Brexit: Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement — House of Lords, 2018-07-24
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank both noble Baronesses for their comments, and I shall take each of their questions in turn. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for her kind wishes for the holiday. Let me extend the same wishes to her: I hope she enjoys reading the White Paper alongside her bucket and spade on the beach. I take her point about timing, but we thought it was important to get the White Paper out before the Recess to give Members of Parliament in another place and here the chance to look at it carefully before we come back in September The reason why Northern Ireland is not in the White Paper is because those provisions are not agreed yet. We did not want to leave the White Paper until everything was agreed; we wanted to give Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the provisions now. Obviously, those provisions are not agreed, and we will come back to the House when we have an agreement As for the implementation period, the EU withdrawal Act will repeal the European Communities Act 1972 on 29 March. We will, however, have to ensure that the UK can continue to apply EU law during the implementation period. This will be achieved by way of transitional provision in which the EU withdrawal Act will amend the EU withdrawal Act so that those elements of the ECA strictly necessary for the operation of the time-limited implementation period are preserved for its duration; I hope that is clear On no deal, yes, obviously if there is no withdrawal Act, all the issues agreed under the withdrawal Act will cease to apply. We will need to look at those matters again, but preserving the rights of EU citizens would be a top priority in such circumstances. As for timing, yes, we are still targeting an agreement in October, and the EU also agrees with us in targeting that. I repeat the obvious point that if we do not have an agreement in October, parliamentary time to implement the necessary legislation will, of course, start to get extremely tight With regard to a debate on the White Paper, happily the Chief Whip has been sitting here and he tells me that he thinks that a very positive suggestion. Provided that other business is dispensed with in an appropriate way, he will endeavour to find the time for that debate. I hope that summarises his view correctly Moving on to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, the Prime Minister is of course leading the negotiations. On something of such crucial importance to the United Kingdom, I think it would be expected that she would lead on behalf of the country but she will be ably supported by the Secretary of State, who will back her up in all the critical areas. On citizens’ rights, let me repeat the answer that I gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter: of course we want to see citizens’ rights preserved and we expect to see them broadly or essentially preserved. I would be happy to write to her with all the details but it is a hugely complicated area. We published the details in December. I am sure that days on debate for the Motion will be agreed by the usual channels With regard to the ECJ, as set out in the draft withdrawal agreement the Court of Justice will have an ongoing role on citizens’ rights but this role will be temporary and narrowly defined. Our courts can ask the CJEU for a legal view on the interpretation of the citizens’ rights parts of the withdrawal agreement if they need answers to questions before they can decide on a case. It will be for the courts to decide whether they need that legal view on interpretation.