My Lords, I support Amendment 28, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Krebs and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and to which I have also added my name. My noble friend Lord Krebs has already described very eloquently the purpose of the amendment. During Committee in the other place, the then Minister of State for Courts and Justice described this clause in nice, simple, visual terms. I found them slightly easier than all the legal language that we have been dealing with. He called it a sort of broom: a sweeper provision that,
“picks up the other obligations, rights and remedies that would currently have the force of UK law under section 2 of the European Communities Act”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/17; col. 498.]
Such a broom seems a jolly useful idea, but as it stands it is missing a few bristles.
My noble friend Lord Krebs mentioned the air quality directive. I believe that Clause 4, as it stands, could fail to sweep into UK law the requirement on the Government to review and adjust the airborne particulate PM2.5 targets in line with scientific information from the World Health Organization. The current clause could also fail to sweep, as he mentioned, details such as the aims and purposes of directives. For example, the environmental liability directive includes the really important principle of “the polluter pays”. I am not quite sure whether I am addressing the noble Baroness the Minister or the noble and learned Lord the Minister, but I would ask one of them to please let us have a broom with denser bristles.