Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I will not give way at the moment. I am going to make some progress, because I am conscious that a number of people want to speak in the debate. As I was saying, all retained EU law in the schedule will be revoked on 31 December 2023.

There is a clear additional advantage to a schedule, and this was a point I made earlier to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy): rather than using precious parliamentary time passing SIs to save laws that no one would ever let sunset, it is right to be clear in a schedule what retained EU law will revoked, while letting the rest be reformed. Instead of our focusing on passing significant numbers of SIs just to preserve the status quo, the schedule will allow the Government to get on with reforming and revoking regulations that are not fit for purpose for the UK.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

My hon. and learned Friend is bringing me a lot of déjà vu, as one of his predecessors who dealt with EU withdrawal and retained EU law. There will be more on that later, but I want to ask him about the point he has just made. Was there not a danger that, in confusing haste with speed, we were going to end up with a cut-and-paste operation, where civil servants were just going to replicate existing SIs and leave them on the statute book to be reformed at some undefined date in the future? Is his approach guaranteed to avoid that unhappy set of circumstances from coming about?

[The Solicitor General]

I am grateful to my predecessor, who has indeed spent many hours at this Dispatch Box debating legislation such as this over the past years. He is absolutely right in what he says; this approach allows the Government to get on with reforming and revoking, rather than having the cut-and-paste to which he referred.

We want to expand both the scrutiny and the breadth of experience that we are drawing on when it comes to revocation and reform. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) anticipated this point, and I thank him for the work done by him and his Committee, a number of whose members are in the Chamber today. Indeed, I used to be a member of that Committee and the Government look forward to engaging with it. I am pleased to give him a commitment that we will present a report to the European Scrutiny Committee on a six-monthly basis on the progress and plans the Government are making on the repeal of retained EU law. Any retained EU law not included in the schedule will be stripped of EU interpretative effects after 31 December 2023. I repeat that it is important to expand both the scrutiny and breadth of experience, as the Secretary of State for Business and Trade has said from this Dispatch Box and elsewhere. This is vital, and it means that we will still be removing the effects of general principles of EU law as an aid to interpretation, ceasing the application of supremacy and repealing directly effective EU rights so that they no longer have any effect in relation to those provisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alyn Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I have to say that I do not agree with him. The intention of the amendment is clearly about protecting the devolved settlement. It does do that, and that is certainly the SNP’s interpretation of it. We do not have Members in the Lords, but if there was scope for redrafting that provision, we would be open to it. Our position, however, is that it defends the devolved settlement. I do not think there is any serious risk to any other provision.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am delighted to engage with the hon. Gentleman, and he is engaging closely on an important detail. The governing provision is section 4 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which in effect deals with the generic issues under section 2(1) of the European Communities Act 1972. There is no specific reference in there to devolved matters. Does that not reinforce the point being made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) about the danger of this Lords amendment 6 not being as precise or as clear as it ought to be?

[Alyn Smith]

In a spirit of intellectual honesty, I will take that point on board. I hope their lordships will, too, because I suspect that this is not the end of the discussion. For today, we will support the amendment to make it clear that we want to defend the devolved settlement from a power grab. I suspect we will come back to this matter, and I am genuinely grateful for those constructive points.

Lords amendment 15, on non-regression from existing environmental standards, takes the statements of UK Government Ministers and various members of the leave campaign at face value that we will not revoke or pull back from our very high environmental standards, some of which derive from EU law and some of which do not. If we are not going to dilute them and there is no intention from those on the Treasury Bench to do so, let us bang that into the Bill and make it explicit.

Lords amendment 42 is an attempt to improve scrutiny, and I come back to the thoughtful points that were made about the possibility that it might introduce friction into the Bill. I would counter that by saying that the Bill goes around the normal legislative scrutiny by which we would deal with these things. I accept that the amendment is an innovative idea, but it is merited, and those on the Treasury Bench should take it as showing the scale of disquiet about the potential for a power grab with the Bill. We will support that amendment.

I will close; I was hoping to be briefer than I have been. We do not like this Bill. We do not like what it is trying to do or how it is trying to do it. From our perspective, it is not in Scotland’s interests, and it is not in Scotland’s name either, with Holyrood having refused consent. I urge colleagues to match their talk of democratic deficits through their actions. If by their actions they prove my party right today, Scotland has a different path to choose if we are serious about democracy in these islands. My party has a clear vision of Scotland’s best future; I do not see a clear vision of any future in this legislation. Scotland has a better choice to make.