It is a shame to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson), the tone of whose speech was in stark contrast to those of the more thoughtful colleagues who recognise the very serious problems with the Bill, and particularly with clause 11.
I absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that I would not sign up to any Trojan horse for independence or for breaking apart the UK. I have been very happy to work together with Scottish National party Members and others on some of the amendments, but they know full well where my views stand on the Union, and we will not agree on that. We can absolutely agree, and I state this as a proud devolutionist, that we have a constitutional settlement that we have spent many years—20 years, in fact—establishing, and I am very proud to support it at all levels. If we throw apart that settlement, we do so at our peril. We are already seeing the chaos created after
the negotiations in Brussels today, which is affecting parts of our economy because of the uncertainty for business. Do we really need to add to that uncertainty and chaos in the constitutional settlement of the UK and our islands? I do not think we do.
I rise to speak to amendments 182 and 186 to 188 in my name and those of the hon. Members for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins), for Arfon (Hywel Williams), for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), the right hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray). I support the amendments tabled on behalf of the Welsh and Scottish Governments, and I also add my support to new clauses 64 and 65 tabled by the Opposition, as well as amendment 72 tabled by the Scottish National party—I have put my name to it as well—about legislative consent motions, and the important amendment 337 about transitional arrangements. We will not be speaking much about transitional arrangements today, but they affect the devolved settlements as much as they do many other parts of the Bill.
Withdrawal from the EU represents a major constitutional upheaval for the United Kingdom. I spoke and voted against the Bill on Second Reading, and the Committee will already be aware of my grave concern with the proposed sweeping powers that Ministers intend to gift themselves, bypassing Parliament and in effect subverting the long-established principle that legislative power and sovereignty is in the purview of this Parliament.
The Government are seeking to subvert not just this House, but the elected—duly democratically elected—Governments of the United Kingdom. The amendments I have tabled with other Members seek to protect the devolution settlement. I have with me the various Acts pertaining to Wales. A serious amount of work, effort and consideration has gone into them over 20 years. They are not perfect—they do not necessarily get everything right or include what I and others would like—but they have been developed with the advice and consent of the Welsh people, as have the other settlements with the people of Scotland and of Northern Ireland. They have also been developed by Members of this House, including many Members from across England who take a keen interest in such matters, not least when they relate to the internal borders of the United Kingdom and the differences that may exist.
Although far from perfect, the legislation laid down in law the permanency of the National Assembly for Wales as part of our constitutional arrangements. I am now incredulous that Ministers are seeking to undermine the ability of Ministers of the Crown in Wales, and indeed Scotland, by allowing Whitehall Ministers to pass swathes of secondary legislation in policy areas that it has been long established are administered from Edinburgh and Cardiff Bay.
For those who do not know, the National Assembly is in the heart of my Cardiff South and Penarth constituency, and I take a great interest in that body. I worked there in its early days—in fact, on the first few days after it opened—and like many of the more recently elected Welsh Members in this House, I have spent time in and around both Welsh and UK institutions and I
recognise the importance of the settlement we have and how it works for the people of Wales, as indeed it does for Scotland.
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Common frameworks on some policy areas, such as fisheries, could be beneficial to all four nations, but surely Welsh and Scottish Ministers should be equal partners and retain the right to withhold consent. The Government at Westminster have no democratic legitimacy to dictate policy. We have often been told by Ministers in this House that they are merely seeking to implement the result of the June 2016 referendum, but do Government Members really feel that there two are two categories of referendums—those that can be ignored and those that have to be obeyed to the letter of what was set out?
I remind Members on both sides of the House that, as we have seen with referendums in Scotland and elsewhere, we have had two referendums in Wales—the one that brought into existence the National Assembly and, more recently, the one that increased powers and changed legislative mechanisms. There is a wider issue with the UK Government that, sadly, has been reflected in the negotiations on this Bill. There are simply some parts of the UK Government in Whitehall that still, 20 years on, do not appear to take devolution seriously. In fact, the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) said during the Conservative party conference this year that
“we still have to get the cabinet secretary to put pressure on departmental permanent secretaries to take devolution seriously”.
To my regret, it seems obvious that the Department for Exiting the European Union has yet to be one of the Departments that takes devolution seriously.
Fundamentally, this is about respect. It is about respect for the people of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is about respect for democracy and the democratic process. There is not just one form of democracy in these islands; there are many forms, and we need to respect them all equally. It is about respect for the different pieces of legislation that we have passed in this place, the different referendums we have had and the settlement that we have established.
As I have said, none of us wants to be in a situation where we repeatedly end up in the Supreme Court, debating and arguing in front of judges about these areas. That is why it is so important to get this right. We have heard some very interesting speeches from Scottish Conservative Members, and I know there are Welsh Conservative Members—I have just mentioned one—who have concerns about where current legislation sits at the moment. There are many views in this place, but the reality is that whether we were for leave or remain and whichever model we see Brexit ending up with—I know where I think it should end up—we are all absolutely clear that we need to keep the constitutional settlement stable and that we do not want to see cases constantly referred to the courts, which would waste hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in disputes. I do not say that in a hypothetical sense, because it has happened already in a number of areas. It has happened in relation to the Agricultural Wages Board in Wales, and we are seeing it in the Government’s claim that they are going to try to undermine the Trade Union (Wales)
Act 2017, which was recently passed by the Welsh Assembly. I very much fear for the future if we do not get such constitutional arrangements right.
I therefore urge Ministers on the Front Bench—some of them have Welsh connections, even though they may not represent Welsh constituents—to listen very carefully to the amendments, which have been put forward with great care by the Welsh and Scottish Governments and by those of us who support them in this House. They are based on substantial legal advice about the Bill and its current deficiencies. I gently say to Ministers that if we do not see some concessions, acceptance and respect in relation to the amendments, they will undoubtedly find that others are tabled on Report and in the other place—and rightly so, because the Bill seeks to undermine the existing settlement.
Let me speak in a little more detail about clause 11 and some of my concerns about it. I want to return to the Prime Minister’s comments when she spoke to the Scottish Conservative conference on 3 March. She said:
“We must take this opportunity to bring our United Kingdom closer together.”
She also said that
“we must avoid any unintended consequences for the coherence and integrity of a devolved United Kingdom as a result of our leaving the EU.”
Those are fine words, but what about what we have seen not only today in the negotiations, but during our debates on this Bill? We have heard warm words from the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales about how they will listen, but they have yet to accept any amendments or to have detailed conversations through either the joint ministerial frameworks or the usual channels in this place. That is what is causing the fear, concern and consternation among many Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members. The Government expect us just to trust them that everything will be okay and all right on the night, but we have seen today what a mess that can put us in. I am not willing to see Wales and our legislature and democratically elected Assembly Members go through such uncertainty.
The White Paper, “Legislating for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union”, states:
“When the UK leaves the EU, the powers which the EU currently exercises in relation to the common frameworks will return to the UK, allowing these rules to be set here in the UK by democratically-elected representatives.”
It does not refer only to democratically elected representatives in this place; it is talking about democratically elected representatives across the United Kingdom.
I am a fan of this Parliament and I think it is given far too hard a time on occasions, but we could learn a lot from the processes and procedures of the National Assembly and, indeed, the Scottish Parliament. For example, rather than seeking Henry VIII powers like this place—we wait with interest to see whether the Government will make concessions on those amendments —the Welsh and Scottish Governments have already made clear that they will not operate in the same untransparent and unconsultative way as Ministers here currently seem to want to operate.
The Government’s White Paper also made very clear that there would be
“significant increase in the decision making power of each devolved administration”
and that the frameworks would be subject to decisions by their democratically elected representatives. Why, therefore, do we find ourselves in a situation in which the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales have, rightly, described the Bill as a “power grab” and have had to draw attention repeatedly to the democratic mandates of their own institutions? Indeed, as has been pointed out by many Members across the House, they have made clear that they are unlikely to pass the necessary legislative consent motions, given the failure to address their concerns. As we have heard, we are not talking about hypothetical scenarios; we are talking about the 111 returning powers that relate to devolved matters in Scotland, and the 64—or, indeed, even more; there are different analyses of the situation—that relate to Wales.
The First Ministers issued a joint statement, saying:
“The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill does not return powers from the EU to the devolved administrations, as promised. It returns them solely to the UK Government and Parliament, and imposes new restrictions on the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.”
It is not just the First Ministers saying that. We often refer in this place to the excellent and neutral work of the House of Commons Library. Indeed, I am drawing on its excellent work today, which looks at the issues from a dispassionate and neutral point of view. I am also drawing on reports by research institutions in the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament.
Indeed, a report by the Welsh Assembly research service points to a number of inferior powers for Welsh institutions under the Bill. I think that has led to a lot of the reactions we have seen. A paper by the research service made it very clear that the Bill
“imposes a ‘freeze’ on the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales and other devolved parliaments. Essentially, the Assembly will still have to legislate within the bounds of EU law, as it existed immediately before the UK withdraws…This restriction will continue for an indefinite period…this means that the UK Government and Parliament could remove former EU rules for England, whereas the Assembly would not be able to do so for Wales.”
It is crucial to show up such inconsistencies.