United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, throughout the many stages of this debate the common frameworks have been given a great airing, and many of your Lordships have had a chance to vent their respective spleens on the subject. The Minister may be assured that my spleen will remain in its correct place, because enough has been said on this issue. Indeed, he observed that noble Lords have made their position on common frameworks very clear.

However, the Government have shown great and steadfast reticence on writing the common frameworks into this Bill. The Minister set out two reasons for this: first, in stressing the word “voluntary” on several occasions, and, secondly, in pointing out the joint ownership of the common frameworks between the devolved authorities and the UK Government. On that second point, have any of the devolved authorities objected to the idea that common frameworks might be a central part of this Bill? I have seen no such objections; on the contrary, I have seen enthusiasm from devolved authorities that this might happen.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has drafted elegant solutions in his amendments, which I hope will help the Minister to get to the point of developing the market access principles and legal certainties—the Minister is right to say that we need them—but, at the same time, respecting the devolution settlement. A key part of the noble and learned Lord’s speech was about the respect that this Bill needs to show the devolved authorities and the settlement that has developed so well there.

I was impressed by the tone of conciliation and consultation in the Minister’s speech, which came through in his “willingness to continue to engage in discussion”, “discussions have not been exhausted” and “open to discussions.” The door is clearly open. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, there is time; I have also worked in commercial life and while the idea of “give me certainty” works within a correct framework, if it is “give me certainty” in a terrible framework then I would rather wait a little and get it right. We can spend a few days more getting this right. A vote for the amendments set out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, would help keep the door open for those discussions with the Minister. That is why we on these Benches will vote in favour of them.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, who is not in his place, will recall how the notion of common frameworks evolved. When we were doing the first EU withdrawal Bill, it became clear that some of the powers returning from Brussels clearly fell within devolved competences. It was therefore widely understood that, to facilitate trade throughout the UK—as otherwise the rules affecting trade could vary across internal borders—a coming together of the four authorities would be needed to balance the desire for, and attraction of, diversity on some issues with a UK-wide approach to help consumers buy and manufacturers trade throughout the UK.

From the start, it was agreed that such frameworks would be established where needed—this is from the communiqué of October 2017—to

“enable the functioning of the UK internal market, while acknowledging policy divergence”

and that they would

“respect the devolution settlements … based on established conventions … including that the competence of the devolved institutions will not normally be adjusted without their consent”.

That was how they started. At that point, a list of 24 such topics was identified and, with a lot of good faith and hard work—as the Minister has acknowledged—the initial three Governments, along with Northern Ireland officials, set to work developing frameworks to enable that UK-wide market to flourish while recognising where devolved authorities might want variations for whatever reason. The basis was, to quote again from that document signed by the Government, to

“maintain, as a minimum, equivalent flexibility for tailoring policies to the specific needs of each territory”.

Until this Bill arrived, everyone thought the system was working well and would accomplish the aims set for it. This should have been something for the Government to celebrate, as they have today, and build on. In fact, it has never been necessary for the Government to use their powers to freeze any devolved authority’s power—a provision set into the EU withdrawal Act, as the Minister has acknowledged.

While this Bill was anticipated, the expectation was that it would help build a new, in some ways unique, internal market across our four nations, which have different cultural, linguistic, agricultural, geographical and industrial histories and realities. Above all, our nations have different democratic governance structures from when we ceded rule-making to the EU in 1973. We thought the Bill would respect the devolution realities while helping to ensure the UK market could prosper for the sake of business, consumers, workers, our agriculture and the environment. As we now know, in addition to throwing the quite unnecessary Part 5 grenade into the Bill, the Government pulled the pin on another grenade by writing into the Bill market access rules which trumped, rather than solidified, the common frameworks programme, which is an approach built on consensus rather than top-down diktat.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, is not a revolutionary. He is not trying to rewrite the Bill. He is seeking—rather like the Minister himself through the Government’s welcome amendments on regulation-making, for which we will give thanks when we come to them later—to start the process on the basis of consent across the four devolved authorities, and, where that is not possible, leaving it to the UK Parliament, rightly, to legislate. We support a union, and therefore we support Parliament’s right at that point to have its proper role. But we start with consent, and then move to Parliament. What we do not support is starting here in Parliament and government, rather than with the four-party common frameworks. So, we welcome the noble and learned Lord’s upending of the procedure, starting with common frameworks and, where or if those do not work, using the market access approach of the Bill in areas obviously otherwise within devolved competencies.

I think we would all warn the Government to be very careful about clawing back decisions from our now quite long-established devolved settlements. I find today’s vote in the Senedd, by 36 to 15, to deny legislative consent to this Bill extraordinarily regrettable. It is an important Bill; it is not a small one. That was denied because of the message sent to Wales and the other devolveds by the rejection in the Commons last night of this approach. So we need a backstop for any failure to agree, but we fail to understand that what should be a backstop has become the starting gun.

The amendments in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, build on the devolution settlements and would support and strengthen the union, as well as creating what we all want: a successful, growing internal market, which is in the interest of all our citizens. We are right, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said, to ask the Government very genuinely to think again about the mechanisms—because that is what we are discussing—to achieve what I think we all want.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said that if there was a will on the Government’s part to make the common frameworks system work, a solution could be found. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, we concur with that view, and we welcome the Minister’s saying that “discussions are not exhausted”—I think I have his words right. Whether we do that by recognising the framework system in some way, extending the freeze provisions when they expire or pausing market access for a period of time while the four Governments talk—as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Adonis—there is surely a way forward. But I believe we need this amendment to get the Government to continue to discuss, so that we can get that way forward. That is why we will support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, when he calls for a vote shortly.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have contributed to this short debate and for the general tone of the interventions made. I was of course intrigued by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who emerged as a tribune of the people in this august senatorial assembly with his powerful oratory—a latter-day Gaius Gracchus, who said that your Lordships should reject everything sent to us by another place as a constructive contribution to law-making. I would respectfully give to the noble Lord, and indeed to any others who may share his views, the advice I would give to an overweight gentleman like myself: rejecting some of what is set before you, whether it is legislation or food, may well be desirable from time to time, but to reject everything is not conducive to the health of the legislature or of an individual. I hope that rather “Radical Jack” approach will not carry too much weight on the Opposition Benches.

I preferred the broader tone of the debate, which, as I heard it, actually reflected this Government’s resolve and the resolve of the parties represented in this place, at least—I cannot speak for down the Corridor: that all of us are committed to the security and future of this great union, to the common frameworks process and, as part of that, to hopefully developing further the next stage of inter-governmental relations, as I have explained to the House during the course of this Bill.

This Bill, however, works in tandem with the common frameworks programme by providing a broad safety net and additional protections to maintain the status quo of seamless intra-UK trade across all sectors of the economy, and there ought to be agreement on that in your Lordships’ House. It will ensure maximum certainty for businesses and investors, both domestic and overseas. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Naseby said from his perspective and experience in business. I am sure all noble Lords at heart support that objective and understand the need for a coherent internal market.