United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Thursday 10th December 2020 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords message

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now come to consideration of the message from the House of Lords on the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, which is to be considered in accordance with the order of the House of 14 September.

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is engaged by Lords amendments 48B and 48C. If any Lords amendment engaging financial privilege is agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving Commons financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.

Before I call the Minister, I should say that hon. and right hon. Members will be aware that we have one hour for this debate, which means that I will impose an immediate five-minute time limit. However, that may end up being four minutes, depending on how long the Front Benchers take. I just want people to be aware of that.

After Clause 1

COMMON FRAMEWORKS PROCESS

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

I beg to move,

That this House disagrees with the Lords in their amendments 1B, 1C and 1D.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

With this it will be convenient to consider the following:

That this House agrees with the Lords in their amendments 8B, 8C, 8D, 8F, 8G, 8H, 8J and 8K, but disagrees with the Lords in their amendment 8L, insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments 13 and 56, and proposes amendment (a) to the Bill in lieu of Lords amendments 8L, 13 and 56.

That this House insists on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments 14 and 52 to 54 but does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 55.

That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 44.

That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 45, and proposes amendment (a) instead of the words left out by the Lords amendment.

That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment 47, and proposes amendment (a) to the Bill consequential upon the Lords amendment.

That this House disagrees with the Lords in their amendments 48B and 48C.

That this House agrees with the Lords in their amendment 50B, but disagrees with the Lords in their amendment 50C.

That this House agrees with the Lords in their amendment 51B.

[Paul Scully]

I will try to be brief in going through the amendments—but with some detail, Madam Deputy Speaker—to make sure that others can speak.

I am glad that, since our last debate on the Bill on Monday, there have been a number of very positive developments. I am delighted that the peers in the other place and the Government have worked together constructively to agree on a number of areas. However, it is clear that there are still a number of outstanding issues, which I will address today. I will set out the Government’s rationale and I call on this House to support the Government’s proposals.

I want to start with some of the positive developments, notably on part 5 and Lords reasons 14B, 45B, 52A, 53A, 54A and 55A. The Government have been clear throughout that they were committed to implementing the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. We were also clear that as a responsible Government we could not allow the economic integrity of the UK’s internal market to inadvertently be compromised by the unintended consequences of the protocol. That is why, through clauses in the Bill, we sought limited and reasonable steps to create a legal safety net by taking powers in reserve, whereby Ministers could guarantee the integrity of the United Kingdom and ensure that the Government were always able to deliver on their commitments to the people of Northern Ireland.

We sought those measures to guard against the possibility of not reaching agreement with the EU at the Joint Committee. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and his EU counterpart have reached an agreement in principle, I am pleased to say that the clauses that provided for the safety net are no longer needed and the Government are removing them from the Bill: that is, clauses 44, 45 and 47.

I am pleased that the other place has now also agreed to clauses 42, 43 and 46 and consequential amendments, which are purely about protecting Northern Ireland’s place in the UK customs territory and internal market, delivering unfettered access in line with the Northern Ireland protocol and codifying in legislation existing practice in terms of the Foreign Secretary notifying the European Commission on state aid.

Alongside that, and in line with the agreement in principle, we have tabled a new clause that will require the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to set out guidance for public authorities on how the state aid provisions of the protocol will work in practice, as well as consequential amendments as a result of removing clauses 44, 45 and 47. Guidance must take account of any declarations made by the EU and the Joint Committee, which would include the proposed EU declaration that forms part of the package agreed in principle by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. I call on the House to agree with the Government’s approach in this area.

I turn now to amendments 1B, 1C and 1D. Yesterday, noble Lords in the other place once again commended the importance of the Government’s continuing co-operation with the devolved Administrations on the common frameworks programme and reiterated their support for it. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the noble and learned Lord Hope for his considered intervention yesterday, and for all his thoughtful work on the Bill. However, while his new amendments would clarify the interaction between divergence agreed under common frameworks in the market access principles, they would still potentially undermine the certainty that the market access principles are designed to provide for business, because of the possibility of differing interpretations of what is permitted under an agreement. Moreover, as I set out on Monday, the amendments could create a broad exclusions regime. In itself, that denies businesses and consumers much needed clarity about the terms of trade within which they operate.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind the House that common frameworks are processes for negotiation and reaching agreement, and are not in themselves a policy outcome. Wholesale exclusions from the market access principles of agreement reached through the common frameworks process could therefore lead to the unacceptable risk of harmful trade barriers being erected across the UK. Such barriers could not be erected under the EU system unless justified and notified to the Commission, and they are undesirable in our own UK internal market. For those reasons, I respectfully suggest that the approach put forward in the amendments is not appropriate.

I have said previously that the Government are committed to completing the delivery of the common frameworks programme and protecting these areas of co-operation to the benefit of jobs, people and livelihoods. We welcome the support of hon. and right hon. Members here in achieving that. However, amendments 1B, 1C and 1D have considerable drawbacks and I therefore call on the House to disagree with them.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 8L. I remind the House that, in drafting the Bill, and clause 10 specifically, the Government designed an exclusions approach that achieves a careful balance. It sits within the fundamental framework of the market access principles, which protect the UK’s highly integrated internal market, but allows the Government to remove very targeted and specific policy areas from scope, so it can continue to operate for the particular conditions, where they are needed, under the bespoke constraints that are relevant to those circumstances. Let me repeat the point for emphasis: we agree that there is a need for an exclusions regime, but one that is carefully drafted and provides certainty for business.

I am therefore disappointed that the other place has again voted to upset that careful balance with an altered, but still fundamentally flawed, expansive list. It would render the protections and benefits of the internal market proposals under part 1 meaningless. This would allow unnecessary trade barriers and unjustifiable costs to businesses and consumers.

Amendment 8L captures all kinds of public policy objectives and only requires a new regulation to make a contribution to any of the aims in the list. That means that almost any regulation that the UK Government or the devolved Administrations propose in the future could be excluded from the scope of the market access principles. I therefore call on the House to disagree with amendments 8L, 13 and 56, and agree with the Government’s amendments in lieu.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I appreciate that the Minister was as brief as he could be, given that he took interventions, but I think we will have to start with a time limit of four minutes rather than five minutes.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I will try to be as brief as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to say to the Minister that we should note the progress made in the removal of the law-breaking clauses from part 5. What has essentially happened here is that the Joint Committee set up to deal with the outstanding issues on the Northern Ireland protocol has dealt with the issues on the Northern Ireland protocol. We are in a slightly through-the-looking-glass world here. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster this week described Maroš Šefčovič, the Vice President of the Commission, and his team as displaying

“pragmatism, collaborative spirit and determination to get a deal done that would work for both sides.”—[Official Report, 9 December 2020; Vol. 685, c. 847.]

These are the same people the Prime Minister described in his Second Reading speech in September as being

“willing to go to extreme and unreasonable lengths”.—[Official Report, 14 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 42.]

He also said that they had engaged in an “extraordinary threat” and refused to take the “revolver off the table”.

There are two conclusions we can draw from this sequence of events. The first is that Mr Šefčovič has changed his whole character, attitude and personality in three months; the other is the Prime Minister has a man who will make up any old nonsense for political advantage. I tend to the latter view.