United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

I will, if I may, focus on the amendments that seek to remove the entirety of part 5 of the Bill, which is its most controversial part because of the remark by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that it would breach international law. That remark proved as incendiary in the other place as it did in Brussels, and I can well understand the consternation that greeted it at the other end of the corridor. However, we must remember that the purpose of the Bill, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) pointed out, is straightforwardly to ensure that trade can flow freely within the internal market of the United Kingdom.

The internal market is specifically preserved and protected by the Act of Union 1800. Equal access to the internal market is therefore a constitutional right of the people of Northern Ireland, as, in due course, will be parity of treatment in the future trade relationship with the European Union. Pursuant to the Belfast-Good Friday agreement, that right should not be disturbed without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. However, considerable difficulties arise under the terms of the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. It became increasingly clear during the negotiations with the European Union that the EU was intent on using the provisions of the withdrawal agreement as leverage in the negotiations on the future relationship. Those provisions could disrupt UK state aid policy and cause considerable friction in trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Part 5 of the Bill, and the forthcoming Taxation (Post-Transition Period) Bill, therefore seek quite properly to neutralise that potentially detrimental effect. However, it must be remembered, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) pointed out, that the powers in part 5 do not come into effect until such time as the Secretary of State makes a commencement order, and that can happen only with the approval of this House.

The Government have a positive duty to safeguard the integrity of the UK’s internal market, and to take whatever action is lawful in order to do that. The Bill gives the Government the power to take necessary action to neutralise the abusive implementation by the European Union of the provisions of the withdrawal agreement, including the Northern Ireland protocol. Furthermore, the same provisions safeguard against the potential breach of the Belfast-Good Friday agreement by ensuring that the constitutional rights set out in article 6 of the Act of Union are not infringed.

There can be no doubt as to the constitutional propriety of Parliament enacting these provisions. Parliament is sovereign; that is the fundamental principle of the constitution of this country. Moreover, and importantly, it is a principle that is specifically reasserted in section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020, the statute that brought the withdrawal agreement into domestic law, notwithstanding the direct effect provisions of the withdrawal agreement.

It is to be hoped that a free trade agreement will shortly be concluded. If it is, there will be no need to trigger the powers in part 5 of the Bill, but as my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, this Bill acts as a safety net. It is therefore clearly in the national interest that these provisions be reinstated in the Bill, and I urge hon. Members to vote accordingly this evening.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

My 10-year-old son asked me what we were debating this evening. I confessed it was Brexit, to which he replied, “Not again! Haven’t you been doing that for a while?”. I tried to come up with an analogy to explain why we are still doing this, and I compared it with the Apollo programme, which had a commitment, an obvious mission—to land a man on the moon—a clear tactical goal with a strategic objective. Our 2016 referendum could not have been more different. Think back to the question that we were asked: “Should the UK remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”. In the case of the moon landing, the difference between success and failure was clear to absolutely everybody, but what “leave” meant was never formally articulated or agreed.

The world watched with trepidation as Apollo 11 completed its mission, targeting not just the moon, but a specific place on its surface. Years later, a global audience would witness another journey into the unknown. This time, it was Brexit that was given the green light to launch—but without our formally agreeing a specific destination. There was a vast spectrum to land in, and four years later, we continue to dissect the issue in detail. Now, with talks going down to the wire, we have to think the previously unthinkable and prepare for the possibility of no deal. To be clear, I absolutely respect the result of the referendum; I care, though, about where this project lands, and that is what we are discussing today.

If we step back from the details of the battle, we begin to appreciate the impact a no-deal Brexit will have on global Britain. The world order that we helped to create after 1945 and globalised after the fall of the Soviet Union is in decline. Threats are diversifying and becoming more complex at the very time that we are witnessing a decline in western resolve—in what we believe in, stand for, and are willing to defend. As the UK assumes the G7 presidency and hosts COP26, we will have the chance to stand tall with a new White House Administration, invigorated, and the chance to repair our frail world order and contest the rise of authoritarian state and non-state actors, which for too long have been given free rein to pursue their own agendas.

Yet here we are, seemingly willing to retreat from the world stage, potentially distancing ourselves from the continent and, indeed, the US by entertaining the prospect of no deal only a week after we cut our overseas aid budget. Our soft power, arguably the most influential in the world, has already been bruised by the UK’s willingness, however good our intentions, to flout international law by breaching the withdrawal agreement. Indeed, we are here today to put back the offending part 5, which was removed by the Lords because of the wider implication that the UK was willing to breach international law.

I am pleased that the Government intend to remove clauses 44, 45 and 47 in the event that a trade deal is confirmed, but it would be an abject failure of statecraft to leave the EU with no deal. If more time is required, so be it. We will live with the consequences for years—indeed, decades. We must summon the political courage to get this right. The west is about to regroup. Our voice, our experience and our leadership are needed on the global stage.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to follow that thoughtful speech from the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). I have a daughter who is younger than the Brexit negotiations, and I think she would probably concur with his son.

I have been around enough tortuous, protracted negotiations in Northern Ireland to know that when a U-turn is being executed, it is polite to let it be done, so I welcome the apparent acknowledgement that the clauses relating to the breach of the protocol will be removed, but it is fair to point out just how damaging their inclusion was in the first place. That proposal to breach international law has proven to be, as many of us said when we discussed this in September, cack-handed and a massive own goal. Threatening the operation of the protocol again through the Taxation (Post Transition Period) Bill would be equally wrong-headed, reckless and counterproductive, and I hope that that will be affirmed before legislation is taken forward. The Joint Committee is, as we all know, the place to resolve issues relating to the protocol. Far from showing that the UK is serious about a deal, as the Government tried to do with this Bill, they have shown that it is untrustworthy. That undermined the very UK negotiators who were trying, through the Joint Committee, to get resolution on some of these issues.

It is fair to say that nobody loves the protocol. It is not beloved in Northern Ireland, but it is a response to the challenges presented by Brexit—challenges that we and others have sounded the alarm on for years before and since 2016. It is a response to decisions made on the Government Benches. The irony is that that is the threat to the Union. I see that my colleagues from Northern Ireland are no longer here, but it is worth saying that those of us in the centre and nationalists in Northern Ireland were minding our own business in 2016 when this was thrust upon us. In fact, it is Brexit, laying out the imbalances in the United Kingdom, that is the threat to the Union. Those of us who got into politics not to bang on about constitutional change but to improve people’s lives can get on with doing that while others appear to make our case for us.

Neither the EU nor the UK is happy about what the protocol means, so we have to think about how it feels to those of us in Northern Ireland, but it is a necessary protection from Brexit. Businesses do not want it to be repudiated and trashed. They want it to be implemented. Moves such as those we have seen leave Northern Ireland more exposed. They leave us looking vulnerable to those who want to invest and are trying to develop their businesses. The point of the protocol was to take Northern Ireland and its complexities and fragilities off the table and try to manage those, rather than undermine them. It remains a fact—one that is always worth repeating—that if people really want to minimise the friction between Britain and Northern Ireland, the way to do that is a closer EU-UK relationship, but somehow that argument never gets made.

I turn to the amendments. We welcome the clear message that the Lords sought to send about good faith, the rule of law and devolution, including the need to enhance the duty to consult and co-operate with devolved Administrations. I will not repeat the points that I made when we discussed this legislation in September, but it is important to say that devolution—local decisions in local hands—is a fundamental part of the Good Friday agreement. The proposals in the Bill offend devolution, which is supported by people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We agree with the Lords’ attempt to offer us protection against that direct overrule and trespass into that settlement.

All that is left to say is that it is time to get this done. I regret that in the biggest economic contraction in living memory, no deal is still somehow on the table, and I urge those who have this decision before them to make it and get this sorted.