The Brexit repeal bill is an unprecedented government power grab. Labour cannot support it. However, there is one point that David Davis made last week that I agree with. In Thursday’s debate on the repeal bill the Brexit secretary made clear that this bill “does not take us out of the European Union — that is a matter for the article 50 process”.
Labour voted for the article 50 legislation because we respect the referendum result and recognise that Britain will leave the EU. Nothing in this bill will change that. What the repeal bill will do is determine how we leave the EU. It will decide what role parliament has in the process and how we safeguard rights and protections.
As we saw in Thursday’s debate, the closer you look at this bill, the clearer it is that it would result in an unprecedented power grab by government ministers.
Davis maintains the bill is merely a “technical” exercise. It is anything but. It gives extraordinarily wide, Henry VIII-style powers to government ministers to change legislation on a whim. It allows ministers to implement any withdrawal deal Britain negotiates with the EU with minimal scrutiny. That means it would be ministers — not parliament — who decided the level of any “divorce bill”. It would be ministers who decided our new trade arrangements, customs arrangements and immigration rules, any deal on citizens’ rights and much else. It would be ministers who decided the nature of the transitional arrangements Britain needs to avoid a cliff-edge for the economy.
It would mean — as the Hansard Society has argued — that ministers would have “a legislative blank cheque” to make sweeping changes to “every facet of national life”.
Far from bringing back control to parliament, it would reduce MPs to spectators. That’s why the Conservative MP and former attorney-general Dominic Grieve has called it an “astonishing monstrosity of a bill”, and why The Times warned last week that it “would grant ministers unprecedented powers to change the law without scrutiny”.
The problems with the bill do not end there. Davis says that all EU-derived rights and protections will be safeguarded. The reality is that the bill would leave vital rights unprotected — including the rights of part-time and agency workers, the right to holiday pay, health and safety provisions, consumer rights and environmental protections. Again, it would give ministers the power to change these rights without any effective parliamentary scrutiny.
Given that Boris Johnson has called for an end to “back-breaking” employment laws, Liam Fox has said it is “unsustainable to believe that workplace rights should remain untouchable” and Priti Patel has called for employment protections to be halved, Labour knows these powers would not be safe in the hands of this government.
Davis also maintains there is no need for this bill to bring the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights into UK law — even though he relied on that charter when, as a backbencher, he took Theresa May, then home secretary, to court in 2016.
Davis the backbencher knew that the charter provided essential safeguards for British citizens. Davis the secretary of state would do well to remember that.
The bill also takes entirely the wrong approach to devolution. Rather than seeing this as an opportunity to bring power closer to communities, the bill limits the powers of the devolved governments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast and hoards power in Whitehall. No wonder it risks failing to command the support of the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament.
Labour has emphasised over many months that the government needs to address these fundamental flaws and to make sure we have workable, effective legislation that ensures there are no gaps in rights and protections as Britain leaves the EU. That is why our manifesto promised to replace the repeal bill with a robust bill of rights and protections.
Regrettably, the prime minister has adopted her default blinkered approach — pushing any opposition aside, ignoring legitimate concerns and seeking to sideline parliament. It is the same approach that led the prime minister to fight a court case to prevent MPs from having a say on article 50 and to call a snap general election in an attempt to crush opposition to her flawed Brexit strategy. Nothing has changed.
The result is a bill that is an affront to parliament and the principle of taking back control. The prime minister will have to rely on Democratic Unionist MPs to drive this through the Commons and will face months of amendments and parliamentary battles.
There is another way forward. She should now act in the national interest: realise that this bill is fatally flawed, drop it and start again.
If she does, there is still time to bring forward new legislation that can command the support of all sides of the House of Commons and the devolved administrations. This bill cannot.
Sir Keir Starmer is shadow secretary of state for exiting the EU
