Law Enforcement and Security (Separation Issues etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, but I disagree quite strongly with him. We have had a lot of these statutory instruments coming through, some of them excruciatingly boring, and we use them as an opportunity to talk about much wider issues. Some are actually quite dangerous and some—this is one—are really quite messy. The Explanatory Memorandum admits as much. The statutory instrument jumps around dozens of different areas of law enforcement co-operation with the EU and makes little tweaks here and there to try to fix deficiencies for when we finally leave the EU. I accept that we need this sort of statutory instrument but, quite honestly, I do not see the clarity here.

One thing we saw throughout the last few months of the pandemic was the confusion, particularly for the police, over the advice from the Prime Minister and the later comments and suggestions from Ministers interpreting it, versus the rules and the actual law. There was a lot of confusion and the police overstepped the mark quite a lot. I basically feel, although I do not have much confidence in our law enforcement agencies, that they were not to blame—it was actually the Government. They presented so many confusing scenarios that the police did not really have much chance to enforce the law. What will the Government do to make sure that this is a clear law, properly understood by the police and security services, so that we do not see the abuses we have seen over the past nine or 10 months? What plans do the Government have to bring consolidating legislation—to put it all in one place and reduce the chaos? It simply is not fair on the police that the Government throw out this stuff and do not give them the time, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid, suggested, or the clarity to be sure that they are not breaking the law when they try to apply this.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick.