My Lords, your Lordships may have noticed that there is a rather cruder amendment in my name towards the end of this group: Amendment 99A. I am not a lawyer, but much of my life in politics and trade unionism and as a consumer champion has been defined by decisions of the British courts—some of the most important of which have been influenced by European law or by the judgments of the European courts. The advances we have made on equalities, employment rights, a number of consumer items and the environment, and indeed on issues such as intellectual property and digital protection and so forth, have been in large part—not entirely; I will not overstate the case—affected by European law,
now called retained EU law, or the European courts’ own judgments which have been followed by the British courts.
In the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—he is not here at the moment; I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy—and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said that the courts will go on interpreting cases as they have done from time immemorial. However, from time immemorial, the courts have interpreted the law on the basis of what is on the statute book at that time. They continue to do so until that law is changed by this Parliament. The implications of parts of Clause 7 are that that will no longer be the case; that the courts will need to have less regard to the types of cases that arose because they were influenced, at least in part, by European law; and that European decisions will not need to be held in the same regard in future. That is the purpose of Clause 7, which is why my amendment would delete it.
I largely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that it could be rewritten—we do need some guidance on case law—but this is taking it in entirely the wrong direction and destabilising what has, from time immemorial, been the basic role of the British courts in interpreting legislation. If the Government and Parliament change the law, that changes it; some of those cases no longer have the same effect as they do at the moment. However, if we take Clause 7 as it stands, we are undermining a number of improvements in the conditions of our people and, at the same time, undermining the credibility, consistency and historical role of our courts. I therefore suggest to the Government that they should remove this clause. If the Bill proceeds—noble Lords know that I am not in favour of it—the Government could come back with a rather more sensible Clause 7. However, as it presently stands, it is one that we ought to oppose root and branch.
The role of our legal system is being undermined by a political doctrine that has yet to find its way into the legislation and the statutory law of our land. That is a dangerous road that we should not go down; I therefore suggest that we remove Clause 7 and think again.