Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship — House of Commons, 2020-07-15
Topic: International Affairs
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) for securing this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood). I noted his use of the term "take back control", which I might use as well, but possibly running in a different direction. I would also like to inform the House that our Senedd in Wales is today holding the first ever debate on annibyniaeth—independence. In the light of the fact that we are also holding this debate here, and of the tenor in which it is being conducted, it is fair to say that the scaffolding of the UK is being strained to breaking by the unprecedented circumstances in which we find ourselves One of the dominant themes of our public debate since the 2016 EU referendum has been that power should lie closer to the people. The campaign was largely won on the emotional appeal of autonomy and control. "Vote leave and take back control" was the mantra that was repeated ad nauseam in debates inside this House and elsewhere. There was, and there remains, a clear emotional appeal to that message, and while I regretted Wales’s decision to vote to leave, back in 2016, I recognise that that vote reflected a genuine and justified dissatisfaction with our distance from where decisions are taken in our politics. Therefore, 2016 should have been a turning point and the beginning of a new process of truly bringing power closer to the people. We should have seen more devolution, not only to our national Parliaments but to local authority level. That vote should have started a process of bringing disengaged voters back into the democratic process, and of giving people real control over the decisions affecting their real lives. The UK Government themselves acknowledged the need for that. The Brexit White Paper released in March 2017 proclaimed: "As the powers to make these rules are repatriated to the UK from the EU, we have an opportunity to determine the level best placed to make new laws and policies on these issues, ensuring power sits closer to the people of the UK than ever before." Instead, what we have had is a centralisation of power—centralisation to these corridors here in Whitehall, standing in the way of powers that should have been in transit from Europe to our national Parliaments rather than empowering Whitehall further. If this were a true Union of equals, these former EU powers would have gone equally, naturally, to all our Parliaments. The process started with the EU withdrawal Act, which ensures that the only Parliament that will take back control is the one most removed from the lives of the ordinary people who many of us in the Opposition represent The UK internal market Bill threatens our powers further, by allowing Westminster to dictate trade, environmental, food and animal welfare standards and provisions and by giving Westminster control over state aid—a clear breach of devolution in spirit and actuality Westminster once again undermines our nations when it comes to an extension of the transition. The Welsh Government, as well as the Scottish Government, last month called for the transition period to be extended. They were ignored.