United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

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

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I also welcome the Government’s amendments in this group and the speech of the Minister. If I may, I will try to answer the concern just expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I think it is fair to say that some of us fear that the Government might be tempted to try to overturn the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in the other place, and so we would like the House to fully consider all the amendments in this group that have been tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and myself.

I would like to speak in favour of Amendments 15, 20, 27, 34 and 46. All of these amendments are based on the same principle: that, when issuing guidance as to the implementation of market access principles, or when seeking to extend or further limit the exceptions to the application of the market access principles, the Government must obtain the consent of the devolved Governments to doing so.

However, we are sensitive to the nervousness of the Government and wish to be helpful by providing clear reassurance in statute of coupling a consent requirement with a limited-time proviso. This states that, should consent not be forthcoming from one or more devolved Governments within a month, the Government may proceed to make the changes or issue the guidance, subject only to the need to make a statement to Parliament as to why this is necessary.

This is not an onerous requirement, and I know that what we have proposed is less than the unqualified requirement for consent that the devolved Governments in both Wales and Scotland would have preferred. But this amendment is a healthy, open compromise which can comprehensively allay the fears of the Government Front Bench as to the risk of the process somehow grinding to a halt should a Scottish or Welsh Minister try to delay. Indeed, our approach, advocated in the slightly different context of appointments to the office for the internal market by the Welsh Government, has been adopted by the Minister in government Amendments 56 and 57, so it seems difficult to see how the Government could object to this.

I therefore hope that the Minister will think again and accept these helpful amendments, rather than put us in a situation where we need to go to a vote.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 26, 27 and 28 in this group, and in so doing I would like to thank noble Lords who tabled the amendments in this group and introduced them so clearly today.

Clause 12 of the Bill provides the Secretary of State with a power to issue statutory guidance about the practical operation and effect of the market access principles for goods. These amendments to the clause highlight what is, of course, a recurring theme in this Bill: the assumption that such decisions will be made by the UK Government, in the guise of the Secretary of State, without any input from the devolved Administrations, dismissing any attempt at building on intergovernmental relationships to come to consensus. It is this assumption and its consequences that I wish to address quite quickly today.

In a recent article published by the Centre on Constitutional Change, Greg Davies of Cardiff University argues that this Bill—and, I would contend, particularly clauses such as Clause 12 and others in this group—represents a failure of soft law and amounts to the introduction of

“a new constitutional settlement by stealth.”

Since the creation of the National Assembly in 1999, our two Governments have used soft-law techniques of intergovernmental political agreements and memoranda of understanding to form and guide the relationship between them. Because soft law relies on mutual trust, good will and co-operation rather than legal enforcement, it can, this article argues,

“be exploited to sidestep more fundamental reform”.

The introduction of this internal market Bill has, I believe, opened the Welsh Government’s eyes to the reality of the weakness of a system that relies on soft law; they themselves have described the Bill as a “new low”. So, in a Bill which will curtail the ability of devolved Governments to regulate products and services within their territories that originate from elsewhere in the UK, Clause 12, and the additional powers it gives the Secretary of State to act in areas of devolved competence, adds insult to injury.

The Welsh Government have no official voice in this Chamber, but they have the voice of many Members who value the devolution settlements and are determined to see the devolved Parliaments flourish and grow. So I am extremely grateful to the noble Lords who have given us the opportunity to debate these three important amendments today, together with other amendments in this group. In these amendments, this House is being asked to reaffirm Parliament’s support for the devolved settlements, to confirm its continued confidence in the soft-law process of building intergovernmental relationships, and to reject the attempts to introduce—and reject being complicit in—what is, in effect, a new constitutional settlement by stealth.

Of course, I welcome Amendments 26 and 28 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, which call for consultation with Ministers in the devolved Governments when issuing guidance relating to Part 1 of the Bill, and Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, which calls for the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of Ministers in the devolved Governments to such guidance. My preference is, of course, for Amendment 27, as it places this Parliament’s commitment to the soft-law process on the face of the Bill and provides for a meaningful outcome to consultation.

I also support Amendments 15, 20, 34 and 46 in this group, which also call for the consent of the devolved Parliaments. In addition, I do welcome the Government’s conversion to consultation in their amendments, but I regret that they really do not go far enough. If the noble Baroness is minded to put any of her amendments, particularly Amendment 15, to the vote, I and my colleagues on these Benches will support it.