Common Rules for Exports (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, after hearing Conservatives and Ukippers preach year after year about the unnecessary bureaucracy of European regulations, it is sad that we now have a Government hurrying to transpose European regulations into domestic law as necessary and useful elements in diverse aspects of government and in managing our economy. That is a sad irony.

My first question to the Minister is to ask whether he can tell us yet how many more SIs are still to come before the House from his department before transposition and replacement are complete. We will be very busy between now and the new year with continuing legislation to clarify our future external trade policy and our relations with the EU and others. How many more SIs are still to come? Secondly, has preparation for this transposition been accompanied by any contingency planning in Whitehall about products not easily available in Britain that could be critical in an emergency?

I understand that constraints on exports of specific foodstuffs might be rational and necessary in an emergency. I am aware that the UK produces a range of pharmaceuticals to which this SI might apply. However, we have learned during the current Covid-19 emergency that there are a number of medicines that we do not produce in quantity, and a wide range of other medical supplies of which we have lacked domestic stocks—and which the Government had failed to ensure were available in usable forms in stockpiles.

Now that the UK is abandoning its guaranteed access to its largest market from which to source many essential products, have the Government embarked on any discussions with the EU and its member Governments about future co-operation in any shared or global emergency? Do they have plans to increase domestic production or expand domestic stockpiles?

I shall leave the Irish dimension to others, beyond noting that the growing prosperity of the Irish economy means that Ireland has also become a significant source of medical and related products used within the UK. Instead, I wish to inquire what the officials who gave evidence to our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee meant when they said that our pursuit of national priorities and constraint of exports would be limited by the need “to meet international obligations”. What international obligations would limit government sovereignty under such circumstances? Which states or international organisations could impose such obligations on us?

I understood from the Brexiteers that the UK was asserting its sovereignty from international obligations by leaving the EU. Were those officials saying that there are nevertheless unavoidable limits on UK sovereignty? Are they saying that it is not only the European Union that cramps our freedom, but that, even after we have escaped from European domination, we will be held down by other foreign commands?

Lastly, is there any prospect of being able to use the powers set out in this SI in early 2021? The NAO report, published last week, put it bluntly, saying that

“preparations to manage the border at the end of the transition period remain very challenging”.

Does this SI set out an aspiration, rather than a deliverable set of proposals?

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, some of the language of the Bill brings back distant memories from over 35 years ago. Proponents of free trade and open markets, including Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, argued then that the absence of a common framework for regulation across the European Community disadvantaged UK exports to our neighbours. It also meant that British standards usually copied US standards; American regulators exercised what lawyers termed “extraterritorial jurisdiction” over foreign markets such as the UK. For Mrs Thatcher, a European single market would mean that British Ministers could take an active part in negotiating international standards rather than swallowing American ones.

A generation later, in a far more integrated global economy, it has become clear that standards and regulations will emerge from one of three major global players: the United States, China or the European Union. However, our Government are pursuing an antique and absolutist version of Westminster sovereignty, breaking free of the EU. In practice, that means we will end up following either American or European standards on food safety, financial regulation and the internet without much influence on either—losing control, not taking back control.

The doctrine of sovereignty that underlies the Bill was set out by Albert Venn Dicey in his 1885 Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. Dicey insisted that Westminster sovereignty was supreme and indivisible, internally and externally. Sir William Cash frequently quotes him and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, cited Dicey in this House when challenged about the subject. However, Dicey was writing at the high point of British imperialism when English politicians could assume that Britain shaped international law and other countries had to follow. The Empire has gone, but the mixture of imperial nostalgia and English nationalism that motivates hard-right Conservatives resists negotiating international law with other states. That is disastrous for Britain’s reputation, for London as a global centre for litigation and legal expertise and for our ability to negotiate future trade deals with others, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others have noted.

Dicey’s approach to domestic sovereignty was shaped by his bitter opposition to Irish home rule. He refused to accept that powers could be shared with a parliament in Dublin. Conservative unionists follow Dicey, insisting that all authority in the UK rests in Westminster. That absolutist view, through opposition to successive proposals for home rule, led to Ireland breaking away from the United Kingdom.

This is a constitutional Bill. It goes to the heart of the rule of law within the UK as well as in relation to other states, and it threatens the further disintegration of our state, with Scotland leaving and Ulster moving towards reunification to leave England diminished and internally divided.

We are now watching right-wing Republicans bend America’s written constitution until it is close to breaking. We have even seen the embittered partisanship of American politics spilling over into this debate in the attack by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on the Bishops who are addressing the moral dimensions of the Bill. We should not allow our increasingly authoritarian Government to bend the conventions of our own unwritten constitution any further.

Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said that the private sector is the only solution to get us out of this. I disagree. We are a mixed economy, a society and a national community. We need our society, community and democracy to have the same high quality if we are to recover from all this.

The Government’s early mistakes in responding to this endeavour were in turning to large outsourcing companies to provide services in testing, and now in recruiting for tracing and managing PPE, and neglecting our local democracy and local authorities—which have been bypassed time and time again—and the local volunteers wanting to join. I have just contributed to a school in Bradford, which sent out an appeal for a new cutting edge for its 3D printer because, while the school was closed, it has been printing screens for local hospitals. There are all sorts of local initiatives like that going on, and I have heard the frustrations of people at the local level who have applied and offered to help.

The SMEs so strongly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and I, have not been caught up, because this approach has been so top-down. I have also heard from those in universities, particularly biologists, who have wanted to help and turn over their facilities, but take-up has been slow from an overly centralised Government in England.

My strong message here is that we have made mistakes in not engaging local democracy and local enthusiasm, and in not treating people as citizens, as well as consumers and patients. The private sector at the local, as well as the national, level has to be part of that. We are a national community of citizens, as well as consumers, and this is a national emergency that involves us all.