Having endured the last 40 minutes, I am bound to say, as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, that although I will be relatively brief there are important matters that need to be discussed. I will raise them and give the House the opportunity to reflect on what I have to say.
This Bill was passed by this House without amendment. There were no amendments on Second Reading or in the Public Bill Committee. I have been Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee for many years, and I have been on this Committee since 1985. I draw the attention of the House to the European Scrutiny Committee report tagged to this debate, published on 21 July last year. As the Minister said, EU retained law was never intended to remain part of our domestic statute book. I am deeply grateful to the Government for today’s round robin letter to all Members and to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) for his work on the genesis of this Bill.
We left the European Union with section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 guaranteeing UK sovereignty and democracy, and therefore UK democracy itself. It was the culmination of a process that began with my sovereignty amendment to the Single European Act in 1986, which, at that time, I was not even allowed to debate. In turn, that was followed by the Maastricht treaty and a whole series of treaties, enactments and debates on the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties.
Incidentally, on the question of maternity pay—the only interesting thing mentioned by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders)—the UK actually has 52 weeks of maternity pay, while the EU has merely eight. On holiday pay, we have six weeks; the EU has four.
The views of the British people, as expressed ultimately in the 2016 referendum, repudiated the idea of our remaining in the EU by democratic vote, and the general election that endorsed that decision, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) as Prime Minister, gave the present Conservative Government a large majority. The democracy that we enjoy is based on our unique and universally envied constitutional arrangements, whereby laws are passed in this House by a simple majority of MPs representing individual constituencies, who derive their authority exclusively from those who voted them into the House of Commons.