European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I, too, will vote against the Bill this evening, and I bring to bear two aspects of my experience in this House on my assessment of the Bill as being profoundly undemocratic and something that this House should reject. In recent years, I have served on a number of Bill Committees, and every Bill has contained centralising measures that take powers away from Parliament, or from a range of agencies, and give them to the Secretary of State. This Government, like the one before, are profoundly centralising, and Parliament should be very worried about the measures in the Bill. I also had the great misfortune to serve on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for five years, so I know how outrageous it is that the Government are using statutory instruments in the way they are in the Bill. The negative procedure, used a great deal in this legislation, is particularly inappropriate in terms of giving Parliament the oversight it needs over how we Brexit.

Not only does the Bill give far-reaching powers to Ministers without meaningful parliamentary scrutiny, but it allows for rights and protections to be reduced or removed through secondary legislation without any meaningful scrutiny; it fails to provide certainty that rights and protections will be enforced as effectively in the future; it provides no mechanism for ensuring that the UK does not lag behind the EU in workplace protections; and, crucially, it prevents the UK from implementing strong transitional arrangements on the same basic terms that we currently enjoy—arrangements that include remaining in the customs union and in the single market. I will say more about that in a moment or two.

From equality laws protecting women, minorities and disabled people from discrimination to workers’ rights and key health and safety provisions, the rights secured through British EU membership have greatly benefited everyone in our country. We should also not forget the proactive role of the European Court of Justice in improving workers’ rights in Europe, on matters ranging from decisions on equal pay for equal work to the pension rights of part-time workers. Equally, the EU’s environmental protections, based on the principles of prevention and precaution, such as the incredibly successful bathing water directive and the common water framework, have had an important positive influence on our environment. They need to be protected by this House and this Parliament, and not left to the whims of Ministers.

It is also important that this House is able to have a say on whether we adopt transitional arrangements and on what they are. That is particularly important in terms of the customs union and the single market, which are vital to my constituency in the north-east. Some 60% of our exports are sold to the EU, and the north-east is the only region in England to export more goods and services than it imports. Trade with the EU has delivered more than 100,000 jobs in the region—that is approximately 8.4% of the workforce. Research by the TUC has found that there are 2,500 workers from EU countries in health and adult social care in the north-east alone, so we have great concerns about what is going to happen to that workforce post-Brexit.

It is also crucial for us to maintain continuity on services sector trade, as half of north-east services exports are traded with the EU. It is therefore not surprising that two thirds of north-east businesses wish to see a transitional period lasting for three years or more, but this is not addressed in any way in the Bill. Sarah Glendinning, the CBI’s regional director in the north-east, has said:

“Europe remains the UK’s biggest export market by some distance, so it’s little wonder that businesses here in the North East see maintaining access to the market of our nearest neighbours as a priority.”

Perhaps Ministers would like to say something this evening about how they will address those concerns.

The north-east also receives more EU funding per capita than most other regions; we receive more than double the national average, through the EU structural and investment funds, the European social fund and the JEREMIE—Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises—programme, to give just a few examples. I also want to hear from Ministers what they will do, through this Bill, to ensure that the money that the north-east gets from the EU will be maintained or increased. We are debating a really important matter for the north-east; Ministers must address the concerns they are hearing from Opposition Members and bring in proper measures that are truly democratic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

It is all about what the process will be. Interestingly, some of us have had the chance to look at a House of Lords report, which recommended some elements that this Bill should include. The report made it absolutely clear that delegated powers will be necessary in some cases, because the sheer volume of legislation needed—some 12,000 pieces of legislation—means that unless we use those powers effectively, the job will simply not be done in time.

The House of Lords Constitution Committee, which is not known to be a warm friend of this Government, made two specific recommendations. It recommended that

“a general provision be placed on the face of the Bill to the effect that the delegated powers granted by the Bill should be used only: so far as necessary to adapt the body of EU law to fit the UK’s domestic legal framework; and so far as necessary to implement the result of the UK’s negotiations with the EU.”

When the Secretary of State introduced the Bill on Thursday, he made it absolutely clear that that was broadly what the Government hoped to achieve. He went further and specified what the legislation would not be about. He made it clear that the powers in clause 9 would be for only two years and that they would make “technical and legal corrections” to deficiencies in the law. He also made it clear that Ministers will not have the power to make major policy changes and that changes will still be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and oversight.

Several Members, mostly on the Opposition Benches, have questioned the definition of significant, what restraint there will be on the Government when deciding what is and what is not important, and what constitute technical and legal corrections. Therefore, there has been a debate, with Members on both sides of the House offering suggestions as to how things can be improved. The Secretary of State has said that he is in listening mode and that he is happy to talk about mechanisms for making sure that the process is fully democratic and open. All that is encouraging and in tune with what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) referred to on Thursday during his important contribution to the debate. In particular, he said that it is important

“to have an established parliamentary system of scrutiny to ensure that the different types of statutory instruments that will be needed are correctly farmed out. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend”—

the Secretary of State—

“is right that the vast majority of them will be technical and of very little account, but some will be extremely important and will need to be taken on the Floor of the House. We need to have a system in place to do that.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 407.]

My right hon. and learned Friend did not recommend a specific system, but it seems relevant to suggest here that we already have what is, effectively, a body for precisely this task: the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. We also have a different model, or possibly an additional one. I am talking about what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is obliged to go through as a statutory requirement: the Social Security Advisory Committee. Some of us believe that we could use a combination of both those bodies. We could use an advisory committee to provide the technical analysis of proposed changes, and the Joint Committee to go through them and approve or disapprove the recommendations.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I am so sorry, but I will not give way.

That body would provide the necessary oversight that Members on both sides of the House, but particularly Opposition Members, are looking for to try to ensure that the right checks and balances are in place—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) mentioned—and we have the right use of statutory instruments—