United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lord Liddle

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 22 and 23, but I shall refer in particular to Amendment 22 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Hain. Again, this is about ensuring that no straitjacket or limit is placed on the procurement practices of devolved Administrations. It is about protecting their functions, with particular reference to the market access principles, which should not override devolution settlements. The noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Empey, referred to the situation of Northern Ireland which, in terms of goods for procurement purposes, will be subject to the Northern Ireland protocol and, therefore, the EU.

While I believe there is a need to ensure that there are no borders anywhere, whether in the Irish Sea or on the island of Ireland, notwithstanding that, there are areas of clarification required. Can the Minister say, or perhaps write to us on it at a later stage, whether any procurement practices would apply to the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland which would be subject to UK oversight as per the Bill? Will there be any at all?

Secondly, on the previous group I asked the Minister whether he could provide an update on the interparliamentary Brexit forum, which consisted of representatives of the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. It has not met since September 2019. Maybe he could provide us with an update on when its next meeting is likely to take place.

Further to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I am reminded of those made by the UK constitution monitoring group. It said that government Ministers have occasionally asserted that the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill is not a constitutional measure at all but is concerned only with economic policy. It would therefore perhaps be better to characterise it as a key building-block in an emerging economic constitution for the UK, post Brexit. However that may be, the group believes that the Bill raises fundamental questions about the governance of the UK following withdrawal from the European Union, in particular whether it will be possible to establish a common understanding of the future role and importance of the devolved institutions in UK governance. Would the Minister like to comment on that statement in his wind-up, and will he assure the House that market access principles will not be used to override the devolution settlement?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in favour of both these amendments, particularly Amendment 22 on the question of public procurement. When I was Europe adviser in Downing Street, I formed a view that the British authorities—in Whitehall and the Government Legal Service—took a more legalistic approach to implementing the state aid rules, the non-discrimination rules and so on of the European single market than did most other member states. It was quite an effort to get the system to think differently about these questions.

One of the most notable achievements where we thought differently was towards the end of the Labour Government, when my noble friend Lord Adonis, who is not in his place, insisted that the award of a big contract for railway carriages and new trains would go to Hitachi but on condition that it built a plant to construct them in Shildon, County Durham. That was a success in breaking the established orthodoxies; it came rather late in the day, but there we are. Then when my noble friend Lord Mandelson was trying to bring back the concept of industrial policy, also towards the end of the Labour Government, one of the big questions was that of public procurement. I really am not a protectionist; I believe in open markets and that, on the whole, the benefits of free trade are very considerable. But there are circumstances in which public procurement can be used to support local business in a way that is justified.

One of the ways of doing this, of course, is that if you have innovative local firms with a lot of potential to grow, they can easily be squeezed out of the market by competition from big companies which can produce at much cheaper prices. I believe that one reason why we have not been as innovative as we should is that we have not used public procurement to support small and medium-sized enterprises with great potential for growth. This was one of the things we were trying to do towards the end of the Labour Government.

However, I also believe that that kind of policy is difficult to run from London. That makes this kind of public intervention, which is about not spending subsidies on lame ducks but trying to grow the economic potential of a local area, one that is best decided upon as close as possible to that area. That is why it is a terrible mistake to try to limit the powers of the Welsh and Scots on these matters. In fact, I would like to see proper devolution in England so that English authorities could do this outside London. This amendment has my wholehearted support, and I hope that the Government will give it a very considered response.