United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

This shabby, shambolic, pernicious Bill should never have seen the light of day. It has already been delivered a historic defeat in the Lords—they rightly tore it apart—yet this Government overturned all their amendments and sent the Bill back. No sooner had they done that than there came the press release—as ever, bypassing this House—to say that the Government would be retreating from breaking international law with clauses that should never have been in the Bill in the first place, and that have only served further to diminish this Government and the UK’s already tattered international reputation. They are now reinstating these amendments.

Of course, it is not just the other place that this Tory Government ignore; it is almost everybody. When it comes to devolution and the nations of the UK, they are still determined to ignore the democratically elected Parliaments. As we have already heard, both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd have voted to withhold legislative consent on this Bill, yet this Government say that it is about working with the devolved Governments. It is not.

Lords amendments 48B and 48C pretty much deal with the shared prosperity fund that we have heard about. Under these amendments, the Government would have to agree with the devolved Governments on the way in which and where funds would be spent for matters within the devolved competences—roads, health and education, for example. The Government have said that the devolved nations will be represented, but Lord Thomas did not fall for that smoke and mirrors approach from the UK Government. He noted that,

“the clause without my amendments would enable the UK Government to spend in devolved fields and bypass the devolved Governments and Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who have been elected to be responsible for those fields. It would, in effect, hollow out the devolution settlements.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1293.]

It is disgraceful that we still do not have details of the shared prosperity fund, just weeks before we leave the EU. I was asking about this in 2017, and we have still not had anything from the Government.

Lords amendments 50B and 50C set out an attempt to agree a common framework, which is a regime that can govern the control of subsidies. Lord Thomas warned that, without this,

“Having changed the settlement for a policy that they have not yet devised, the Government then wish simply to consult…and then announce their decision. That is what I would call ‘way one’—the UK Government way.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1309.]

The SNP will not accept this brazen power grab. State aid must remain a devolved competence.

We welcome the changes through motion C1 in the Lords. The amendment removes the law-breaking clauses from part 5 of the Bill. Lord Judge said:

“They were constitutionally improper and a constitutional aberration. They subverted the rule of law.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1277.]

They have even been knocked down by former Tory leader, Lord Howard.

[Sir William Cash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Drew Hendry]

I am not going to take interventions. We are very short on time, so I am going to press on; sorry.

Lords amendments 8B to 8L, 13A and 56A require the Secretary of State to seek the consent of the devolved Administrations before exercising the powers, setting a time limit for that and a process if consent is withheld. Lord Stevenson said:

“The purpose of our amendment is to preserve the potential for managed policy divergence that is central to the devolution settlement.”

Again, the UK Government just ignore that. Lord Stevenson also noted:

“The Government have failed to explain properly why their list of exceptions is so much more restrictive than that of the EU—well, we can probably work that one out”. —[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1268-69.]

Let us not forget that this covers a huge range of effects for people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:

“environmental standards and protection…animal welfare…consumer standards, including digital and artificial intelligence privacy rights…employment rights and protections…health and life of humans, animals or plants…protection of public health…equality entitlements, rights and protections.”

It has a massive impact on Scottish public society.

Lords amendments 1B, 1C and 1D seek to protect the role of the common frameworks in the Bill. The Minister thanked Lord Hope, but he was the one who pointed out that

“if there really is a will on the Government’s part to make this system work, a solution can be found.”

He also said:

“Traders from other parts of the UK who had no regard for the higher standard could simply ignore it, irrespective of how simple and easy it was to comply with. That is not where we should be going.”

He concluded:

“A balance needs to be struck here, if devolution is to be respected.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1249-50.]

Time after time after time, Members of the Lords pointed out the massive disrespect and contempt the Government have for the devolution settlement. Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town warned the Government

“to be very careful about clawing back decisions from our now quite long-established devolved settlements.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 December 2020; Vol. 808, c. 1256.]

The Scottish Government, by the way, remain fully committed to the common frameworks process, as this Minister knows. I cannot use the language I would like to use in this House about what the Minister repeated, but he knows that the Scottish Government have remained 100% committed to the agreement that was set up to take the process through, and he should correct the record.

This Bill is unwanted and unwarranted and unashamedly undermines devolution. It is an attack on the democratically elected Scottish Parliament and the vast majority of the Scottish public who value it. Since 2014, promises to them have been routinely broken in this place. Their votes and their views have been ignored over Brexit. Now, Scotland will be the only country not to get what it voted for in that referendum. They will in the next one. They know that. The only way to protect their rights and their Parliament is for them to take the next logical step and for Scotland to become an independent nation.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted that it was unwise, if I can put it charitably, to have certain clauses in this Bill that might have impugned our international reputation for supporting the rule of law. I welcome the Minister’s approach and that of his colleague Lord True in the other place. The Bill is better off without those clauses. I had sought at the very least to ensure there was a parliamentary lock should such clauses ever be needed, but I hope that through the agreement achieved in the Joint Committee, thanks to the work of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, they are not needed at all. It is better, therefore, to leave the Bill clean in that way to serve the other important purposes that it does have to achieve.

That is why, with all due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), I trust that the Minister and colleagues will firmly resist any temptation to try to reinstate such clauses, which would be unnecessary, provocative in more ways than one, and unhelpful to the purpose we all seek to achieve.

I read with care the speeches of two former Lord Chief Justices and the former leader of my party, my noble Friend Lord Howard of Lympne, who himself was a distinguished Queen’s counsel with many years in practice before he came into this place. They certainly were not talking nonsense; they were making legitimate and fair points about areas of concern, even though I perhaps was more content to go with the view of David Wolfson QC, who was quoted by Lord Naseby, that the taking of such clauses into the Bill was not of itself a breach of international law until such time as they were brought into force. We are none the less better off not going down that route, so I hope the Minister will resist any temptation to put anything of that kind back into this Bill or into the Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill, because that would muddy the waters needlessly, legally and politically.

We are going to require political goodwill on all sides to make the coming days and weeks work. Were it ever to be necessary to take such extreme measures in such extreme circumstances that might occur, immediate primary legislation on an emergency basis could of course be done, and that would give the parliamentary lock that I was concerned should exist, but through another form. It is not necessary for us to go down that route now, because, frankly, to try to reinstate the clauses would be fatal to the progress of the Bill, and that would not be in the interests of the Government or anyone else. I thank the Minister for the way in which he and his colleagues have approached this matter.