United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the most reverend Primate, and I congratulate him and his most reverend colleagues on their very welcome letter today, with which I, too, wholeheartedly agree.

The European Union Committee published our report on the internal market Bill last Friday. It was the 74th Brexit-related report that we have made since the referendum in 2016. It was unanimous, as all the previous reports have been. Once again, I pay tribute to the outstanding committee staff, working all hours as they do, to such a very high standard over such a long period. The report is short. It deals only with Part 5 of the Bill and its interaction with the Government’s implementation of the withdrawal agreement. It was designed to fit together with the excellent report of the Constitution Committee and its wider analysis of the rule of law issues.

I have said before in this Chamber that there is an inherent tension at the heart of the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol, essentially in marrying up the aspirations of the recitals with the hard legal texts of the articles that follow. The committee reported in June that there was not enough urgency among the parties in the negotiations, who in a pragmatic way need to seek the compromises to sort this out, protecting, first and most importantly, the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and, secondly, the two mighty single markets involved—those of the EU and the UK. That report also dwelt on the multilayered dispute resolution mechanisms contained within the withdrawal agreement. The Bill before us supplants those mechanisms without their ever having been tried out. We have heard already of the Secretary of State’s clear and repeated statement that, in doing so, the Bill breaches international law. The result, as we report, strikes at the heart of the withdrawal agreement and hence poses a threat to the maintenance of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement itself. It is corrosive, too, to the future relationship discussions, as trust has become a casualty of the arrival of Part 5 of the Bill.

We wrote to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 18 September, with nine questions on the situation. To date, we have had no response to that letter and the letter is set out as Appendix 2 of our report. I very much hope that the Minister will carefully cover these nine questions in his response tomorrow. In the absence of convincing answers to these nine questions, the committee recommends removing Part 5 of the Bill.

In closing, I note that the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, is entirely in keeping with our report. I therefore strongly support it, and for once, and after advice, can follow him into the virtual voting Lobby when he divides the House.