United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Baroness Boycott

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I thank him and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for supporting this amendment. I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, when she said that, if this internal market Bill does not align with the Agriculture Bill, then something is wrong and we are missing a trick.

I have tabled Amendment 52, which seeks to introduce a derogation from the market access principles to allow all four nations to put in place proportionate measures to protect the environment, support the progressive improvement of environmental standards and tackle climate change. My concern is that, in the absence of an agreed common framework, we will not be able to protect existing high regulatory standards in cases where one nation wants to introduce something new and higher, in the environmental sense, for a particular good or service—although not legally prohibited from doing so, it could be disincentivised from doing so. Under the market access provisions in the Bill, goods from other parts of the UK would not have to meet those requirements if standards elsewhere were lower. Other Peers have spoken about this. It is about protecting us against a race to the bottom in setting environmental standards or measures to tackle climate change.

At Second Reading, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said of the Bill:

“It will protect our common causes, such as the setting of high standards in our economy”.—[Official Report, 19/10/2020; col. 1285.]


But the Bill does not give legislative effect to these commitments. It fails to create the proper framework and fails to deliver the safeguards and assurances needed to ensure that all four nations of the UK can legislate ambitiously, progressively and effectively to protect the environment. Currently, the Bill provides for exceptions only in a limited range of circumstances, such as preventing the spread of diseases or pests. Even then, this is only under very strictly controlled conditions.

Environmental matters generally fall within devolved competence. Regulatory divergence already exists within the UK and there have been a number of examples of really innovative policies which have delivered legitimate public policy objectives—and specifically progressive environmental rules. I know that this has been mentioned before, but Wales was the first country in the UK to introduce a charge on carrier bags. It is atrocious to think that that could somehow have been denied.

Amendment 52 would allow an individual nation to refuse mutual recognition on the grounds of measures protecting the environment or tackling climate change. To give a practical example of why this is so important, there have been mounting calls to ban the sale of horticultural products that contain peat. This is obviously to protect biodiversity, but also to avoid the extraction of peat and the release of high levels of soil-based carbon. If one of our four nations’ Governments decided to ban the sale of products containing peat, this could potentially be undermined by the failure to match those efforts in other jurisdictions, where producers could continue to actively sell these products in a market where they would otherwise be banned.

My amendment would require suppliers to comply with these devolved rules where they relate to the protection of the environment or tackling climate change, meaning that even if regulation in England were to fall behind, say, that found in Wales, those supplying the Welsh market would still have to comply.

At Second Reading, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord True, responded:

“commerce, services and professions must be enabled to operate freely across the whole United Kingdom. That is … demanded … by business”.—[Official Report, 20/10/20; col. 1426.]

However, business coalitions such as the Aldersgate Group have commented that the objectives of frictionless trade and encouraging a race to the top for environmental standards do not contradict one another. A fully functioning and innovative internal market should strive to both reduce unnecessary costs and uncertainty and protect all four nations’ right to regulate in the public interest.

Finally, protection of our environment and tackling climate change really are not an option anymore. If you listen to Christiana Figueres, who set up the Paris Agreement, you will know that we have 10 years in which to try to get ourselves to 50% of carbon emissions. That means reducing by about 7% to 8% a year. Not to do this is a complete abdication of our rights as legislators because, if we do not put policies in place in this Government and this Parliament, then we will be left pretty legless in the fight ahead.

As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, we cannot do business as usual; we have to do business in a new way. We have many excellent Bills before us that can make this happen, and I commend my amendment to the House.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords who have attended this Committee to date know, my role is occasionally to get up and give a minority perspective on the amendments before us. There are 20 amendments in this group and, one way or another, each of them would allow barriers to trade to be erected by one or more of the devolved nations. The effect of the amendments is to restrict the amount of trade to which the market access principles will apply and thereby reduce the extent to which barrier-free trade can take place throughout the UK’s internal market. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that that is not an argument against devolution; it is an argument for trade and economic success, which I hope that we all want to achieve for the United Kingdom.

I will not repeat all of what I said on the earlier group, but the more that laws relating to trade in goods and services diverge between the component parts of the UK, the more likely it is that costs will rise and choice will diminish for consumers. Barriers to trade are also likely to result in lower GDP, as the impact assessment analysed, and we need all the GDP that we can get at the moment, given the impact of lockdown and similar anti-Covid measures. I am sure all those noble Lords who support and voted for devolution did not vote to become poorer through devolution.

The amendments give very considerable cover to the devolved Administrations to erect trade barriers under the guise of higher standards but, actually, on grounds of protectionism. At the very least, I predict that there will be massive scope for lawyers to argue for a very long period and to mount legal challenges. That may well be good for the fees of the legal profession—and for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton—but the important thing I want to stress is that it will result in uncertainty for business. If there is one thing that is bad for business, it is an uncertain business trading environment.

Therefore, while I understand the desire for higher standards—and many noble Lords have spoken to this in respect of the particular varieties of relaxation that they are seeking in the Bill—at the end of the day, they can result in trade barriers. We really should be very careful not to wreck the UK’s internal market before it has even started.