European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

William Cash Excerpts

Report stage: First Day: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

The position that my right hon. and learned Friend took on the charter back in 2007 is the right one. As I was saying, it is in the interests of maintaining the rule of law that we maintain clarity, consistency and a clear authoritative source for those rights. My genuine concern about the importation of this particular charter into our domestic law is that we will sow confusion. That is not good for the maintenance of the rule of law, for the citizens of our country, for the future development of the law or for the position of this place vis-à-vis that development.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I entirely endorse what my hon. and learned Friend is saying, not least because of the acquis itself. Secondly, there are the adjudications under the European Court itself. Thirdly, the charter is like a legal ectoplasm: it seeps into everything. There is no way in which we would ever be able to extract ourselves from the entirety of the provisions in perpetuity.

[The Solicitor General]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who raises a genuine concern about the impact of protocol 30. Many Opposition Members were here 10 years ago; they were anxious then to make sure that the protocol was included in the Lisbon treaty. They are now happy to resile from that position and take an entirely different view. I take great issue with that: the legal principles were the same then as now. Nothing has really changed about the potential force of the charter, so I am rather bemused to hear about that volte-face on the part of many Opposition Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend is allowing me to intervene on his intervention. Let us not forget that we are dealing with the pre-exit situation. The EU acquis is being frozen, in the sense that its full effect in a pre-exit sense must be maintained so that we can maintain certainty. I agree that it is a strange and rather unusual concept, but I think it preserves that all-important certainty.

Time is short, and I want to ensure that I deal with further amendments.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my hon. and learned Friend give way?

[The Solicitor General]

I must press on, I am afraid.

The amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield relating to the way in which we designate EU legislation make important contributions to the debate, but they are laden with problems. The sheer volume of what we are dealing with—well over 15,000 pieces of legislation—leads me to draw back from trying to create a convenient categorisation of retained EU law. With the greatest respect, I think it far wiser for the Government to approach each item on a case-by-case basis, not making glib assumptions and trying to downgrade EU law, but getting each particular measure right.

Amendments tabled by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West and others deal with, again, the debate on clause 6 and the interpretation of retained EU law. I entirely understand why the amendments were tabled, because the debate is intense, but I would say to those Members, with respect, that I think less is more. The more we try to enshrine in law principles such as persuasive authority—which is in one of the amendments—the more I see the potential for judicial head-scratching and litigation of a type that I do not believe the judiciary would welcome. I have said it before and I say it again: I trust our judiciary to answer the question put before them rather than to survey like lions of the constitutional savannah and to run across the landscape. They answer the question that is put to them, and I trust them to do that and to use the discretion that quite naturally they should be given.

In relation to the new clause in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), it is clear that the Government regard animals as sentient and we of course support the sentiment behind the new clause, as we did on a previous occasion, but we could not support it then and the reasons for not supporting it have not changed. Article 13 places an obligation on the EU when developing certain policies, and on EU member states when developing and implementing those policies. That obligation, because animals are sentient beings, is to have full regard to their welfare requirements, but article 13 applies only to a limited number of EU policy areas, and frankly it also allows for practices that we would consider cruel.