Subsidy Control Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-19
Topic: Agriculture
Roger Thomas (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, we plainly need a proper subsidy control regime and we need independent enforcement. We decided that this was a matter that was a reserved power, but the fact that it is a reserved power does not mean that every effort should not be made to agree the principles on which the independent enforcement agency is to work and to ensure that the procedure before it is fair and balanced. There are very good grounds, therefore, for the fact that the devolved Administrations have refused to give legislative consent I will look at two specific areas. The first relates to the way in which the detailed guidance under the Bill and other powers given to the Secretary of State will be operated. Guidance in relation to principles is of fundamental importance, given the very general and non-specific terms in which the principles are set out in Schedule 1. I understand what is meant by, "Subsidies should pursue a specific policy objective in order to—(a) remedy an identified market failure" That is reasonably easy to understand—but I am entirely uncertain about what is meant by "address an equity rationale (such as social difficulties or distributional concerns)" What does that actually mean It seems that when one takes those words and focuses them on two areas that will be of acute political concern—regional aid and agriculture—we are building up a terrible problem for the enforcer unless we have clear guidance. The real deficiency in the way we are going forward, apart from the points that have been made by the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Lamont, as to the way in which the Bill is constructed, is that there is a danger if we do not put this right on a basis of consensus between the UK Government—for a reason I will come to in a minute—and the devolved Administrations We have heard an awful lot about consultation, but I am afraid that I have lost faith in consultation. We need a proper protocol or—to use the word for which we fought during the passage of the internal market Act—a framework within which this can all be agreed. I am grateful to the Minister for taking forward some of these suggestions during the passage of that Act, and I hope fondly that I can persuade him again to look more carefully at a mechanism, because it is critical. We have overlooked it, or insufficient attention has been paid to the fact, that the sole enforcer will be the Competition Appeal Tribunal. It will be a judicial body and it needs the clearest, most definite guidance to deal with what will inevitably be highly political issues. Speaking as a former judge, the last thing a body of that kind wants is to get involved in politics—therefore we need clear principles The second aspect is procedural fairness. In this respect, it is interesting to read that the Secretary of State, as a Secretary of State, is an interested party in any application before the Competition Appeal Tribunal, but the other governments are not. Therefore, the Secretary of State, putting on his hat as a Minister for England, can intervene before the Competition Appeal Tribunal to say, "We don’t want this—we are very unhappy about a factory going to Scotland or Wales", but it does not apply the other way round. Where is the justice in that All these points show that we need a proper framework for consultation to iron out these points and ensure that the judicial body that decides these things does so on the basis of clear principles. That is what we should try to achieve I have 30 seconds to make a completely different point, of which the Minister has been given notice. It is on the powers given to the Treasury under Clause 47, particularly the power to make secret laws or directions. I never thought I would rise in this House to object to legislation on secret powers. There can be no justification —I hope the Minister will look at that again.