State Aid (Revocations and Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Baroness Noakes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, it will not surprise the House to hear that I strongly support these regulations and do not support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara. I particularly welcome any statutory instrument that removes EU-derived law from our statute book. It may take a long time to remove it all, and it is clearly not a top priority, but when excellent opportunities such as this arise, we should grasp them.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mirrors the concerns expressed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House in relation to not using primary legislation to introduce a new state aid regime. We are not being asked to approve a replacement state aid regime. We are being asked to approve this statutory instrument, which should be judged on its own merits and not in relation to the legislative process that may or may not be followed for any replacement state aid regime. The merits of these regulations are clear. They will remove from our statute book the state aid rules that apply to those within the single market. We will no longer be in the single market at the end of this year, except to the extent required by the Northern Ireland protocol. That should be the end of the story.

I have to say to my noble friend Lady Altmann that I do not understand the concerns expressed by the Welsh Government that she relayed. The legislation is redundant and keeping it would be confusing.

The question of what kind of state aid rules we need for the UK’s own internal market is an entirely separate issue and should have no bearing on this order. As noble Lords are aware, the Government have committed to consulting on their plans for a scheme of subsidy control for the UK’s internal market. I am sure that this will include consultation with the devolved Administrations, and so we do not need this amendment to bring that about.

A regime for the UK’s internal market is not an urgent issue, and it is important that the Government take their time to get the details right. As my noble friend the Minister has said, the UK will of course be bound by the WTO’s rules and the terms of any free trade agreements, as it will whether or not we create new rules for our own internal market.

Equally, whether or not the mechanism for creating any new state aid scheme is by way of primary or secondary legislation does not affect these regulations. As noble Lords know, the Government had intended to use the power in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill before your Lordships’ House took another swipe at the Bill with its wrecking ball last week. Whether the Government decide to use primary or secondary legislation is not a big issue for me, provided that their consultation is thorough. Primary legislation can take a big chunk of the finite time available under our parliamentary processes. I would prefer to use up any spare legislative time for things such as our levelling-up agenda. I would certainly not get excited if secondary legislation were used.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also seemed to misdirect itself when it said, at paragraph 17 of its 30th Report, that part of the reason for drawing the order to the attention of the House was because,

“on this occasion, the policy is one that appears central to the UK’s negotiation position with the EU.”

Your Lordships’ Select Committees never miss an opportunity to drag Brexit into the story, which is, I am afraid, another sign that many noble Lords—perhaps a majority—still have not yet come to terms with the fact that we have left the EU. But our negotiating position with the EU on our future relationship is nothing whatever to do with this statutory instrument. The EU may well be making a fuss about our future internal state aid regime and may want to try to dictate its terms, but that is not relevant to excising irrelevant law from our statute book.