United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, when the debate on this group of amendments started, it seemed that it would be another round of Westminster versus the devolved Administrations, which is a major theme of the group. Nevertheless, there are other issues.

I added my name to Amendment 166, which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, spoke to so ably just now. I also support Amendment 169 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in principle. Both amendments would correct a glaring omission: the absence of any reference to environmental outcomes in either the Bill and the Government’s earlier statements on a shared prosperity fund or my noble friend Lord Stevenson’s otherwise admirable attempt to set up a shared prosperity commission to administer the framework of financial aid across the four countries of the UK.

In effect, the shared prosperity fund concept is a sort of replacement for the EU’s structural funds and regional funds—probably other funding too—which have hitherto been provided back to the UK by the European Union, largely to level up economic and social well-being and performance across Europe. In principle, I like the concept of such a fund or a commission, which may well be a better home for the administration of that framework than the office for the internal market within the CMA, but I must confess to your Lordships that I do not like the term. I racked my brains as to why. I think that it is somehow a bit redolent of the euphemistic terminology of the Soviet era or, perhaps even more worryingly, of imperial Japanese militarily dominated eastern Asia during the time of the co-prosperity zone in the 1930s and during the war. Neither of those historical examples were ever cited by Brexiteers as preferable to the supposed centralisation by Brussels. If that rings alarm bells for me, no wonder it does for the devolved Administrations. Whatever we do, can we perhaps set up a body such as the one proposed by my noble friend Lord Stevenson, but find a better title?

More substantively, if the UK is to distribute aid to business and others to replace and improve on the benefits of the money that we previously received from the EU—which, quite rightly, disproportionately benefited the devolved nations of the UK and deprived areas in England—we need some objective criteria, constraints and rules surrounding that allocation. We also need an institution along the lines proposed by my noble friend Lord Stevenson. His amendment lists a lot of economic and social criteria that such an award of funds would have to take into account, but there are no environmental criteria.

As Amendment 166 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, indicates, the biggest crisis facing us all is the climate emergency. Our international obligations under the Paris Agreement and national commitments under the budget of the Committee on Climate Change surely mean that future state aid of any sort must advance progress on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, and certainly not lead to effects that undermine our carbon and greenhouse gas targets or make worse the outcome of our industrial system. To that degree, it needs to be an improvement on the operation of some EU funding to sectors and projects that even I, as a passionate pro-European, recognise were not always done well in the EU—that is, some projects, particularly in eastern Europe, undoubtedly damaged the environmental prospects for Europe as a whole, particularly by favouring the substantial further use of fossil fuels.

It is therefore important that any such criteria are written into the terms of the proposed shared prosperity fund, and the commission must reflect those environmental aims. Indeed, any proposition for state aid subsidy, preferred public sector procurement treatment or clearance for planning permission, whether by the UK Government, a devolved Administration, local government or a quango, needs to have attached to it a clear environmental assessment of the impact on the climate, particularly regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, takes it further than the carbon figures to cover other environmental dimensions, particularly the protection and enhancement of the natural world. Some of what she refers to may be more difficult to measure than greenhouse gas effects, but in reality, if subsidised projects lead to a deterioration in biodiversity and habitats, as did some European projects under the common agricultural policy, that is a contribution to environmental degradation and in many instances leads directly to increases in carbon, methane and other greenhouse gas effects. We should adopt the concepts in these two amendments before we move any further towards something like the shared prosperity system proposed by the Government.

The negative effects of some government subsidy need to be discouraged by the criteria, but positive investment—in renewable energy and other carbon-saving outcomes, for example—needs to be sustained through this system and written into it. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was right to say that Clause 48 in its present form should be deleted, but if we are to provide a substitute it has to be an improvement, and an improvement on my noble friend’s amendment—it has to be greener.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 166, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. It is an honour to follow her, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lord Whitty. I also support Amendment 167, in the name of my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and its inclusion of the impact of climate change—particularly flooding. That is an issue close to my heart, living as I do near Cockermouth in Cumbria, which has suffered such devastating flooding over the past 10 years.

As we heard today, and in last week’s debate, Part 6 does not rule out working through the devolved Administrations, but—and this needs repeating—sets no requirements to do so, and enables Ministers to spend money directly in otherwise devolved policy areas.

Right across the world it has been recognised that we have to combat global warming and restore biodiversity. It has been agreed that the next round of European structural funds will have tackling climate change and addressing the just transition as a major theme. In May of last year, Parliament recognised, on the Floor of the other place, that we are in a climate and environment emergency. Last week, in his response to Amendment 52, the Minister said that

“the protection of the environment and tackling climate change are vitally important, and something that the Government are, of course, already committed to.”—[Official Report, 28/10/20; col. 339.]

If the Government are serious about achieving this aim, they need to ensure that where direct financial assistance is given it is consistent with these climate and environmental goals. We need to commit to environmentally sustainable, transparent legislation and policies, and apply them to any future trade deals and relationships, if we are to have any hope of tackling climate change. Whatever the formal future relationship between the UK, its constituent nations and the EU, it is vital that we maintain close environmental co-operation and do not risk undermining it through poorly thought-out legislation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, explained, Amendment 166 could avoid funding being provided for projects that are not compatible with climate and environmental targets and could undermine these goals.

Funding to support the environment needs to be secure as we leave the EU, because we will lose access to so much. I will give a couple of examples that have not yet been mentioned. The EU LIFE programme for environment and climate action has €3.4 billion to support, among other policies, the special conservation areas in the Natura network. The EU maritime and fisheries fund is a €6.4 billion programme, more than a quarter of which supports projects protecting marine environments, developing sustainable fisheries, and supporting the scientific and data-collection aspects of fisheries management. The concept of sustainability involves operating in a way that takes full account of an organisation’s impacts on the planet, its people and its future. That includes how Government operate and the decisions they take. Amendment 166 will help us to secure this for the future.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

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

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, I originally put my name down to speak on this group because I wanted to give strong support to Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, have made a good case; after all, climate change and the other environmental challenges are bigger issues than Brexit, Covid or even the break-up of the United Kingdom. We need to ensure that nothing we do in this Bill or in parallel Bills diminishes our commitment to meeting our international obligations under the Paris Agreement or our national obligations under the Committee on Climate Change’s proposals on carbon budgets and the commitments we make as a Government and as a Parliament to meet our targets on that front. Amendment 52 would help deliver that.

During this afternoon—I was not here on the first day of Committee—I have also become increasingly concerned that the Bill is, as the noble Lord, Lord German, called it, twin-tracking different aspects of government policy on the devolution settlements and the way they are going. The two do not meet. The principal commitment here is market access. There are government commitments to standards in the Agriculture Bill and elsewhere, and there is the whole process of common frameworks, many of which are still in very preliminary form.

With regard to the broad public debate, the Government have managed a great diversionary tactic by banging Part 5 into the Bill and causing public and international outrage. However, there are some fairly profound issues in the lack of commonality or melding in the approaches on market access, common frameworks and the long-term implications for our devolution settlement. They have not been resolved today in the subjects we have discussed. At Second Reading, I expressed some concern that the Bill was not clear in relation to state aid and the internal market, or the role of the proposed office for the internal market.

A lot of this needs to be pulled together before we complete the Bill. I have a proposition. We have as a House established a short-term Select Committee looking at common frameworks. That has called for evidence; the deadline is 30 November. Would it not be sensible for the Government and the usual channels to talk to it? I am afraid I have not consulted my noble friend Lady Andrews, who chairs that committee, on this; it occurred to me only this afternoon. It is looking at the role of common frameworks, but in this Bill, which the Government are trying to get through as fast as possible, we are doing something which cuts across some of the commitments on them. Would it not be sensible to ask that Select Committee to look at the relationship between the Bill and common frameworks before we move to Report, or, if that is not possible, at least between Report and Third Reading? The process we normally adopt will not resolve these conundrums in the Bill; we need to find a novel way of dealing with them, and we have a solution at our fingertips with the Select Committee, which has already begun its work. I ask the Government and the usual channels to look at that proposition.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, what a powerful team at the end of this very interesting debate. It was great to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, putting her case on standards so strongly; she is absolutely right. I was also delighted to hear my good neighbour and noble friend Lady Hayman—we live in the same ward in the west of Cumbria—speaking with all her authority. She will bring a very important contribution to the considerations of this House. My respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, is continuing and constant, and noble Lords hear it again tonight. What my noble friend Lord Whitty was saying about the useful contribution the Select Committee could make in getting things right should be taken very seriously. We get awfully trapped in patterns of organisation for our affairs and debates. Sometimes we do not look at our assets and the contributions they can make.

I strongly support my noble friend Lord Stevenson’s amendment and I am impressed and struck by the importance of Amendments 52, 53 and 54. They all deal with the essential quality of our existence and the action that is necessary to ensure that we have some sort of quality of existence, and ensuring that we are in a strong position to ameliorate the impact of climate change. These are absolutely fundamental issues for our future.

I sometimes look back on a long time in Parliament and politics and think that we sometimes want to fit things into organisational structures. Of course, the market is crucial and what we are debating is a reform of the market and what we are going to do, but the market is not an end in itself. We should constantly be restating the challenge: in the environment, in conditions of work and workers’ rights and employment conditions, of animal welfare, and of good husbandry of our land and care of it. There is also the whole issue of understanding that this is not just a choice of what we might do; we are dependent upon getting it right. From that standpoint, these amendments are a very important part of our proceedings, and I congratulate all those who have been involved in proposing them.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, most contributions so far have related to Part 5 and the Government’s somewhat ham-fisted attempt to unilaterally disavow an undertaking made only a few months ago. I agree with those sentiments. and with the reports of the Constitution Committee and the EU Select Committee and the contributions by their chairs, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I will also support the Motion in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, at the end of the debate.

However, this is quite a big Bill, and I want to talk about something else. Before doing so, I welcome my noble friend Lady Hayman to the Chamber. I commend her speech, including the importance that she stressed of environmental standards, which relate to this Bill as much as they do to much of the legislation we will face over the coming months.

I want to talk about state aid, which is in the Bill but is dealt with rather superficially. It needs to be clearer before the Bill finishes its passage through this House. In a sense, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, referred to this in her contribution. She and I were members of an EU Select Committee that produced a report on state aid about two years ago. We rarely agreed on anything fully, but we do agree on the importance of this issue.

At its most acute, the issue of state aid could be epitomised by the issue in Northern Ireland. As a result of the agreement and the way the Government are now pursuing the matter, through the Northern Ireland protocol Northern Ireland is to be part of the customs union and, to a large extent, the single market. So if the Stormont Government gave a subsidy or preferential public procurement arrangement to, say, a Northern Ireland textile company, the main exports of which are to the Republic, and if its Irish competitors objected, would EU state aid rules prevail or would the UK internal market rule prevail? It is clear that we need a UK state aid regime and it is fairly clear how that will relate to our international obligations under the WTO and, I hope, to future bilateral free trade agreements. But it is not at all clear how it will operate in relation to the internal market, which is the focus of the Bill. If that same Northern Irish company’s main export were to Scotland, what then would the arrangements be? If it were to England, would it be different again, because there would be an equivalent objection from England-based competitors?

The fact is that industrial, employment and consumer policy—all of which are relevant to state aid considerations —are differentially devolved between the three Administration and centralised in England but not in the UK. Of course, even in England there is the expected intention to devolve more industrial and employment policy to the English regions, so the question could, at some stage in the future, apply to Greater Manchester, which may have a different industrial and employment support system from that in the West Midlands. How does that play out in the new state aid framework?

The central question is whether there is yet a draft framework for all of this in relation to state aid, at least between the UK Government and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Governments. If not, what do the Government think it should look like and, above all, how should it be enforced? Is the office for the internal market, due to be established within the CMA, wholly a creature of the UK Government or will the devolved Administrations have a say in its governance and decision-making? During the EU regime, the Commission’s state aid arm had authority over member states, with prohibitions and fines at its disposal. That could be the case for the CMA.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I remind noble Lords of the speaking limit.

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

Before the passage of the Bill, we need to clarify these issues.

Trade Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his place in the House. I also welcome his maiden speech and that of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, who gave a rather more convincing advertisement for Lancashire than the Minister did for the Bill.

I recognise that, in the circumstances, some of the Bill is necessary, but it is largely defined by what it omits, starting with parliamentary scrutiny. Yesterday, we were pressing for at least the equivalent scrutiny given to all treaties, particularly trade treaties, by the European Parliament—as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has just explained. But the new Bill omits much more than constitutional issues and parliamentary scrutiny. There are, in effect, no provisions for the protection of our food standards, which means that future trade deals could undermine the high standards of UK agriculture and the health of our nation and animal population.

There are other provisions that ought to be part of our approach to trade in the new circumstances. There are no provisions on employment standards—not even commitments to basic ILO conventions on workers’ rights or even protections against slavery. No consideration of basic human rights is included at all, yet it is in many extant EU trade agreements. We have to recognise that some of the countries that the Government are targeting for future trade agreements, such as China or Brazil, have regimes whose contempt for human rights and environmental protection is blatant. Ministers will of course say that the Bill relates only to continuity agreements, but even in that context some of the arrangements with the EU also raise issues of human rights—take the case of Turkey as an example. The Bill is not just a continuity Bill; it sets the tone for our approach to trade much more widely.

We know that the big prize for the more extreme Brexiteers is a trade agreement with Trump’s America. Frankly, that prospect raises deep anxieties about food standards, animal welfare and US pharma companies’ ambitions for the National Health Service market and the provision of healthcare. The Bill will protect us from none of that.

I hope that the Minister listens to the House and tells his colleagues that at least some of these provisions need to be introduced to the Bill before it ends its process through Parliament.

Housing Insulation

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. As she will be aware, the ECO scheme is funded from fuel bills. If we increase funding for the ECO scheme for poorer households, that puts up the cost of bills for all customers. That is one of the points we need to address; her point is well made.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to his new post—and his new collaborative approach. However, he still manages to miss the point. He said that the ECO scheme was the main weapon for tackling fuel poverty, but it has failed to do that and to meet what is necessary on home heating to tackle climate change. Has the time not now come—I hope that he will raise this with the Chancellor—for the restoration of a tax-funded intervention for the nearly 4 million homes that are suffering particularly from lack of insulation and failed heating systems? This was dropped 10 years ago; it now needs to be restored.

[Lord Callanan]

I am, of course, always happy to work collaboratively with the noble Lord, but I point out gently that he is not correct to say that the ECO scheme has failed. The latest fuel poverty statistics show that the aggregate fuel poverty gap is falling year on year. We can always argue that we need to make faster progress, but the scheme is a success and it is working to bring down fuel poverty.

Trade Unions

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and to commend the introduction to this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Jordan. On a personal basis, I was particularly touched that he mentioned Bill Brett’s contribution to the ILO. In the last few weeks of his life, Bill Brett was my roommate in Fielden House and I much respected him.

I declare my interests: I have been a member of the GMB for nearly 50 years—a bit longer than the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. I also share a role with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in relation to BALPA at this disappointing time.

This weekend, in my adopted county of Dorset, I shall be in Tolpuddle recalling the day nearly 200 years ago when a group of agricultural workers were imprisoned and deported for the simple reason that they had combined to discuss their wages. Regrettably, in some parts of the world, there are trade unionists and workers who are faced with even more stringent sanctions in this day and age. That is where the ILO and the international trade union movement need to play their role. In a globalised world, workers need to reach across frontiers, but so do institutions, such as the ILO, which support those workers. Over the two centuries since Tolpuddle, workers’ conditions and rights have not advanced in a straight line. Indeed, I would contend that here and in several other countries there has been a setback in recent years.

By the end of the 19th century, trade union and workers’ rights had prospered in a number of industrialised countries. At the end of the First World War, it was an important plank of the post-war settlement that the ILO was established and that workers’ rights were seen as part of that settlement to minimise conflict between the nations. A key part of this were the rules that governed not only the standards for workers but their right to associate and, at least to a limited extent, to withdraw their labour. Regrettably, almost immediately after that came a period of setback. In some countries, such as Germany and Spain, which had had strong trade unions, the fascist regimes suppressed them. In so-called workers’ states such as the Soviet Union, they were incorporated into the state and party apparatus. It took till after the Second World War for us to begin to rebuild an international trade union movement; for example, the British trade unions and the TUC helped rebuild the structure of trade unions in Germany and other countries on the continent.

Trade unions grew in strength in almost every industrialised country from the end of the Second World War until the 1980s. Since then, as others have said, there has been a decline; we need to examine the reasons for it, which I see as fourfold. First, there was a changing labour market, as has been referred to. The large places of work were destroyed in the 1980s, in this country and others, by technological change as well as political decisions. That made life for trade unions more difficult because not only is it harder to recruit in smaller workplaces but not having large bases can prevent them establishing their own local lay memberships and shop stewards on which they used to depend.

Secondly, more recently, we have had the move towards the gig economy, with irregular patterns of work, individualisation of contracts—if indeed there are any contracts—zero hours, minimum pay and so forth. For those workers, particularly the younger workers, the benefits of collective bargaining and trade union membership are not that obvious. This has been compounded by the outsourcing by large companies and the public sector of so much of their routine work, in particular. For example, just this morning I spoke to a social worker two miles away who is employed by a private company for Westminster Council. He works for 13 hours because he has to move between appointments but is actually paid for only six hours. That is the nature of the labour market in this country for millions of our workers. At the very rough end—we have just been talking about modern slavery—we saw only last week the impact in this country of European workers being gangmastered totally and utterly illegally, an increasing feature of parts of the labour market.

The third reason is, of course, globalisation, which has its benefits but also its setbacks. Here I focus on the situation in other countries as well: in the same way that we have exported carbon emissions, we have exported some of our bad labour practices. We have responsibilities as consumers here, because the cheap clothes and cheap food we get, which used to be produced in Europe, are now often made by those suffering appalling conditions in, for example, Bangladesh and China, yet we continue to buy them. Within multinational companies, which often pride themselves on standards, their own supply chains and sourcing also make use of those very poor workplaces.

However, there is a fourth reason: the failure of the unions themselves to successfully adapt. We must adapt to new technology and to some of the aspects of the changing labour market. Looking back in history, in the 1880s and the 1890s we saw the growth of new unionism, which created both my noble friend Lord Morris’s union and my own. It organised the manual workers who had largely been ignored by the craft unions. The unions needed to change and operate differently. They needed to accept different employment patterns and attitudes by the employers. We need a new unionism today. I hope the existing unions can adopt it but, if not, different organisations might have to do so.

The back-up to this is the role of the ILO and international standards. As we move away from the EU, with all its failings, we move away from an international labour standard-setting organisation. The ILO is the most important international one. It has its drawbacks and slowness, but it is vital. As we move to new trade arrangements around the world as so-called global Britain, the standards written into those trade agreements ought to be, as a minimum, those of the International Labour Organization, but they also need rather better enforcement. In this day and age it is quite difficult for the workers of the world to unite, and they need some support in uniting. The ILO has, for 100 years now, been that main support.

Competition and Markets Authority: Legislative and Institutional Reforms

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in applauding very much the tone, and much of what was suggested, in the letter sent by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, to the Secretary of State. As has been said, the UK has a highly respected competition regime, and has been instrumental in devising the European regime—which has had some successes and some failures. As my noble friend Lady Crawley says, Brexit now presents us with some problems. My sub-committee of the EU Select Committee produced a report relatively recently on competition and state aid post Brexit. It means that the competition authorities here have to take on more resources, because they will have more cases—plus the state aid cases referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull. It also gives them an opportunity to rethink their role, which I think is what the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, has done here. I hope that the Minister and the Secretary of State take his propositions seriously.

What is the end of this policy? That is the central point. As my noble friend Lady Hayter says, the end is consumer benefit. Like her, I recall us making that case at the Committee stage of the then Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which set up the CMA in its present form. We were not properly heard then. We need to be heard now. Even the reference to Adam Smith given by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, was that the aim of competition is actually the welfare of all. It is a means, not an end. Therefore, it is right that the objectives of the CMA be written in those terms.

I have a number of points, and will also no doubt be tempted to respond to some of those already made. If we are to change the nature of the CMA in the direction that the noble Lord proposes, that has to be reflected in the totality of the regulatory regime on competition and related matters across the board. In other words, it also needs to affect the way we operate the sector regulators in terms of their competition function. That, I think, is an important point. Also, it has to be built into the structure of the CMA. It was, I think, six years ago—God!—that there were suggestions about a panel within the CMA or some other means of reflecting the consumer interest, and that needs to be part of the new thinking. The role of consumer organisations is also important here, not as part of the CMA but as its interlocutors—Citizens Advice, the National Consumer Federation, Which? and, of course, trading standards. I am even tempted to say that the Government should come back and rethink the unfortunate abolition of the statutory consumer basis made under the coalition. I have a slightly personal grudge here; nevertheless, it is sensible to reconsider those issues.

I will put one other thing on the agenda because I am presently conducting a commission looking at the effect of energy companies in their dealings with vulnerable consumers. While an increase in competition usually benefits most consumers, it does not necessarily benefit all of them. Some consumers get left out of whatever process we have. One thing that needs writing into the consumer protection role of the CMA, and the increase in its powers advocated here, should be to pay particular attention to the needs of those who are not quite able to engage with the market, particularly the sophisticated and digitally-driven market that we now have. Whether that comes from questions of capacity or income, we need to pay attention to it.

On the implications of Brexit, as I say, there are possibilities for changing the structure because we no longer have to quite conform with or mirror the European structure. We will need to ensure that the CMA has adequate resources. I am glad to say that its staff have been co-operating with my committee to indicate how they are progressing on that. The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, referred to speeding up processes. Clearly, one of the complaints about European and national competition regimes is the issue of speed and he made a number of very sensible propositions there. In particular its power on market investigations is, in a sense, a jewel in the crown. Internationally, many other competition regimes do not have that power and it is an important part of its armoury but it is a bit clunky and needs speeding up. Early intervention and direction, and the undertakings sought by the CMA, would make that more effective.

I am not totally sure about the criticism implied in some of the noble Lord’s views on the CAT. I partly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, but the fact is that all regulators are judge and jury to a certain extent. The issue is whether they are subject to some form of appeal and what the nature of that appeal is. It is true that the CAT has become a bit litigious, or that companies which appeal to it have become over-litigious. Perhaps it could be focused down a bit but the aim should be to enhance and focus the role of the CAT, not make it less effective.

I will not repeat the points made by my noble friend Lady Crawley, and by the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Neville-Rolfe, about trading standards. The national-level activity on consumer protection and abuse of the market has to have a local arm. The reality is that, over the last 10 years, the resources available to local government trading standards have been cut by over 50%—in some places, it is far worse. Unless their local arm of trading standards operates effectively, any individual citizen or small company that feels that they are being abused by companies under consumer protection, or under things such as safety standards, cannot get redress. In most of the country, they are not. That needs to be addressed within the same timescale as we address the CMA’s own role.

The CMA has a number of new challenges. If I may advertise again the products of my sub-committee, in the glory days just before Brexit we produced a report on the challenge of online platforms and the ability of competition authorities across the world to deal with this new form of trading, which is now a dominant form. Markets are difficult to define and whether you are dominant in a market is difficult to define, as is whether you are abusing that dominance. The long-running saga of the European Commission and Google illustrates this. The digital giants are the new oil companies—the equivalent of the Rockefellers of the 1890s—and we need anti-trust legislation to be able to deal with them. Our traditional forms have not really managed to do so. The Googles, Amazons and Facebooks are not necessarily acting in the interests of consumers even though consumers may think that those companies are because, for the most part, they do not pay anything up front. The fact is that the data about consumers is both the product and a currency for that type of company.

The CMA will also need to return to some old issues. I have often thought that the terms “cartel” and “monopoly” do not entirely describe the most usual form of market distortion, which is effectively oligopoly. In so many of our sectors, whether it is in energy, banks, supermarkets, insurance or whatever, there are half a dozen or so companies determining 60% to 70% of the market. Our market laws have not really worked out how to deal with that situation, either in respect of the rest of the market and competition within it, or in respect of consumers.

My last point is simply this. We need to ensure that our competition authorities are up to speed, resourced properly and respected so that they have powers which they can use. The proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, move a significant way in the direction of strengthening that intervention. I hope that the Minister will be able to reply today—we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, in a moment—in a very positive way to at least the gist of the direction in which the noble Lord recommends that the Government should go.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Rooker for introducing this debate so passionately, and we have heard an even more passionate speech from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, whose work on the Committee on Climate Change is absolutely central to us getting this right. Some 11 years ago, I served on the Joint Committee on the Climate Change Bill, which brought in the very first legally binding targets. Some 20 years ago, I was working with my noble friend Lord Prescott in his department when he went off to Tokyo and was so instrumental in delivering the Kyoto agreements. I am glad he will speak later today.

Some of those earlier promises have not been fulfilled, either nationally or globally. Globally, we are not yet on course to achieve anything like the 1.5 degrees constraint of growth; it will be significantly worse than that, even if we adopt some of the measures that will be advocated today. Nationally, we have had a number of successes, but some of those have been by default. We have also seen the abandonment of policies that were delivering many of those successes, such as the premature ending of subsidies to the renewable sector, the abandoning of some R&D in tidal power and carbon capture and storage, the end of an effective programme of energy efficiency through the insulating of existing homes, and a pulling back on the regulations for new builds in this country.

We have had some success, but we need to be a little cautious about this. My noble friend Lord Rooker referred to Greta Thunberg’s assertion. Some people derided it, but she is essentially right that some of our claimed progress is a bit dubious. In particular, we have essentially exported the carbon emissions from our manufacturing industry to the Far East. Part of China’s escalation is because Britain and the rest of the West have moved their dirtier industries to the Far East. Therefore, an assessment of demand—including demand for imports—needs to be taken into account when we congratulate ourselves on our achievements in this area.

The Government have been clear that we need to do something about this, but the reality is that it has gone down the list of priorities. Brexit has dominated our lives. Other things impinge—the housing and social care crises and so forth—but this is the central issue that any Government need to tackle. Yesterday, at last, following Extinction Rebellion, David Attenborough and indeed the report from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, the House of Commons declared this an emergency. It was pretty obviously an emergency 20 years ago. We now need to treat it as such and to upgrade the actions on climate change within our government machine, this House, Parliament and the national consciousness. It has been downgraded and it needs to be upgraded again.

I have not had the opportunity to read the climate change committee’s report yet—it is a bit long; I will have a go at it tonight—but I hope it gives us a blueprint as we go forward, and I hope the Government take notice of it. There are some big decisions on the immediate agenda, such as the decarbonisation of domestic heat and of our transport system; we have made some progress, but still a very small proportion of our transport system is decarbonised. We need to look at developing hydrogen for both those purposes, as well as at things that themselves have some environmental impact as they rely on current battery technology.

We also need effective government machinery. We need proper regulations and, above all, the effective enforcement of and compliance with those regulations. For all the good words from Michael Gove and others, which I support, when we come to actually proposing the future principles and governance of environmental policy, climate change is not centre stage and the proposed Bill, which is yet to reach this House, is completely insufficient to ensure that the whole public sector—let alone the whole economy—is prioritising the fight on climate change.

I will use my last two minutes to talk about two things that have been mentioned but are normally prioritised down. We talk about emissions into the air, but I want to talk about soil and water. The combination of poor water management, increasing heat, less water being available and the insatiable demand of individuals and businesses for water in our country means we have to take much more drastic measures to control our use of water, such as leakage controls, water efficiency measures and control of the energy content of water infrastructure. We need to retrofit our houses and businesses with energy efficiency appliances, and we need better water catchment management in the first place. That needs to be delivered with the industry and with effective government intervention.

On soil, three or four years ago, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who is not in his place, asserted that we had only 50 harvests left in northern Europe. That is the most frightening thing I have heard. It was the first time I had heard it, and I followed it up and read the literature behind it. It is truly terrifying. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, described, if we do not do anything about it, all our grandchildren will face within their lifetime a situation in northern Europe, and probably the globe, where the soil does not deliver the food, the biodiversity and the environment needed for human life to continue. It is a frightening thought that, 50 or 60 years from now, we will no longer produce enough food from our soil because of climate change, to a large extent, and bad agricultural practice and land use over the years.

Let us put those two issues back into the equation. Let us ensure that the Government take the situation more seriously. It is an escalating emergency, and I hope that we act on the report of the noble Lord, Lord Deben.

Brexit: Protection for Workers

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I have been in this House long enough to see what goes on. I think I have been in this House slightly longer than the noble Lord was in another place. Conservative Governments have brought forward a great many improvements. My right honourable friend listed those in his Statement earlier, starting with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, brought in under John Major’s Government by my noble friend Lord Hague. Look at the national living wage. Conservative Governments have done a great deal. My right honourable friend went back as far as the Shaftesbury Acts two centuries ago. We have made improvements and will continue to do so, but we will make sure we get the right balance.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend talked about history, as has the Minister, but we also need to consider what the future will look like. Can the Minister understand why there are some suspicions in the labour movement and the trade unions about the intentions of a post-Brexit Conservative Government when so many of his colleagues have held out the vision of a low-regulation, low-cost economy competing with employers across Europe and the world? The whole point about European legislation is that employers cannot undercut each other on workers’ rights, yet the Minister himself briefly made a slip when he referred to the relative situation in France against that in Britain. That shows the psychology of some elements of his party in how they see the future. I should like an assurance that that is not likely to be the official policy of a Conservative post-Brexit Government, if such there be.

[Lord Henley]

Would the noble Lord like unemployment levels at the same rate we see in France, or would he prefer to see employment and unemployment levels at the rates we have in this country, where we also have the right sort of protections for workers but do not have inappropriate protections that prevent people getting jobs?

Discontinuing Seasonal Changes of Time (EUC Report)

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee on the Commission Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council discontinuing seasonal changes of time and repealing Directive 2000/84/EC (COM(2018)639, Council Document 12118/18) (22nd Report, HL Paper 200).

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to both Motions in my name at the same time. In some ways, this is a slightly esoteric Motion, but the subject matter concerns every single citizen. I thank the members of my sub-committee and the Select Committee for their help in producing this draft reasoned opinion and presenting it to the House tonight.

It is important to recognise that the decision this evening relates to the issue of subsidiarity and whether this House wishes to submit a reasoned opinion. It is not on the subject matter itself. The subject of the report is obviously the Commission’s proposal to replace the obligation to apply seasonal changes of time—to turn the clocks back or forward—with an obligation to discontinue this practice. We have probably all heard over the years different views on whether that would be a sensible thing or not for different groups in different parts of the country. This House has debated the issue several times over the years. But the issue tonight is whether we consider that the Commission’s proposal is in order in terms of subsidiarity and in terms of the persuasiveness of the assessment that the Commission has made on single market grounds.

The timing of this proposal is important. It would see the end of changing the clocks. Member states would retain the discretion to choose which time zone they operated in, but there would be no seasonal clock changes. Effectively, member states would be required to opt for permanent winter time or permanent summer time—presented to the people, there is no choice between those, but in effect that is what it means. The Commission’s intention is that this would come into force in April next year. That means in the proposed transition period, which, if the UK and the EU reach a deal, means that it would clearly apply to the UK. Even without a deal, the proposal could have significant implications, particularly for the island of Ireland.

I come to the proposed reasoned opinion. Since the coming into force of the treaty of Lisbon, national parliaments have a formal role in the scrutiny of EU legislative proposals, notably through examining compliance with the principles of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is defined in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union like this:

“the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.”

National parliaments then have eight weeks from the transmission of a proposal to issue a reasoned opinion. Each parliamentary chamber has the ability to do so. If the vote is agreed by more than one-third of all the votes allocated to national parliaments, the Commission is obliged to review its proposals. That is the so-called yellow card procedure.

The decision to send a reasoned opinion must be agreed by the whole House. That is a rare proposition. The last time that the House agreed to send a reasoned opinion was in January 2016 on a proposal on reforming EU electoral law. The House of Commons is clearly also considering this proposal. The appropriate committee has not yet reached its conclusion but will do shortly and, if it is agreed, the Motion will be put to the whole House.

I emphasise that the report and hence the decision are on the question only of subsidiarity and not of policy. The policy of summer time arrangements has been the subject of many domestic and parliamentary debates. Noble Lords may well have received even in the last few days representations from safety organisations and representatives of the agricultural and construction sectors. But because of the importance of this, our Select Committee has treated the question of subsidiarity as a preliminary matter. If this proceeds further, there may be a point for the sub-committee to consider the objective benefits or otherwise of the detailed policy, but the yellow card procedure, checking that the Commission has observed the principle of subsidiarity, is a very important first step.

The proposal’s subsidiarity statement, which is the first of the three main points, is that under Protocol 2 annexed to the treaties, draft legislation,

“should contain a detailed statement making it possible to appraise compliance with the principles of subsidiarity”.

The Commission’s proposal, in our opinion, does not meet that obligation. The subsidiarity statement is very limited and cites “increased questioning” of the current arrangements, although there is not much evidence of that, but we note that this mainly seems to arise because of an opinion poll conducted across the EU. The vast majority of responses came from three countries—indeed, 70% of the responses came from Germany, where for some reason it has been a live issue for debate in recent months. The proposal also referred to various studies and reports on the application of summer time arrangements, but none of those cited reports ended up recommending abandoning the current system.

The second issue is that Protocol 2 requires the Commission’s consultations to,

“take into account the regional and local dimension of the action envisaged”.

In the case of this proposal, the impact of losing summer time arrangements varies considerably between and within member states due to the interplay between longitude, latitude and time zones in determining daylight hours. That is particularly important for the UK, where it is well known that the benefits and drawbacks of permanent summer time or permanent winter time would significantly differ between the northern and southern parts of our kingdom.

The potential implications for the UK are exacerbated by the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland under which the setting of the time is a devolved matter, which is not the case for Scotland and Wales. Indeed, we note that in a no-deal scenario, if Great Britain as a whole decided to maintain summer time arrangements, Northern Ireland would separately have to choose between having a one-hour time differential for half the year either with the Republic of Ireland or with Great Britain.

My last point concerns the internal market objective. The Commission’s proposal points to the importance of harmonised summer time arrangements for the functioning of the internal market under Article 114. However, harmonisation is already provided for under the current arrangements. Very sensibly, a few years ago, the Commission proposed and it was adopted that where we switched time, the date of switching had to be co-ordinated for the same day, which is of great benefit to the transport sector and for those of us who, for a few weeks of the year, were completely confused as to what the difference either side of the channel was going to be. That was a sensible calling into question of the previous arrangements under internal market arrangements. But the Commission has not adequately explored in this context an additional option, which is the possibility of allowing member states to choose whether or not to observe seasonal clock changes, but requiring co-ordination for the date for those that do so.

Towards the end of the preparation of this report, we received an Explanatory Memorandum on the proposal from the Government. I understand that the Minister concerned is Sam Gyimah, a colleague of the noble Lord, Lord Henley. The committee was familiar with Sam Gyimah because we recently received a useful contribution from him in relation to the Galileo project. He is obviously a busy chap, as he is responsible for time as well as space. His Explanatory Memorandum agreed that the harmonisation was already provided for under the current arrangements, and that the Commission had not demonstrated how its proposals would enhance that. Therefore, the Government are broadly on the same side as us on this. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, will explain their position later. They also highlighted that the proposal would require a huge exercise to assess how a permanent switch to summer time or winter time would affect all sectors and regions of the UK’s economy. Given the timescale of this coming into effect, there would be very little time for that to be carried out.

For those reasons, the report concludes that the Commission’s proposal to discontinue seasonal changes of time does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity and does not sufficiently make the case under internal market rules. Considering that geographical and other factors come into play for the UK in particular, that leads us to the conclusion that the member states are best placed to determine whether seasonal changes remain appropriate within their jurisdiction. On this occasion, we conclude that the Commission has failed to observe the principles of subsidiarity and has exceeded its powers. I therefore beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his support for the committee’s position. We have a high degree of unanimity in this Chamber. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I was very pleased to be present at my noble friend Lord McNicol’s appearance at the Dispatch Box. He seems as if he is going to do a decent job. He once took a job that I once had, and he was quite good at that too.

I hear what my noble friend Lord Rooker said that, effectively, this is the sort of proposition that gets the Commission a bad name. I agree with him that despite what we might individually think about the substance of this, this is not an appropriate way of proceeding.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson—who are both members of the committee—for their support on this and, indeed, in the discussion that we had on the committee. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for underlining the proportionality argument, which perhaps in retrospect I did not emphasise enough. That is an important dimension and probably answers some of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. While this may potentially be within the remit of the Commission, subsidiarity requires that you adopt a proportionate approach and decide that this cannot best be pursued within the individual member states.

The noble Lord, Lord German, asked how we will pursue this with other parliaments. The timescale is short, but I assure him and the House that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, the chair of the main committee, and I will try to ensure that our parliamentary contacts are aware of the importance of this issue to the United Kingdom and the difficulty of proceeding at the kind of pace that the Commission proposes, without trial and without notice. I hope we will get a response from our parliamentary colleagues. The Minister has indicated that he will pursue it with his ministerial colleagues in the other member states. I hope this is an occasion on which unanimity will be broader than within this House and another place and will actually prevail.

It is, of course, an historic occasion in that this could be the last reasoned opinion that this Parliament puts into the legislative process before Brexit. I congratulate all noble Lords present tonight for contributing to what I hope will be a significant intervention by Parliament, indicating that national parliaments do, indeed, have an influence on the way in which Europe operates. Having said that, my thanks again to them and to the staff who have helped produce this report.

Motion agreed.