Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-09-30
Topic: Government Operations
Sally Rachel Hamwee (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I moved Amendments 4 and 5 in Committee; they are amendments to what the Public Law Project called the "breathtakingly wide" powers proposed to be given to the Secretary of State. It is ironic that when elsewhere negotiations are going on—or maybe not going on—regarding the sovereignty of the UK Parliament, we are being faced with exercising our sovereignty in order to pass it back to the Executive Amendment 4 would substitute in Clause 4, which is about regulation-making powers, the word "necessary" for "appropriate". Amendment 5 would take out the ability for the Secretary of State to make regulations "in connection with" anything in Part 1. Taken together, these terms give the Executive huge latitude. I am glad that the names of the noble Lords, Lord Rosser, Lord Pannick and Lord Alton, have been added to my amendments. The clause would read, "such provision as the Secretary of State considers necessary in consequence of any provision" of Part 1 The amendments follow the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, a member of which, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, made a very balanced speech at the last stage of the Bill. She acknowledged, as I do, that consequential amendments through means of secondary legislation are generally needed—although, as she said, when they can be they are to be put in the Bill, with regulations then used for tidying up. But as the breadth and number of amendments in Committee showed—that is, amendments to the Bill —a huge number of topics can fairly be said to be connected with Part 1. Those topics were all approved by the clerks to the House as being within scope of the Bill The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, chair of the DPRR Committee, said that he spoke in sorrow, rather than being vicious, about its reported criticisms or concerns about the clause. I think we are entitled to expect more of the Government—and this is not vicious, but many degrees up from sorrowful—than the defence that: "There are clear constraints on the use of the power in Clause 4. It can be used only to make regulations that amend primary or secondary legislation ‘in consequence of, or in connection with’ Part 1" That is exactly what we object to. I had forgotten to comment on the offensive—and I say that deliberately—power to amend primary legislation through regulations. The Government’s reply to the committee’s report included the Minister again asking your Lordships to consider the illustrative draft of the regulations which, shortly before the last stage, had been circulated, and to "take comfort that this power is specifically to deliver the end of free movement".—[Official Report, 7/9/20; col. 641.] That is also relied on in the long letter from the Home Office, which I received at lunchtime today—and I dare say that the timing was similar for other noble Lords. I have to confess that I have not been able to get my head around quite all of it The draft regulations referred to are, frankly, fiendishly complicated, and are causing a lot of anxiety both as to the extent they are understood—especially as to any omissions—and to the extent they are not understood. But whatever they are like, we have nothing that we can look to as an assurance that there will not be more regulations. The "lawyers", I am told, are engaged in an exhaustive process of analysing this draft. It may bore others as much as it does me to say it, but whatever the intentions of this Government and this Minister today, that would not matter one jot tomorrow in terms of curbing the power in Clause 4. I beg to move.