Draft Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (Revocation and Sunset Disapplication) Regulations 2023

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 General Committees

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I will start with the way that the Solicitor General described the statutory instrument. Perhaps he did it for the benefit and excitement of his Back Benchers, because he said, “First, it revokes yet more European law, and then, secondly, it retains a few slightly important clauses.” But, actually, it is schedule 1 that does the retention, so the first thing that it does is retain, and then the second thing that it does is revoke. That might be slightly pedantic, but I think it is quite an interesting way of trying to present exactly what the Government are up to here, because I think, as suggested by the Labour spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, an awful lot of the entire process under the retained EU law Act has been window dressing and completely unnecessary.

We passed the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which created the concept of retained EU law. That meant that everything that needed to be on the statute book was on the statute book, and it was up to the Government, at their liberty, through primary legislation, to introduce new laws to undo whatever hated European policies they might have inherited. That provided us with a stable statute book, and the Government could have gone on and delivered whatever they thought the benefits of Brexit were. But, of course, that is not what has happened. We have tied ourselves up; we have created new distinctions, clauses, sequences and procedures, and none of it is delivering what the Government proposed or said that Brexit would do in the first place.

I also want to echo the points made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston about exactly where ownership of the retained EU law Act lies. It was introduced by the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg)—it was only really ever his personal hobby-horse—and then the hon. Member for Watford, who graces us with his presence today, found himself moving it on Second Reading. But, by the time we got to Committee, we had the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) taking it through Committee, Report and Third Reading. Then, by the time that it came back from the Lords, it had fallen to the Solicitor General. However, the statement on the European convention on human rights, which, of course, is not without irony, is in the name of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. The statement about the guidance note itself is from a Minister in the Department for Business and Trade, and yet we have the Solicitor General, a Minister from the Attorney General’s office, which is a separate Government Department, speaking for the Government today. We know that the Government speak with one voice, but I do start to wonder whether Ministers are generally quite embarrassed about everything that has happened, and perhaps the Solicitor General’s reward will in due course therefore be great in heaven, or, at the very least, in the House of Lords.

I am also intrigued by the further analysis that has been conducted to identify the various statutory instruments as not obsolete and therefore as needing to be preserved. How long has that analysis been going on for? During the passage of the Bill, Ministers were at pains to assure us that all the mapping exercises, dashboards and all the rest of it meant that everything was under control, and that provision to bring forward such statutory instruments was just for emergencies or unforeseen circumstances. As the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, is that analysis still ongoing? Will further statutory instruments and Delegated Legislation Committees need to be established to preserve even more regulations and retained EU law before the end of the year?

The revocation point is also important. The explanatory notes state:

“These Regulations also revoke further obsolete and inoperable pieces of legislation listed in Schedule 2…helping to further modernise our statute book and improve its clarity for businesses and consumers alike.”

The first statutory instrument that the draft regulations revoke is the Alcoholic Liquor (Amendment of Units of Measurement) Order 1992. The main effect of that order is to amend the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 as follows:

“In section 24(3) (restriction on carrying on of other trades by distiller etc) for the words ‘2 miles’ there shall be substituted the words ‘3 kilometres’.”

The order then does the same for section 69(2) of the Act. So there we are. If I understand correctly, the effect of the draft regulations will be that the 1992 order is revoked, and everyone can go back to reading the 1979 Act as saying “2 miles” instead of “3 kilometres”. We will all sleep easier in our beds tonight, knowing that that is the benefit for which Brexit was rolled out. This is what they fought so hard for. This is what taking back control really means: expunging the hated metric measurements and reinstating glorious imperial units. What an incredible achievement. I can see the Brexiteers on the Government Benches weeping with joy—I am sure that it is joy and not boredom.

Except that it appears from the tracker on legislation.gov.uk—I might not have been following it properly—that section 24 of the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 was itself repealed by the Finance Act 2006. The draft regulations therefore revoke a statutory instrument passed in 1992, which amends a section of an Act passed in 1979 that was itself repealed in 2006. Is this what the Brexiteers fought for when they demanded that we take back control? Is this what they thought it would look like—tying ourselves up in legislative knots, devoting thousands of hours and millions of pounds of officials’ time and resources to track down amendments to laws that do not even exist any more? Well, good luck with all of that.

I suspect that this is not a one-off; this is not the last time a DL Committee will have to be established to keep the retained EU law Act grinding away. As I said at the start, the Government at any time could have brought forward primary legislation to rewrite entire areas of public law and policy that had once been the purview of the European Union. Meanwhile, the statute book would have continued functioning under the terms of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Instead, the hated Brussels bureaucrats have been swapped out for the Whitehall mandarins, and instead of Parliament taking back control, the Executive are using sweeping delegated powers and hoping that nobody notices.

In some ways, I congratulate the Solicitor General for fronting up and taking ownership of something that no one else in Government seems to be prepared to take ownership of. I suspect that that means we will have the pleasure of seeing him yet again, the next time the Government have to bring forward a statutory instrument under the retained EU law Act.