United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2020 Commons Chamber

To conclude, will the House please stand with us and send a very clear message that if the intention is to undermine British sovereignty and for negotiations to fail, as they have failed thus far, we will not be pushed? Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is worth standing up for, and I urge all in this House to do just that.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I rise to speak to the amendments tabled in my name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

We have had some good contributions from colleagues from all parties in today’s discussion of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill—or, as the Prime Minister now calls it after his roasting yesterday, the infernal market Bill. Let us hope that when the Minister rises to speak he is better briefed than the Prime Minister, although I have no doubt that he will be because, unlike his boss, he very much is a details man.

Before I address the substance of the amendments, I want the House to be clear on a few points. Labour wants the Government to get Brexit done and we want a strong internal market that respects devolution and protects high regulatory standards, but we will not fall for the Prime Minister’s attempt to rerun the Brexit arguments, and neither should the public. The Brexit issue is settled and the Government now need to get on and get the deal that they promised the British people at the general election.

The Prime Minister’s attempts to boost his falling poll ratings have failed. Brexiteer after Brexiteer has denounced this Bill; they clearly did not get the memo that opposing it was some kind of remainer plot, which it is not. We have had a roll call of the great and good—some not so good, but I will let Members decide—including Lord Howard and Lord Lamont, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) and the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), to name but a few. They have spoken out with courage because this Bill, in its current form, is not in the national interest.

Let me turn to the amendments. The central challenge that faced those drafting the Bill was how to square an internal market where goods can be sold across the UK with the fact that regulatory standards are devolved in key areas such as animal welfare, the environment, food safety and many others. There was an obvious answer, because since 2017 there has been a process of agreeing common frameworks—a joint approach to standards in the different devolved areas. The Government could have chosen to legislate for those common frameworks to make them the default option for regulation, thereby granting a proper voice to the devolved nations on the regulatory standards to which we have to adhere.

To be clear, that approach would have imposed a duty on all Governments to seek to establish common high standards. There would have needed to be an ultimate last resort in case the way forward could not be agreed on, at which point the UK Parliament would have needed to step in. That would have been the way to square the circle of the internal market and respect for devolution but, unfortunately, it is not the route that the Government have chosen. Instead, they have chosen non-binding common frameworks, up against what is in essence a Westminster veto, potentially leading to lower standards, with no guarantee of a voice for the devolved nations.

The Government say that they will still negotiate for common frameworks; that is welcome but it is not enough. If we do not put the process for common frameworks on a statutory footing, we undermine the very process itself, making the nuclear option of imposition more and more likely. Common frameworks without legislation are toothless. As time for regulations to be implemented becomes more and more pressing, and with the looming prospect of other trade deals and their inevitable call on UK-wide standards, we can see how things will play out, with the imposition of regulations via statutory instruments becoming the norm.

In line with getting Brexit done, there is now a huge repatriation of powers from the EU to the UK. The Government have a choice to make: do they want to respect and strengthen the devolution settlement by pushing power closer to people in communities, as promised in the referendum? Or do they want to retain all those powers here in Westminster? At best, the Bill is a missed opportunity to strengthen our Union; at worst, it threatens the future of the UK itself, giving—as we have heard today—the First Minister and the SNP all the grievances they need to turbo-charge their independence campaign. One has only to listen to the voices across our four nations to realise that, yet the Prime Minister and the Government have a tin ear.

A Front-Bench Conservative Member of the Welsh Assembly resigned because of the Bill’s disregard of and disrespect towards the nations of the UK. It is worth listening to what he had to say, which was that

“the Internal Market Bill has done nothing to lessen my anxieties about the dangers facing our 313 year old Union. Indeed they have been gravely aggravated by the decisions made in the last few days by the Prime Minister…I will feel it necessary to speak out against what I consider to be a lack of statecraft at this crucial time for the UK’s very survival”

as a multi-state Union.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to those comments by a very honourable man, one of my constituents, David Melding, the shadow Counsel General, a lifelong and loyal Conservative with whom I disagree on many issues. However, he was pointing out the pattern of behaviour from the Government of disrespect for devolution. I have just been speaking to the First Minister of Wales, and he has been clear this is a pattern of behaviour in everything from covid testing to the situation regarding the Bill. Does she agree that the Government need to take a completely different approach if they want the UK internal market to work, as we do?

[Lucy Powell]

I absolutely do. My hon. Friend has made some powerful points today about the disrespectful way in which the Welsh Government were consulted over the Bill, and he is absolutely right to highlight those. I am afraid that, if that continues, that will not be good at all.

Labour firmly believes that the UK single market is the foundation stone of our Union and brings huge economic benefits to the entire UK. That is why we support the principle behind the Bill and why our amendments are so necessary to improve the Bill in Committee. The UK internal market will be essential in recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. We know that we need mutual recognition for our internal market to function coherently, and we believe that we should use this opportunity to drive standards up further.

Our amendments are about the way in which we arrive at those minimum standards, not whether minimum standards are required. The common frameworks programme has been in place since 2017 and has led to some extremely positive outcomes, even in policy areas as complex and contentious as food standards. I am grateful to the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), for speaking to me last night about how the common frameworks programme is progressing. The Government and the devolved Governments should be commended for having established this collaborative forum. It could have proceeded with perhaps a little more speed and zeal, but we recognise the competing demands on the Government.

However, the Bill as it stands has the potential to undermine those processes entirely. On food standards, for example, where a common framework has already been agreed, if the Prime Minister were to pursue a free trade deal with the US, we may see chlorinated chicken imported into the UK and making its way on to Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish supermarket shelves, irrespective of the standards that they have worked so hard to agree through the common framework.

However, it is not only about food. The Bill could have far-reaching implications for the country’s ability to reduce waste and meet our net zero targets. Wales, as we heard, has high ambitions to reduce single-use plastic items, but the UK Government have proposed a less ambitious target for England. It would be tragic if the UK Government imposed a lower standard on Wales, when we should all be working together to eradicate plastics and keep standards as high as possible and going ever higher. Instead, my fear is that the Government are firing a starting pistol on a race to the bottom for regulatory standards across the United Kingdom, which we do not want to happen.

New clause 2 sets out a process that would underpin the common frameworks approach in good faith and within reasonable time commitments and would put the common frameworks programme on a clear statutory footing. We propose that, where common frameworks are already in place, Ministers should not be able to unilaterally override them via secondary legislation to impose lower standards on devolved Administrations without their consent, as the Bill would currently allow. Where any frameworks are currently in development, or as any new common frameworks become necessary, Ministers would need to allow a consensus-based negotiation via the framework process within a reasonable timeframe before making any further intervention via Westminster. Only if an agreement could not be reached through this process would a Minister be able to intervene and protect the internal market.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I agree with the vast majority of new clause 2, but this is the one point that really worries me, because it indicates that Westminster will have supremacy over Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Am I right in interpreting the end of the new clause in that manner? Surely the hon. Lady’s colleagues in Wales will be very concerned about any proposal that means that the Westminster Parliament will have supremacy over the Welsh Parliament.

[Lucy Powell]

This might be where we differ, as I was going to come on to say, because we believe that the ultimate arbiter of the UK internal market would need to be the UK Parliament. Our amendments seek to ensure that negotiations through common frameworks are conducted in good faith and given proper time and that this would need to come back to the UK Parliament in primary legislation, rather than secondary legislation, as is proposed.

Labour supports the need for some kind of independent body to arbitrate the effectiveness of the internal market. However, we want to ensure that this body is fully accountable to the views of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and, crucially, has proper teeth to be able to do what it needs to do. New clause 3 would therefore place a legal obligation on the CMA to monitor, to report and, most importantly, to consult with the devolved Administrations when discharging its new and enhanced duties.

I turn to the amendments tabled by the Scottish national party. While I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) said, it appears from the amendments that the SNP does not want a functioning internal market; it wants to frustrate one. I am afraid that some of its amendments would, in essence, give a veto to the Scottish Parliament of the internal UK single market. We cannot support that. We believe that the UK Parliament has to be the final arbiter of a functioning internal market because we believe in the UK, and the SNP does not. Its amendments would clog up the process and effectively offer one Parliament a veto.

As MPs, we have a responsibility and a duty to protect the interests of this country. The rule of law and the safety and security of our nation should be paramount. For the Conservative and Unionist party—let us remind ourselves of that name—to propose legislation that breaks the law and threatens the Union by putting rocket boosters under those campaigning for independence is near unthinkable. We hope that Ministers will accept our amendments to strengthen the Bill and to respect devolution as it stands and that they will table amendments at the next stage to strengthen the Bill further, so that we can keep our Union intact, get Brexit done, get the deal that this country was offered and move on.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I would like to thank all Members who have spoken today. Before I proceed to discuss part 4 in some detail and the amendments that have been tabled, I want to put the Bill into context, so that we can see where it sits. I would particularly like to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) and for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) for their support of the Bill. This is an economic Bill to ensure that UK companies can trade unhindered in every part of the UK, and their focus on the core issue of ensuring that free trade must be commended.

The United Kingdom’s internal market has been the bedrock of our shared prosperity for centuries. It has enabled businesses and individuals to thrive and has been the source of unhindered and open trade across the country. It has helped to demonstrate that, as a Union, our country is greater than the sum of its parts. The economies of our four nations within one United Kingdom are forged as one. Around 60% of Scottish and Welsh exports are to the rest of the UK, which is around three times as much as the exports to the rest of the EU. About 50% of Northern Ireland’s sales are to Great Britain. In some local authorities in Wales, over a quarter of workers commute across the border. So when we leave the transition period at the end of this year, and the laws made in Europe can now be made across the UK, hundreds of powers will flow from the EU to the devolved nations and the UK Government in an unprecedented transfer of powers. It is really important to remember that we are devolving powers down to those devolved nations.

The Bill will not limit the devolved Administrations from innovating, as some Members have suggested. If an Administration wanted to introduce minimum alcohol pricing laws in the future, as was mentioned earlier, our proposals in the Bill would have no effect on them as long as the rules did not have a discriminatory effect on goods from other parts of the UK. Nor would our proposals do anything to prevent any Administration from introducing rules and regulations on how and where products could be used, including bans on smoking in public places. As these powers return to the devolved Administrations and as we recover from covid, we must ensure that our economy is stronger than ever. That is why the Government have brought forward this legislation to guarantee the continued functioning of our internal market and to ensure that trade remains unhindered in the UK.

Our manifesto committed us to maintaining and strengthening the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market, and eight weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy presented to Parliament a White Paper that set out plans to preserve our internal market after the transition period. Since then, we have spoken to hundreds of businesses and business representative organisations across the UK to gather views and feedback on our proposals. Overwhelmingly, businesses supported our approach. For example, the British Chambers of Commerce stressed that a fragmented system would create additional costs, bureaucracy and supply chain challenges that could disrupt operations for firms across the UK. As these proposals progress, business communities will want practical considerations, not politics, at the heart of the debates on shaping solutions. I want to thank those businesses, along with colleagues across the devolved Administrations, for their engagement on the White Paper.

Turning now to the independent body that will be created by the provisions in part 4, we consulted on how to ensure that an independent monitoring and advice function could uphold the internal market. In response, to oversee the functioning of the internal market, the Bill sets up the Office for the Internal Market within the Competition and Markets Authority. In some of the contributions today, Members have talked about who will serve in the Office for the Internal Market. I must remind people that the Competition and Markets Authority sits aside from Government and the directors of its board can be seen on its website. It is open to everyone to see their expertise in their fields. These are not people who are passed on through grace and favour; these are technical roles and it is really important that we have the greatest expertise in that body.