United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, it is worth reminding ourselves that we are talking about the Committee stage of an internal market Bill. I frankly do not see the relevance of the part of Amendment 1 which talks about the environment. We do of course have environmental laws. They are ever being strengthened and are an important part of our society. What they are not is anything specifically to do with an internal market.

We turn to look at consumers. I am a marketing man by profession. After university, having read economics, I joined the Reckitt and Colman Group as a marketing executive and later a marketing manager, in the UK, India and what is now Sri Lanka. I understand marketing. Marketing is about more than just the consumer. It is about those elements of a market that are all working within it. A whole host of bodies is working there. I share the view of my noble friend Lady Noakes. While the UK was in the EU, which I voted to stay in, we had all sorts of restrictions, some of which were very adverse to industry and commerce in this country—not all by a long way, but some were. We want an internal market where people who manufacture, sell, distribute, research and devise new products can succeed. We want that market there, without the stranglehold of having to agree with half a dozen other nations. That is absolutely key. It is not a simple matter of just worrying about the consumer. I think it was the noble Baroness who opened who spoke about driving competition to the lowest level.

Competition is very healthy but, of course, there must be safeguards. That is why in the Bill there is this new body, the office for the internal market, working alongside the CMA. I criticised the CMA at Second Reading and I believe those criticisms were valid. I want to see this office for the internal market really have teeth and really be able to operate. Reflecting on Second Reading, frankly, it is not right in the Bill to just have a review after five years. We have enough evidence in modern society to recognise that things move much more quickly these days than they ever used to. I put it to the Minister that Her Majesty’s Government should consider a three-year review of that body.

On Amendment 2, it is already part of our public law, so why does it have to be written here—if that is right? It comes later, under Part 5, but we cannot have a situation whereby all parts of the UK can have their own minor arguments on whatever product or service it may be. Then we would end up with everybody having a different viewpoint. That does not seem to me at all sensible. My plea to the Minister is that this is a very exciting time if you are a UK manufacturer, trader, in financial services, in hospitality, in the professions, a retailers or wholesaler, or an online trader. Certainly, in my former constituency of Northampton, they look forward to this internal market.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, if the Ministers shepherding this Bill expected an easy ride, this gives a taste of things to come. It serves a purpose in setting the scene, and a lot of arguments and debates will come in other groups as we go through this process. I shall not labour those points. An overriding sense I got from my noble friend Lord Purvis is that the question everybody wants to know the answer to is: why have Her Majesty’s Government decided to turn away from a process of managing markets that has been extremely successful? It was successful before we joined the European Union and successful afterwards. This is the overriding question that hangs over this whole debate.

On Amendments 1 and 112, if ever we needed convincing that things such as the environment need to be written into the Bill, the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, convinced me that they do. This is because we cannot take things for granted. Governments come and Governments go, but the law stays, and we need to be sure that our public policy is being directed properly. I uncharacteristically find myself somewhat agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: we have to be careful not to constrain the nature of this Bill. We need to find a way to write in issues such as those of the consumer and the environment. I would add some of the points made by my noble friend Lady Bowles and food safety to that. We need to ensure that there is an assessment of the success of this internal market in some of those areas, including the environment, the effect on consumers, the effect on jobs, et cetera. I share the view of my noble friend Lady Bowles that perhaps more work is needed, but the issue is live and very important. I thank the proposers of the amendment.

Turning to Amendment 2, I do not think proportionality pops up anywhere in other amendments. We had a brief discussion of this extremely important subject from various speakers. I take my lead on this from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who understands the law, and my noble friend Lady Bowles, who knows a thing or two about regulation. If they are concerned about proportionality, so are we on these Benches. The Government need to find a way of writing that issue into the Bill.

On public procurement, we need to understand what the Government mean by what they seek to do in this legislation. The issue highlighted by my noble friend Lord Purvis is live and real: how will this legislation affect those issues? It is a probing amendment, but for it to work we need answers.

We have started. There are issues we shall return to, but proportionality and public procurement are two on which I hope the Minister will respond at length.

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I hope that the Government will reflect on this very carefully. I have indicated that we do not need this rush before the end of the year, and I have stressed the importance of having consensus on the way forward. Up until now, the Government have chosen not to go down this route, but it is not too late. I hope that they will reflect very carefully on this approach and that those on the Cross Benches and Labour Benches will work with us to ensure that there is a degree of consensus to allow the Government some space to change their course.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I shall resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in what he has said. However, I reflect that in the other place I was responsible for, and chaired most of, the Maastricht Bill, with 500 amendments and 24 days of debate. Even there, I think that I would have been really stretched to have enabled what is labelled here as a new clause to be put into the purpose of Part 1 on an introductory basis.

I understand the feelings of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I had the privilege of being Parliamentary Private Secretary in Northern Ireland, and I was a local government leader. Of course they feel strongly, as I do about local authorities and the Covid situation. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the purpose of Part 1 is

“the continued functioning of the internal market for goods in the United Kingdom by establishing the United Kingdom market access principles.”

It then lists what the mutual recognition and non-discrimination principles should be.

If the Opposition and those who do not like what is in Part 1 want to make a point, there is a case for having a small amendment including just the words “and services”. I see merit in that because, as I said earlier, that seems to have some validity, but to suggest in the introductory part, under “Purpose of Part 1”, that we have to await a statutory instrument

“containing regulations under section 56(3)”,

et cetera, is extraordinary. I cannot believe that there have ever been many Bills where that sort of new clause has been inserted into the introductory part.

Therefore, I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that there are valid questions arising from this alleged new clause to be asked in the right place, but this is certainly not the right place in this Bill.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, said, this debate is a sort of appetiser for the main course to come in later groups, when we will dig much deeper into the right approach to ensuring that our current well-functioning internal market continues after the transition period ends and that we can manage the necessary and inevitable policy divergences that we need across the United Kingdom and should welcome.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, said that the key questions are why we need the Bill at all, let alone now, why the Government are ignoring the evident successes of the co-operation and constructive progress which have been hallmarks of the common framework programme, why threaten the devolution settlement so directly, and what it is about the top-down approach that the Government wish to introduce that is so attractive, given the huge risks to devolution. Those are very important questions and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says when he comes to respond.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that she recognised the value of proposed new subsections (1) and (2) in the amendment but was worried that proposed new subsections (3) and (4) made it a wrecking amendment. I do not think that it is. Indeed, I make the same points about the need for a pause before we implement in my Amendment 178, which is in a later group.

I hope that the Government will think very hard about the clear message that seems to come from this debate. We need to carry on down the road well travelled in recent years, encouraging the devolved Administrations to continue to collaborate, to work together with mutual understanding until agreement is reached, and then to go further so that there is agreement on all the issues that need to be agreed and a way of resolving any issues that are left over. This is the way in which we make progress—not by imposing a top-down solution. Indeed, anything else risks destroying the complex but pretty successful devolution settlement that we currently enjoy.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. Do we have Lord Morris of Aberavon? We will move on.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House. I understand I was on the list for Amendment 5, but I never applied to speak on that one.

This is an interesting amendment. My colleagues, the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe, have already made the point that we are very close to 1 January—in fact, we are 66 days away, by a quick calculation—and so I look at that time dimension against the complications within this proposed new clause.

As I said much earlier in the evening, I am a marketing man by profession; I worked very closely with a large number of manufacturers when I was a senior director in one of the major advertising agencies. I find some of the elements of this amendment, or proposed new clause, too prescriptive. Take subsection (1)(a), where the whole principle is that nothing is going to happen until the

“access principles may be applied”

and have been “exhausted”. We are in a time framework where that is not going to work. It may be necessary, later on, to look at how it does work in principle, and maybe some changes should be made then.

I worry deeply. We are a creative nation. We are in an enormous period of change. One sees now what is happening in the fintech world: it is moving forward at an enormous rate, and it does not want to be stultified by a whole series of restrictions before it can be added to a particular schedule or not. All of us are conscious that there is a whole variety of different companies, across the world, trying to find an answer to Covid-19 through new drugs and vaccines.

Personally, I am terribly practical, and I just do not see the elements of this amendment helping the United Kingdom move forward. There may be bits of it that have some relevance—I am sure there are—and I recognise that they are put forward with a genuineness by people who want things to work. But when I listen to the noble Lord opposite talk about the Welsh Government, and having observed what is happening down in Wales now, one has to say that it is not terribly practical. I am not sure that the credibility of the Welsh Government is very strong in today’s world.

I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will understand that, perhaps in the future, some of these elements may need to be applied, but, as matters stand today, with 66 days to go, frankly, I do not think that this proposed new clause helps at all.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon.