European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-01-15
Topic: International Affairs
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Ludford and Lady Hayter, for their amendments and the noble Lord for his contribution to the debate. I also express my thanks to the Constitution Committee for providing what was an extremely thorough analysis of this Bill. I hope my response will provide reassurance to noble Lords about the purpose of these clauses; if the House will forgive me, I will go into quite a bit of detail on this As noble Lords will know, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 was drafted without prejudice to the outcome of our negotiations with the EU. However, now that we have agreed a withdrawal agreement together with the implementation period, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, observed, it is necessary to update that Act to ensure that it can still fulfil its intended purpose in light of the new circumstances The subsections to which the noble Baronesses have tabled their amendments are there to ensure that the power can continue to meet the broader goal, which was much discussed during our debates on the 2018 Act, if noble Lords remember, and on which there is a widespread measure of agreement across the House. It is simply to ensure that the law continues to operate correctly, as it was passed at the time. To provide the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, with a specific example of the kind of thing to which we are referring, we will need to replace the previous deficiencies in the statutory instrument on telecoms, which will no longer work because EU-derived domestic legislation will have been amended during the implementation period to implement the new EU regulatory framework for electronic communications. That will be changed during the implementation period and we may well have to go back to the previous fix in order to update it and provide a functioning statute book at the end of the implementation period. That is why we need to extend that power Moving on to the specifics of Amendment 24, EU law will of course generally continue to apply in the UK during the implementation period. This Bill takes the approach of providing what are known as glosses for EU-derived domestic legislation, to clarify the way in which EU-related terms should be read so that our laws will continue to work during this period. Obviously, as a non-lawyer, the only "gloss" that I am familiar with is gloss paint, but for the benefit of the House, glossing is a technical device used to direct readers of the law to interpret specific phrases without textually amending the original provisions. Apparently, it is a fairly standard legal clause. When retained EU law is created at the end of the implementation period, the EU-derived domestic legislation will be the glossed version of that law. Subsection 2(c) ensures that the powers in Section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 can be used to fix ambiguities which may arise as a result of the approach that we have taken to the saving and exceptions of retained EU law, such as the application of the glosses set out in Clause 2 of the Bill. In our view, it is right and appropriate that the Section 8 power is made available for this particular purpose.