Draft Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between William Cash and Stuart C McDonald

Wednesday 6th December 2023 General Committees

[Sir William Cash]

I hope that everyone in this Committee, and indeed in this House, wants to protect women. That is a very important principle as expressed, for example, in my International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014. On the question of the charter of fundamental rights, that has now been excised from our statute book by clear and explicit words. That is the issue that I want to address and that my Committee, the European Scrutiny Committee, is examining at the moment in a series of evidence sessions.

I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge because there is a lot of law in here that I will not regale the Committee with today. I think there is time enough for that. The bottom line is that in the Supreme Court judgment last month, which by any standards was an important judgment, the case of ASM was dismissed. It did not receive much attention, but that is what happened. The Court concluded that the statutory repeal under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 had the effect that provisions relating to his case had been, by clear and explicit words, effectively removed, so his case had to fall and was dismissed. That is very important indeed. It was reflected by what Lord Jonathan Sumption said on the “Today” programme only a couple of hours ago: he said that if the words are explicit and clear in the case of a repeal of, in this instance, retained EU law, the courts will of course carry out the instructions of Parliament where the intention is clear, unambiguous and explicit. That is the crucial test.

The question in this instance is whether that test is something that needs to be taken into account at the time the decision is taken on the Floor of the House. The procedure of the House can be a little opaque. It can be that we end up without having a full debate on the subject. I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said—that there are questions still in the mind of the Government over this. In that event, I would suggest that the most appropriate approach in this instance would be to make sure that there is adequate time for consideration. In other words, we should not have a rushed decision on the Floor of the House about these regulations.

It is still open to the Government because, as you rightly said when I made my point of order, Mr Hollobone, this is a matter for the Committee to consider, rather than decide on. We want to be sure that when the decision is taken, account can be taken of, for example, what the European Scrutiny Committee may want to say about this. We will obviously look at it, because it has evoked a lot of interest and some concern. Rather than repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge has said, the best thing I can say is that my objective in being here today, while I obviously do not have the right to vote, is to take this opportunity to speak—for which I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Hollobone.

The subject matter is important, and there are principles here of great significance. There are questions of interpretation by the courts that could be taken at a later date. We want to be crystal clear that if serious objections have been and can be raised—and will be—as we proceed and as the situation evolves, the House can come to the right conclusion as to what interpretation will be placed on this provision.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Is not the problem we now face as a Parliament that we have this deadline of the end of the year to get this sorted, and it is precisely because of that that we are left with pretty much no choice but to take what the Government deliver to us, or else lots of these employment protections will fall away?

[Sir William Cash]

The hon. Gentleman is super courteous, and he has put his finger on it, I have to say. In informal discussions with members of Government I have raised that I am concerned about the fact that this list of legislation has not yet been finalised. Some Members may recall that I took part in the ping-pong on this subject. The Government accepted an amendment that I put forward, which has also been put forward in principle in the House of Lords to ensure that the list accurately reflects what we want to remove and what we do not.

That is something the hon. Gentleman quite rightly points to; we have had to wait an awfully long time for this list to appear. If it does appear, it seems to me that there are grounds for including this provision as one that should be revoked rather than allowed to go through by way of adaptation. I will not offer more thoughts on that for the purposes of this Committee.

I would just like to put on the record that a lot more consideration could usefully be done. We are not asking for an adjournment of this Committee or anything like that, but we would like the opportunity to deal with the issue properly and fully and for the Government’s reappraisal of the position—if it is thought to be appropriate—to take place as the result of proceedings in the House. This is a very good example of the way in which this House operates compared to some foreign jurisdictions, where these matters are not properly looked into. It is tribute, if I may say, to the manner in which we conduct our procedures that these opportunities can be provided to clarify things and make sure we do not make any serious mistakes.

European Agenda on Migration

Debate between William Cash and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I want to mention briefly three aspects of the European agenda on migration, the first document mentioned in the Government’s motion. The first of those three aspects is safe legal routes. That European agenda document acknowledges that

“vulnerable people cannot be left to resort to the criminal network of smugglers and traffickers. There must be safe and legal ways for them to reach the EU”.

Similarly, the House of Lords European Union Committee said that one effective way to address the root causes of irregular migration is to create safe and legal routes for refugees to enter the EU. The UNHCR endorsed an EU target of around 20,000 resettlements across Europe each year by 2020—a modest and wholly achievable proposal if there is political will. We welcome the Government’s resettlement programme, overdue as it may have been.

[Sir William Cash]

There has been an accumulation of documents over a long period. Had the proposal from the European Scrutiny Committee been taken up earlier, we would have been debating those documents when the numbers were at the level that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned. We are now talking not about 20,000 or 40,000, but about 400,000, 500,000 or 600,000 migrants.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I am speaking first about plans for resettlement. I shall come on to relocation later. Resettlement through the UNHCR is not the only method of providing safe legal routes. We have urged and continue to urge the Government to listen to the expert organisations calling for broader family reunion rules, and to consider the case for humanitarian visas so that fewer people are compelled to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean.

The second aspect of the agenda document that I want to mention, and probably the most important, concerns hotspots, which both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have talked up in recent months. Everyone knows that Greece’s asylum system was already chaotic before the crisis began, and Italy’s is probably not much better, so expecting those systems to cope with the crisis would be unreasonable. That is where the so-called hotspot approach is supposed to help. The theory is that the full weight of EU asylum institutions will

“work on the ground with frontline Member States to swiftly identify, register and fingerprint incoming migrants...Those claiming asylum will be immediately channelled into an asylum procedure where European Asylum Support Office (EASO) support teams will help to process asylum cases as quickly as possible.”

In addition, €60 million was to be invested in emergency funding to support the reception of migrants and the provision of healthcare to migrants in member states under pressure.

I have not had the benefit of visiting any hotspots, but I have read and listened with concern to recent reports from those who have visited. Those include reports from the International Rescue Committee, which said that

“the way hotspots are currently being rolled out is causing chaos, increasing tensions and violence, and leaving more people without basic shelter.”

In October an update from the Commission explained some of the reasons why that might be the case. At that stage, only six member states had responded to its calls by providing just 81 out of 374 experts requested, and just six member states had responded to calls by providing 48 border officials out of the requested 775 border guards, screeners, de-briefers and interpreters that were thought necessary.

Lots of serious questions remain about how hotspots are to function and their basis in law, so I would be interested to know whether the Minister can comment on the legal basis for hotspots; whether people in those hotspots have access to legal advice; whether the way a person is dealt with in a hotspot area will depend on their nationality; the proportion of those in hotspots who are recorded as having claimed asylum; the number who have been removed directly from hotspots; and, more generally, when data on outcomes from hotspots will be published, and the UK contribution to all this.

Thirdly, on relocation, I was disappointed not to be able to attend the earlier debate that focused more intensively on that. The Government’s motion talks of

“working with the EU and Member States and other international partners”

to address current migratory pressures, but the difficult starting point for the Government is that they wash their hands of relocation plans, despite those being pivotal to the agenda on migration, and instead leave responsibility for that to everyone else.

The House of Lords described the Government’s reasons for opting out of relocation as unconvincing. I would say that that is being pretty kind to the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, the idea that whether or not the UK takes part in relocation schemes affects the number of people attempting dangerous crossings is utterly unsupported by evidence. It has been several months since the UK first said that it was going to shirk its responsibilities in this regard, and still more and more people make the crossing. They are doing that because they are fleeing desperate circumstances, not on the off-chance that they will be incredibly lucky in a lottery of a relocation scheme and end up in the United Kingdom. A European relocation scheme should be a response to an emergency situation—a humanitarian crisis. As the Lords EU Committee said, failing to opt in means that we are failing to live up to our duty of solidarity and burden-sharing between member states.

A crisis on this scale requires collective action. Dealing with more than 900,000 people arriving in desperate circumstances is an impossible task for two or three countries to take on. In a Union of 500 million people their arrival poses a huge challenge—there is no doubt about that—but it is surmountable given that they represent less than 0.2% of the population. As the European agenda document states:

“No Member State can effectively address migration alone. It is clear that we need a new, more European approach.”

That is the approach that the Government should take rather than their head-in-the-sand approach to what is going on in Europe just now.