The Home Office has come under fire from Peers for its lack of transparency on Brexit’s effect on justice and security.
In a report published last week, the peers highlighted the lack of scrutiny of draft regulations prepared as a contingency measure in case of a no-deal Brexit. The draft regulations cover 24 separate security, justice and policing matters including counter-terrorism, drugs offences, extradition and serious crime and fraud.
The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report states: ‘Correspondence with the Home Office has not persuaded us that so wide-ranging an instrument, covering policy areas which are individually of significant concern to the House, can be justified.
‘Effective scrutiny is further inhibited by the failure of the Home Office to provide any contextual explanation, with estimated numbers or an indication of the degree of usage, to illustrate the impact of the changes that this instrument addresses.’
The secondary legislation concerned are the Draft Law Enforcement and Security (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
