My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the SI and for the helpful briefing that she organised beforehand.
This is one of a number of recent Defra SIs laid using the “made affirmative” procedure, with the justification that changes to the statute book must be implemented by the EU exit date of 31 October. It is now 30 October and it is clear to everyone concerned that we will not leave on 31 October. Nevertheless, we seem still to be correcting errors, some of which might be said to be quite serious. For example, Regulation 4 corrects an error made in a previous Defra SI and was identified in the 69th report of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments as sufficiently important not to,
“be suitable for correction by correction slip”.
Regulation 8 amends the Marketing of Seeds and Plant Propagating Material (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) (EU Exit) Regulations to correct a reference to the European Union that was missed in the original instrument.
A number of these amendments change longer standing, devolved Northern Ireland legislation, which one would hope had been cross-checked and updated well before now. If the Minister accepts that we will not leave tomorrow, as is clear, where does this leave the “made affirmative” provisions, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, were only ever intended for use as an emergency measure? I query whether the Government are now broadening them out to deal with all the corrections and updates that really should have been made some time ago. I find this process unsatisfactory. I hope that the Minister can comment on that.
Can she clarify what additional steps have been taken to ensure that these new instruments, and the ones we have been dealing with during the past year, are 100% correct? We seem to be uncovering new mistakes every week. Will the Government use this delay to the exit to hold a thorough review of the state of Defra EU exit legislation so that we are not left making endless corrections? They could cause considerable confusion to businesses and farmers who will be doing their best to abide by our laws in the coming period.
On a separate matter, what organisations in Northern Ireland have been consulted on these proposals? Are they content with them as they stand, even though it appears that we may well be revisiting them in the context of the re-establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly or of a variation of the withdrawal Bill when we come back after the election? A comment on
the stakeholders who have been consulted and their views on this would be helpful. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
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