Road Vehicles and Non-Road Mobile Machinery (Type-Approval) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, appreciate the explanations given by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, about her anxiety about a number of key features of this statutory instrument. I am commenting on the second of the two documents rather than the first one, although the first has a number of significant question marks. I thank the noble Baroness for her thoughts on those matters. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said in agreeing with the noble Baroness, a number of questions need to be answered comprehensively today by the Minister.

However, it is not just that but, once again, the anxiety we all feel about the huge accumulation of SIs going through inadequately, badly considered, all in a rush, in not enough time to be considered properly. It comes back to the much more fundamental issue that one always needs to remember in this whole business, of the flaws in the original referendum and the failure to prepare properly immediately after the result for all the things that are now flowing through in the last minute—literally the last few weeks—in the painful process of the disintegration of this country’s membership of the EU. This is now causing more anxiety and concern among many members of the public as they wake up to these realities, not having been given any guidance by the Government immediately after the result. It is not a matter of disrespecting the result of that vote. We know that it was flawed for various reasons. The construction of the referendum was wrong. British citizens who had lived in other European countries for more than 15 years were excluded automatically, so were the youngest voters, who should be entitled to be on the register for future occasions. There were many other mistakes as well. It was really the fault of the Government immediately afterwards—

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, this does not seem to be much to do with this statutory instrument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Eccles]

Does the noble Lord not think it is slightly insulting to assume that we do not know the background?

[Lord Dykes]

That is the reality that is now hitting members of public—and not just the press in article after article, comment after comment—as people interviewed say that they were not given sufficient warning.

On the detailed policies, this might seem to be a minor matter, and in one way it is, but it is of great importance to the environment and to the health of the motor vehicle industry in this country, which faces such a gloomy prospect now in view of the most recent developments. The point I was making, which I think is entirely valid, is that after the referendum result, and at least before the 8 June 2017 election when the Prime Minister completely lost the mandate to continue “Brexit means Brexit”—which needs to be remembered as well, but she carried on regardless—the Government should have started going through all the legislative responsibilities they needed to enact. This would have reassured the public that if there was continuity of any kind in policy formation, if we thought that the EU policy system, of which we were devoted members for 45 years, was sufficient, it would be protected.

I come now to the quick points I want to make to cement my agreement with what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was saying as well. I, too, cannot understand why there is no proper explanation of paragraph 2.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum. Further, paragraph 2.5 says:

“The proposed changes are designed to ensure that the CO₂ emissions of new cars and vans registered in the UK after the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union continue to be regulated in a manner that is at least as ambitious as current arrangements. If these changes are not made, then the retained EU legislation would have no legal impact on newly registered cars and vans in the UK”.


That, too, would cause a certain amount of alarm unless it was properly explained by the Government. I also agree with the question marks raised about paragraph 7.

Consultation was conducted on the second document, at least. According to the Explanatory Memorandum:

“There were seven responses to the consultation all of which were broadly supportive of the proposals”.


However, no detail is given, unless one gets the full government documentation. It sounds very strange that there were only seven responses to the major matter of the future of the motor vehicle industry. Once again, it probably indicates inadequate time for people to be able to consider these things.

Finally, paragraph 11.1 says:

“Detailed guidance on how the regulations will function and how the various flexibility mechanisms should be applied for will be provided to manufacturers, and made available on line, as soon as it practicable to do so”.


Is this future legislation or just extensions of regulations? When is it going to be? We urgently need guidance now from the Government on all these matters.