My Lords, in moving Amendment 51, I shall speak also to Amendments 53 and 56. I look forward to hearing from others who are speaking to their amendments in this group: the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, my noble friend Lady Lawlor, the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Fox, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, with whose amendments in this group I have much sympathy.
Amendment 51 is a simple amendment which would leave out “Minister of the Crown” and insert “a relevant national authority”. The point of the amendment is to ensure that any relevant national authority, as defined in Clause 21(1), can extend the sunset referred to in Clause 1.
The reason I move this amendment is that the Bill currently proposes, in Clause 2, that only a Minister of the Crown can make regulations to extend the sunset period. In my view it is inappropriate that Ministers in the devolved Administrations cannot carry out the same function in respect of the retained European Union law that applies in their respective devolved competencies. Limiting this power to a Minister of the Crown appears to be at odds with paragraph 60 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill:
“The Government also remains committed to respecting the devolution settlements and the Sewel Convention, and has ensured that the Bill will not alter the devolution settlements and will not intrinsically create greater intra-UK divergence.”
The point of this amendment is to assist the Government in this regard. It provides devolved Ministers with the power to extend the sunset deadline. Amendment 53 is merely consequential on this amendment.
Amendment 56 intends to delete Clause 2(4) at line 18 of page 2. Clause 2(1) provides that:
“A Minister of the Crown may by regulations provide that … the reference in section 1(1) to the end of 2023”
should specify a later time. Clause 2(4) provides that the later time cannot be
“later than the end of 23 June 2026”,
which happens to be the 10th anniversary of the date on which the referendum on UK membership of the European Union was held.
In my view and that of the Law Society of Scotland, which helped me draft this amendment, government policy in relation to the applicability of retained EU law should not be made on the basis of symbolism. There is no need to set such a deadline, and I seek to understand why my noble friend the Minister is putting such an arbitrary deadline in the Bill. Were any deadline to be necessary, this should be made on the application of good legislative practice, including consideration and analysis of the legislation involved and consultation with those who will be affected by the variational revocation proposed by the regulations in question. In any event, in the opinion of the Law Society of Scotland, with which I agree, the sunset provision should operate from 31 December 2028 at the earliest. Clearly, the possibility of any extension of a sunset provision should run for a period after that date.
In an earlier debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others referred to the political dimensions of parts of the Bill. I ask my noble friend to confirm that it is not purely for political symbolism that the Government have fixed on this deadline.
I also request that the point I raised in the debate on the first group of amendments be now positively responded to. In summing up this group of amendments, can my noble friend tell me how the Government intend to respond to withdrawal of consent by the Scottish Parliament? How do the Government intend to respond to the amendments the Scottish Parliament
has published and tabled in this regard? With those few remarks, and looking forward to the other contributions, I beg to move.