Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Debate between Wendy Chamberlain and Kevin Hollinrake

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

It is a shame that the Bill has been rushed through the House so rapidly. Members have had a short amount of time in which to get to grips with a rather technical and lengthy piece of legislation. The small number of amendments tabled today speaks to the incredibly tight time limits that have been put in place. Given the impact of the legislation on businesses operating across Northern Ireland and Great Britain, that concerns me, and it should concern us all.

For me, the Bill speaks to the heart of the many contradictions of Brexit—between what was promised in 2016 and what is being delivered today. We were told that Parliament will take back control, but this Executive, peopled by the same individuals who made those promises, have arguably more contempt for the legislature than any before them. That is summed up by an incredibly depressing piece of legislation, presented a couple of weeks ago, to repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which attempts to engineer the first ever return of powers from the legislature to the Executive in our history.

However, the contradictions do not end there. A case in point is clause 6 of this Bill on the uprating of fuel duty for aviation gasoline, which, for me, is a microcosm of the whole Brexit process. The whole point of Brexit was to get our sovereignty back—was it not?—so that we could finally write our own laws rather than follow bureaucratic regulations from Brussels, the sort of stiflingly dull directives with boring names such as EU energy tax directive (Council Directive 2003/96/EC). We might have thought that directive was exactly the sort of red tape we would finally cut through in Brexit Britain, and yet the Bill proves that the reality is far removed from the rhetoric, because EU energy tax directive (Council Directive 2003/96/EC), which ensures that across the EU a minimum level of tax is applied on a whole type of aircraft fuel, is in this Bill being applied across the whole of the UK.

The explanatory notes rather patriotically inform us that,

“the UK is not bound to comply with the Directive in respect of Great Britain (GB) from 1 January 2021,”

but none the less Great Britain is complying with it anyway. Does that not say a lot about Brexit and the current trade negotiations, where effectively the Government have been toying with the idea of taking maximum tariff pain now in order to allow regulatory divergence that, in all likelihood, is not going to take place?

Turning now to the amendments, I agree with amendments 1 and 2 and new clause 3, tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. Economic assessments have been conspicuously lacking over the past few months, covid notwithstanding: not only a lack of assessments of the impact of any potential deal with the EU, but the refusal of the Secretary of State for International Trade to tell us whether any of the trade deals she has struck will actually leave us any better off than our current trading relationships. The other conspicuous absentee when it comes to the economic impact of all this is the Chancellor. I find it very surprising that he has said very little about the threat of no deal, during a time when the UK finds itself in the midst of its worst economic crisis.

It is entirely right that we carry out proper economic assessments of all that, not least for Northern Ireland. I remember during the election campaign last year the Prime Minister was caught on camera telling Northern Ireland businesses that,

“Northern Ireland has got a great deal. You keep free movement, you keep access to the single market”.

In the words of the Foreign Secretary, Northern Ireland has “a cracking deal” because it has access to the EU market. Meanwhile, as we teeter on the edge of no deal, we are told by the Culture Secretary that things “will be choppy”, but that “we can survive”. I am sure those words will be a comfort to many of my constituents.

Finally, I turn to new clause 1 and new clause 2. During the debate on the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill earlier, I spoke about what a disaster the notwithstanding clauses in that legislation were for the future of the UK and elsewhere. I will not repeat myself, because exactly the same applies here; all I ask is for the Minister to give a guarantee that, if there is no deal with the EU, international lawbreaking clauses will not be introduced in this or any future business. We cannot afford to let a no-deal scenario be a proxy for further actions that are hugely damaging to our international reputation. For that to be the UK’s first action once it left the EU would be a truly regrettable matter indeed.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate. I will speak particularly to new clause 1 and new clause 2 because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, this is a matter of sovereignty. I am very keen to explore where sovereignty ends and international law starts, and that is right at the heart of those new clauses, I guess.

We have made reference several times in these debates to section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2020, where it says that,

“the Parliament of the United Kingdom is sovereign.”

If that is the case, and I accept that it is the case in areas of our jurisdiction, is there a need to reiterate it in every piece of legislation, or is it simply a fact that Parliament is sovereign?

My hon. Friend has rightly stated quite clearly that the UK Parliament has a general power to override treaties, but I am very keen to understand how that works in the sphere of international treaties, particularly in terms of trade agreements. As I quoted in my intervention earlier, there was a case between Mexico and the US, settled in 2009, where a US company, Cargill, took the Mexican Government to court on the basis that they had breached the general agreement on tariffs and trade regulations of 1994. The Mexican Government had applied some punitive tariffs on soft drinks coming from the US, produced by Cargill and other companies, which effectively blocked access to the Mexican market.