Common Frameworks (Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee Report)

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

It has been an enormous privilege to serve on this committee. Listening to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and with my little knowledge of Scottish politics, I can say that one of the great benefits of sitting on it is to realise that in this United Kingdom we share common problems and we need to try to solve them. It has been very fortunate for us to have had, as has been described by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, the wonderful clerks and analysts that have pursued points. I cannot pretend that reading common frameworks is anything but a cure for insomnia. I just marvel at the officials and how they have provided this detailed analysis. I wish to add my thanks.

As has been seen from the various speeches that have preceded mine, we have been extraordinarily fortunate in the outstanding chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. She has kept us on our toes; she has made certain we have gone into everything in appropriate detail without being swamped by it; and she has found an almost entire consensus on the way forward. I wish to add my deepest thanks to her.

I want to add one or two points that go to the general importance of common frameworks. No one could have devised a more awful name for these. It was a mistake. People spend huge amounts on branding, and whoever thought of this failed to brand its importance. That is why it is necessary to realise what this was trying to achieve. When we were members of the EU, there was in place a mechanism, both between Brussels and London and internally, for dealing with the two critical questions that arise in a state that has more than one Government. There are lots of examples all over the world of constitutional mechanisms. We had to try to devise something to replicate and replace the constitutional mechanism that had governed intergovernmental relations within the UK and their corresponding relationships with Brussels, as regards both policy formation and delivery. I do not think anyone quite understood the importance of carrying through on the commitment made to that end in 2017. We needed a real determination to make this work. It is not easy.

We have asymmetrical devolution. It was designed at a time when we were members of the EU. Therefore, it probably would not have been designed in the same way today; but it is incredibly difficult to make a constitutional change of that kind. The devolution settlements—no one appreciates this until they start to work out where powers lie—are awful in terms of their complexity and get more awful every year. The mechanism that common frameworks were designed to deal with made certain that we ran ourselves as a state that recognised that there was large devolution of home rule—and I want to use the phrase “home rule” to stop the confusion with devolution to local authorities, because they are very different. We did not really work out how to be sure—with limited, differing forms of home rule within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—that we had agreement on areas where it was necessary to preserve home rule, to preserve unity and to deliver.

If you look at the common frameworks, the delivery mechanism for working out how you deliver decisions is not too bad. One can criticise them. They are terribly complicated. One would not have devised them to look the same, since they differ so much that a new official would not know where to find one. And I regret that there is an overemphasis on process, but one can understand that. But this must not detract from the substantial achievement.

Where I think there is a problem—we are seeing it more and more—is the mechanism for agreeing policy: agreeing what is for Cardiff, for Edinburgh and for Belfast, and what is for the UK Government. If you cannot get agreement on that, we are in for a very rocky ride ahead. I entirely agree with the analysis that has been given of the retained EU law Bill. This is a major problem, and it should not be.

Therefore, there are two things we ought to look at. I am going to say the easy thing first and the more difficult one subsequently. I must also add to the deserved praise that has been given to the Minister for what has transformed since she came to take an interest in this subject. First of all, can we fix transparency? It is incredibly difficult to find out what is going on. Civil servants are wonderful at producing minutes. They do not have to say a great deal, but would it not be wonderful if we had published the minutes of meetings so that we knew what was happening? It is almost impossible to find out, but that cannot be too difficult.

Secondly, it would be quite useful, so that people understood the problem, if we had some kind of simplified structure described on one piece of paper with what is trying to be done in relation to the agreement on policy. That step seems relatively easy to take.

A third step would be to try to bring greater transparency to the relations between the devolved Administrations and their respective legislatures and Westminster. There is not enough publicity about this—it is almost impossible to find out. That is the easy bit.

The much more difficult bit is fixing the structure on agreeing on policy and agreeing what is for London, what is for Cardiff, and for Edinburgh, and where legitimately you can have differences. We seem to we see this fairly regularly in this Chamber; for example, on the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill. Points come up as to the impact of that agreement on Scotland and Wales in particular.

To give an illustration, which takes one outside common frameworks, as to why it is so unfortunate that we do not have agreement, I wanted to say one word, and I do not expect the Minister to say anything in response to this, because I raised it and unfortunately she had to leave this morning. She would have had some advance notice then of what I was going to say, so in fairness I must say that. The levelling up Bill is before this House at the moment, and that contains, or is going to contain, provision to make 12 statements of mission. One does not need to go into what a mission is and whether that is the right thing, but it is essentially what the UK Government hope to achieve by 2030, and it covers a number of different areas. They include education, skills, health, well-being, housing and local government. All those are devolved, as is the policy. The immense seriousness of the failure to agree the structure on policy that should be in the common frameworks is demonstrated by the fact that we have no model to deal with the much more serious problem of what the devolved Governments are going to say is, from this perspective, an invasion of their policy areas in such an important area.

I want to say one final thing. We ought to thank the Minister for the steps she has taken. However, we also ought to convey the message to Scotland and to Wales that it takes two to make this work—four, in fact. Even if one of the nations is not keen—I will not suggest which one, as I would be delving into an unfortunate area of politics—the others must go ahead. We cannot go on with a non-transparent lack of structure for agreeing policy. The failure to deal with this in the common frameworks—that is why it is so relevant—is to my mind the big failure we have; it is the unfulfilled opportunity. I wish we had it there.