argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-30
Topic: Energy
Barbara Young (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who have had the stamina to stay this late to speak to this amendment. The Minister’s response was disappointing. The undertaking that departments will engage with stakeholders where possible does not give me a lot of confidence. I understand that consultation takes up time and resources and that it needs to be focused on the important rather than the minor. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said, many technical and minor amendments can have major impacts I am not convinced that the statements and the transparency promised by the government amendments to the later schedules will fit the bill because, if I understand correctly, they are very much about statements made at the time when the statutory instrument is laid, by which time it is too late to make further amendments. It really is into the nuclear option situation, where only an annulment can then happen I had hoped that the Minister would use this opportunity to reassure the House generally and the wider audience about the real commitment the Government have to trying to make sure that we get all these statutory instruments right first time. I only hope that the debates we have had on this proposition and the continuing discussions we have with government departments will reveal that that intention does exist, even if it has not been laid out in the parliamentary domain tonight. In view of the time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-04-30
Topic: Law and Crime
Maeve Christina Mary Sherlock (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, EU family law provisions are tried and tested. There is a broad consensus that they work well, and with the advent of the Brussels II recast—as it is known in the trade—they will become more effective still. At earlier stages of the Bill, I set out in some detail the challenges for international family law post Brexit, so I will not rehearse those again. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, has said, this amendment is focused on what happens to child maintenance when we leave the EU Child maintenance matters because parents can separate or divorce but they do not cease being responsible for their children. Children have a right to support from both parents, even if one lives abroad. Maintenance plays a key role in lifting single-parent families out of poverty. Receipt of child support is also positively associated with single parents taking up work and with children maintaining contact with a non-resident parent This may be private law, but the need for it to work well and be enforceable is a matter of public policy importance. Even the UNCRC mandates, at Article 27, contracting states to take all appropriate measures to secure the recovery of child maintenance and, when a parent lives abroad, to promote accession to international agreements. So there are compelling reasons for Parliament to want to be assured that we will have a well-functioning system to enable the assessment and enforcement of child maintenance owed by a parent living in one of the EU 27. The Minister told the House that, during the implementation or transition period, the current reciprocal rules, including the key EU family law instruments and Hague conventions, will continue to apply as now. Beyond that, we do not yet know what the landscape will look like Ministers have signalled that they would like to continue to participate in the Lugano convention, but that is nothing like a substitute for the maintenance regulation, as that part of the EU family law provisions are known. The 2007 Hague convention would go some way towards assisting with the recognition and enforcement of maintenance obligations, but it too falls well short of the maintenance regulation. It has no general system of jurisdictional rules, and you cannot enforce spousal maintenance orders via the central authorities unless they are linked to enforcement of a child maintenance order. We are left hoping that the Government will be successful in negotiating a reciprocal deal that will serve our people well. Given the significant number of international divorces, these issues cannot be ignored. Ministers are confident that comparable reciprocal arrangements can be achieved to replace the EU family law provisions. This amendment would simply require Ministers to tell us how. If Ministers do not smile on this amendment, perhaps they could tell the House how and when the Government will update us on progress. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Government Operations
Winifred Ann Taylor (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, while I do not want this section of the debate to be dominated by members of the Constitution Committee, I should congratulate my noble friend Lord Pannick on the way he presented the amendment despite it certainly not being in the interest of the legal profession—if we manage to get legal certainty in the Bill, the lawyers will not have their field day. However, I fear that, unless we achieve legal certainty and the clarity that my noble friend mentioned, we will be in real difficulty. Our committee has put forward suggestions, but we do not think that they are the only ways forward. It is important at this stage that the Government recognise the extent of the problem and the damage that will be done if we do not have some amendment and some concessions from them in this area. It is of course an area linked to the other parts of the Bill, because, unless we make changes here, the powers that the Government will have under Clause 7 will be completely unacceptable because of the breadth of legislation there captured I therefore urge the Minister to reflect carefully not only on the suggestions of the Constitution Committee but on those of others outside, because this problem will dog the Bill for ever if we do not make some changes here.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Environment
Barbara Young (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I repeat the worries about coming in on a debate populated primarily by lawyers, but if my noble friend Lord Adonis can do it, I can have a go. I very much welcomed the intent of the Constitution Committee and the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but I subsequently received a briefing that raised a question about it. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for alluding to the issue of the amendment meaning that UK courts could not be required to consider existing European court decisions when interpreting and applying provisions that have been implemented through UK law by Acts of Parliament or regulations introduced under Acts of Parliament other than the ECA 1972. I am grateful that he referred to the Bingham Centre proposal that there needed to be consequent amendments later in the Bill to cover that. I want to highlight the importance of that because the reality is that about 80% of environment law stems from the European Union and much of it would be caught by this provision. We just need to be sure that if this provision were recognised as needing to be addressed by the Government, we will see that subsequent amendment to allow ECJ decisions to be taken into account.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Government Operations
Jeremy Hugh Beecham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, your Lordships may have noticed that I am rather short: this afternoon, I can give the House some comfort by saying that, in relation to this amendment at least, I shall also be brief The Constitution Committee points out that Clause 2 is not needed to ensure that most categories of domestic legislation—which in practice will remain in force—will continue to apply. It concludes that, "clause 2 appears to be significantly broader than it needs to be". The Constitution Committee affirms that it is not constitutionally necessary or appropriate for primary legislation, which will continue in force in any event, to be treated as retained EU law and be subject to the powers of the amendment referred to in Clause 7 Does the Minister accept this? If not, on what basis does he take that stance? The provision appears to be a way of allowing the Government to amend legislation by the mechanism of secondary legislation. With all the concerns around the excessive use of such procedures that have frequently been expressed by committees of the House and by Members in the Chamber, it would be reassuring if the noble and learned Lord could make it clear that that is not the Government’s intention in respect of this Bill.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Winifred Ann Taylor (Labour, Centre-left): I accept that, but the Minister is assuming that legislation is always very neatly compartmentalised in a way which would allow that. My fear is that there will be enabling parts of legislation that could be caught up because some subsection could be EU related.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, perhaps I might check that, in interpreting the clause as it now stands, it is not possible for there to be a freeze on implementation by a particular exit day, whereby Ministers can cherry-pick the pieces of legislation they want to take through. That was not the intention. Can the Minister comment on that possible consequence of the exit date?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, for many of us, this is a seminar and we are hoping to learn quite a lot from noble and learned Lords in the course of the Committee proceedings. We are dealing with areas that certainly I have very little grip on. Perhaps I may probe the relationship between this issue and the transition agreement being negotiated in Brussels at the moment, because I do not understand it. As I understand the transition agreement, presumably we will commit to bringing these admirable pieces of legislation that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has referred to into our law. If the transition agreement requires that, does that mean that everything passed during the transition period will acquire the status that it would have had on 29 March 2019 and will all become retained law? How does the Bill deal with that point and the relationship to the transition agreement? I am sorry if this is all very ignorant but it seems to be a very relevant point.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. For those of us who are not lawyers and are uninitiated in the complexities of this law, what does "implemented" mean? As I understand it, once the Council of Ministers adopts a directive, it is then the responsibility, under the European Communities Act 1972, of member states to implement it. Presumably the question is: what duties lie on Her Majesty’s Government and Parliament to implement directives which have been adopted by the Council but which would, in the normal course of events, be implemented over a period that might or might not span beyond 29 March next year? I assume that that becomes a very important issue in the scenario that my noble friend Lord Liddle has just referred to, where, in the "implementation period", the United Kingdom is undertaking to abide by the evolution of European law in the making of new directives over that period. I am not sure whether I should call him the non-Advocate-General for Scotland, but could the noble and learned Lord, in whichever capacity he is speaking to us this afternoon, give us a view on this matter?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Environment
Barbara Young (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I want to add to the voices of those who have said that there is a lack of clarity and point to a specific example that raises some questions: the circular economy package. We, along with our European colleagues, have been working on this since 2014 and it is due to be agreed shortly. There is legislation to amend six EU directives on resource use, all of which are incredibly important both domestically and internationally. That includes things such as the waste framework directive; the packaging and packaging waste directive, which has a big impact on the Government’s commitment on plastics; the landfill directive; and directives on end-of-life vehicles and batteries in electrical and electronic equipment, for example, all of which will be hugely germane to our potential export of motor vehicles and other electrical equipment. We will be approaching exit day with the package enshrined in EU law, but we will not have had time—nor indeed will many member states—to implement it For me, this package is important for a number of reasons. First, there are hugely important international commitments that we need this legislation to fulfil. Secondly, we have spent an awful lot of time on it and have been quite effective in making and shaping it to ensure that it fits with our requirements, as well as being effective for the environment. Thirdly, one assumes that we are going to keep a car industry going in this country, and I doubt that we can maintain our trade, or the levels of exchange of components for the automotive industry, across national boundaries if we do not adopt similar standards I am concerned about the "snapshot" mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I understand that it is required, but if that snapshot will leave us with a great need for this legislation to go forward but an inability to make it happen, then I must press the Minister on how he envisages that such a situation will be dealt with. It would have a poor effect not just on the environment but on our ability to trade.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Environment
Barbara Young (Labour, Centre-left): I would like some technical clarification on this. My understanding of the example I gave is that Europe will change the standards for packaging and packaging waste, the landfill directive, end-of-life vehicles, batteries, and electrical and electronic equipment and the old standards will no longer hold, except in Britain. Quite frankly, I am not sure that that is a viable way forward. We will continue to apply standards that everyone else has abandoned immediately on exit day if we do not take forward the implementation of that directive.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am still not quite convinced by the explanation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. Clearly, if a directive has not completed its legislative process by 29 March 2019, there is no question about it: whatever happens to it later on is nothing to do with us and it does not in any way enter English law. Equally, if a directive has been assumed into domestic law and been implemented, there is no doubt that it is part of English law. However, where a directive has completed its legislative process, has been implemented into English law in the normal way but has not come into force because it contains a provision under which it comes into force only at a certain date after 30 March, the English law—or, for that matter, the Scottish law—has already been altered and adopted the new provision. Those provisions enter into force at a certain date subsequent to 30 March but without any further change in the corpus of statute because the measure is already provided for. Surely, in those cases, that directive remains in force in English or Scottish law in the normal way. Even though it had not reached the point at which it would come into effect on 29 or 30 March, it would nevertheless be part of the corpus of law in all the union countries.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): I agree: the Committee will be pleased to know that, had the letter ended like that, I would not be on my feet today. These are important measures for our international co-operation, and if the Government would say, "Yes, this is something that we are willing to do", that would take us forward. I hope that the noble and learned Lord may be able to give us that assurance as he responds.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: International Affairs
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): For those of us who have not been following the minutiae of the Government’s announcements, can the Minister say that it is an absolute commitment on the part of the Government that directives that have been adopted and for which the implementation date falls before 29 March next year will be implemented?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Law and Crime
Charles Falconer (Labour, Centre-left): I express my gratitude and admiration for the way that the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Keen of Elie, are bringing lustre to the Scottish Bar in the way that they are answering all these questions so brilliantly and with such trouble. My inquiry relates to a directive requiring implementation that has not been implemented, where there are certain rights that would be directly enforceable by an individual and there is no court case that says that. Can you go to court afterwards and say, "We can enforce that because there was a directive prior to the date of exit"? No court has said that it was directly enforceable; you could argue subsequently that if you win, you win—this would be in the domestic courts—and can say it is enforceable. Would that be covered?
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Macroeconomics
Roger John Liddle (Labour, Centre-left): Would my noble friend give way? I want to be helpful to his argument. He refers to Professor Minford and the cost of EU regulation. It is only by making the extreme assumption that all these regulations will be abolished that the tiny number of economic studies that demonstrate some growth benefit from Brexit are able to get to that number. Those studies are quoted very frequently from the Front Bench opposite as examples of the fact that some economists differ from the consensus, but in fact that difference depends on the assumption that we would scrap every single piece of EU social protection.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Government Operations
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, may I elaborate on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick and invite the Minister to respond further? A key point in this debate is surely that powers conferred by Parliament should be exercised only as Parliament intended. A key point on paragraph 3 of Schedule 8, which the noble Lord referred us to, is that the power to make and approve subordinate legislation—which is conferred in primary legislation—was, in the case of retained direct EU legislation, originally conferred in the context of directives and legislation which derived from the European Union itself. So the context in which Parliament gave the power to make subordinate legislation was that it should achieve the purposes of the directive That being the case, allowing these powers to be used completely independently of those directives significantly enlarges the scope within which those powers can be exercised, which was not intended by Parliament when the powers to grant that subordinate legislation were first conferred. I am not sure that I am carrying the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with me, but that seems to me to be a crucial aspect of Schedule 8, and it would be good to get the Government’s comments on that.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Government Operations
John Davies (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. Of course, we hope that we are not talking about any of those things. We hope that we are not talking about radical changes and reductions in some of the essential regulation which we have all said is so necessary. However, we need a little bit more than hope. We need some evidence of the Government’s commitment to restrain themselves when it comes to using these powers.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-28
Topic: Government Operations
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the noble Lord. I apologise for misunderstanding that point I am afraid there was an offline conversation between the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, and myself. I do not know whether he referred to that when he spoke but in that conversation he gave a very good description of the aims of the Bill—namely, that after we have examined it and are satisfied that all the stuff is going into UK legislation, everyone should know what the rules are and the Bill should achieve that outcome. That is what this measure is about. It is about whether we leave it to Ministers in the future to decide which bits of retained EU law they can deal with in secondary legislation. As my noble friend Lady Drake said, we need to restrain executive powers as ministerial promises will not suffice. That in a sense is where we are with this issue My next point relates to the issue raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—namely, that we as legislators look at something but may forget sometimes to undertake consultation, be it with families or anyone else. That is one of the other great advantages of primary legislation: it is much more out there for people to talk about The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, as always trumps everything I do and comes up with much better arguments. However, I too had not noticed the lack of a time limit in Schedule 8. I am sure that we shall want to return to that As we have heard a number of times, the Minister said that there has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the current EU law, so anything we get in future will be better. I remind him that much of that law goes through the Council of Ministers, where we have a Minister, and through the European Parliament, where we have British MEPs. Therefore, the idea that there is no democratic involvement from the Brits is not quite right. We are listening to the concerns of consumers, workers and, indeed, business, about the Bill and I think there will be amendments to it to address some of their concerns. However, we are looking now to future-proof it to ensure that we do not give Ministers rights that we may not want them to have. We will come back to that in the broader discussion. However, for the moment, all noble Lords will be very pleased to know that I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 21.