreement is monitored by the EU, so the Bill will convert the regulation into UK law and we will need new regulations.

The explanatory memorandum states that the new regulations may be subject to the Government’s “one in, three out” rule. We cannot have the Government making hundreds, if not thousands, of new regulations that get caught under that absurd administrative rule, so I want the Minister to assure the House that it will be scrapped. I have written about that as the Committee Chair, and Lord Henley has said that there is no clarity about it and no decision has been made. That has to change.

[Mr Leslie]

This is an incredibly important series of discussions. We need more information on the 759 international treaties that may fall on exit day, and I am glad that the Minister indicated that more information would be forthcoming. I want to vote for new clause 22 on the European economic area and the single market, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 22

EEA Agreement

“(1) No Minister may, under this Act, notify the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EEA Agreement, whether under Article 127 of that Agreement or otherwise.

(2) Regulations under this Act may not make any provision that would constitute a breach of the United Kingdom’s obligations under the EEA Agreement.

(3) Regulations under this Act may not amend or repeal subsection (1) or (2).”—(Heidi Alexander.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

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

[Mr Leslie]

Exactly. People voting in the referendum might have been moved by that slogan “take back control”, but I do not honestly think many voters thought that that meant taking back control from a European Executive and handing it to Ministers of the Crown, outwith the powers and scope of Parliament to do much about it, yet that is effectively the proposal in clause 7.

I want to emphasise that this is not simply an exercise in transposing technical and necessary measures. The Government have extended the scope of the Bill into policy-making capability, which brings in the question of divergence. We have heard a lot recently about concepts of full alignment and this notion of diverging from rules and policies. The way clauses 7 and 9 have been drafted would allow Ministers, by order, through negative statutory instruments that we rarely get the chance even to vote on in this place, to make policy changes that could affect policy functions and the rights of our constituents—perhaps as part of a deregulating agenda—if that is indeed what the Government of the day sought to achieve.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend, like me, will have read in the newspapers about the Cabinet split opening up on divergence, with various Cabinet Ministers backing divergence and others not. How does he think this squares with the Prime Minister’s promise to our European partners and the Government of the Republic of Ireland that we will stay in full regulatory alignment after we leave?

[Mr Leslie]

I suspect that the European Commission and the Republic of Ireland Government saw the phrase “full alignment” and thought that full alignment meant full alignment. It turns out from the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday that full alignment does not quite mean full alignment. She said it only meant aligning the areas in the Good Friday agreement protocol, but of course that predates the notion of our leaving the single market and the customs union, so the Good Friday agreement did not cover such narrow issues—I say that sarcastically—as goods and manufacture trade. The list of issues that she thinks full alignment covers does not include trade in goods, which is a staggering thing, because of course if we do not cover trade in goods, we end up with that hard border, which is absolutely the point we have got to.

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

[Mr Leslie]

I do not want to digress at this stage. I want to focus particularly on the powers that Ministers are taking in clause 7, if my hon. Friend will allow me to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

The offer from the Government has been a binary yes or no motion at some point when we see the withdrawal agreement, and then—potentially after the fact, post-signature by Ministers—a Bill later on down the line. That is obviously not good enough, but we will come to many of those issues in tomorrow’s debates. For now, there are further deficiencies in the way clause 7 has been drafted to be addressed.

Clause 7(5) talks about the functions and public services that the regulations can amend. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has spotted in amendment 5, as I have in amendment 61, that these powers could allow Ministers to sweep away a public service function currently undertaken by an EU agency without making alternative provisions; Ministers have talked about a function being not only “replaced” or “modified”, but “abolished”. Ridiculously, Ministers have snuck in this phrase, under which by order they can abolish a whole area of public service activity through the powers they are granting themselves in subsection (5). That could affect lots of obscure and small areas of public policy that do not matter to all our constituents but will certainly matter to some, including chemical safety certification, medicine risk assessment activities, aircraft airworthiness, preparedness for disease prevention and control, aeronautic research, energy market trading, and maritime pollution.

There are lots of functions that EU agencies currently fulfil. Some Members might say that they should be fulfilled within the UK, which is a perfectly good argument, but clause 7 would allow Ministers to abolish those functions entirely by order. I do not believe that is appropriate, and that is why I think amendment 61 and certainly amendment 5 are necessary.

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend has talked about the many agencies that we currently rely on to regulate all manner and aspects of our national life, but he has neglected to mention the regulatory and enforcement functions carried out by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Does he share my concern that, particularly in the environmental sphere—which I will talk about in my speech—removing the Commission as an enforcement body could be very detrimental to standards in all areas of regulation?

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend has done important work as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee on some of these questions. These are not small matters; they are important functions that over the years we have developed and grown to expect. Some of them are provided by EU agencies, but they should not be able to be abolished simply by order—by the sweep of a ministerial pen—without reference to this place and without the House of Commons having some ability to decide.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes the point well. We can all imagine circumstances in which the Government could be in part responsible for failures to comply with various legal obligations—as she says, it might well include failure to comply with air quality directives—and those who suffer harm as a consequence of those Government failures may no longer have the right of redress. Those rights exist not only in environmental legislation but in, for instance, equal opportunities legislation. I can foresee circumstances in which a same-sex couple seek retroactively to claim their right to pension arrangements that might not have existed in the past so that they can accrue their pension rights, but they would not have redress to do so under the proposed arrangements.

The other big one is competition law, which relies very much on the right to challenge the Government, particularly on procurement arrangements. Companies that say they did not get a contract for such and such a reason may well feel that it was partly because they were unfairly treated by Government. Under the Francovich arrangements we have protections so that contracts can be let fairly, be it for house building, transport infrastructure or anything else we can name. A number of protections need safeguarding there.

Perhaps the biggest one that has not been addressed by Ministers and where Francovich may still be required is the protection of the rights of EU nationals after Brexit. A number of EU nationals will continue to reside in the UK after Brexit, but what will happen if their residency rights or definitions change, if their children are affected by changes of arrangements with the Government, or if rights to claim various tax reliefs or other things change in an unfair way for them, as EU nationals? There should be some level of redress against malfeasance by Government in that respect, so at the very least we need to hear from Ministers a better justification for the deletion of this Francovich protection.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. His amendment on Francovich echoes my own, although mine is slightly different on time limitation. Does he agree it is unthinkable that a Government who throughout this Bill have said, “All rights and protections would be guaranteed,” are now seeking to remove the ability to sue the state for imperfect administration, mostly of directives, at a time when they are about to incorporate hundreds if not thousands of pieces of EU law into our UK law? They are saying, “If anything goes wrong with any of that, you’ve got no right to sue us in the future.”

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend is correct about that and she has tabled a very good amendment on this issue. Ministers need to do better and explain why they would seek to wrench out of the protections for our citizens this potential right-to-redress arrangement, particularly as it may well affect malfeasances and the need for redress that takes place before exit day. This is not just saying that this rule will not apply to situations that occur after exit day; its drafting would prevent that right to redress, even if the claim itself relates to an occasion prior to exit day. All hon. Members, regardless of political party, should therefore think of their constituents, the cases we pick up and the surgery discussions we have with people who ask what they can do. The Government are a large and powerful organisation—many Conservative Members often make that point about the size and power of the state—and individuals need rights in order to protect themselves in some of those circumstances. This is something that really should transcend the normal party political issues.

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[Mr Leslie]

I have been in Parliament since 1997, on and off, and I find that amendments can often be rebutted for a number of reasons but when people say there is a technical deficiency that tends to be the last refuge of the Minister. There may well be arguments that say that we need to cut and paste the charter of fundamental rights or the Francovich provisions, but to do so having regard to changes in the language to take account of new circumstances. Everybody can recognise the need for consequential or supplemental amendments to the legislation sometimes, but let us not kid ourselves: we are talking about some far bigger principles here. I hope the hon. Gentleman would not diminish the importance of the charter of fundamental rights and those myriad legal rights and protections we have that are so essential for the specific and general reasons I have given in this debate.

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

[Mr Leslie]

I will give way one more time but I want to make sure that other Members have a right to speak today as well.

[Mary Creagh]

I am in violent agreement with the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) on the issue of Francovich, and I will be speaking to those points in more detail when I come to talk to my amendment. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that certain rights in the charter such as environmental rights, consumer rights and the rights of the elderly in particular, which are not highly developed in UK case law or in any other sort of legislation, are gently being thrown out with the bathwater in this removal of the charter of fundamental rights?

[Mr Leslie]

That is an exceptionally important point. Our legal system is one of the finest in the world. It is a dynamic legal system and is not simply reliant on statute; it can relate to cases as they evolve. The charter of fundamental rights, which could equally be a charter within the UK law, according to this Bill, if it were transposed, could help to maintain that dynamism and the protection of rights to fill the gaps when those unforeseen circumstances arise. We do not know what issues our constituents will bring to us from one week to the next, but we may well have a constituent who has found that their rights have been deprived unfairly and who needs redress to protect them from the Government or others. In our surgeries and discussions, what will we say to our constituents in such circumstances? What will we say when they say, “But you had the opportunity to transpose and retain the protections under the charter of fundamental rights”? Will we say “Oh, well, it was a very busy day. I didn’t really notice what was going on in the Chamber. There were lots of complex things going on to do with Brexit”?

This really matters. I am delighted and proud that many Members from all parties in this House are voicing their concerns and are not prepared to see these rights just swept away on a ministerial say-so.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Finally, we get some sign of life from Conservative Members. They are finally interested in the consequences of withdrawing from the European Union. This is an issue that the House should have the opportunity to discuss. Many firms, industries and producers, on both sides of this question, will either benefit or—probably—lose out, as a result of our exiting from the European Union in this way.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Blessed are the cheesemakers, wherever they happen to live, but may I return my hon. Friend to new clause 112, which deals with the European Chemicals Agency, and alert him to the fact that the Environmental Audit Committee is looking into the issue? I have the 200 pages of evidence on what withdrawing from the European chemicals regulations will mean for the motor industry, the defence industry and the pharmaceuticals industry in this country, and it does not make pretty reading.

[Chris Leslie]

As my hon. Friend says, there are serious questions about hazards that could affect our constituents and substances that pose dangers because, for instance, they may be carcinogenic.

We are disappointed in the Government not only because of their White Paper, but because they are trying to gag Parliament and prevent it from debating these issues. Muzzling Members on both sides of the House on these questions means that we will end up far poorer and far worse off, and it sends a message to the Lords that they will have to do the job of scrutiny and due diligence that we were unable to do. This is our only substantive opportunity to debate the Bill. Parliament deserves more respect than the Government have shown in their insubstantial, inadequate White Paper, which does not touch on many of the questions in our new clauses. We simply want to know what they plan to do, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will answer our questions when he responds to the debate.

Finance Bill

Debate between Mary Creagh and Chris Leslie

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I am not saying people should buy everything new, but I am certainly not telling families in my constituency that when they have a second baby they should trawl around to the local hospice shop or British Heart Foundation shop in a desperate quest to get a car seat so as to take their child home from hospital without breaking the law. The hon. Lady says that those goods are in abundant supply. One of the important things about car seats is that if we buy them second hand, we have absolutely no idea whether they have been involved in a car accident. I am certain that no Member of this House has bought a car seat for their child—for their new baby—from a charity shop. What we ask for ourselves we should also stand up for in this House, and ask for our constituents.

[Chris Leslie]

When listening to interventions from the Government Benches, it comes as a shocking revelation to hear the notion expressed that those who are in financial difficulties can go round the charity shops looking for cots and prams. I do not quite see how they can do that for sanitary products or teething equipment, for instance: perhaps the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) would suggest buying recycled baby bottles and so forth, too. All such products attract the higher rate of VAT at 17.5%, which will go up to 20% as a result of the Bill. Does not all this show a degree of condescension in the Conservative party’s attitude to those in the greatest need?

[Mary Creagh]

I think it does, and I also think it is indicative of the idea that the poor are no better than they should be, and that they should aspire to nothing better than charity shop purchases.