Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray. They made excellent maiden speeches, and I am sure they will bring great expertise and enhance our proceedings in the future.

In 2018, we passed the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, which made it absolutely clear that we were going to review all the EU legislation. You would have thought that that would have been a signal to the civil servants of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, to start sorting out what this actually meant and how much EU legislation they had in their departments. In fact, as far as I can make out, almost nothing happened at all. They thought, “Well, we needn’t bother about this. It will never happen and, anyway, most of us voted remain and we would quite like to rejoin the EU anyway.”

It is an absolute disaster that we are now having to impose sunset clauses in this Bill which has galvanised the departments to produce the EU retained law that they have. They are even sorting out in archives and so forth to bring this stuff out. The briefing that we got said that there were 2,000 bits of EU retained law. That then went up to 3,300; now we have heard today that it is 3,700. Most people think it is going to top out at 4,000. I only hope they are right, as it seems to me that there is no limit to the amount that this number might grow.

When we come to review it, it seems to me that there are a number of options in front of the Government. We could retain the laws from the EU and, presumably, it would be pretty uncontroversial with most of your Lordships in this House if we retained the law intact and unamended.

We could repeal some of the law. As my noble friend Lord Callanan said last week, some of the bits of EU law involve—and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made light of this—movement of reindeer between Denmark and Sweden. That is of no concern to this country whatever. What we need to know is how many more bits of legislation there are which are as irrelevant as reindeer in Denmark. I would ask my noble friend to give us the percentage. But I am afraid that, as he does not even seem to know the number of bits of EU law there are, the chances of him knowing the percentage that are completely irrelevant to this country probably are not very great.

Other bits that we would want to repeal are ones where EU provision is actually less than what we provide already in this country in our legislation. Presumably, that would be relatively non-controversial if it could be proved that we make greater provision for workers’ rights or whatever than under the EU law. If we follow the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts to somehow filter this stuff, then it would be quite possible to say that it could go through under a statutory instrument because it would be basically non-controversial.

We then come on to the more difficult areas where we are revising legislation to bring it up to date. They are technical changes. As we well know, technical changes can be a number of different things. They can be very dramatic changes or just genuinely technical, and that is why once again I support my noble friend’s suggestion. We have to filter out genuinely technical changes from those that are not.

What is very bad news about this legislation that we have in front of us is that it enables Ministers to completely change legislation altogether, and that is something that we did not vote for in the referendum. When we wanted to get our powers back, we certainly did not say, “We will bring undemocratic edicts from Europe and enhance the power of Ministers and increase the powers of the Executive.” That is not what we are here for and not what we should be voting for.

Horizon Europe: UK Participation

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, the Government need no convincing about the benefits of association with Horizon Europe. We benefited from it. The UK has eight universities in the top 50 globally; the EU has only six. It is a multifaceted programme; exchanges benefit both sides. We were of the view that association would be a good idea; that is why we entered into the agreement. We still hope that the EU will have second thoughts.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, has apologised for asking the same question twice. I will do the same thing and ask why we cannot be associate members of Horizon, like Israel and Tunisia.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think my noble friend has asked that question three times. He gets the same answer every time but he is welcome to ask it again. The point that he makes is very valid. There are 15 countries in addition to the EU that have associated to Horizon, including Israel, Kosovo, Turkey and Tunisia, but, for reasons known only to itself, the EU refuses to continue the agreement.

Prime Minister: Trade Unions

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I understand the point that the noble Lord is making but the problem is that, once you make an exception for one group, I imagine that lots of other deserving groups will also want exceptions made for them. Pretty soon, the exception becomes the rule. We are sticking to the position that we asked the pay review bodies to look at the appropriate level of remuneration; they have done so and we have accepted their recommendation.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, is it not true that, in the National Health Service, there are many different grades that nurses can achieve? They can go on doing the same job but be promoted up the grades and get more pay.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not overly familiar with the pay grades in the National Health Service—perhaps my noble friend Lord Markham could have answered that on the previous Question better than me.

Horizon Europe

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I stand completely by those words: it would be a win-win, and we want to do it. It would be to the benefit of the EU and the UK scientific community, and it is regrettable that the EU is refusing to finalise the agreement that it entered into.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend tell us why we cannot be associate members of the Horizon project, like Israel and Tunisia? Israel is not a member of the EU, and Tunisia is not even a member of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Fire and Rehire

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We have said that we will deliver when parliamentary time allows, but there are many other ways of delivering what were manifesto commitments than a formal government employment Bill.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend has pointed out that unemployment levels are at an all-time low, but is he not worried about the rising number of those who are not seeking work?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

That will depend on the individual circumstances of many people. The pandemic resulted in a number of people reassessing their life choices and if they have decided not to go back into the labour market, I am not sure that is something we can implicitly control. But as I said, we have 600,000 more people in work than before the pandemic and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the western world.

Trade Talks with India, Greenland and Israel

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, first, if I may just offer a small correction to the noble Lord, the Ponsonby rule survived for 86 years before it was supplanted by CRaG. I can completely confirm that now that they are governed by CRaG, the Government will abide by CRaG in all the appropriate circumstances.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that however much Parliament oversees free trade agreements, it cannot amend them?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I recognise the point, but free trade agreements are negotiated under the royal prerogative. The House has full opportunities to scrutinise these agreements as they move to ratification, and I believe this should be sufficient for noble Lords.

Mathematical Sciences

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord raises an important subject. We clearly want to make sure that some of the top mathematicians stay in our universities to educate the next generation of young people. I will certainly take his remarks back to the Department for Education.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, says that maths should be fun for women. Can it actually be fun for anybody, even if it is very necessary for everyone?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sure that maths can be fun for everybody. I am disappointed that my noble friend does not think so.

Net-zero Emissions

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We are working closely with industry to work up the offers we have to householders, as well as the myriad government schemes targeting mainly low-income families: the £800 million social housing decarbonisation fund, the £950 million home upgrade grants, et cetera. Then, of course, we have the £450 million boiler upgrade scheme launching in April next year to subsidise the installation of heat pumps.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, to follow the question from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, now that the debate on net zero is maturing and we are talking about the costs of reaching net zero, should we not have a cost-benefit analysis from the Government on how all this is working out?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The legislation has, of course, already been passed by this House to make net zero legally binding, but extensive impact and cost-benefit analyses were done at the time.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and my noble friend Lord Sarfraz on their maiden speeches, which I much enjoyed. I hope they enjoy this House as much as I have. I also hope they listened to my noble friend Lord Cavendish of Furness, who gave a slight word of warning that we have lost many of our friends in the other place, and we have not made any new ones, so our future is not quite as straightforward as we might all hope.

I want to talk about the extremely shabby way in which my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie was treated by this House and by others in the Government. He was a very fine lawyer, and probably one of the best Advocates-General for Scotland that we have ever seen. Those are not my words; they were the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, earlier today. We have lost an extremely able man, and the contributions of rather lesser men in your Lordships’ House have contributed to him being removed from office. I do not think that that has done any great favours to our House, or to Scotland.

In previous Administrations in which I served, in a very junior capacity, we always had problems of how you interpret legal situations. A tremendous onus is put on our law officers to decide whether things are legal or illegal. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, made reference to this, with respect to his time as Attorney-General under a Labour Government.

My noble and learned friend Lord Keen, on 15 September, made it absolutely clear that he thought the Internal Market Bill, which we are now considering, was within our obligations under the withdrawal agreement and was legal. A number of noble Lords have chosen during this debate to try to obscure that fact and say that somehow my noble and learned friend Lord Keen was conflicted. He was not. He said on that occasion that

“the EU has materially breached its treaty obligations and … we find that it may have acted in such a way as to fundamentally alter our obligations under the treaties.”—[Official Report, 15/9/20; col. 1131.]

So he was quite unequivocal on the fact that the Government were acting completely legally over this, and he was the law officer.

In my opinion, what he was referring to—these are my words—was the fact that the EU had decided to say that the border in the Irish Sea should remain even if we left the EU with no deal. That, of course, would have undermined completely the single market of the United Kingdom and was totally unacceptable to this country. So it seems quite straightforward that my noble and learned friend Lord Keen considered the actions of the Government to be legal.

Therefore, we have to ask what on earth my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was doing when he said that in some way this was a minor infringement or a technical matter that was only slightly illegal. I do not think that things can be slightly illegal—they are either legal or illegal—and I do not really know what Brandon Lewis was doing. He was actually called to the Bar himself in his youth. Why did he not question what he was doing by getting up and saying that this was only slightly illegal? That is rather like the curate’s egg—excellent in parts—or a woman saying that she is only half-pregnant.

At the end of the day, the advice that should have been taken by this Government was from its law officers. There may be many noble Lords in your Lordships’ House who do not agree with the judgment of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen, but he said that this was legal, I believe it to be legal, and for that reason I shall be voting against the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and supporting the Bill.

Smart Meters

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the figure I quoted was bill savings of some £1.2 billion, but I accept that the noble Baroness misheard me. We expect a net benefit of some £5.7 billion from the rollout as a whole. Again, I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness with estimates as to what individuals could save, but obviously, it will depend on how the individual makes use of the smart meter. The point of the smart meter is that it makes it easier for the individual to keep an eye on their electricity or gas use and therefore to make the appropriate savings we would all like, both in the use of energy, which is important, and in money for the individual.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has commented on the value of markets. Will he tell us about the success of capping energy prices? I gather that most customers are now paying the higher tariff and prices have gone up, rather than down.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think my noble friend is wrong—capping has been a success. We announced that it was only a temporary measure because the markets were not working, but I, like my noble friend, want to make sure that the markets work because that is the best way forward.