The Government promised that the EU Withdrawal Bill would bring across all the EU laws and turn them into British laws, so why aren’t they doing that? By exempting the Charter of Fundamental Rights they are significantly weakening the current system of human rights protection in the UK. If that is their intention, then let the Government have a proper discussion about it, rather than sneaking it through as an exemption in part of the much broader debate about the EU Bill.

I co-signed Plaid Peer Dafydd Wigley’s amendment 35 to the EU Withdrawal Bill because the Charter of Fundamental Rights is crucial to social justice and civil liberties in this country. The eminent lawyer Lord Pannick QC noted in the debate that “there is no other area of retained EU law where the Government have carried out this exercise or said that we do not need to read across a particular provision because it is already in domestic law. Why are they making an exception of the Charter?”

The Government is using the EU Withdrawal Bill as an excuse to push through their right wing ideological agenda, whilst some in the media brand us who oppose them as ‘traitors’. It is the Government’s stated aim, and manifesto commitment, to repeal the Human Rights Act in this Parliament. I hope the Lords stand up against this bullying and protect our fundamental rights by revising this bad legislation.​