Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Olivia Blake and Jeremy Wright

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and support the amendment. It is sensible, because the public have an expectation here, and we should not forget that. They believe that, having had a vote some time ago—in 2016—to leave the European Union, we would do exactly that. For them, that includes European Union law no longer holding sway in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone talked about the disadvantage of having two sets of law—pre-Brexit and post-Brexit—that the courts must look at separately forevermore, and that disadvantage is considerable. Despite the fact that I did not vote for Brexit, the consequence of it is that we absolutely must have a Bill of this nature, and we must have the measures that flow from it.

I fear that the public will spot that if that extra friction is unnecessary—I believe it is—it is a consequence only of seeking to delay the point at which Brexit has meaningful impact. I do not think it is good for our democracy or for the contract we made with the electorate, which is that if we offered them the chance to decide this question, the political classes would honour their judgment—and that is what we must do. From that, it follows—it seems to me, at least—that the Bill is necessary and that amendments that seek subtly to undo its effect are profoundly undesirable and should not be supported.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I wish I could say I was happy to be called in this debate, but the truth is that I do not believe we should be having it at all. I am not sure that if I tried, I could design a worse way of withdrawing from a legal framework. Not content with crashing the economy, the world being literally on fire, and our food prices and energy bills being so high that people are no longer able to afford to eat or heat in many parts of the country, Ministers now want to waste our time and energy driving us off this regulatory cliff. I wonder how many civil servants have been drafted in and redeployed to deal with the legal consequences of the sunset clause—I am pleased the Government have now dropped it—which was ridiculous and absolutely unworkable. Despite the recent climbdown on what the Bill will cover, the truth is that it still hands power to Ministers to rewrite, revoke and replace hundreds of our vital laws on substantive issues.

Without the Lords amendments, the Bill places our rights at work, our environmental protections and hard-won equal rights on a cliff edge. From working with my constituents on the Hallam citizens’ climate manifesto, our vision for climate action locally and nationally, I know the importance and appetite for democracy, especially around protecting our natural environment. Our response to the climate and nature emergency must be led by communities across the country who already feel the impacts of the climate crisis. That is why I have been working with campaigners to bring forward the Climate and Ecology Bill as a 10-minute rule Bill. It would enable us to reach the goals we need to protect us from a 1.5°C increase in global temperature. We need to bring about a democratic transition. We urgently need to protect our precious natural environment and expand our democracy when talking about these issues, not curtail it.

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will do the exact opposite, concentrating power even further into the hands of a few Ministers. That should concern everyone in the House who claims to represent their constituents. The truth is that the Government do not value our natural environment. Just look at the key pieces of environmental law that were missing from the dashboard, or the way it treats the people who work every day to protect it at the Environment Agency.