European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Bassam (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I rather hope that the modest amendments in my name do not take the House two hours to deliberate over. They focus on a narrow set of issues relating to pending cases Amendment 62 would allow our domestic courts, subject to the terms of the withdrawal or transitional agreement, to refer cases to the CJEU after exit day if the course of action arose before exit day. Amendment 61 would require the Government to obtain from the CJEU and then publish a list of pending cases referred to domestic courts before exit day. Amendment 64 changes the definition of retained EU case law to include case law relating to pending cases referred to the CJEU before exit day These amendments were drawn from the Constitution Committee’s excellent report on the Bill and essentially aim to deal with two issues: first, pending cases in domestic courts that might have been referred to the CJEU and, secondly, pending cases already lodged with the CJEU before exit day. In the first instance I am really asking for the Government’s assurance that, in any withdrawal or transition agreement, they will seek to clarify whether domestic courts can continue to make reference to the CJEU in relation to cases that began before exit day. I can see that there has to be a cut-off point for references but it is the timing of that point which concerns me. What criteria will Ministers apply and how will these be written into the agreement in such a way as to guarantee, and not undermine, procedural fairness and access to justice It may seem that this is a small or insignificant matter but, given the wide range of issues that the court considers, I think not. After all, it looks at everything from trademarks to intellectual property rights, workplace rights and even the distribution of EU funds. Given that cases started before the Prime Minister triggered Article 50 are likely to be treated differently from those which followed it, it is surely important that principles of fairness and consistency enter into any agreement which the Government can sign The second type of pending cases, dealt with in Amendment 64, will be those that are already with the CJEU. In another place, the Solicitor-General argued that these cases would simply continue. That is fine as far as it goes but, as the Constitution Committee pointed out, the Government intend to provide for these pending cases to be covered in the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill. But what happens to those cases if there is no deal? Would it not make sense to have a saving provision in the Bill saying simply that any case that is with the CJEU is determined to be treated as contributing to pre-exit case law, and in turn forms part of retained EU case law The Constitution Committee’s proposal that the Government should produce a list of cases on exit day that would be treated in this way made very good sense. To my way of thinking, that is a logical way of handling quite a complex set of legal issues, which are obviously well beyond my sort of competence as a non-lawyer. However, I hope that the Minister can satisfy my curiosity and set out how the Government intend to proceed. I also hope that he can satisfy the Constitution Committee, which I thought had a rather neat solution to the problem. Pending cases are of great value and will be of great interest to colleagues. I am hopeful that the Government can satisfy my simple concerns and provide us with an explanation that works. I fear that we will otherwise end up with something of a case law muddle. I beg to move.