Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Committee (1st Day) (Continued)

Amendment 3

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, at beginning insert “Except for the European Qualifications (Health and Social Care Professions) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I. 2019/593),” Member's explanatory statement This amendment excludes the European Qualifications (Health and Social Care Professions) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 from the sunset in Clause 1.

I apologise to the Committee for not being able to speak at Second Reading because of another commitment. I attended part of that debate and have read Hansard’s record of it. In this group, I particularly thank the General Medical Council and Food Standards Scotland, as well as many other organisations, for their excellent and helpful briefings.

It is worth noting that, in The Benefits of Brexit, published in January 2022 by this Government, they set out their principles for regulation, including:

“Recognising what works. We will thoroughly analyse our interventions based on the outcomes they produce in the real world and where regulation does not achieve its objectives or does so at unacceptable cost, we will ensure it is revised or removed.”

Like many other Peers, I echo concerns that the Bill contains severe risks to our democracy and laws and even to the role of Parliament. Once again, we have seen that the Bill gives widespread executive powers, and that has an impact for the amendments in this group. Department by department, the number of regulations continues to increase, as the debate at the end of the last group demonstrated, and I suspect it will increase again.

The three amendments in this group relate to health, but each covers completely different areas affected by the REUL Bill. This is because they are on the dashboard; it is all about what is and is not included on the dashboard, and, frankly, it appears to be universally confusing, including to government departments, which is worrying. So, if my questions to the Minister for all three are broadly similar, I suspect that that will be reflected by other noble Lords during the passage of the Bill. I hope that she will forgive me.

Amendment 3 looks at the European qualifications for health and social care professions, as amended by further regulations made in 2020. These govern the way that the UK recognises qualifications obtained in the EEA. As the General Medical Council—GMC—said, this is done in two distinct ways: via amendments that were made to our legislation and by four substantive provisions. The legislation route included a pathway to registration, known as the “relevant European qualification pathway”, which is a streamlined way for doctors with European qualifications to get registrations with us.

Secondly, can the Minister confirm that amendments made to the Medical Act for the regulations will not be automatically repealed at the end of 2023? If the answer is, “No, they could be repealed”, what are the consequences? Would it be a perfect copy of these regulations or a new version to reflect this Government’s choices and views, which most Governments with a mandate would argue was entirely valid? We got to these by very wide consultation with stakeholders, including all the royal colleges, all the universities and, above all, the wider public. How does that fit into a scale between now and the end of the year, at a time when the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care can barely cope with yet another distraction? It cannot be done as a negative instrument just to move things through.

I turn now to Amendment 4 on food labelling, which

“excludes Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 from the sunset in Clause 1. The Regulation requires that packaged food and drink provides a product name and list of ingredients, including allergens.”

This is because the third recital of the regulation says:

“In order to achieve a high level of health protection for consumers and to guarantee their right to information, it should be ensured that consumers are appropriately informed as regards the food they consume. Consumers’ choices can be influenced by, inter alia, health, economic, environmental, social and ethical considerations.”

Regulations in relation to food labelling need to protect the public from the risks to health which may arise in connection with the consumption of food, to improve the extent to which members of public have diets which are conducive to good health, and to protect other interests to consumers in relation to food. It is much more than sticking a label on a product. Because of the global trade world we live in, many of the standards developed under EU law, on which we often led the way when we were in the EU, still need to maintain those international standards.

One of the great benefits of the regulation has been to provide a baseline of core information that is recognised by consumers all over Europe and frankly much further. I know this personally because I was diagnosed as a coeliac 50 years ago this year, and, until this regulation, which was supported by the UK Government and many organisations, I had to be able to find out exactly what was in food, whether it was in a shop, restaurant, cafeteria or even a hospital, because it was not always labelled. If I ate the wrong thing, the consequences could have been fairly serious. It also made international travel particularly trying at the best of times.

Now the situation is completely different—and that is the point: these regulations work. When they fail to work, as in the case when some people die as a result of eating allergens, there is now an accountability through the courts because the standards and regulations are well known. So without this regulation, and without the very careful and long-considered detail that sits behind it, consumers will have no confidence. Can the Minister confirm whether this regulation is planned for complete and thorough replacement before the end of the year, including the consultation with the many stakeholders on what you want to change and to keep? Or is the plan to let it sunset, or for parts of it to sunset, as with the previous amendment? In that case, where is the impact assessment for the consequences to vulnerable consumers and public health?

I turn now to Amendment 17 on the purchase of PPE. It refers to accepting EU regulation 2016/425

“on personal protective equipment and repealing Council Directive 89/686/EEC, and the Personal Protective Equipment (Enforcement) Regulations 2018”.

During the debate on Biocidal Products (Health and Safety) (Amendment) Regulations on 21 November last year, it emerged that the chemicals division of the Health and Safety Executive was struggling to manage the new certification process for chemicals since we left the EU, and, in essence, the instrument was asking for extra time. Ministers had decided that the UK would move straight away to its own certification for chemicals, despite the fact that very many organisations and companies were already certified under the old system and still trading with the EU.

As I have already said, the amendment to the regulation was to give the HSE more time to cope with the administrative burden, both for applicants and for the HSE. Worse, the HSE discovered too late that it could not have access to the EU chemicals database after we had left, because the Government had demanded a clean break. When I asked the Minister how the HSE was managing with its resources, he said that its chemicals division budget was now 40% higher and that this would be needed for the foreseeable future. So when we talk about impact assessment, it is not always just about the impact on the public. It can also be about the impact on government spending and business spending.