United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-26
Topic: Government Operations
Christine Humphreys (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will speak to the amendment to Clause 51 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, to which I have added my name. The amendment opposes this clause standing part of the Bill. In a Bill that stands accused of breaching international law and impacting on devolution settlements, this clause is probably one of the most harmful, in the power that it hands to Ministers, and through them the Executive, to make regulations As the Explanatory Memorandum explains, regulations made by Ministers under these powers are to be made by statutory instrument and may be used to amend, repeal or modify the effect of legislation, including Acts of Parliament, which of course include the Government of Wales Act 2006—and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has just pointed out, all without consultation with the devolved Administrations However, the prime function of this clause, and the whole of Part 7, is to ensure that all clauses of this Bill become protected enactments. It neuters the powers of the devolved legislatures, ensuring that they are unable to put forward Acts in their own Parliaments, in their own areas of devolved competence, to modify this Bill if or when it becomes an Act. This is almost unprecedented. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has already told us that, since devolution, the only other examples of protected enactments covering all sections of an Act are the Human Rights Act and the Civil Contingencies Act Even in the case of the withdrawal agreement Bill, which was initially intended as a protected enactment, the UK Government produced a clause-by-clause analysis justifying protected enactment status, which eventually resulted in only a few clauses being protected. Why is this approach not applicable to this Bill? The Welsh Government have asked for a clause-by-clause discussion of why each clause should be protected. I would be grateful if the Minister could outline the Government’s response to this request Up to now, the Government have not produced any detailed justification of why protected enactment status is necessary, which exemplifies their cavalier attitude to devolution in general. In Wales this is seen as an assault on our devolution settlement, heralding the return of direct rule from England We are faced here with another example, as with the Covid-19 response in England, of Whitehall insisting on managing from the centre rather than understanding and empowering local decision-making. The powers of our devolved legislatures and regional mayors, although limited, seem to be resented and distrusted by the Government, and the automatic response seems to be to claw back control to the centre. My fear is that this Government’s unthinking, knee-jerk reactions all add to the perception that the union is not working for the devolved nations and, as I have said in previous contributions, this is encouraging an increasing percentage of people in Wales to conclude that the future lies in independence. My colleagues and I on these Liberal Democrat Benches want to see true devolution of power to all four nations, including England, in a federal UK where each nation is equal to the other and treated with equal respect. For our party, the union is important because, as federalists we know, that without a union, federalism cannot exist, but we also know, that without federalism, this union will not exist into the future Clause 51 is truly indicative of the UK Government’s attitude towards the devolved parliaments and their powers and the desperate need they seem to have to curtail those powers by a show of strength. It is vital to the devolved nations that this clause does not stand part of this Bill, and if the noble Baroness is minded to reintroduce a similar amendment on Report, she will again have my support.