United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Sally-Ann Hart Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gerald Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, but it is certainly clear to me from comments I have heard from the Government side of the Chamber that lots of people do not understand devolution. Devolution is about giving powers to those devolved nations to make the decisions for themselves, and that is where some Government Members struggle.

In Wales, the Welsh Government have, as we have heard, stated that the Bill is an attack on democracy and an affront to the people of Wales, not to mention Scotland and Northern Ireland, who have voted in favour of devolution on numerous occasions. As we have heard, one of the Conservatives’ long-standing Senedd Members has resigned as shadow Counsel General over the Bill, commenting that:

“The publication today of 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.”

That is from a well-respected Member in the Welsh Senedd, and of course we have heard very clear concerns from three former Conservative Prime Ministers and two former Labour ones—in fact from all living Prime Ministers.

One of the foundations of the devolution delivered by the Labour Government for Wales and Scotland in 1997 and developed over the past 20 years has been the right of devolved nations to set their own priorities on key spending areas. The explanatory notes to the Bill state:

“Part 6 grants power to a UK Minister of the Crown to provide funding across…economic development, infrastructure, culture, sporting activities, and international educational and training activities and exchanges.”

Of course, I welcome any additional funding or assistance that would benefit Wales and my constituents. However, it is not for the UK Government to play Father Christmas and pull those pet projects out of the air. Any additional funding should be delivered by devolved Governments in line with what has been developed over the past 20 years, in a strategic way involving local authorities and local stakeholders. If the Government have their way, spending decisions previously made in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast will now be made in London, and that flies in the face of devolution.

The Government argue that this Bill strengthens the Union on the grounds that it will give the UK Government new powers to spend across all four nations, but I believe that it will have exactly the opposite effect. A Government official reportedly told Politico that the spending powers would be used sparingly but demonstrated that the

“devolve and forget approach of the Blair/Brown years”

was over. But this Bill provides a risk that the UK Government will now be able to undermine the spending decisions and policy priorities of devolved Administrations.

It is no accident that we have yet to receive clarity on the UK shared prosperity fund, after almost two years of waiting. The Government stated that the consultation should have been held in 2018 and that Wales would not lose a penny compared with what we have received until now from the UK structural funds. That funding was based on genuine need, not on patronage or favour. It is essential that any funding Wales now receives is allocated in a similar way, involving the Welsh Government and local authorities in Wales in determining and delivering on local priorities.

On Second Reading, I supported the reasoned amendment tabled by my hon. and right hon. Friends declining to give the Bill a Second Reading and I voted against the Bill. I will continue to oppose this Bill until the Prime Minister and the Government reconsider and come up with a way to ensure that the devolved settlement is preserved and the Union is intact.

The Government must negotiate in good faith with the EU and devolved nations, instead of creating division and discord that puts getting a deal at risk. So my message to the Prime Minister is this: please get back around the table and negotiate properly and stop posturing. We do not have time for distractions like this when a deal is on the line. We need leadership from the Prime Minister, not theatrics.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

The United Kingdom of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales is the most successful union of nations the world has known. The Bill will ensure that we continue to thrive as a United Kingdom and that unfettered trade across our four nations continues.

I oppose the Opposition amendments to clauses 46 and 47, although I hear the reasoned speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). It is essential that the UK Government have powers to provide financial assistance for economic development throughout the UK, as has been vital during coronavirus and our recovery from the pandemic. The existing clauses will help the Government to deliver on our commitments to replace EU funding programmes, including by delivering a shared prosperity fund to replace the bureaucratic EU structural funds.

The clauses are consistent with the Government’s levelling-up agenda throughout the whole UK. They better position England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales to take advantage of opportunities for future growth and develop our place in the world as a united and independent nation. Our nations—all of them—require investment in and support for our communities, businesses, infrastructure, sport, education and training, among many other policy areas. The Bill will create new opportunities for the Government to do that.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I will not.

By strengthening our internal market, our nations’ economies will be protected. Take Scotland, for example: 60% of Scottish exports, worth more than £50 billion per year, go to other parts of the United Kingdom. The Bill will mean more powers for all parts of the United Kingdom and ensure that businesses can continue to trade across our country, avoiding new burdens and barriers, protecting jobs and supporting our recovery from coronavirus.

The British public want us to get on with delivering Brexit and it is our responsibility to do so.

[Kirsten Oswald]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sally-Ann Hart]

No.

Faced with a choice of supporting our Union or the European Union, I know whose side I am on; do you?

[Chris Bryant]

There is nothing like a dame, Dame Rosie.

This debate today! I remember sitting in the theatre a few years ago—do you remember the theatre?—and there was a couple in front of me who had had a terrible row. The woman turned to the man and said, just as the curtain was coming up, “The worst of it is that you’re so bloody ‘paytronising’.” and he kissed her on the forehead and said, “It’s ‘patronising’, dear.” If I am honest, I feel we have all patronised each other to death today. Actually, there are lots of areas where there could be some common ground, if we chose to try to find it, which is what I shall try to do in my speech.

Let me start with principles, because they should inform all the legislation that we support. The first principle must surely be—I say this as a proud socialist; I have never run away from the word “socialist”, even when Tony, whom I much admired, was leader of the Labour party—that any country performs best when it is most equal. When it is most equal, a country is happier, more successful economically and a better country to live in.

Secondly, decisions about policies and, for that matter, about funding are best made closest to the people that they most directly affect. I was a Government Minister for around 20 minutes, and my experience was that it is all very well coming up with all these grand ideas, sitting in an office in Westminster, but if they cannot be delivered because they do not fit alongside other policies, is just a waste of time—someone would just be wasting their own energy dreaming up legislation, and although they might buff their fingernails at the end of the day, they would not have actually got their hands dirty and achieved anything.

Thirdly, no single policy area stands alone. I have tried to do a lot of work on acquired brain injury over the past few years; it is an issue that affects every single Government Department—the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice and so many other policy areas, including the Treasury, of course. My experience is that unless we manage to devise policies that fit with other policies, we are not going to achieve what we could possibly achieve. Perhaps that is just because I believe that we achieve far more by our common endeavour than we do by going it alone.

All that is why I am afraid to say to the people with whom I am often in the same Lobby, but not so much this evening, that I believe in the Union. I believe that Wales is stronger in the Union and—I hate to say this to the people I disagree with in many ways—but I am also still a Unionist when it comes to the European Union. I know that I am not meant to raise that decision anymore, and that that battle is meant to be done, but—[Interruption.] Yes, I did not get the memo, but I will doubtless be sent it later.

I say all these things because I represent one of the poorest constituencies in the UK, one of the poorest constituencies in Wales and one of the poorest constituencies in the whole European Union. I was proud when we kept on getting structural funds in Wales. One of the things that I thought was clever about structural funds was that the funding had to be matched. It always had to sit alongside decisions made locally and money that was raised locally, so there was a degree of devolved decision in there.

I hate to say this, Dame Rosie, but I have a list of things that the Rhonda needs. We need to finish the Rhondda Fach relief road. I would like to improve the railway so that people can get into work much quicker, with bigger trains and proper toilets. I would like to unblock Stag Square in Treorchy and, for that matter, the roundabout outside Asda. I would like to rebuild the powerhouse in Tonypandy, which is falling apart. I would like proper cycle routes up both valleys. I would like a fully funded youth service which, unfortunately, has been cut in pretty much every part of the UK over the past 10 years.

This year has been—there is a four-letter word for it, but I am not allowed to use it—not very good in the Rhondda. We have had terrible flooding. A quarter of all the floods in the whole of the UK were just in my constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) has experienced similar. One of the culverts will cost £300,000 to be mended, and about £140 million-worth of work needs to be done to ensure that people’s homes are safe. I do not think that that should be met within the normal envelope of the Barnett formula, because I think that is part of us being a Union of four nations. I have repeatedly asked the Prime Minister for that money, and the Prime Minister has actually said at the Dispatch Box that we will get it, but it has not come and, of course, that makes me worried, because if Rhondda Cynon Taff has to do that work and has to find the money from elsewhere, there is a real danger that lots of other budgets will be slashed to the bone, and, if I am honest, things are already pretty threadbare—if I am not mixing my metaphors.

The one issue that I have had rows with the former Welsh Secretary about—he is not here—is that Wales and many mining constituencies across the UK have former coal tips. They are the responsibility of the Coal Authority and, of course, the problems that stem from them today predate devolution, because nearly all of them were closed long before devolution came to pass—certainly all the ones in the Rhondda. I gather that the Coal Authority, which is an agency of the Westminster Government under the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has produced a new report, or is in the process of doing so, which is likely to suggest that a lot of those tips need a lot of investment to be made safe.

Just like those in Nottingham or Durham or wherever else in the UK, including in Scotland for that matter, I think that the coal tips in the Rhondda are a UK responsibility—a moral responsibility, even if not a legal responsibility—and we need to ensure that they are safe. A tip in Tylorstown collapsed in the floods earlier this year, and 60,000 tonnes of material needs to be moved, which is a phenomenal job of work for a relatively small local authority to undertake. It is doing it because it has to be done, otherwise there is a real danger of further slippage if there is much more serious flooding later this year. However, we still have not had the guarantee from the Westminster Government that the £1.2 million, which would seem a tiny amount to most people, will come our way.

Now, I actually think that clause 46 is both unnecessary and impotent. It is unnecessary because the Government could do every single thing in clause 46 without it. I do not think it is needed at all, but, equally importantly, I think it is impotent. Let us say for the sake of argument that the Government decided, having heard my pleas for a youth service in the Rhondda and to do up the powerhouse in Tonypandy, that they were going to spend money on a brand-new youth service facility in Tonypandy in the powerhouse. “Hurrah!”, I would go. They would not be able to do it without the local authority agreeing to it because they would have to get planning permission and work with the transport facilities. They would have to make sure that people were available to work in it and that it was sustainable, so it would be impossible to implement that simply on the basis of clause 46. I say gently to some of my colleagues that I think they have slightly over-egged the argument that suddenly Westminster will descend and plant things in constituencies, because I do not think it will be able to. I think this is very poorly drafted legislation, as it happens.