United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord McNicol of West Kilbride

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have had three more requests to speak. I will take them in order: the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I call the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the serious point here is whether responsibility for economic development measures, which are the purpose of the shared prosperity fund, will be devised, agreed and undertaken with the consent of the devolved Administrations and devolved bodies in England.

Last time I spoke on this, the Minister claimed that the distribution of EU funds was decided in Brussels. That is not the case, as she well knows. As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, would confirm on the basis of his great experience of European matters, the EU established criteria against which funds should be spent and rules for determining the areas of greatest need, which were based on the relative GDP of an area in the European Union—which areas were Objective 1, which were Objective 2, and all the rest. It did not decide on individual projects. That was never determined in the Commission.

The way individual projects were decided under the structural funds—as I think Conservative and Labour Governments have practised since the 1990s—was on a bottom-up principle, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, probably started off agreeing with. If we were to have effective economic development, it had to have the buy-in of local areas, and of the nations when we had devolution. The best way to do this was through mechanisms that brought together locally elected people with businesspeople in bodies at local, regional and national levels to determine which projects should be prioritised.

As I understand it, the present proposal is that, instead of this devolved system, which has worked reasonably well over the past few decades, this Government want to take power to centralise decision-making. The precedent for this—as my noble friend Lord Adonis mentioned—is the towns fund, which is a completely centralised pork barrel dished out to Members of Parliament representing constituencies that the Conservative Party has recently won. That is what the towns fund is. I know from my own county, Cumbria, that Carlisle, Workington and Barrow will be recipients of towns fund money. Why? Yes, they have great needs, but it is because they have recently elected Conservative Members of Parliament.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Liddle and Lord McNicol of West Kilbride

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Grocott explained perfectly how well my noble friend Lady Hayter introduced this set of amendments. She took us through the main issues and the main points within them. I wish to emphasise just a couple of issues that my noble friend Lord Foulkes touched on at the end of his speech.

British politics is cyclical. Removing proper parliamentary scrutiny is not just wrong but could prove to be a very short-sighted action by this Government. Empowering the Executive over Parliament raises issues and concerns. If this was the only change brought forward in the Bill, we would be questioning it and raising issues with it, but what makes it more concerning is that it is coupled with other changes that make it harder to have that democratic oversight: the timetabling of any future changes—we will be discussing later the 5% that has been mentioned—and the nominating process for the Boundary Commission.

Boundary Commission recommendations deserve a democratic parliamentary backstop. These are judgment issues: major constitutional issues and changes that could be implemented around the parliamentary landscape. Although MPs, political parties and communities can feed into the earlier stages of the Boundary Commission review, the full oversight of all the packages across the different nations really takes place only when they enter Parliament itself.

We have heard that the Commons would now have 600 MPs if we had the system proposed in the Bill. What happens if the Prime Minister of the day decides that 600 is not right, and that 200, 300 or 1,000 MPs are needed? Not having full parliamentary oversight and decision-making power on would just not be right. Like my noble friends who have spoken, therefore, I am more than happy to support these amendments and look forward to the Minister’s comments and response.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the speeches by my colleagues before I was called have left me very little to say that is fresh, but I will try to make some new points, if that is possible.

My first point is that I am instinctively opposed to what the Government are trying to do here—to take this issue out of Parliament’s hands—mainly because I see it as part of the general trend of what the Johnson premiership is doing to Britain. It sees Brexit, and the constitutional changes resulting from Brexit, as an opportunity to strengthen the power of the Executive, and not to bring power back to Parliament, which was what the leave people argued for in the referendum. Across the board we see—for example in the Trade Bill and the Immigration Bill—a concentration of power in the Executive, with Parliament having less say than before. This is a deplorable trend, and it is not giving power back to the people.

My second point is that what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has said about the need for impartial consideration of constituency boundaries, and what the Constitution Committee says about this proposal being appropriate, would be all very well if one felt that one could trust this Executive to behave impartially. The way in which the Government have behaved since the December general election gives one no confidence that they will behave in a decent and impartial way, so why should we give them this power that they currently do not have?

I also believe that there has been inadequate consideration of the Bill, in the Commons and in our own House as a result of the way we are now dealing with the Bill, of the very big issues that it raises. If you apply a strict population basis to representation in this country, you will gradually see a shift in political power to London and the south-east, where most voters are. The Government decided to opt for 650 Members rather than 600 because they were deeply aware of the fact that the redistribution is likely to see a shift of representation from the north of England to the south, and that with the new “red wall” MPs who have been elected, a further reduction in the number of MPs would lead to very considerable party problems for the Conservative Party in the north of England, where it has just won representation.

We ought to be taking a bigger look at these issues. Representation is not just a feature of the arithmetical equality of the size of constituencies; it is also about whether, within a union such as the United Kingdom, all parts are fairly represented. I deeply regret that the numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs are being reduced—when the debate about the union’s future is becoming critical, this is a grave mistake.

Similarly, within England, we need to think about the balancing of power between the regions of the country. My noble friend Lord Foulkes and I would probably agree that we would like to see this done through reform of the upper House—but, while we cannot achieve this, it is a bad political and constitutional mistake for the Government to go down the road of strict arithmetic equality. The different parts of the United Kingdom have to be decently represented.

So I support these amendments, for the fundamental reason that you cannot trust this Executive to behave fairly.