United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alexander Stafford]

I hate to rehash the arguments, but the United Kingdom did vote to leave the European Union. I am sure that Mrs Miggins at 34 Acacia Avenue in my constituency did not vote to leave the European Union either, but we are still part of the same family and we are leaving. We cannot balkanise our country. We cannot split up this family. That is the fundamental difference between Government Members and Opposition Members. We see this as a family—a family of nations; a family of people that we love. We want to keep us together, and we will not parcel off our great country. I will not be ashamed of promoting what this country voted for.

I turn to Government new clause 12, which enables the Secretary of State to issue guidance relating to part 1 of the Bill explaining how the UK internal market principles operate, in order to support traders, regulatory authorities and the public. That guidance will help us all to understand and benefit from the Bill, which will increase the internal market. Again, I emphasise that this Bill is about the market, not politics. It is not an independence Bill or a Brexit Bill; it is a business Bill—a Bill to get businesses going and to recover our economy.

The House must pass this Bill, which protects our domestic markets, rejects separatism and division, eliminates chaos and confusion, ensures transparency and impartiality, and strengthens our world-beating standards. I believe that in doing that, the Bill, with the Government amendments, will create a better business environment for all.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I hope that my hon. Friends will forgive me if I do not go down exactly the same route as some of the conversations we have had recently. I had a good deal to say yesterday on the previous part of the Bill, and I will not repeat that, because I see my good friend the Minister in his place, no doubt ready to ensure that amendment 66 is moved at the end of the day. He knows—as do you, Ms McDonagh—that since that is the case, my amendment 4 will not need to be moved. Having made sure that he will remember to move amendment 66, I can now move on to the stand part debate.

I am a little prejudiced here; a name like Robert James MacGillivray Neill is probably indicative that my heritage comes from various parts of the United Kingdom, and I am very proud of my Scots background. I might add that the weekend after the European Union referendum, in which everybody knows I campaigned vigorously to remain in the EU, I happened to come across my call certificate to the Irish Bar via King’s Inns in Dublin. Who knows, it might come in handy one day, but it reminded me that there are huge and deep-rooted linkages between the countries of the United Kingdom. We can talk about what are the right governance arrangements between them, but there are personal interdependencies and economic interdependencies that benefit us all. I hope that later this evening we are going to be able to deal with a number of those concerns. No doubt there is more to discuss, but, having banked that progress, I want to say that the rest of the Bill is desirable.

That is why the thrust of the Bill is desirable and, as I said yesterday, I have no trouble supporting it all, apart from my concerns about part 5.

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[Anne McLaughlin]

rose—

[Sir Robert Neill]

I am sure the hon. Lady would be disappointed if she did not get every speaker to give way to her at some point, so I will add myself to her set.

[Anne McLaughlin]

If the hon. Gentleman is perfectly happy for our separate legal systems to mean that someone has to be qualified in the given jurisdiction, is he not uncomfortable with the idea that teachers who learn to teach, or who do not get a teaching qualification, in one country can move to another country and teach there? If he is perfectly happy with that, may I talk about—and will he go to the Home Secretary on this—all the teachers I know who have come to this country from other countries across the world, are not allowed to transfer their qualifications and are therefore not allowed to work? If he is happy to provide support on that, I will perhaps think about what he has to say.

[Sir Robert Neill]

The first point is that there have to be professional qualifications in order to recognise the people qualified. The Bill does not seem to cause any difficulty about that. I was also making the point that the carve-out on legal qualifications accepts that there are legitimate areas of difference, but there are many other areas where it is entirely legitimate for us to try to work together as a single UK market. I would have therefore thought that the Bill was balanced and proportionate in that regard. I cited services and the importance of the financial services sector, both north and south of the border, as a key example of that. I hope that after the transition period we will also continue our good links with the financial services sector in Dublin, where a number of English legal and professional firms have bases because of those links. The Bill is not malign in any of those regards.

Although the Bill does not and need not cover this, I hope as we go forward that we will see what can be done to help other parts of the broader British family that would desire access to our new internal market—for example, the Crown dependencies, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Many of their financial sectors— their trust arrangements and their banking fund arrangements—are importantly and closely linked to the City of London and the UK. The Justice Committee has oversight of the Ministry of Justice’s work on the relationships with the Crown dependencies, and I think there is a great desire to see how we can strengthen the access between them and the UK. The aspiration for the Crown dependencies to have free and unfettered access to the UK market is something we should look to explore with them on a reciprocal basis.

That particularly and specifically applies to our British territory of Gibraltar—as you know, Ms McDonagh, I have the honour to be the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar. It is a well expressed intention of the Gibraltar Government, supported by all parties in Gibraltar’s Parliament, to have access to, in effect, a free trade area with the United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will take that back to his colleagues in the Government, because it ought to be a no-brainer as we go forward. It causes the United Kingdom no difficulty, and it would be of considerable reassurance to the people of Gibraltar, who despite having voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, none the less trumped even that and asserted their membership of the British family and the desire to remain with the United Kingdom and not to be coerced, sometimes, by their neighbours. Supporting them by making sure they have full access to the internal market ought to be a high priority, both practically and morally, for the United Kingdom Government.

Finally, there is one area that we can perhaps simplify. I am not generally in favour of simplifying or lowering food standards, and I am certainly not in favour of lowering environmental or food standards as we leave the EU or in any future free trade deal, but there is one area, ironically, where leaving the EU may give us something we can turn to our advantage, and that relates to public procurement and, in particular, local authority procurement.

As a number of hon. Members know, I served in local government for many years before I came into this House, and I was local government Minister for the first half of the coalition. One of the genuine complaints I had from councils of all political complexions was about the complexity of going through the OJEU—Official Journal of the European Union—process, where contracts over a fairly basic level had to be advertised through a pretty bureaucratic process. That had the no doubt laudable objective of ensuring that firms across the single market could access those contracts, although, in practice, doing a contract in Bromley, Merton or wherever was not likely to be attractive to a small-sized firm of builders in Poland or the Czech Republic.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

rose—

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[Sir Robert Neill]

I will certainly give way to my hon. Friend, who knows a great deal about this.

[David Simmonds]

Does my hon. Friend note, as I do, that the OJEU process in the United Kingdom resulted in less than 1% of procurement exercises yielding a bid from outside the United Kingdom?

[Sir Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend, whose experience in local government is huge and much more recent than mine, is absolutely right. That is the irony—what was a theoretical process none the less caused considerable delay and cost for local authorities seeking to carry out a range of capital works. I hope the Government will say, “Let’s seize the advantage and simplify the public procurement process.”

For a raft of reasons that have been well rehearsed and that I need not repeat, local authorities are hard pressed for cash, and we could certainly make their lives easier by enabling them to save money in the way they do their procurement. We can make it easier for them to adopt a policy of sourcing contractors locally, as they already try to do, so that they can be drivers of support for businesses in their area, without needing to parcel up contracts artificially, as was historically the case to avoid the need to go through the OJEU process. That is one area where I hope the Minister, whose own experience in local government is considerable, will talk urgently and swiftly to his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government so that we can sit down with the local government sector and get rapid reform of local government procurement rules.

So without more ado, I commend the Bill, now that the little obstacle that might potentially have been in its way has, I hope, been resolved. We can now get on with the serious business of making the best of what is, to be frank, a bad job. This is not where I wanted to be, but it is in the interests of the country that we have a proper working set of rules to enhance the internal market in the United Kingdom.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of the amendments tabled by the Labour Front-Bench team, and to put on the record my opposition to the Bill which, as has been pointed out by many, risks undermining devolution by driving a wedge between our Government and the devolved Administrations and infringing on the devolution settlement. The Trades Union Congress is particularly concerned that, unless specifically exempted, restrictions may be placed on the ability of devolved authorities to adopt new or revised regulations to support progressive public policy objectives, which may have a direct or indirect discriminatory impact.

Fundamentally, this legislation shamefully undermines the basis of the Good Friday agreement, a solemnly agreed international treaty that laid the basis for peace in Ireland. Ministers should not need reminding that the withdrawal agreement is part of a binding international treaty, and that breaching a treaty breaches international law. However, we should not be surprised, because the Conservative party has repeatedly shown contempt for international law and collaboration. There are now real problems with Britain’s approach to international law, particularly with regard to the protection of human rights in the UK.

In many areas, particularly in the spheres of immigration control, national security, counter-terrorism, freedom of association and speech and the treatment of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, UK law has frequently been the subject of criticism from experts such as the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Council of Europe. Recently, we also learned that the UK is to resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite concerns that they could be used against civilians in Yemen, in complete violation of international humanitarian law. Today, the Government are increasing the healthcare charge for migrants, widely thought to impinge on fundamental human rights. It is therefore clear from the Bill and many contributions from Government Members that there is little or no respect for democracy, devolution or international diplomacy on the Government Benches.

My contribution is brief, but I conclude by saying that, while some of the Government’s amendments aim to correct the Government’s approach, they do little fundamentally to resolve the vast array of problems with the Bill as a whole.