United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

I beg to move,

That this House disagrees with Lords amendments 1F, 1G, 1H, 1K, 1L and 8M.

I am pleased that we continue to make positive progress on the Bill and that both Houses have continued to find agreement on a number of issues. In large part, this is due to colleagues from across both Houses continuing to have constructive and positive discussions with the Government. I want to put on record my thanks to colleagues on the Opposition Benches in this place, and the other place, in particular, for their engagement.

There are still a few outstanding areas, which have gone back and forth between the Houses, and I will outline the Government’s rationale for why we cannot accept the proposals as drafted. I will begin by speaking about the approach to exclusions taken by the Bill, which is a shared point across amendments 1F, 1G, 1H, 1J, 1K, 1L and 8M. I will then address the specifics of the common frameworks amendments and wider market access exclusions.

As I said last week, and as my noble friends Lord Callanan and Lord True said in the other place yesterday, the Government have been clear throughout these debates that we agree that there is a need for an exclusions regime. However, it has to be carefully drafted and provide certainty for business. In drafting the Bill, and clauses 10 and 17 specifically, the Government have designed an exclusions approach that achieves a careful balance. Both the noble and learned Lord Hope and Lord Stevenson have narrowed the scope of their amendments and I thank them both for their continued dialogue with the Government on those. Our assessment remains, however, that the approach in both sets of amendments goes too far both in the breadth of exclusions that it would require the Secretary of State to create and the uncertainty that it would lead to. These amendments would be detrimental to the clarity, simplicity and certainty that the Bill intends to provide.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

My reading of these amendments is that they are extremely watered down from what we would want. They essentially still give the Westminster Government a veto over the ability of the devolved Governments to legislate within devolved competency, so these are very meagre proposals. In refusing to accept even these proposals, is not the true nature of the Bill revealing itself? It is the British Government’s intention to use the Bill to impose uniformity over Wales and Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Powell]

We have worked incredibly hard to maintain the devolution settlement through the Bill; that is not something that the hon. and learned Lady’s party want to do. The SNP wants to use measures in the Bill to break up the Union and seek independence in Scotland. That is not something that we agree with. We have tabled amendments and voted on them to ensure that the devolution settlement in this country is respected, and I hope that the Government will continue to talk to us about that.

We welcome the Government concessions so far and are hopeful that with some more good will we can get some more recognition of common frameworks in the Bill in these late stages of ping-pong. The Lords amendments to strengthen the common-frameworks approach and fair access to the market are good ones that we will vote to uphold today. I am grateful to Ministers and Lords colleagues, especially Lord Hope and others, for their continued engagement on this issue, because there is a lot of agreement between us. Ministers are rightly proud of the common frameworks process, which has brought about a number of areas of agreement on standards and market access because it involves the Government working with the devolved Administrations. It is an approach that both Front-Bench teams agree on.

We also agree—unlike the SNP—that the UK Parliament should be the ultimate arbiter of the internal market, and we agree that no one nation should be able to frustrate that process, that all must act in good faith before the UK Parliament intervenes, and that safeguards should be in place to make sure that that is the case. It really feels to me like the Government could move further on this issue, because there is a huge amount of common ground. We need to see in the Bill a recognition of the common frameworks process and the devolution settlement that it represents, which is why I hope and expect that in returning the Bill to the other place today, the Government will introduce some final amendments along those lines. If they do so, they could receive broad support. It did not need to take quite so many iterations and pleas from both Houses, had the Government not taken such a hostile, blunderbuss approach with the Bill in the first place.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lucy Powell]

No, I am afraid I will not; I am finishing.

I sincerely hope that the Government will reflect on that approach in future.