European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-12-12
Topic: Government Operations
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): I have now been in the Chamber for seven hours, apart from a brief sojourn to serve on a statutory instrument Committee related to fish taxes in Scotland, which feels completely apposite given today’s debate. No one is suggesting that there will not be points at which we may want to have a way to amend legislation, but I have concerns about clause 7. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) because I have a completely different opinion on what clause 7 offers. This is about so much more than taxes on fish It is important that our constituents understand that we are discussing a clause that gives Ministers the ability to introduce legislation when they consider it appropriate. I consider pudding always to be appropriate, but it is not necessarily necessary. This is one of those matters where the wording is crucial. The deficiencies that the Bill identifies are not limited as long as something can be called a deficiency, which is a huge loophole into which Ministers can reach The SIs that Ministers can bring in will have the effect of primary legislation—the same as any Act of Parliament—and the legislation can abolish functions of the European Union covering a whole range of issues. It would be a brave, bold, disciplined Minister who is not tempted by those powers. That is what we are discussing tonight. The hon. Member for Wealden suggested that the provisions do not look like a power grab, but they do not give power to the courts; they put power in Downing Street. That is the Opposition’s concern, which my Front-Bench colleagues have so ably set out In the time available, I want to explain my particular concerns about the Henry VIII powers and amendment 332, which relates to a good example of what could go wrong. It is clear that the Henry VIII powers are not about taking rights away; they are about sweeping them away. As the House of Lords Constitution Committee said, the use of such powers "remains a departure from constitutional principle" We know from recent years just how often Ministers have been tempted: cuts to tax credits, student maintenance grants, fracking, fox hunting, winter fuel payments, the electoral register and individual voter registration, and legal aid entitlements. Whether or not someone agrees with those policies, they are not fish taxes. They are not minor amendments to existing legislation. They represent major policy changes that the Government pushed through, or tried to push through, using SIs Since 1950, over 170,000 statutory instruments have been laid by Departments—2,500 a year. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, is not in his place, but he was talking about 1,000 SIs resulting from this legislation alone, which is half a year’s worth of work and represents an awful lot of sifting. Only 17 of those 170,000 SIs were rejected. Indeed, the last time that the Commons rejected a statutory instrument was in 1979. The House of Lords has been more robust, having rejected six such instruments, and it has been rewarded with the Strathclyde review Amendment 49 is important because it is clear that when Governments have the ability to use SIs in this way, they do so. It is also clear that this House has not been able to exercise a comparable power of check and balance. Even when such SIs are lawful, the Supreme Court has said that they should be challenged in court. As the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) said, this Bill is almost a lawyer’s charter I want to give the hon. Member for Wealden the example from amendment 332, which covers the elephant in the room during our debates on this Bill and relates to the rights of the British public and of future British citizens around freedom of movement. Freedom of movement has been bandied about as the reason why many people voted for us to leave the European Union. It is a key pillar of the single market—I will be supporting amendment 124 this evening because the single market represents the best deal for all our constituents—but we must address the question what we mean by freedom of movement We know that freedom of movement is a right worth fighting for. It means that kids in our communities can work for companies that have bases in Berlin or Rome, and they can be sent there without any hesitation. It means that if someone falls in love with their French exchange partner, they can move to Paris with them or the exchange can come and live here. It means that someone can be one of 4 million students every year who spend a year in another European country benefiting from that kind of education. These are freedoms that our communities are likely to need more options to access in the future, not less. It also means that people have come to our country and helped our NHS. They have brought jobs and investment, and, yes, British citizens have fallen in love with them. Their kids have gone to school with our kids. They are our neighbours, our friends and our family All that is now at risk. Whether we voted leave or remain, whether we think the referendum was about freedom of movement or leaving the single market, we should support the idea that Parliament, not Ministers, should make or rewrite decisions if Ministers do not like the outcome of our discussions. It is clear that the failure of the previous Prime Minister to reform freedom of movement does not mean that we should give up these rights without asking about those changes, and that is what amendment 332 would give us as a Parliament the power to do. It would stop clause 7 being used to make that a decision made by means of a statutory instrument.