United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami]

I am glad that the Minister is in favour of the Bill as well; that is good news.

In the modern world, trade matters just as much as—if not more than—it ever has. There has been much talk about trade, not just over the days in which we have considered the Bill, but over the past couple of years. I do not want to put us through the last couple of years again, but we spend a lot of time talking about tariffs. Although tariffs are important, the biggest obstacles in modern trade are often non-tariff barriers such as professional standards, standards for goods or different standards relating to services. The whole Bill seeks to address these aspects of trade, particularly through these clauses.

We need to consider not just trade between the United Kingdom and other countries, but trade within the United Kingdom. We all have businesses in our constituencies that trade. I was talking to a business in my constituency this summer about the places with which it is trading. I said, “Are you trading with China or the United States?” and the people from this business said, “With Aberdeen.” It is easy to forget that we need to ensure that our internal market—some people may prefer the term “internal single market”—is as seamless and as free as possible, and that is what this Bill does.

The Bill also ensures the principle of non-discrimination within the United Kingdom internal market. It allows businesses to expand within the UK as well as trading abroad, and helps businesses to access procurement from across the United Kingdom. For example, the Scottish Government may procure goods from a Welsh company, or Hertfordshire County Council may have a procurement contract with a Northern Irish business. Our trade within the United Kingdom is of paramount importance, and this House should not forget how much trade happens within our nation.

It is important to address some of the criticism of the Bill. I have been listening to the debate over the last couple of weeks, and, frankly, I find it rather odd hearing SNP Members criticise the Bill on the basis that the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or the Northern Irish Assembly would not be able to have their own say vis-à-vis certain standards. On some level, one could argue that that is an argument for independence. Obviously that is the SNP’s stated position and they are entitled to have it, but contained in the same breath SNP Members are saying, “But we want the European Union to impose common standards.” We are talking about a European Union that, even under the most generous terms of electoral governance it may devise, would give the Scottish people, the Welsh people or the Northern Irish people—

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Bim Afolami]

In a second. I would like to make a bit of progress.

The European Union would not give its voters a direct say in the making of such common standards as Members would have in this House. Yet SNP Members would prefer the European Union, which has more than 450 million people in 27 member states, to impose common standards, rather than the United Kingdom Parliament, where SNP Members quite rightly speak for their constituents in this House. I find that a bizarre position.

I do not believe the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) is in her place, but earlier she became very exercised—she mentioned it several times—about the idea, the horror, of English teachers being able to teach in Scottish schools. This is not a place to talk about the SNP’s record on education, but it is odd if we cannot have an amity between the four nations and would regard an English teacher as somehow not qualified to teach in Scotland. Do we not want fully qualified English teachers to be able to go to a Scottish school and to say that they want to teach in Scotland? The Bill allows the sort of non-discrimination that that would outlaw.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Williams]

My constituency has a huge concentration of high mountain and hilltop sheep farming. This Bill affects none of that. It changes no specific powers. The point that the hon. Lady just made means absolutely nothing in detail—nothing to jobs in my constituency, nothing to the constitutional changes and nothing to the devolved Administrations. All this does is continue what we had under the European Union.

[Claire Hanna]

rose—

[Craig Williams]

I will give way once more, and then I promise to be brief.

[Claire Hanna]

We come at this a different way. Can the hon. Gentleman name a single power that will not potentially be affected? Can he name a single devolved power that is ring-fenced? On Wednesday evening I asked Ministers for assurances on a range of different potential interventions, but I did not receive any, so I will ask again. Can the hon. Gentleman name a single power that this Bill would not allow the Government to scoop in from the opposite direction?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne McLaughlin]

I think what the hon. Gentleman is doing is making an argument for independence. If he is saying that the only way we can control this is by Scotland becoming independent, well I will be looking forward to that in the not-too-distant future.

I want to come on to my second scenario, which is procurement. There are many differences between procurement rules in the UK and in Scotland. I will give the House some examples. Scotland excludes companies that have breached blacklisting regulations. That is a good thing, but the UK does not agree. In Scotland, public bodies are forbidden from awarding contracts solely on the basis of cost alone; not so in the rest of the UK. Scottish rules put an explicit requirement on public bodies to include conditions of contract which ensure the contractor complies with environmental, social and employment law in the performance of that contract—also a good thing, but also something where UK rules do not apply. Yet we could be compelled to ditch our rules in favour of the weaker procurement system.

Is there anything in the Bill to prevent this scenario? A company with a dodgy track record on blacklisting eyes up a juicy contract from a public body in Scotland. Could the Bill enable the dodgy company to argue that Scotland’s different rules be considered disruptive, and, in arguing thus, it becomes eligible to apply for the contract? There is nothing to stop that happening. Yet again, the UK Government are asking us to permit them to bulldoze their way through carefully crafted responsible legislation. And yes, I am aware of the exclusions, but I am also aware of the powers of the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to alter those exclusions. And yes, I also know that this relates to goods rather than services, but after this week, when the UK Government said they would break international law, we cannot take a single assurance of theirs seriously. Still they cannot point to the legislation that guarantees that what I just described could not possibly happen.

In fact, clauses 3, 7, 6, 5 and 10 give considerable latitude to the Secretary of State to amend the scope of the mutual recognition and non-discrimination principles, by using affirmative resolution procedure. This is a sweeping power that gives very limited room for parliamentary scrutiny. The clause pays lip service to consulting with the devolved Administrations, but contains little detail on what happens if they do not consent. The dictionary definition of the word consultation is

“the process of discussing something with someone in order to get their advice or opinion about it”.

What is the point if that opinion is simply disregarded? The Government always deny that that would be the case. They say, “That will never happen. You’re making it up,” but I am afraid it happens all the time.

My very good, honest and honourable friend Michael Russell MSP, who is the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary, talks of the disrespect and even hostility coming from the current UK Government towards the devolved nations, and we hear it all the time. He says that there is “no trust” between the UK and Scottish Governments. That is a ridiculous state of affairs. The UK Government can hardly claim that they are behaving respectfully when there are no safeguarding provisions in this Bill to respect the consent of the devolved Administrations by protecting the Sewel convention.

In the general election campaign, the Prime Minister drove a bulldozer with “Get Brexit done” emblazoned on it through a polystyrene wall. Now he and his colleagues are doing the same thing to the devolution settlement. We know exactly what the Prime Minister meant when he talked about taking back control. He meant that the UK Government should take back control of Scotland.

You know how sometimes a song will keep popping into your head, Ms McDonagh? Whenever I hear this Government talk about Scotland these days, the old Who song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” pops up, and there is nothing I can do to get rid of it. I will not subject you to my singing, but I will share some of the lyrics:

“I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution”—

I will miss out the bit about picking up my guitar—

“Then I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again”.

“Lead, don’t leave”, we were told in 2014. I do not blame those who trusted the UK Government, but they will not be fooled again.

I want to respond to the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), although he has gone now. To win the next independence referendum, one side has to convince the people in Scotland who embraced devolution but voted no last time. Either the Unionists convince them to vote no again, or we convince them to vote yes. If the UK Government keep on with this level of respect, keep driving that bulldozer through everything we in Scotland hold dear and pass this legislation, they will be doing our jobs for us. Perhaps in time, when I look back from our newly independent country where people and the environment come before profit, my anger will, ironically, turn to gratitude.

[Claire Hanna]

I rise to support amendments 81 to 85, which are in my name. I will also pick up on a couple of the points raised by the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who performed some logical somersaults in becoming the defender of free trade. I have to remind Members that it is this Government’s decisions that are erecting barriers, because we were already part of the largest, most stable and most successful free trading body in the world. I suppose we are the ones who are attempting to deal with the complications of those barriers.

I am not sure if it was just rhetoric, or if the hon. Gentleman genuinely does not understand why the regulations that we all shared while we were in the EU are not perceived to be such an imposition. That is the case precisely because they have raised standards in things such as environmental protection, food standards, the safety of products and toys, and workers’ rights. We see them as a guarantor, an enforcer and a raiser of standards. Unfortunately, we see the Government as no such thing, and in the first year of their term they have resisted and rejected numerous attempts to put into legislation protections for food and environmental standards. This Bill makes absolutely no mention, let alone guarantee, of consultation.

I do not like to keep refighting the last war, but the fact is that when the UK was in the EU, 95% of the regulations that the Government want to change—we never know which ones they want to change—were agreed by consensus. The UK had to oppose only 2% of them. Such consensus-based decision making is not currently enjoyed in the United Kingdom.

Our amendments 81 to 85, which are in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), are designed to address a specific issue about frontier workers, and I will take a wee minute to explain what that is. The border on the island of Ireland is soft and invisible, as Members know, and it runs for hundreds of kilometres. It goes through villages and townlands, and even through homes, churches and farms, so a lot of people live a very cross-border existence. Over the last few years we have tried to soften out some of the bumps that will come up, and that is what we are trying to do with this Bill. One of them is about frontier workers. Between 23,000 and 30,000 people routinely cross the border for their job; I am talking not about people going for social reasons or going up and down, but people whose daily commute crosses the border. That is very common, and until now people have not had to think about decisions in their personal or working life that might involve crossing a continental barrier, but now they do, and we are trying to address this.