United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Of course we all want agreement and we all want a trade deal, but what happens if relations break down? Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that, first and foremost, the Labour party is a Unionist party that believes 100% in the economic integrity of the United Kingdom and will not act as a poodle for nationalists? Can he give me an absolute guarantee that if relations break down and we reject this Bill, we will not be in a very difficult place in terms of the economic integrity of the United Kingdom?

[Edward Miliband]

The right hon. Gentleman and I agree absolutely about the United Kingdom, and I am now going to come on to why I have such fear about this Bill. I fear that it is ignorant and blundering on the most important question about the way in which we share power across the United Kingdom. My fear about that and about the Bill is that it has given those who want to undermine the United Kingdom a further weapon with which to do so. That is why I want to turn to the devolution aspects of the Bill.

I particularly want to put on record my thanks to Lord Hope, former Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General, for his work on the Bill. The common frameworks are a complex issue, but it is worth spending some time explaining them. The common frameworks process—the Government deserve some credit for this—was established in 2017 to enable us to agree high standards across the United Kingdom and manage any divergence in those standards. The problem with the Bill is that there is no mention of common frameworks. Instead, it provides a blunderbuss principle that the lowest standard in one jurisdiction is the standard for all, with no voice for the devolved nations.

Take the issue of single-use plastics, which is a very concrete example. The Welsh Government want to legislate to ban the use of single-use plastics, but the problem is that the Bill as it stands enables the UK Parliament to simply come along, without discussion and without a voice for the Welsh Government, and legislate to stop them doing that. In a written answer earlier this month, they said very clearly that they believe that they will not be able to make that legislation stick. The Bill in its current form allows the UK Government simply to undercut the powers of the devolved Administrations in key devolved areas, including the use of plastics, other environmental standards, animal welfare and other consumer standards. That is very serious, because the common frameworks are a way in which we can both secure high standards—this is the intention of Lord Hope—and manage divergence when it occurs across the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

When I voted to leave the European Union, it was not primarily over concerns with immigration or concerns about how we would divvy up the money that came back from the contributions we would not be making to the European Union; it was entirely as a constitutional lever. I believe in the principle that the people who live under the law should have the right to choose the people who make the law. Incidentally, that also shapes my views on how the House of Lords should be reformed. However, that principle could not survive as soon as we had the direct application of EU law and the use of the ECJ. Therefore, for me that meant that there was only one choice, which was to leave the EU. I explained that to an American audience by saying that, if in the United States there was a court in Ottawa or Mexico City that could override the US Supreme Court and there was nothing legislators could do in the US, how would they like it? They said, “Absolutely, we would never ever accept it.” That, for me, is the key principle.

When I first heard of this internal market Bill, I was at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and, frankly, I was shocked to hear that the Government were intending to break international law. That was until I came back and looked at the provisions themselves, and found out that nothing whatsoever was actually being broken in this Bill. In fact, nothing was actually being done in this Bill, other than setting out a set of contingency measures, which is of course a well-accepted legal principle.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Fox]

I will give way once—to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There has been virtually no discussion during this entire debate about the fact that this is a safety net, which we hope will never be used. If we are on the high wire—and when we are dealing with the EU, we are on the high wire—we may not want to use a safety net, but it does no harm to have one.

[Dr Fox]

I entirely agree. I have used the analogy myself that this is a lifeboat that we hope we never have to launch. We hope the ship will never go down because we will reach a trade agreement, and we should reach a trade agreement because, as I said earlier in the House, there has never been a trade agreement that has begun with the two parties in complete identity of trade law, of tariffs and of regulation. It should be, if it was only about trade, an easy agreement to reach, but it is not just about trade. The main stumbling blocks are constitutional—the very constitutional issues that made me want to vote to leave the European Union in the first place.

There are those who have said that this Bill is outrageous and that it sets new precedents, but in fact it says only that, under certain circumstances, domestic law might have to be used to overrule treaty law. Is it revolutionary? Is it unprecedented? Well, on 12 February 2016, the German federal constitutional court said:

“Treaty overrides by national statutory law are permissible under”

the German constitution. It added:

“Under the system of the Basic Law, international treaties have the same rank as statutory federal law. Therefore, they can be superseded by later federal statutes that contradict them.”

That is merely the power that the United Kingdom Government are seeking to use as a contingency power, should they need it, yet nobody screams about the German Parliament being able to exercise an identical power.

In the short time that I have, I want to make a couple of comments about the value of free trade in the internal market to the Union itself. The 1707 articles of Union between England and Scotland, and those between Great Britain and Ireland in 1800, abolished all customs duties between the different parts of the United Kingdom. Free trade across the whole of the United Kingdom was not only integral to the development of the whole of the United Kingdom from the industrial revolution on, but it was particularly important to Scotland and Ireland, whose citizens could freely trade with the much bigger English market—something that exists today. That point was made very well by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) earlier in this debate.

It is easy, given how successful it has been, to forget how important that single market is, and how easily it could be damaged and what the what the implications would be if it were interfered with or restricted. Of course, that is why the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady)—I am sorry that he has left his place—was unwilling to engage in debate with me last week when I asked what estimates had been made by the Scottish nationalists of the break-up of the UK internal market in terms of the Scottish economy. He said, “We will come and make those arguments in due course,” because they do not want to hear those arguments aired in front of the Scottish people at the present time.

The devolved legislatures were created after the UK joined the European Community and then the European Union. Because the single market rules apply to regional Governments and legislatures as well as central Governments of member states, there was no pressing need during our membership of the European Union for specific UK-based rules maintaining the UK internal market against fragmentation. Brexit changes all that, and that is why I believe that we should reject the Lords amendments tonight.

However, in supporting the Government, I just ask this one question: when did the Government’s legal advisers advise Ministers that the withdrawal Act indeed, by direct application, threatened the internal market of the United Kingdom? It was not something that I heard discussed at the time, but I would like to know the answer to that question, as would many of us who are supporting the Government tonight and who believe that what we are seeing is proportionate contingency planning, fulfilling the duty of the maintenance of the UK internal market, the key part of the United Kingdom itself.