United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-23
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Hain (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, although I welcome the Minister’s moving of government Amendments 14, 36 and 45, I still wish to speak in support of Amendments 15, 20, 27, 34 and 46, to which I have added my name As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, these are modest amendments which are almost painstaking in their attempts to be reasonable. They balance the right of the devolved Governments to be asked for their consent if and when Ministers want to use Henry VIII powers to clamp down still further on the very narrow exceptions to the market access principles, with the right of the UK Parliament to act if it believes that one or more of the devolved Governments are unreasonably delaying or blocking such changes. I am happy to put my name to these amendments, but the fact that they are so modest highlights the parlous state of the union. We are faced with a Government who are so paranoid about the potential threat of a nationalist veto to their plans that they are prepared to provoke the very thing they fear: the collapse of the house of cards which is our so-called current constitution. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, coined the phrase "the good chaps theory of government" as a description of the way the governance of this country functioned in the absence of a codified constitution. We are faced with a Government who have defenestrated the good chaps with an insurrectionist zeal that makes Robespierre appear a model of restraint. They are unapologetic when found by the Supreme Court to be violating the constitutional rights of Parliament, responding by attacking the judiciary; they use constructive dismissal as a routine way of neutering the Civil Service; they give consultancy contracts on a breath-taking scale to their friends and relations without any proper procurement; and they tolerate a Cabinet Minister with the brass neck to remain in one of the highest offices of state after being found to have broken the Ministerial Code by bullying her officials—the list goes on If we are to defend devolution and indeed the future viability of the union—which I believe your Lordships’ House has repeatedly shown it wishes to do—we need to compel the Government to respect the rights of the devolved Governments and legislatures. That is why it is so important that the market access principles should be brought into play only if this House and the other place are convinced that a real-world threat has emerged to the internal market which cannot be addressed by the common frameworks. That is why the consent of the devolved institutions to legislative devices which might limit their rights should always be required. Let us be in no doubt that that is precisely what the Bill would do. Even without using the Henry VIII powers to which these consent provisions would apply, the Bill poses a real and present danger to the capacity of the devolved Governments to do what they have been elected to do In Committee, many Members raised the issue of single-use plastics. The Welsh Government have consulted on a proposal to ban nine types of these items—a move in line with their recognition of the climate emergency which would be fully possible under EU law, and which is very broadly supported in Wales. Ministers did not give a clear answer as to whether legislation of this sort would be possible if the Bill was enacted. However, in the policy statements published on the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—BEIS—website last week, the issue is now crystal clear. To quote from one: "Conversely, non-pricing policies that place an outright ban on goods being sold, for example a ban on single-use plastics, would be caught by mutual recognition. Devolved administrations could introduce a ban on the sale of a particular good, but the ban would only cover local products produced in that part of the UK (or those imported into that territory from outside the UK). Devolved administrations could not enforce that ban against sellers of goods produced in, or imported into, other parts of the UK." That is a quote from an official government website. Will the Minister please confirm on the record that this official BEIS advice is accurate, because its implications are pretty serious? If it is, would he explain how this is consistent with his and his colleagues’ previous assertions that the Bill does no more than replace constraints that existed by virtue of our membership of the EU? The Bill is a tale of two halves. The one half consists of legitimate fears on the part of the devolved institutions that their role and powers are in real jeopardy, and the other of bogus claims that the devolved Parliaments are lying in wait to sabotage the union as the chimes of Big Ben welcome in the New Year. We must face down the half-truths of this unscrupulous and power-hungry Government and defend the rights of the devolved institutions, as these modest amendments seek to do.