My Lords, the Benches opposite have been well filled to harry the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, about fundamental rights. Sadly, they were not here for the previous debate to speak up for achieving a fundamental right to safety and security.
I fear that parts of this debate have displayed a fundamental misunderstanding about the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. There has been evidence of some quite muddled thinking. The charter is not a tool that extends the remit of EU law or promotes further integration; it protects citizens and businesses from abuse of the powers that EU laws confer on EU institutions and—I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—on national Governments when they are implementing EU laws. So it is not just about all the EU institutions that we might leave; it is about achieving legal certainty and continuity. Deleting the charter means discontinuity by making substantive changes to the EU law that is retained in domestic law.
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I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that his was a very entertaining speech but, I am afraid, he fundamentally misunderstood the whole purpose of the Bill, which is to retain EU law. In the Bill’s treatment, not only of the charter but also of the general principles of EU law, which the Government propose to allow no right of action on, human rights laws are an exception—different from any other sector. This is entirely at odds with the stated purpose of wholesale transfer of EU law on to the domestic statute book and completely undermines the government assurance that the same rules will apply on the day before exit as the day after. It is completely at odds with the stated aim of taking a snapshot of the current body of EU law.
The Government have been entirely inconsistent over time about the charter, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said. In the context of this Bill, they say: “Oh, it adds nothing”, while at other times they bemoan the fact that it adds an undesirable extra layer of rights. If we keep EU law but not the charter it is like “Hamlet” without the Prince—and I am sure we would not want that. There would, no doubt, need to be some housekeeping on the Bill once the principle of retention had been secured. There has been some support for the amendment in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, but that bridge can be crossed once the principle has been secured.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, who was an original party to the so-called Watson case on Dripa, relied on the charter; he must have found something in it that was not in existing data protection law. In one of those “couldn’t make it up” moments, I read that Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that EU sanctions for UK breach of an agreement with the EU—an entirely reasonable proposition—would be,
“against the EU’s own Charter of Fundamental Rights”.
So we have Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the so-called European Research Group, joining David Davis in finding it useful.
Time does not allow me to mention other cases. Earlier I mentioned the European arrest warrant, which would not work without the charter. Data transfers are the same. There was another speech this evening by a junior Trade Minister assuring the tech industry that there would be frictionless, seamless data flows after Brexit. That will not happen without the Charter of Fundamental Rights in domestic law. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said at Second Reading, wanting to make the Bill fit for purpose is not putting a spanner in the works: it is making the Bill actually work.