EHRC briefing - EUW Bill Lords committee stage, day 2
Equality and Human Rights Commission
This briefing covers amendments relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights; and EU case law
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has produced a further briefing for Committee Stage of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, which can be found here.
This updates our previous briefing (focusing on the Charter and EU case law) so that it now includes advice on amendment 63A that relates to how the Charter will work after we leave the EU.
To summarise, in this briefing we recommend supporting the following amendments:
- 34, 14, 20, 25, 41 and 63A to ensure protections in the Charter are retained.
- 56 which requires a court or tribunal to have regard to future decisions of the European Court where relevant to the proper interpretation of retained EU law.
The Commission has also published a ‘Supplementary legal note on how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights works, and would work after Brexit’ to accompany this briefing. This note explains why there is no reason courts should not be able to continue to apply the rights in the Charter to retained EU law, and to actions of UK public bodies which fall within the scope of retained EU law, in the same way as they do at present. To do so will promote legal consistency and certainty, and ensure there is no weakening of human rights protection as we leave the EU.
