Levelling-up Fund Round 2

Debate between Hilary Benn and Lucy Frazer

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaigning work to improve the area of Blackpool. It is areas like that that we absolutely want to level up, to improve living standards and the lives of communities for those people who are living in Blackpool.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

There is bitter disappointment that the really good bid from Holbeck—one of the most deprived parts of my constituency, which is the 18th most deprived in the country—has received nothing. As the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), said, huge efforts were put in and hopes were raised, only to be dashed when bids were unsuccessful. Since this is all about control, surely it is now time to devolve the money to local areas so that they can determine their own priorities according to their own decisions, rather than continuing to ask them to jump up and down at the whim of central Government.

[Lucy Frazer]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his points. There was £8 billion in funding and of course not everyone can be successful, even though a lot of very good bids were made. He makes a very important point about devolved powers; he will know that this Government have taken great strides in devolving power to Mayors across the country. Indeed, we very recently announced a number of other areas that are gaining devolved authority. We are continually looking at how we can further devolve powers to ensure that power and authority are directed to local areas, driven by local communities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hilary Benn and Lucy Frazer

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Member makes an important point, and I know that freeholders are paying charges for maintaining communal areas, known colloquially as “fleecehold”. It is something we are looking at, and I am happy to update him on that.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Just before Christmas, a constituent of mine received a service charge bill in respect of her leasehold flat for fire-stopping works. Leaseholders rightly believe they should not have to pay to fix fire safety defects, and they think the Building Safety Act 2022 protects them from having to do so. Can the Minister therefore set out for the House in what circumstances it is still lawful for the owner of a building to charge leaseholders to fix fire safety defects?

[Lucy Frazer]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we are taking a number of steps in the Building Safety Act 2022 to strengthen protections for the residents living in these buildings. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), or I will write to the right hon. Gentleman on his specific question.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and Lucy Frazer

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)]

I wish to begin by thanking all Members who took part in the debate on Second Reading as well as in the debate in Committee that preceded this one. As we progress to the second day of the Committee stage, I want to reiterate some of the key points that go to the heart of why the Government have introduced this Bill.

The Northern Ireland protocol was agreed with the best of intentions. However, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) has passionately set out, reinforced by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), unfortunately it is causing real tensions and problems for the businesses and people of Northern Ireland, including trade disruption and diversion, costs and bureaucracy. This legislation will fix the practical problems that the protocol has created in Northern Ireland. It will enable us to avoid a hard border, protect the integrity of the UK and safeguard the EU single market.

Let me address the clauses in turn. The Government’s intention is to introduce a new and different regime, including a green lane for goods remaining in the UK and a red lane for those destined for the EU. Clause 4 will allow the UK Government to implement such a regime for goods remaining in the UK and entering Northern Ireland. The clause, therefore, disapplies in domestic law certain EU law requirements and, with clauses 5 and 6, provides the powers for Government to remove many of the burdens currently placed on businesses by the extensive customs and regulatory processes that are required under the existing Northern Ireland protocol.

Clause 4 also defines “qualifying movements” that will be able to enter our proposed green lane. The subsections remove current burdensome processes for prescribed qualifying movements of UK or non-EU destined goods, and there is a power to define UK or non-EU destined goods. Clause 4 is central to our intention to rationalise the processes for goods moving into Northern Ireland. We have been clear that we do not believe it is appropriate to continue to require full customs and regulatory processes when goods are not even destined for the EU. This clause is part of what will allow us to put in place a more sensible and proportionate regime.

Our green lane and red lane proposals will form the basis of that regime. Engagement with businesses on the detail of the regime is already under way. We know that it is important that we listen carefully. It is the powers in clauses 4, 5 and 6 that will allow us to put it in place.

[Hilary Benn]

In respect of supermarket deliveries to Northern Ireland, it is really dead simple: those supermarkets sell only in Northern Ireland, so they would, of course, be appropriate for the green lane. But given the very large number of other businesses that send goods across to Northern Ireland, how do the Government propose to identify those businesses that are sending goods that are destined for the Republic and those that are sending them into Northern Ireland where they may be processed and then moved on to the Republic of Ireland? How will that work in practice?

[Lucy Frazer]

Obviously, this is a matter that the Government have been considering very carefully. There are goods, as the right hon. Gentleman says, that will obviously be going to Northern Ireland. Businesses will also know that there is a significant category of goods that will not, and then there are the goods that may not be certain at all. That is something that the Government will be discussing with businesses during the consultation over the summer period, and it will be set out how those goods are dealt with. The hon. Member for Strangford asked us about reducing paperwork, and I can say that, of course, that is the intention of the future regime.

Clause 5 ensures that a Minister of the Crown has the power to make regulations in relation to any provisions to which clause 4 relates, with the exception of customs matters, which are dealt with in clause 6. Clause 5 is essential in enabling a Minister of the Crown to deliver the UK’s proposals for a new green and red lane regime. Taking a power to provide for the regime is required, and the precise detail of the regime will be guided by consultation with stakeholders.

Clause 6 ensures that the Treasury or Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can make regulations in respect of customs matters. It will ensure that, once this Bill gains Royal Assent, the Departments can put in place the arrangements needed to operate a coherent customs regime.

Clause 24 sets out the Parliamentary procedure to be followed in respect of the exercise of regulation-making powers related to tax and customs matters in this Bill. The clause provides that regulations making provision in relation to tax and customs matters are to be made by statutory instrument. Regulations would be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure, depending on their effect. These statutory instruments would come before the House of Commons only in line with the exercise of Commons financial privilege, usually given to tax matters.

Before I turn to the amendments, I will touch on a number of points that have been made by hon. Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) rightly said that the Government have been very generous and practical in our approach to border checks, not only in relation to Northern Ireland, but more broadly. He is also right to say that we have tried to negotiate a way forward with the EU. We have spent 18 months doing that. We have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on the trader support service, we have spent 300 hours in negotiations and we have shared 17 non-papers. Unfortunately, the EU has not come to an arrangement with us, and that is why I stand at this Dispatch Box today.

I dispute what the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) says, that it is clear that the two positions can be reconciled. It is clear that they cannot. We have tried to do that, but we have not succeeded. The Foreign Secretary invited Vice-President Šefčovič to the Joint Committee when we announced this legislation. However, the EU proposals do not go forwards; they go backwards. Under the EU’s suggestions, sending a parcel will involve completing a form with more than 50 data fields. A grandmother who wants to send a gift to her daughter in Belfast will need to complete a customs declaration and a pet owner will have to pay £280 for a certificate to take their pet. I welcome the support for this Bill from the right hon. Member for East Antrim and the hon. Member for Strangford.

Dealing now with the amendments, I will first respond to amendment 24, tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry). I appreciate the intention of his amendment. However, it would be contrary to one of the core purposes of the Bill, which is to disapply in domestic law those parts of the Northern Ireland protocol that require goods remaining in the UK or not destined for the EU to complete burdensome processes.

The amendment would also mean that the “at risk” test would be left in place, which would mean that some businesses moving goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would still be required to pay customs duty even when those goods remained in the UK. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the Government’s intention is to put in place a different regime, one that is more proportionate and would remove the unnecessary burdens on business created by the protocol. I hope he will therefore withdraw his amendment.

On the points the hon. Gentleman made about the vet agreement, the UK remains open to a negotiated solution. We have put forward a number of practical solutions to resolve outstanding issues on SPS, but the UK has also been clear that we will not commit to dynamic alignment, which would compromise our sovereignty.

I turn now to amendments 34 and 35 in the name of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) . The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), addressed this issue briefly in the previous debate, so I will not labour the point. Replacing the requirement for a Minister to consider that regulations are “appropriate” in the use of the Bill’s delegated powers with a test of necessity risks our ability to put in place the right solutions to the problems the protocol is causing. In these clauses, that would potentially circumscribe the ability to design a green lane that will preserve the unity of the UK internal market. I expect the right hon. Gentleman will not agree with me, but I ask him to withdraw his amendments.

Amendments 15 to 18 and new clause 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), would remove the Government’s proposed parliamentary procedures for statutory instruments under the Bill relating to tax and customs matters. The amendments attempt, in some cases, to replace them with a new, so-called super-affirmative procedure. In other cases, the amendments attempt to limit them to the draft affirmative procedure, removing the possibility of the made affirmative procedure in cases of urgency.

The drafting of these amendments is defective, making it unclear precisely what procedure is intended to apply to different categories of regulations. However, I will address the principle behind them. As Members will know, true super-affirmative procedures for statutory instruments are vanishingly rare. The normal affirmative and negative procedures for SIs provide effective scrutiny for the House. The hon. Member’s proposed procedure is long, requiring months of consultation on draft SIs, and procedurally complex, but ultimately does little more than envisage a Committee of the House making recommendations and preventing an SI coming into force pending a vote by this House. The amendments would require the Treasury or HMRC to make statements about any representation they have received on the draft recommendations.

I hope I can reassure the hon. Member that the Government intend to consult on the policy—indeed, work is under way—and the usual tools of parliamentary scrutiny will allow him to seek answers about this from me and my ministerial colleagues. His amendments would simply slow down solving the problems facing the people of Northern Ireland and create a muddling precedent on perfectly effective parliamentary procedures. I therefore urge him to withdraw his amendments.

New clause 4, tabled by the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), would prevent the exercising of powers in this Bill until an agreement has been sought on reducing sanitary and phytosanitary checks in the EU-UK Joint Committee—the joint decision-making forum overseeing implementation of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement. In many ways, I agree with the spirit of what the new clause seeks to achieve, but where we differ is that I recognise that we have already exhausted this option. The Government have engaged extensively with the EU on reducing the burden of sanitary and phytosanitary checks both through the Joint Committee and through official-level channels. As I mentioned, we have had over 300 hours of ministerial and official discussions and spent a significant amount of money. Nevertheless, we were still prepared to get round the table with the EU, and we held further talks through the autumn to the turn of the year.

However, as we set out in the statement by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on 17 May, the EU has simply shown insufficient flexibility. Although the EU published proposals in a non-paper on SPS in October 2021 that claims that checks carried out on SPS goods moving from GB to NI will be reduced by 80%, our own analysis and business feedback shows that this would not be the case in practice, and that a large volume of SPS goods staying in Northern Ireland will still face documentary, identity and physical checks. I understand why the new clause has been tabled, but regrettably we have had to conclude that the solutions put forward by the EU are not sufficient. It is for the EU to come back to the negotiating table or for the UK Government to get on with the job. I invite the hon. Member to withdraw his new clause.

The Bill provides a comprehensive and durable solution to the existing problems with the Northern Ireland protocol. As I said, the protocol was agreed with absolutely the best of intentions, but it is creating real problems on the ground for people and businesses in Northern Ireland. It is creating trade disruption and diversion, and increasing costs and bureaucracy for traders. The Bill will fix those practical problems. It will enable us to avoid a hard border and it will safeguard the EU single market. I therefore recommend that the clauses in this group stand part of the Bill.

Question put, That the amendment be made.