Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

Of course, it would also ensure, as we have said many times, that Parliament actually takes back control of the process and does not give it away, not just to Ministers but to lawyers and judges, who will pursue cases in the interests of their clients. There is nothing wrong with that, but it risks a lopsided development of the law and could bring forward legal principles and developments that we cannot foresee and certainly cannot control.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I wish to make a relatively brief point, anticipating what the Minister might say on the basis of her response to comments on clause 3. It is worrying, when we are trying to have a serious consideration of the Bill, that serious questions either from our Front Bench or from my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow are met with the suggestion that we are, in some way, trying to deny Brexit.

I think we need to be clear on this: we campaigned to remain in the European Union; the majority of Conservative Members campaigned to remain in the European Union; but we lost and we left. There is no going back; none of us is arguing for it—no rejoining the EU, no rejoining the single market, no rejoining the customs union. But there are choices in the way that we manage our future outside of the EU. That is what we are trying to deal with, because we want to make the right choices, and are worried that the Government are not.

I have come to this session from a meeting of the UK Trade and Business Commission, which is a cross-party, cross-industry body looking at the trade opportunities and trade implications of our departure from the European Union. Both the British Chambers of Commerce, which gave evidence to us this morning, and the TUC expressed huge concern about the uncertainty created by the provisions in clauses 4 to 7 and the potential for businesses and workers to get lost in a legal quagmire from which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston says, only the lawyers will benefit. Given the current backlog of such cases in our courts, that uncertainty will last for some time.

Will the Minister address the concerns that were raised by the Bar Council, whose evidence I know she will have read? It warns about,

“creating uncertainty as to the meaning and status of such REUL by removing established principles by which it is to be interpreted, altering its status vis-à-vis other law, and nudging the courts towards departing from EU case-law that interprets it.”

I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, because the evidence then says:

“We detect no sign that any assessment has been done as to the legal effect of those changes on the regulations concerned (despite their importance) and can therefore detect no policy rationale for those changes whatsoever.”

I hope that, in her remarks, the Minister will address those points.

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central is absolutely right. This is not about whether Brexit has happened. We all know that Brexit has happened. We have left the European Union, and, frankly, it reflects an intellectual insecurity about the legislation if that is the only response that the Government can come up with—if they cannot actually engage in defending their proposals but try to take us on to a completely different debate.

That matters because millions of people across the country are dealing with the consequences of Brexit on a daily basis, none more so than our friends and family in Northern Ireland. I rise to ask the Minister to put aside the constant talk about, “Well, if you disagree with this, if you want to ask these questions, it’s cos you didn’t agree with Brexit,” and to do justice to the people of Northern Ireland.