United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-11-18
Topic: Foreign Trade
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in this debate for their thoughtful and often powerful contributions. It has been a wide-ranging debate and a very interesting one. It has raised new dimensions in our debate today, and for the ones we will have in succeeding days on Report It made me think of two things that I want to share with the House in concluding. A lot of the problems with the Bill arise from the accelerated timetable it has gone through. The feeling I am left with after this debate is that if there had been more time for debate prior to its publication, we would not be facing the rather uncomfortable tension between the wish to maximise consumer benefit and reduce barriers to trade, which has been expressed by a number of speakers and which we fully support, and being unable to respond to local wishes in parts of the country on issues that matter to local people. We want there to be competition not only in raising standards but in innovation and finding new ways of dealing with issues of public policy that may arise. Interestingly, various derogations and exemptions that appear in the amendments in this group mimic the concerns expressed during the Trade Bill, which we will return to later this year, and which were resolved in the Agriculture Bill, with the Government conceding that there needed to be a statement on the standards of environment, animal welfare and animal production standards in relation to the agricultural trade and products. If you add public health, social and labour standards, we are back with the lists that appear in today’s amendments. I wonder why that is; I do not really have an answer. However, it might be worth more consideration. I will look carefully at Hansard to see whether we can find a common thread that might be picked up in later amendments, and on which it might be worth pushing for further debate if we can—or perhaps to a vote In passing, I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, whose contributions are always of interest, was foxed by the term "cultural expression". I believe that is the term used when state aid is used to support activities that would otherwise not be possible. A reference here would be the horse race betting levy, which would otherwise be banned, or the support that this Government brought in to support the film industry, animation, high-end drama and other aspects of cultural life, building on work done initially by the Labour Government. I think that is where it comes from. If it is valid for anyone in the public sector or an elected organisation to wish to see more work, investment and activity in the green economy, for example, as the Prime Minister announced today, it is just as appropriate to say that there could be support for cultural expressions, the term used to talk about the culture industries The general feeling is that the Bill is too tightly constrained around how the market access provisions will work—so much so that there may be disbenefits to consumers unless people in different parts of the country can respond differently to issues they feel strongly about. As I said, I will read Hansard, but I feel that while the common frameworks will be able to carry most of the load of the issues raised today, they will not take us all the way and it may be necessary to return to this issue at some stage. In the interim, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.