State Aid (Revocations and Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we have had so much contentious legislation in this Chamber recently, some of it causing noble Lords—including myself—genuine anguish, that my sole purpose originally in putting my name down to speak in this debate was simply to thank my noble friend for bringing forward an instrument around which I thought we would all be able to unite quite joyfully. After all, we as a country voted to leave the ambit of EU law, and noble Lords from all sides of the House have bought into that. Indeed, I recall that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, whom it is always a pleasure to follow, was a keen advocate of Brexit alongside us at the time. We achieved our objective.

Brexit was an inherently constitutional vote. It did not decide policy, nor what our future laws would be. It decided dramatically to change the locus of where those laws would be made, restoring that to our own democratic institutions and to the electorate on which they depend. Yet, here we are, four years later, still subject to the full panoply of EU law. So we should really be rejoicing at this statutory instrument which, for the first time, is wholly devoted to abolishing a whole range of EU laws—clause after clause. It does almost nothing else. It simply sends regulations bowling like ninepins off the statute book and out of existence.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, seeks to persuade your Lordships to introduce a note of regret into this inherently joyful event. He is not happy for a number of reasons, principally—as far as I can make out—because he is not content to see elements of the existing regime abolished without knowing what will take their place. We might all want to know that; what will replace the Government’s state aid regime is a matter of keen interest. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has promised us that it will be robust, and that is all we know. However, as my noble friend Lady Noakes has explained, this is almost entirely ungermane to the current instrument before us. She gave a number of reasons why it was not relevant —but there is another. It would be naive of the Government to put forward their state aid subsidy regime in the context of protracted negotiations with the European Union about our future relationship. The European Union intends to take that regime and, if it approves of it, seek to codify it in an international treaty or make it a precondition of such an international treaty. It wishes to recover its influence over our industrial subsidy strategy before it has even relinquished it—to de-democratise it and take it out of the hands of the electorate.

This seems a very strange path for a Labour Front-Bencher to pursue. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, will be well aware that, in recent years, even among the leaders of the Labour Party there has been a wide range of views as to the role of industrial subsidies. There is nothing wrong with that; in a democracy, there is bound to be a wide range of views. His Motion effectively begs a Conservative Government to take their as yet unknown policy and see it embedded in an international treaty. This would remove the opportunity for other political parties which may put themselves forward for election in future to make any meaningful change to it, which is a strange and difficult path to go down.

In the interests of our democracy and of maintaining democratic control over our policy, this amendment to the Motion should be rejected.