United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeffrey Rooker (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I again partly apologise to noble Lords because I intended to speak on later amendments and to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on Amendment 69. I will settle for Amendment 64 I take exception to the definition of the Long Title from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. Whichever way we read it, it is about devolved matters in the United Kingdom. We have only to look at the definition of infrastructure in Clause 42 to see that it absolutely covers devolved matters. His was a bit of a cheap shot at the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to try to imply that this was inconsistent with the Long Title My other beef is one I have had in the past regarding Wales and the Barnett formula. I have never understood why the people of Wales, including the politicians, have never risen up. Some years ago I was a member of the Select Committee that looked at the Barnett formula. It was abundantly clear that Wales had been cheated for years. If the Barnett formula was based on need, rather than population, Wales would be on about a third more than it is now. We told leading MPs about this, but I have never noticed any great kickback. Wales has been short-changed under Barnett for years. There is no easy answer to that The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was absolutely bang on in delivering the information from box 3.1 out of the Red Book at the beginning of the debate. I thought his eight questions were incredibly telling. I would use the term "pork barrel", because that is what it is about. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose Statement I heard earlier, made it quite clear that the spending of this money relied on the consent of the constituency Member of Parliament, although I understand that the Treasury might have disowned this since. I tweeted, saying that it is incredibly dangerous for constituency Members of Parliament to be involved in executive functions. Local councils are always involved in executive functions; Members of the House of Commons are not. It is incredibly dangerous territory for them to get involved in, particularly in view of incidents that arose in the past I understand that the Treasury might have backpedalled a little on that, but it shows the thought process of those who constructed the Statement today, which is intricately involved with the Bill: destroy devolution, open up the pork barrel and give money to your friends based on the constituency MP. That cannot be a good form of governance. It cuts across devolution massively, whichever way anyone defines it. I have said before that my experiences have been at Defra and MAFF before devolution, then at the Food Standards Agency, which was a four-nation, non-ministerial department at the time. Whitehall has never really done devolution and never really understood what was happening. It has taken a while even for the House of Commons to become clear about the quite distinct advantages of devolution. It all went wrong, of course, when the proportional electoral system gave a majority Government. That is not supposed to happen, but neither, on the other hand, is first past the post designed to give coalitions, which is what we had in 2010. You cannot base the future construct of the constitution on such whims Governments come and go and will not be there for ever, but I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said: with devolution now under acute and very massive threat, there is no question but that this will push the independence movements of Wales and Scotland wider and further, particularly in Scotland, where it is stronger. I cannot see a solution to it. I think that we are heading headlong towards the break-up of the union. I will fight like hell to stop that and a lot of people will. The problem is, keeping the fight in words and debate. We are heading for the destruction of our country, without any policy announcement, a clear vote or a manifesto commitment. It is being done by subterfuge and backhanders In my view this is the direct effect of the Bill, particularly these attacks on devolution. Amendment 69 covers the same for Clause 44; they are two sides of the same coin. I was going to speak about Amendment 65, but I will leave that to my noble friend. This fundamental attack on devolution, with the push to break up the United Kingdom, is a much more serious affair than has been recognised by your Lordships’ House, where it has been recognised more than in the House of Commons. We need to send a signal to the elected House that our country, our constitution and the make-up of the union are under direct threat as a result of the Bill.