30/12/2020
And so we come to the UK parliamentary approval of
the TCA signified by the passage of the implementation Bill.
This is preceded by
ERG members announcing that they would vote in favour of the deal after a self-appointed "Star Chamber" decided it had passed the test of "restoring Britain's sovereignty". Chairman, Mark Francois, says that while the deal is not perfect it does pass the "acid test" of guaranteeing the UK's sovereignty as an independent state.
With the proceedings in the Commons starting 9.30 am in order to allow enough time for the EU (future relationship) Bill to pass within the day, prime minister Johnson will open the debate for the government. From a preview of his speech (with the speech itself having been delivered by the time most people have read this report) we are told he will say that:
The central purpose of this Bill is to accomplish something which the British people always knew in their hearts could be done, but which we were told was impossible â namely that we could trade and cooperate with our European neighbours on the closest terms of friendship and goodwill, whilst retaining sovereign control of our laws and our national destiny.
This reflects the usual muddled thinking from this quarter, and the confusion as to the nature of sovereignty where, in strict terms, we never lost sovereign control over our laws. We have, however, delegated a considerable amount of power to frame this nation's laws and, even with the coming into force of the TCA, not a lot will have changed.
This, I touched on
yesterday but there is hardly a better illustration of Johnson's confusion than his
resignation letter in 9 July 2018, when he left Mrs May's Cabinet in protest at her handling of the exit negotiations.
In his letter, he complained that the negotiations appeared "to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system". It now seems, he wrote:
⦠that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London, in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though there had been a horri?c spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
Johnson thus concluded by writing: "If a country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists ⦠then I don't see how that country can truly be called independent".
Now, the fascinating thing at the time was that the former foreign secretary was apparently completely unaware of the role of the UN Economic Commission Europe (UNECE) which in 1958 had concluded an Agreement on "harmonised technical UN Regulations for the approval and certification of new wheeled vehicles, their equipment and parts".
Administering a global body known as the World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29), this was the first attempt â pre-dating any activity by the then EEC in the field â to create a single market in automobile manufacture, and on a global scale.
In 1998, the European Union had become a "contracting party" to UNECE and, from 2007 onwards had "outsourced" its vehicle regulation to WP.29, adopting "UN regulations" into EU law. Thus, the originator of vehicle construction standards was no longer the EU but UNECE.
As regards fatal collisions between lorries and cyclists, this was indeed an issue and there had been a spate of accidents in London which had been
picked up by Johnson as London Mayor.
He had joined with Chris Boardman, the former Olympic champion, and Kate Cairns, the sister of a cyclist killed by a lorry driver in London, to call on the Department for Transport to throw its full support behind measures that could save hundreds of lives each year.
In fact, under the general direction of Johnson Transport for London (TfL) had produced a preliminary study for improving the "direct vision" in heavy goods vehicles.
There had already been a lengthy study by
Loughborough University which came up with some preliminary recommendations.
However, because vehicle design was now an EU competence, the issue had to be "bumped" upwards to the European Commission, which in turn handed it over to UNECE (WP.29). As the problem also affected other European cities, it gained the support of the
European Transport Safety Council which called for the introduction of a European "direct vision standard" for Heavy Goods Vehicles.
However, research sponsored by UNECE (and largely funded by the EU) found that TfL's proposed standard would have had the effect of banning 28 of 51 current vehicle models available in the EU. Furthermore, the core principle of UN regulations was that they should be "technology neutral" allowing manufacturers flexibility in achieving the desired outcome.
And when it came to improving direct vision, researchers categorised five different ways of making improvements, from changing cab designs to fitting additional windows, with no single solution applicable to all types of vehicle. To add to the complexity, methodologies for assessing compliance also had to be developed and agreed.
The reality was, therefore, was that it was well into
2019 before a definitive standard could be formally introduced on a limited scale with
enforcement having started in October this year, progressing through to 2024.
However, this was only part of the solution as, with the range of different types of HGV in use, an all-embracing construction standard was needed for all new vehicles. And, given that the UK no longer produced heavy goods vehicles on any scale, it was therefore dependent on the national authorities of supplier states, spread throughout the world, to develop new safety standards.
The agreed mechanism for this was WP.29. The organisation is in the process of delivering various instruments. When produced, these are automatically adopted by the EU and then by member states.
From Johnson, however, there was and is no understanding of this regulatory system. Yet, in the TCA, we see that the UNECE system has been adopted by the UK, including the whole-vehicle
type approval regulation which was not adopted by the EU until 2018.
Specifically, the Parties recognise that the WP.29 is "the relevant international standardising body" which produces the "relevant international standards", and the Parties agree to "refrain from introducing or maintaining any domestic technical regulation" diverging from these standards.
Thus, even with the passage of the TCA, we have not regained direct control over vehicle safety laws and cannot pass our own laws "to save the lives of female cyclists". And this, by Johnson's own estimation means that he does not see how this country "can truly be called independent".
And yet, today, that self-same man is applauding the "independence" of the UK, supported by ERG MPs, clearly in circumstances where they don't have the first idea of what they are talking about.
Also published on
Turbulent Times.
