United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Commons, 2020-09-16
Topic: International Affairs
Alexander David Sobel (Labour, Centre-left): I stand here after three of the most bizarre years of constitutional contortions, when parliamentary conventions were stretched to their very limits. However, on Monday we topped them all when Government Members voted to breach the very same withdrawal agreement they voted for just months ago. We have to wonder what the point is of making law and entering international agreement when just months later the Government seek to overturn it. The same Members who voted to breach the withdrawal agreement had hailed the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of it as a masterstroke and then campaigned for it and voted to enact it I cannot compete with my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) in making the Prime Minister look like a petulant child, so I will not try, but I will try to make Members opposite think about the damage they are doing to our international standing, to their individual reputations and to the fabric of our Union, and to a Bill which could render the Good Friday agreement asunder I have some interest in constitutional law; I know the power it has to create new opportunities, to spread power to the people, and to have decisions made closer to where people live, but this Bill is about putting the foot down on the accelerator and driving the constitutional settlement off a cliff with the Union as its trailer. Clause 46 breaks the settled will of the devolved nations, so allow me to outline some of the problems with this Bill First, there is the Executive power grab: the Bill has enabling clauses that enable a Minister to make unilateral regulations. Secondly, there is the breach of existing law: the enabling clauses allow a Minister to create regulations regardless of whether those regulations are in breach of domestic and international law. Let that sink in for a second before I carry on: we are giving Ministers the power to break the law Clause 46 allows pork barrelling, a US practice allowing for Government spending for local projects to help a politician in their constituency. It allows pork barrelling by ministerial diktat and over the heads of devolved bodies. The Bill not only creates a situation where the Government are in breach of the UK’s obligations under the withdrawal agreement, but it would provide the statutory basis for new regulations to be made by Ministers that are also in breach of UK and international law This does have recent precedent. The Coronavirus Act 2020 gave the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care similar powers, which we saw implemented this week when the new health regulations were published allegedly 28 minutes before they came into force. So 29 minutes later, a family of three meeting a family of four could have been in breach of the law, after a flick of the Secretary of State’s pen, with no warning. So, soon we will have two laws, covering coronavirus and Brexit, where Ministers can create law by diktat, and in the case of Brexit break already agreed international law. We must therefore ask whether Parliament’s only purpose will be to provide a body of personnel to fill the Executive and oversee some functions as a law-making body. This means that when it comes to devolved bodies having to make spending and funding decisions, clause 46 will take it over their heads, and they will be denuded of their powers Far from bringing sovereignty to our shores, this Government are stripping our sovereign Parliament of its powers piece by piece, and doing the same to the devolved bodies. The Government’s real purpose is a power grab: they are using a difficult situation as a subterfuge to hoodwink the public. The checks and balances are being eroded—[Interruption.] Yes, they are; Government Members are shaking their heads. Those who are meant to safeguard are brought into the pretence and belittle their own office: the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, and the Lord Chancellor. The Advocate General for Scotland has at least shown proper respect for the law by resigning—or at least attempting to resign by tendering his resignation—and the Northern Ireland Secretary himself admitted this Bill breaks the law "in a very specific and limited way."—[Official Report, 8 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 509.] However, a breach of the law is a breach the law, so any breaking of the law in a very specific and limited way is no defence in court: the law does not discriminate on specificity Even the need for this Bill has been ridiculed by more constitutional experts than I could possibly name. The Government argue that the powers are needed in case they need to rapidly implement safeguards under article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, but Professor Mark Elliott, chair of the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University, argues that clauses 42 and 43—I know that we are not debating those today; I will come to the point about those later— "bear little relation to the matters with which Article 16 is concerned".