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The UK government has overturned demands from peers for extra safeguards over post-Brexit plans to scrap EU laws.
MPs voted 269 to 204, majority 65, to reject a measure to ensure ministerial powers to revoke, replace or update retained rules from Brussels do not undermine current environmental protections.
Solicitor General Michael Tomlinson told the Commons: ‘We’ve repeatedly made the commitment at every stage of this Bill that we will not lower environmental protections and we will ensure the continued implementation of our international obligations.’
MPs later voted 269 to 202, majority 67, to reject a separate Lords amendment seeking greater parliamentary oversight of the retained EU legislation earmarked for the scrapheap.
Peers had backed a move to require EU laws facing the axe to be sifted by a Commons committee, which could then trigger a debate and vote in both Houses of Parliament if deemed necessary.
Critically, it would have also allowed amendments to the proposed regulations, which is not usually permitted to so-called secondary legislation.
But Tomlinson said the proposal was ‘novel and untested’, adding: ‘It’s unnecessary because there are already measures in the bill. We have already made provision for a sifting committee.’
He said a committee would be able to recommend if there are votes on reforms the Government brings forward via the powers contained in the bill.
For Labour, Shadow Business Minister Justin Madders said: ‘The lack of transparency and the desire to bypass scrutiny that is the hallmark of this bill demonstrates a lack of confidence from the Government in its own programme.
‘It’s clear they either do not know or do not want to tell us what they intend to do with the powers conferred by this bill.’
Conservative former cabinet minister Robert Buckland had offered support to the call for extra scrutiny, saying: ‘It does seem to me not unreasonable to ask for just that further check and balance.
‘I don’t think it is the sort of unwelcome additional bureaucracy that perhaps he and others are concerned about, because fundamentally we do have a duty as parliamentarians to protect the role of this place, in particular in the scrutiny or passage of important new regulations.’
Labour MP Stella Creasy said: ‘We cannot have a legislative process that simply says we have to trust the chaps and chapesses who are ministers and in Downing Street to do a decent thing.’
She added: ‘Never let anyone on that side or who said they were speaking up for democracy through Brexit tell you ever again that Brexit was about taking back control. It’s taking control back to Downing Street, not to this place.’
The bill will now return to the Lords where peers will weigh up whether or not they make another attempt to change its wording, as part of the parliamentary process known as ping-pong.
The legislation was previously watered down by the government after it abandoned a planned ‘sunset’ clause to scrap all laws carried over from the trade bloc by the end of 2023.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faced criticism from the right of his party after it was announced that around 600 laws would be revoked by the end of the year, rather than the 4,000 previously pledged.
source: PA
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