These are the amendments to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to be debated this week in the Lords. publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill…
Note on p.7: attempt by Lord Pannick, @bricksilk, and others to remove the odd provision that allows the Government to permit lower courts to stop following ECJ-settled interpretation of areas of retained EU law.
This provision is very odd. If the Government wants to change the law, it can do so in the normal way. But this provision allows the Government to throw open the interpretation of retained EU law to lower courts.
It is hard to see the rationale for that. If the law is unsatisfactory, the Government and Parliament can (and should) change it in the normal way, rather than simply throw the issue to the courts.
Note on p.19. This is about the Independent Monitoring Authority, which has the critical job of making sure that the Government honours its agreement on the rights of EU citizens.
The current Bill gives Government power to wind up the Independent Monitoring Authority on “efficiency” grounds (though the Government would have to transfer its powers and functions elsewhere). The amendment seeks to to remove that power.
The central concern here is that the Government does not generally have power to wind up regulators - especially regulators whose main job is to scrutinise and challenge Government. If they want to hand their powers to someone else they have to go back to Parliament.
Why is that? Well, it is not exactly encouraging you to be a fearless and objective challenger of government if the government can (on wide and subjective grounds) abolish your post and transfer your duties to someone else.
It will be interesting to see how the Government responds to this amendment.
