United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-28
Topic: Foreign Trade
Sheila Masters (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I would like to remind the Committee of two things about this Bill. First, the Bill is to facilitate trade between all parts of the United Kingdom, not make it harder. Secondly, businesses favour barrier-free trade. That was the very clear message that came from the consultation on the White Paper during the summer. We should be trying to minimise the possibility of barriers being put up to trade within the United Kingdom If we allow exclusions of goods from mutual recognition, that will inevitably lead to higher costs. This is analysed in quite considerable detail in the internal market White Paper. Costs generally end up being borne by consumers. Excluding goods can also result in businesses deciding to withdraw from certain markets, which can in turn restrict consumer choice. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is keen on consumer protection; she reminded us of that on the first day of Committee. Restricting trade tends to operate against consumer interests, so we should be very careful in trying to put amendments to the Bill that make trade more difficult. I also remind noble Lords that restricting trade is more likely to hit the devolved Administrations’ economies because of their greater dependence on exporting to the rest of the United Kingdom I want to comment on a couple of the amendments in this group, Amendments 7 and 8. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said that Amendment 7 was a probing amendment, but by seeking to exclude imports into any part of the United Kingdom we are reducing the internal market rules to a very parochial interpretation. It seems to ignore the plain fact of commercial life, which is that there are complex supply chains and complex distribution logistics. It is of course the way we have been living in the EU; at the moment, we are quite accustomed to importing in one place and those imports being accepted throughout the rest of the community It also seems to me that the noble Baroness’s amendment would, in effect, impact exports between different parts of the United Kingdom. For example, if something was exported to Wales and imported to England, it would stop it then being imported into Scotland with the protection of the internal market Bill. That does not seem to make any kind of sense. It is pretty clear from the impact assessment that Wales and Scotland in particular are reliant on intermediate goods coming from other parts of the United Kingdom The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, spoke to Amendment 8. I did not follow what he said about pig semen because I do not think that, by any definition, pig semen is an animal feedstuff. I did have a chance to check the definition of "animal feedstuff" while he was speaking, and it is not. Perhaps we can put that to one side. We have to understand that if we try to exclude food and animal feedstuffs from the UK internal market mutual recognition rules, this will again potentially impact the devolved Administrations the most, given their import and export profiles. For example, if you look at Wales’s agri-food chain, you will see that 48% of agricultural inputs to Welsh food manufacturers come from the rest of the UK and 31% of food and drink sold in Wales comes from the rest of the UK. We should be thinking really hard about who we are likely to hurt when we put amendments such as this in the Bill, which restrict barrier-free trade.