My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the first of what I hope is going to be a very small and select group of DExEU orders. Indeed, luckily for myself, for the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and for the Minister, I think the vast majority of these Brexit orders will be handled by other departments. However, I do wonder how on earth our colleagues covering those departments will cope, given the near 800 they will have to handle between now and March. They have not exactly got off to a great start: since the Act received Royal Assent on 26 June this year, a mere 71 have been laid, and only two have completed their passage through Parliament.
The delay is slightly hard to understand if the bulk are indeed to make relatively simple, perhaps technical amendments. Why then have we only seen such a tiny proportion of them so far? I assume that the pace will quicken in the coming months, but the tardiness to date means that while 45% of the time between Royal Assent and the supposed exit day has passed, only 9% of the likely total number of orders have so far been laid. Can the Minister therefore confirm that proper time will be allocated to those of our colleagues who will have to handle this to do the necessary scrutiny, that full consultation will take place with all outside stakeholders—this was something we discussed a lot during the passage of the Bill—and
that feedback from those stakeholders will be available to our colleagues as they go through the various statutory instruments?
The sheer number of orders exposes the sheer scale of the legislative challenge facing Parliament. It also puts into perspective the Prime Minister’s claim that Brexit is 95% complete. As far as our work is concerned, that is clearly not the case. I have a slight problem with the 95% figure anyway. I am reminded of the man falling from the 10th floor of a building. After going past the first nine floors, he said, “So far, so good”. I hope that we are not facing the same crash that he did after the 10th floor. Aside from this particular order, I know that work is now gathering pace in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee: I can only say good luck to the committee.
Turning to the order in front of us, while it may be what the Minister calls “technical in nature”—which I think means “hard to understand”—it gives effect to decisions taken by both Houses during the passage of the withdrawal Act. As has just been mentioned, during debates on that Act, there was quite a bit of confusion over the new category of “retained direct EU legislation”. The provisions in Schedule 2, which respond to our Delegated Powers Committee, will, we hope, provide some certainty about the exercise of the relevant powers, particularly for our learned friends: I trust that they are clearer now about the significance of how those powers will be used. We certainly welcome the confirmation that the withdrawal Act powers to make secondary legislation will be exercised under the normal rules for SIs, with which we are familiar.
I want to raise one other point, absolutely unrelated to this one but within the broad remit of Brexit. Yesterday we read that Sir Bernard Jenkin said:
“While some SIs may need to be rushed through with less consideration, they can always be amended later”.
First, we simply must not rush these through. I am sure that is not the intention of the Government. On our Benches and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, it is not something we would want to happen. Secondly, and perhaps more substantially, given how important some of the SIs will be to maintaining standards on environmental, consumer and workers’ protection, and that they will include some quite important decisions about the supervision and enforcement of those standards, that comment from Sir Bernard Jenkin—I recognise that he is not a Minister—seems to fly in the face of the government assurances we received many times during the passage of the Bill that any such change to any of these standards or anything else would be by primary and not secondary legislation. We were very clear, I think, that secondary powers were going to be used for a lift and shift so the existing rules could be brought across but not for changes. Perhaps the Minister could confirm what I know he has said before—but now that we are into the SIs it is important for him to say it again—that from the point of view of the Government there is absolutely no intention to allow any backdoor changes to legislation in the way suggested by his honourable friend in the other place.
Of course, the order is based on the assumption that we will have a deal. Given the wishes of some of the Minister’s close friends that we should not have a
deal and the inability of the Government so far to strike a deal, the risk of no deal looks alarmingly likely. All of us in this Room, because we are a bit sad, have read all the technical notices about what would happen in the event of no deal, but it is not clear what the task facing this House would be in those circumstances in relation to statutory instruments that would need to be got through very quickly. If the Minister has any information on that, perhaps he could share it with the Committee.
As your Lordships will have gathered, the order itself presents us with no problems. I hope that that will be the case for all the others that will come our way.