United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Marco Longhi and Alan Brown

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

It is a kind of pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie). He strikes a conciliatory tone and he sounds reasonable, but the bottom line is that he talks complete tosh. Nobody in the SNP is arguing against preserving the UK internal market, but this Bill does not preserve the internal market; it actually undermines Scotland’s position, because it means we can be forced to accept conditions imposed on us by Westminster. It undermines devolution for the very same reason.

The hon. Gentleman says that the Bill allows the UK Government to spend more money in Scotland. That is bypassing the devolution settlement. There is nothing to stop the UK Government working with the Scottish Government at the moment to give the Scottish Government more money to spend on infrastructure and to discuss with them our needs in Scotland.

The hon. Gentleman supports a Prime Minister who in the past has said:

“A pound spent in Croydon is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde.”

A Prime Minister who wanted the Barnett formula scrapped. A Prime Minister who said:

“I do think it is pretty monstrous that you have free care for the elderly in Scotland and no tuition fees…when you still get considerable subsidies from the rest of the UK”.

Where is the respect for devolution and for the Scottish Government making their own policy decisions in Scotland? It is non-existent.

As we have heard, clause 46 is the biggest power grab ever, allowing the UK Government to impose spending decisions on Scotland, bypassing the elected Government of Scotland. We have heard that it will be additional money, but where is the proof? This allows the Tory Government to cut the Scottish block grant and then spend that money for its own political gain, pretending that it is top-up money when it is not. It is a con trick.

The first sentence of clause 46 includes the provision:

“A Minister of the Crown may….provide financial assistance to any person”.

Given the Tory track record—as we have heard, they have awarded a ferry contract to a company with no ferries, awarded PPE contracts to their cronies and outsourced the track and trace scheme, for example—how can we trust their spending judgments and their integrity to spend money in Scotland, supposedly for our benefit?

Scotland previously relied on EU structural funds to help to plug shortfalls from Westminster, and now we are supposed to trust the UK prosperity fund, which sits in the Department of English communities and local government, managed by a Secretary of State who ploughed the English towns fund money into Tory marginal seats and who made an unlawful planning decision to save a Tory donor millions of pounds. There is no way we can trust him to look after the needs of Scotland. We cannot trust the Tory Government with clause 46 and, to rub salt in the wounds, clause 47 allows returns and punitive interest to be applied to any spending that comes through clause 46.

Clause 48 allows Westminster to decide what is and is not allowed with state aid. Let us look at farming, for example. The Scottish Government may wish to pay headage figures for lamb and beef production, but the UK Government could overrule that if they do not support English farmers in the same way. If we get to the stage where the free marketeers have their way and UK Government state subsidy is eliminated for certain sectors, by default, the Scottish sectors will also have their rug pulled from under them because of state aid rules. How does that respect devolution? When it comes to farming, the UK Government have form, previously having stolen the common agricultural policy convergence uplift money from the EU.

We know the risk of imports of chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef. However, Argentinian beef could come in and undercut the market. Genetically modified crops could be imposed in Scotland. We have more robust climate change targets that could now be overruled by Westminster. The Government might impose this Bill on the Scottish Parliament against its will, but they are going to lose the independence argument.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of the Government’s Bill and their amendments. This Bill exposes an inherent weakness in the withdrawal agreement—namely, that while the EU and UK Government must use best endeavours and act in good faith to reach an agreement, it does not spell out a clear course of action if either or both of those criteria are not met. We all know that the EU has become accustomed to a United Kingdom that repeatedly comes back to the table asking for an extension, and maybe this is why the EU’s format of negotiation is a sequencing one, meaning that it agrees to move forward only once an agreement has been reached on a previous matter. This has the effect of incurring huge delays, and the EU’s unwillingness to multitask must have a purpose—namely, continuous delays desirable to the EU and damaging to the UK’s prospects of a good deal.

Is the sequencing approach to negotiating a demonstration of using best endeavours or negotiating in good faith? I submit that it is not. It is now clear to most objective observers that the EU’s current interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol is to use it as a lever in the negotiations. How is that a demonstration of negotiating in good faith? This Bill will ensure that Northern Ireland remains part of the UK’s customs territory and that Northern Ireland businesses retain unfettered access to GB markets. I must, however, place on record that more needs to be done in relation to Northern Ireland, having heard very powerful and compelling speeches from Unionist colleagues today and previously.

We know that the withdrawal agreement provided for the Joint Committee to set out heads of terms of a future deal, but the prospect of there being a timely and full agreement now appears unlikely. Why does the EU fail to agree at the Joint Committee on a single exemption from controls and tariffs for any goods flowing between GB and Northern Ireland? Is that behaviour consistent with best endeavours and good faith? Again, I submit that it is not. Why is it failing to agree exemptions at the Joint Committee on food checks for food moving between GB and Northern Ireland when we have been a member of the EU for 40 years and set standards ourselves? However, more fundamentally, what country and what Government in their right mind would devolve such fundamental sovereign powers to a foreign entity so that it would have the right to decide whether we can move our own food around our own Union of nations, as we have done for centuries? If we do not deliver this Bill, the EU will also have jurisdiction over how state aid decisions are made, for example on bail-outs related to covid or any future crisis.

For all those reasons, the Bill is about the delivery of Brexit and about sovereignty. It puts into law the ability for the Government to take action if a deal is not agreed. It delivers on an instruction that the good people of Dudley, and across our Union, gave this place not only in the 2016 referendum but at the last general election. We should, and must, press on with this.