European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Duke of Montrose Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Monday 13th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, to follow on from that speech, I have to say, much to my surprise, that I regard myself as being accused of being thoroughly responsible for the Bill.

It has been obvious to anybody listening to this debate that the process required by Brexit is liable to be highly disruptive to the entity that is the United Kingdom, and this is not just a question of an Irish border or troubles with devolved Administrations, as several noble Lords mentioned. In the past 40 years, we have had legislation coming from Brussels which ensured that there was a large amount of similarity and coherence in how these laws were interpreted in the various parts of the United Kingdom. The question that arises now is: will we require to maintain that level of coherence in order to operate as a single national economy? This will be particularly true for food, farming, fishing and rural affairs in Scotland and all the devolved Administrations. This is an area where I have always had a major interest, both because I have a farm and because I have taken an interest in the sheep industry, as stated in the register. I thank the Law Society of Scotland for briefing me on the difficulties that appear from the Scottish perspective.

Inevitably, this has been occupying a great deal of time of the Joint Ministerial Council, where no doubt worthy people have been working away—but to most of us it is a shadowy body which, if some recently published minutes of its meetings which I have just seen are anything to go by, it is quite happy to remain. However, it is good to note that in October 2017, it recognised that there would be a need for common frameworks to be in place which should recognise all devolution settlements. Later on that year, the Cabinet Office published a list of 110 points where EU law intersects with devolved matters. Perhaps fortunately, for everyone’s relief, it has now published a revised analysis saying that the Cabinet Office identifies that there are only 21 policy areas affected where more detailed discussion around whether legislative common framework arrangements might be needed. For agriculture, regulation currently involves at least 12 separate pieces of EU legislation, so a number of frameworks may be required there. Can the Minister tell the House how many of these framework proposals are now accepted by the devolved Administrations as necessary and what further discussions are planned?

The Scottish Parliament is very concerned about this area. It is currently considering the Agriculture (Retained EU Law and Data) (Scotland) Bill, through which the Scottish Government seek powers both to simplify and improve CAP legislation and to trigger market intervention measures. It also includes regulations to facilitate the continuity of agricultural payments following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and to make new provisions about marketing standards and the classification of carcasses. In this, they appear to have realised, almost before the Government woke up to it, that on 31 January the withdrawal Bill will disapply legislation enabling the Government to make the payments as required under the CAP, in particular the 2020 single farm payment.

However, the Government have woken up to this situation. Perhaps noble Lords noticed last Thursday the First Reading in the other place of the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill on exactly that subject. I do not know how many of the single farm payments to farmers for 2019 are still outstanding and whether they will be affected on 31 January. Do the Government intend to have this piece of legislation in force before then? If not, what action do they propose, or will we have a hiatus where all moneys will be stopped?