My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Like him, I am a fellow survivor of Margaret Thatcher’s first Administration—although I was but a humble spear carrier at the time. I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Bray who, like me, before she came here represented Ealing and Acton in another place—a constituency of beauty and contrast. As I remember it, all the beauty was in Ealing and all the contrast was in Acton.
About two hours ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, in introducing this debate, said that it was not about Brexit versus Remain: it was about the Executive versus Parliament. Control may well have been brought back, but it has been delivered to the wrong address: to Whitehall instead of Westminster.
Following what my noble friend has just said, I have left the Government five times—more than anyone else in this Chamber—but only once voluntarily. That was when Boris Johnson illegally prorogued Parliament. My concern then, and my concern now, is that, in the legitimate delivery of the referendum decision, the Government have done, and continue to do, injury to Parliament. They are repeat offenders, and we got used to this under the last two Prime Ministers, but the present one has inherited this poisoned pill and we should help him by amending it.
Last Thursday, I tuned in to a Zoom call organised by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and listened to Ruth Fox of the Hansard Society. Her verdict in a nutshell was that the powers in the Bill transfer future democratic oversight of any changes to REUL away from Parliament. The Bill itself does not specify the Government’s intended policy changes in respect of any area or piece of REUL. We are being invited to give Ministers a cliff-edge power without knowing what, if any, pieces of REUL may be thrown off the cliff on sunset day.
So far, no one in this debate has explained the indecent haste proposed in the Bill. Everything else to do with Brexit has taken some time. It has taken about seven years to get this far, but we now have this mad rush to disengage from inherited legislation, contradicting, as we heard from the DPRRC, pledges by the Government that Parliament would be the agent of substantive policy change in these areas. Noble Lords do not have to read its report; they just have to look at the headings: “Bypassing Parliament” “Uncertainty” and “Lack of justification for the powers”. The Regulatory Policy Committee said that the Bill’s impact assessment is “Not fit for purpose.” It said that the Government needed to
“provide a stronger argument for why the sunsetting of REUL is necessary, as opposed to merely setting a deadline to complete the review.”
Grant Shapps told the Regulatory Policy Committee:
“Efforts are also underway to understand the potential impacts of sunsetting.”
That is an astonishing confession. Those efforts should have preceded the introduction of the Bill, not followed it.
We are all entitled to have reservations about this Bill, but I read in the Telegraph on 28 January that my noble friend Lord Hannan believes that those who do so are “demented”. He wrote:
“To overcome the bureaucratic inertia, ministers came up with the sensible idea of a sunset clause, whereby all EU rules would lapse at the end of this year unless expressly readopted. The demented response to that proposal, not just from Opposition parties but from civil servants, is revealing.”
I say to my noble friend that it is not just opposition parties and civil servants who suffer from this sad lack of short-term memory loss and an inability to articulate themselves clearly, but two Select Committees of this House, about half the Conservative Peers speaking in this debate, the CBI, the City, constitutional experts and the law. I suspect that the last person who called the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, demented was sent down for a few hours to cool off. If ever there was a Bill the second Chamber should revise, it is this one.
6.31 pm