Intergovernmental Relations Within the United Kingdom

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie. I should reassure her that the Welsh are very rarely in a majority in this House. We should take advantage of that this afternoon. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for enabling us to have this debate and for the forensic way in which he introduced it. It is timely because there is much to welcome in the new IGR structure, especially the greater clarity in terms of process, accountabilities and dispute resolution. As he was saying, this is a work in progress and I entirely agree with him about the challenges of how it will be used. I look forward to the Minister’s response to his important questions.

I will focus on Wales, because what gives this debate extra edge today is that we have had the much-anticipated report of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, chaired by our very own Archbishop Rowan Williams, and by Professor Laura McAllister. It has concluded that

“The relationship between the UK government and the devolved governments has fallen far short of the co-operation that citizens expect and which is essential to the successful operation of the Union”.


It calls on the need to protect the Union from the risk of “gradual attrition” if steps are not taken to secure it, and sets out the options for Wales in terms of the future of its governance.

Now, its conclusions consolidate much of what has been marked by intergovernmental relations of recent years. However banal this may sound, no matter how good our structures are, unless those trusted relationships can be retained and made resilient, Westminster and the devolved Administrations will always have an asymmetrical relationship.

That is certainly reflected in Wales’s relationship with Westminster. In July last year, the UK’s conduct towards Wales was described as

“attempts to undermine the devolution settlement and … continued disrespect for the Welsh Government and the Senedd”,

which has damaged intergovernmental working. When he was asked during the Covid inquiry how the new intergovernmental structures were working, the First Minister said they would work only where there were existing good relationships in place, but that

“the new machinery has not succeeded in sparking those arrangements”

or “new forms of interaction”, and that too often relationships just reflected the whim or will of the individual Minister. Indeed, we saw the failure of that will during the Covid pandemic itself, when, despite what we were told in this House, the relationship between Wales and Westminster was one of incommunicado some of the time. Now, that was a basic failure of courtesy, let alone co-ordinated policy.

This House has seen at first hand how the Government have introduced legislation that has overridden the basic precepts of devolution—consultation and consent—and this is documented in the commission’s report. But in this House, I am delighted to say that noble Lords have played a key role in protecting the devolution settlement from the worst effects of provocative legislation, presented to the DAs without care or consultation.

The Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, which I had the privilege of chairing for two and a half years, had a ringside seat—sometimes we were actually in the ring itself—for intergovernmental relationships. It was not so much a case of benign indifference but more a question of “prod and provoke”. It was our conviction that common frameworks could help to mend those relationships and build a stronger Union. But the prevailing political mood was in effect to make common frameworks a victim rather than an agent of positive policy, as seen particularly in relation to the internal market Act and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act. These brand-new mechanisms, these common frameworks that were invented post-Brexit for managing divergence within the internal market, were intended originally to be positive instruments for taking collaborative policy across the UK, whether that was on agriculture or health, and in so doing to draw the Union closer. That opportunity has been lost so far because they have become focused on compatible processes rather than policy. Insofar as they are successful, it is because the officials working across the four countries have made them so.

What has been lacking is political leadership, and in our final letter to Mr Gove—I completely agree with everything the noble Lord has said about the way the Cabinet Office is marginalised here—we said that the failure to provide drive and focused leadership, which would have galvanised the contribution common frameworks could make to the Union, explains why we described in our reports that common frameworks have been an unfulfilled opportunity. Indeed, we had a whole cohort of Ministers trooped in front of us—some with a better grasp than others—but they all displayed a rather cavalier attitude towards the frameworks and no real grip on what they could actually achieve. Mr Gove has disputed our arguments, of course, but he does say that he thinks the IGR reforms have created “a better overall context”. The obvious question is how; I hope the Minister can answer that.

Recently, the Interparliamentary Forum drew attention to the difficulties caused by the United Kingdom Internal Market Act—a Bill that was fought in this House, where we were able to protect the dispute resolutions of the current frameworks against being subordinated to UK legislation, which was very important—and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act, which virtually dismissed any concerns on the part of either Wales or Scotland as to how their regulatory frameworks would be impacted.

Given that the union is now more troubled, less robust and less certain about boundaries and functions, the publication of the report today, which calls on the Westminster Parliament to secure through legislation

“a duty of co-operation and parity of esteem between the governments of the UK”

is vital. I hope the Government will listen and learn from that because parity of esteem between the different cultures and conditions of the countries of the UK must be at the heart of reviving the relationships if they are not to become even more frayed.

Wales carries the burden of inherited poverty and ill health. It is an exceptional legacy. Underfunding for years means that the Welsh Government simply cannot meet the needs of Wales. The reason why that is so, and its repercussions in the context of the union, is part of the conversation that the commission has started across Wales by making recommendations about the strengthening of the union and raising options for its future. I hope the Government will listen intently to that.