European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I think the most important principle is legal certainty. It may well be very sensible for us to start to remove, as soon as possible, bits of retained law that we do not want to keep, but it seems to me to be equally implausible to retain something without following through on the logic from whence it comes. I recognise my hon. Friend’s point, but the issue, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) pointed out, is one of the Bill’s own making. I hope that the Government will table an amendment—before the Report stage—to remove these internal contradictions sooner rather than later. I think we all want to be in the same place, but justice requires not only independence of the courts but a proper framework in which it can operate. Above all, it requires certainty. The Bill as it stands runs the risk of creating uncertainty, and that cannot be in anybody’s interest.

I have been struck by the tone of the responses we have had from the Government Front Bench so far, but it is really important to stress that this is a matter of very significant principle. We wish to give the Government the best possible fair wind. I have no doubt whatever about the intentions, credit and integrity of the Solicitor General, who will reply to the debate shortly. What he says will weigh very heavily with many of us. I am sure he will do something that is constructive and helpful, and will help to improve the Bill. This is an important point that I wish to put on the record, because if there is not something of that kind, we will have to return to the issue as the Bill progresses. I hope that that will not be necessary. I believe it will not be necessary, but it is important to stress how fundamentally significant it is. These matters may seem technical, but they are vital to the underpinning of a sound piece of proposed legislation going forward.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I support those amendments that seek to ensure that the charter of fundamental rights is not exempted when we transfer powers from the EU after Brexit. Like many people I expect, I have received a lot of correspondence from constituents, and I wanted to start by reading from one—because time is short I will just read the last section of a letter from one of my constituents, Andrew Connarty:

“I feel that the EU and its legislative and judicial bodies protect me as a citizen and have a process of checks in place to protect my human rights, my legal rights and provide me with security. A lot of conversation in the media covers the rights of EU citizens in the UK who are foreign nationals, but what about the rights of EU citizens in the UK who are British nationals?”

Andrew Connarty is one of the great number of people in this country who are fearful of what is about to happen. For them, the process of leaving the EU is not some great liberation or removal of an alien superstate that oppresses them and over-regulates them. They see this as a loss of something of themselves; they see themselves as being diminished and lessened by this process.

Some on the Government Benches will say, “Well, that view does exist, but it is the view of a small liberal elite”. Indeed, a Member earlier tried to taunt a colleague by suggesting that the vote for remain in her constituency could not possibly have been motivated by concern about the charter of fundamental rights. I accept that the great mass of people are probably completely unaware of what particular rights we are talking about, but that does not mean they are unconcerned about them. Joni Mitchell probably summed it up best with the line,

“you don’t know what you’ve got

‘Till it’s gone.”

The reason is that by their very nature political rights do not put obligations on the rights holder—they do not have to be defended and claimed every day; they put obligations on everyone else. We all have to respect the rights of others. In particular, private corporations and public institutions have to respect the rights of others. It is not until they are changed and that relationship alters that people understand that something has been taken away from them. That is why it is absolutely vital that we educate people about the process now happening.

There was some debate about whether the rights in the charter are substantial at all, about whether they mean very much and about whether they are covered elsewhere in legislation. In 2006, this Parliament established the Equality and Human Rights Commission to advise us on such matters. I have read its briefing—I suspect most have—in which it cites clear examples of articles in the charter that are not replicated in other forms of legislation and states that, if the charter is not transferred or incorporated into British law, these rights will be lost. They include—I will not read them all: article 22 on child labour; article 8 on the right to be forgotten on the internet; article 26 on independence for disabled people; and article 24 on the access of children to both parents. These are rights that we have now that we will not have if the charter does not come over post Brexit.

It is not necessary to lose these rights in order to achieve Brexit. I say to the Brexiteers: I am not one of you but you can have Brexit without losing these rights. It is entirely possible. We do not need to do this, so why are we discussing it at all? The Minister said earlier that it makes no sense to have the charter if we are not a member of the EU, because it refers to the EU, yet the entire canon of European law is being taken over and incorporated into British statute, and this charter goes along with it to give citizens rights in respect of it. It makes total sense, therefore, to bring the charter over in the process of repatriating these powers.

There has been talk that it would be silly to bring the charter over because it would create anomalies and inconsistencies with other parts of the Bill, but the Bill already recognises that there are a million anomalies in the process and makes provisions to deal with them. We wonder, then, what is so special about the charter that it cannot happen there, too. Leaving that to one side, however, the most telling argument, as colleagues have said throughout the last six hours, is surely that it is operational at the minute. Why is our legal system not grinding to a halt under the pressure of these contradictions if they are so great? The truth is they are not so great. It works at the minute, and there is no reason it could not continue to work beyond 2019.

In the absence of a rational argument for the retention of clause 5 and schedule 1, I am compelled to find myself reaching the same conclusion as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke): what is happening here is pure politics. There are those on the other side who will be satisfied by being thrown this bone, and, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman put it himself, the idea of being able to get rid of a provision that includes both the word “Europe” and the word “rights” creates a double salivation, but I do not think that it just about sating those who are so Europhobic that they will get pleasure from this; I think there is something else going on as well.

The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who is no longer in the Chamber, said earlier that the Government did not intend to remove or weaken our human rights, and I take that at face value. The Government have certainly not come here and said that that is their intention. In fact, no Members—or almost none—have said today that they want to remove people’s human rights, to weaken protection at work, or to lessen consumer protection laws in this country, although I rather fear that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) nearly let the cat out of the bag when he referred to “the wrong people” having rights in the charter.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the repatriation of powers so that he could have “real human rights” in this country. I dread to think what he means by “real human rights”. I find him an honourable fellow and I am sure that he means no malintent, but I know that there are plenty of people in our society and in our community who will take advantage of any roll-back of civil and human rights protection to ensure that our religious and political freedoms are constrained so that they can adhere to theirs. I think we need to be eternally vigilant, and I hope very much that the Government will feel able to think again.

I say this to those in the centre ground of the Tory party: “If you are just trying to keep the good ship together and keep every faction on board, and if you think that by giving this concession on human rights you will shore up the Government’s support, remember that your former leader David Cameron thought he would be able to do that by having a Brexit referendum in the first place, and look how that has worked out.” I sincerely say to them, “Once bitten, twice shy. Please think again.”

[The Solicitor General]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). Let me take this opportunity to assure him yet again that our commitment to rights and freedoms remains absolute. I spent nearly 20 years at the criminal Bar dealing with the liberty of the individual. Indeed, I think I was a human rights lawyer before we even coined the phrase, as were many other Members on both sides of the House.

The point has already been made that our rights and freedoms long pre-date modern developments, but modern developments have no doubt helped to sustain, improve and enhance the range of those freedoms. The fundamental question that we seek to ask about the charter is whether, in the final analysis—as we are no longer to be members of the European Union—it adds anything relevant or material to the sophisticated and developing body of law that has evolved over generations. I do not think so, and I have reached that conclusion after extremely careful thought.

It is tempting, after a long debate, to try and treat this as a Second Reading wind-up, but we are far from that. Other Members are anxious to take part, and I am mindful of the time. I will therefore be true to the principles of debate in Committee, and deal with schedule 1, which I hope will be agreed to. In doing so, however, I will address the various amendments that have been tabled on pages 8 to 12 of the amendment paper—which is still the same size although we are now on day three of the Committee stage, and I am pretty confident that that will remain the case.