United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Hope of Craighead

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

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 39A, 47A and 52A are in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. They have the support of Cancer Research UK, the Faculty of Public Health and the British Heart Foundation along with Action on Smoking and Health and the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, for whose briefing I am grateful.

The amendments address some of the concerns expressed by the Scottish and Welsh Governments over the Bill, regarding a risk of a race to the bottom in relation to public health. They also complement amendments in earlier debates that sought to restore the flexibility that exists under the common framework for legitimate variations in approach within the component parts of the UK—a common theme that has run through our debates this week—so my amendments are another pair of braces for the belt of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, in a remarkable speech, mentioned public health. Public health is an essential part of this debate; Covid has finally brought home to us the importance of what was previously the Cinderella service of our healthcare system. To quote the Secretary of State for Health:

“The first responsibility of any government is the protection of its citizens, and threats to public health are among the most important of all.”


So it is critical that the provision of market access is balanced against the ability of Governments to protect the health of their citizens.

With regard to goods, the Bill describes exemptions in two places: Clause 8(3) and in the list of legitimate aims, including the protection of human, plant or animal health, public safety, along with a number of other more specific exclusions in Schedule 1. In both instances the Secretary of State can amend the core principles of the Bill, which are quite rightly enshrined in primary legislation, and he can do so by regulation. Again, that has been a consistent theme throughout our debate.

The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has raised serious concerns that the power included in Part 1 to amend, repeal or otherwise modify legislation by regulation is inappropriate as drafted and should be removed from the Bill. The Marshalled List is full of amendments raising objections to these powers. My amendments focus specifically on the impact on public health.

The ability to alter these regulations matters. Take, for example, minimum unit pricing for alcohol, as currently exists in Scotland and Wales. The Government have argued that new policies similar to minimum unit pricing would be possible under the Bill because they are covered by the non-discrimination principle, so there is a pathway through which they might be justified. Minimum unit pricing might be a necessary means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting human health. In future, though, through a simple affirmative resolution procedure the Secretary of State could modify that list of legitimate aims to remove the justification of protecting human health so that that was no longer the case. That is an insufficient safeguard for future legislation to protect our health, and the amendment would prevent that. The reach of market principles is so broad that a number of other potential policies, including regulations to restrict the availability of alcohol, attempts to raise the age of purchase for cigarettes, restrictions on children buying sugary drinks and other legitimate public health measures, could all be similarly vulnerable.

I turn briefly to Amendment 52A, which aims to expand the reach of the public health exclusions listed above. The proposals contained in the initial White Paper would have posed more potential risks for public health, but the Government have listened and have put in the protection of being a

“necessary means of achieving a legitimate aim”,

as I mentioned earlier. This is very welcome, but the protections are unevenly applied, allowing legislation that aims to protect our health and safety to be justified in some instances only. This is because the Bill contains two market access principles, non-discrimination on the one hand and mutual recognition on the other. Currently, only non-discrimination can be overridden by a policy that is shown to be necessary to pursue a legitimate aim. Mutual recognition contains no such clause. This is different from the status quo, where a general exclusion for the protection of human health against a broad range of other aims exists. It is in that respect a step backwards, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. This difference is significant, as mutual recognition covers characteristics of goods such as packaging, content and labelling, all key areas of public health.

To take one example, 40 years ago, when I was a Health Minister under Margaret Thatcher, I argued for a health warning not just on cigarette packs but on individual cigarettes. If, for example, the Welsh Government legislated to do exactly that, I would be delighted to see it implemented but, because this is subject to mutual recognition, Wales would be unable to require it for cigarettes coming into Wales from other parts of the UK, even if they were originally produced overseas. A range of similar examples includes calorie labelling on alcohol, as proposed by the Department of Health and Social Care; including information about the medical officer’s low-risk guidelines, something that Scotland has expressed some interest in legislating on; improved front-of-pack warnings on cigarettes; or even policies such as restricting the amount of sugar in goods sold in Scotland. That was an example given in the Scottish Government’s legislative consent memorandum.

Finally, this could also impact on England. Let us take, for example, the current plans of the Department of Health and Social Care to consult on requiring calorie labels on alcohol products to help reduce obesity in England. Once more, if England implemented this requirement, it would not be able to enforce it on alcohol sold in England but produced, or even first imported, into other parts of the UK.

We have made great strides forward in public health, in part because the swiftest moving parts of our union have been able to lead the others. England led the way on restricting tobacco displays in shops. Scotland and Wales are ahead on policies such as minimum unit pricing. This lack of a broad public health exclusion risks this advantage being inverted and our pace being locked into the slowest moving of our constituent parts. I know that the Minister will have taken note of the concerns raised by noble Lords in this debate and that he will endeavour to meet them, but I hope that between now and Report there will be discussions with a view to finding acceptable amendments that do not prejudice the key pursuit of legitimate public health objectives.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am in sympathy with the words just uttered by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, but I wish to speak to my own amendment, Amendment 36, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her support.

My amendment is concerned with the meaning of words and, to some extent, achieving compatibility, as far as possible, with devolution legislation. It is directed to the definition of the expression “legitimate aim” in Clause 8(6), which sets out two aims, one of which is

“(a) the protection of the life or health of humans, animals or plants”.

If the draftsman of the Bill was to look at Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, under heading C5 he would find similar words set out in one of the exceptions to the reserved powers; that is, exceptions which mean that the things described are within the devolved competences of the Scottish Parliament. It refers to the

“protection of animal products, plants and plant products for the purposes of protecting human, animal or plant health, animal welfare or the environment.”

My point is that what one finds in subsection (6)(a) takes part of what is found in that provision but misses out some other important words. The phrase I quoted from the Scotland Act draws a distinction between animal health and animal welfare. There is some basis for that distinction because there are things that are designed to achieve the welfare of animals that are not directly related to their state of health. So there is some force in considering the addition of “animal welfare” to the formula in that provision. It also refers to the environment, and nowadays, thinking of all the concerns we have about the environment, I would have thought one could, without damaging the purposes of the Bill, include the words “protection of the environment” within the formula of the clause.

These are drafting points. I draw them, if the Minister will forgive me, more to the attention of the Bill team and the draftsman of the Bill to see whether he can find room for including words in my amendment. It is to make sure that they cover what I take to be the broad aim of the language; it is the kind of discussion we might have had, had we been given time, around a table, discussing how those particular provisions should be framed.

I am not trying to damage the Bill or adjust it in any more significant way; I just want to see that the language used covers the aim of the provision fully and completely. It is on that basis that I brought forward this amendment.