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

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Good morning, Sir Gary. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning on this Bill. You have missed some real treats, I venture to suggest, about the future of decision making in this place.

Members who have been on this Committee for the whole marathon rather than the last couple of miles will know that Opposition Members have been raising consistent concerns about how we do what we were all promised we would be able to do—take back control. The amendments before us this morning are about exactly that, because one of the central concerns that we have about this legislation is that it does not take back control to the British people; it simply takes back control to the back rooms of Downing Street and Departments. These provisions, these amendments, show why that concern is merited.

All of us have sat through statutory instrument Committees in our time in Parliament. It is a joy to receive the message, at the last minute, that you have been selected, Sir Gary, for what pleasures—what delights—await you and what information you will learn on one of those Committees. But they are a vital part of our parliamentary scrutiny process. After all, they offer the opportunity for Ministers to set out clearly the purpose behind any amendments; the recognition that not everything needs to be debated on the Floor of the House; and clarity about the Government’s thinking. Many of us who have sat through court cases will recognise how important that is when it comes to the application of the law.

As we have discussed previously in Committee, this legislation will delete overnight potentially 4,000 laws. It could be more, or it could be slightly less—who knows? We probably should know before we pass the Bill. We have had that debate and the Government still do not think it is important, but they have always told us that they wanted to take away unaccountable European bureaucrats and give us the opportunity to have British bureaucrats making legislation. The amendment challenges that process. It would give back to us, as parliamentarians, the responsibility for holding the Government to account.

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[Stella Creasy]

Perhaps, then, the Minister will publish and confirm for all of us who have been on the Committee—he is new to these debates, but I am afraid he is going to hear this concern repeated at length—what comes next. Without clarity over what comes next, it is difficult to be confident that the legislation will not be a destructive disaster. I see he is already enjoying the fact that he is on duty today.

Having this power only for revocation undermines other powers the Bill gives to Ministers, because it is a power both to ignore and to amend legislation. Taking back control and returning it to the back rooms to allow Ministers to write legislation and then simply put it before us in a “like it or lump it” proposal is not really taking back control.

I also venture to say that it is worth ensuring that we have this procedure for all forms of legislation that are affected by the Bill—not for some grand political design so we can have these wonderful debates, but because, as we have already seen with this Bill, not everything is going to be perfect. Departments make mistakes. Drafting can contain errors. I am reminded of the tale, which is completely true, of the Belgian legislature that managed to put a recipe for asparagus into Belgian law because it was cut and pasted into legislation by accident. That genuinely happened—I am sure the Minister will google it—in 2021.

Statutory instruments give us an opportunity to pick up drafting errors, as well as to hold Ministers to account, and to challenge and query legislation—for example, one of those so-called technical amendments, although we know the Bill represents not technical amendments, but, potentially, serious changes to rights, rules and regulations that people have relied on and recognised for generations. Having such a procedure would give us the chance to identify actions, and possibly to identify the asparagus.

If the Minister will not accept the amendment, he is saying two things: first, that taking back control is not about Parliament, but simply about the back rooms, and, secondly, that we never get things wrong. We have all met in life individuals, and perhaps even organisations, who say, “I never get things wrong,” and we know that that is the most worrying thing that anybody can say. Drafting errors are part and parcel of trying to get right even one or two pieces of legislation, but the Government, potentially, are setting us up to try to get 4,000 right to replace the laws they are deleting overnight.

Statutory instruments and the use of processes and amendments are an important part of the process of trying to ensure that that is done with the greatest possible skill. Removing those powers, or not clarifying that they are part of those processes, and giving Ministers the opportunity to decide whether they want to put themselves up for parliamentary scrutiny is like letting contestants in “The X Factor” avoid the judges’ houses stage. This all forms an important part of the process.

I have a horrible feeling that the Minister is not going accept the amendment, so in responding to the queries and questions we have raised, and in reflecting on why the amendment has been tabled, will he consider why—when we are discussing potentially significant and meaningful changes, and when we know he can only water down regulation because the Bill says that regulation can only be something that does not create a burden—he believes our constituents should be denied that representation and that voice in the process? That is what not including such a provision, or not having any form of it, means.

We saw that in the pandemic, when statutory instruments were not receiving appropriate scrutiny. In December 2020, a new set of covid restrictions that would have criminalised a child going to school in tier 4, despite schools remaining open, were implemented without any parliamentary scrutiny. In that case, due to the extraordinary public scrutiny these regulations faced, the issue was finally identified before the schools returned from the Christmas break for one day. Despite what they might think, however, it is not normal for commentators on Twitter to go through legislation at this level. Such errors are not minor—they are not just asparagus—but could have real life implications. They happen and they happen in this place, and not having proper scrutiny of SIs is the foundation of such errors.

I hope the Minister will do more than laugh at the asparagus. I hope he will act on these concerns and finally agree, if not to this amendment, to the tabling of the Government’s own amendment in the other place to ensure we finally take back some control. I say to my colleagues on the Government Back Benches that at some point, somebody will turn up in their constituency surgeries asking about the outcome and implication of this legislation, and they will have to say, “Well, I didn’t vote through any changes. I did not recognise the problems with the sunset. I was pretty confident about not knowing what laws this would affect and I did not even vote through any powers to be able to scrutinise what happens next. I just thought it would all be fine because this Government never make mistakes.” It simply will not wash.

[Graham Stuart]

I urge the Committee to reject amendments 88 and 89. Alongside the other powers in the Bill, the power to revoke or replace in clause 15 is an important, cross-cutting enabler of reform in the Bill. The power to update in clause 16 is an essential, ongoing power that will facilitate technical updates to retained EU law to take account of changes in technology or developments in scientific understanding. We recognise Parliament’s important role in scrutinising legislation, and the Bill ensures the appropriate scrutiny of all amendments and revocations of retained EU law using the powers in the Bill, including the powers provided for in clauses 15 and 16.

When discussing matters of scrutiny, I feel it is important to note the negligible scrutiny that most of the legislation we are discussing today—with such high-falutin’ language from the Opposition—received when it was created. When our democratically elected Government of the people of the United Kingdom take decisions, for which they are accountable at the ballot box, that is what I mean by taking back control. The people who are elected are responsible for what happens. That is what we have, and we are accountable at the ballot box. When they go to the ballot box now, British people will know who to hold responsible: us. It is not some pooled whatever system in Brussels; it is here in the United Kingdom. Power sits within this legislature, which is elected by the people of this country; it is not about precisely where the powers sit within our legislature. That is why it seems ironic that the Opposition parties had so little concern when powers were exercised on the other side of the channel, but apparently it is outrageous when those powers are exercised here by a democratically elected Government.

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[Alex Sobel]

I want to just pick up on the idea that before 2016, or before early 2020 anyway, the regulations that we are talking about were somehow just created out of thin air—that an EU Commissioner decided one day that that was the regulation and that was it, and suddenly it was law in this country. That is a long way from the truth. The regulations had to go through the Council of Ministers, on which a UK Minister sat; they had to go through the European Parliament, where UK MEPs sat and provided scrutiny; and then they had to go through this House and the whole process here in the UK Parliament. When they related to devolved bodies, they also had to go through the devolved Administrations. I do not understand the argument that somehow there was a lack of scrutiny and process before, and now there is proper scrutiny and proper process. What our amendments would do is introduce the affirmative procedure.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a heavy irony in a Minister who refuses to take interventions and to be held accountable for what he says suggesting that nobody should be worried about the details of parliamentary scrutiny, who then cloaks himself in an argument that somehow the scrutiny mechanisms within the European Union were not acceptable?

[Alex Sobel]

That is a theme running through the whole Bill. First, Ministers want to take powers for themselves—for the Executive—and away from Parliament. I understand that the Executive in this country is elected, at least in part—that is, down at this end of the building. Secondly, even in the microcosm of this Bill Committee, this is the third part of the Bill on which Ministers have refused to take interventions from the Opposition. They are not prepared to allow relevant scrutiny, which creates an even stronger argument as to why we need protections.

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[Justin Madders]

It is worth spending a little time on schedule 3 because it is the engine underneath the dashboard of the vehicle that will drive us off the cliff edge at the end of next year. It gives the Government the ability to use regulations to carry out the heavy lifting required by the Bill. As we have discussed many times already, we know the potential ramifications of that for the huge range of protections that our constituents currently enjoy and for the lack of parliamentary oversight that there will be in that process.

We have said all this before, but the broad changes that will be carried out under the regulations will mainly fall under the negative procedure. Offering only the affirmative procedure to a small proportion of the changes envisaged by the Bill falls far below the standard of scrutiny that we would expect. When one considers the sheer number of regulations required to make the changes, which we have talked about, and of course the risk that laws will fall by default because the relevant Department has not identified them, the concerns over lack of scrutiny multiply.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is so critical is that we depend on Ministers knowing what is affected and what is not? I am struck by the fact that the Minister tried to tell us on Second Reading that airline safety rules would not be included and therefore we did not need to worry about the regulations. In fact, subsequent written parliamentary questions have confirmed that the SIs around airline safety were part of the Bill and therefore not contained in the Civil Aviation Act. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that making sure the engine underneath is roadworthy is perhaps one of the most critical things we can do in Committee, given that Ministers themselves perhaps should not be at the wheel?