It is always an enormous pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). For decades, the EU was a train that we had to stay on, and now Brexit is a tiger that we have to get off. There is not time to re-engage in the old arguments about sovereignty, but it was very telling that he thought the importance of sovereignty was what a country chooses to do with it, not what it is imposed with. There is no international organisation of which we are a member in the world that is like the EU, which imposes its will on us through our own laws and courts; every other international body—such as the WTO, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—is a voluntary association governed by international law, which is a completely different matter.
7.15 pm
The other place has excelled itself in revising the Bill. Is it a revising Chamber, or has it become an opposition Chamber? Much attention has been concentrated on part 5 of the Bill, but I wish to talk briefly about the devolution aspects. I say to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) that there is only one party in this Parliament that wants to take a wrecking ball to the devolution settlement, and it is the SNP. Every other party wants devolution to work. The other difference between the hon. Gentleman and me is that I opposed devolution in the 1997 referendum, but since then I have been a supporter of devolution because I accept the results of referendums. The hon. Gentleman accepts neither the referendum on Brexit nor the 2014 independence referendum. That is the difference between him and me: I am a democrat and he is something else. It is time that we called a spade a spade.
I have some sympathy for those who believe that the Bill is somewhat unfinished as we vote on it and send it back to the other place. We want better devolution arrangements.
When I presided over the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I no longer chair, we produced several reports on how to ensure a more stable and productive devolution settlement, which is not represented by what the House of Lords has sent us in this Bill. For example, the Lords have taken out clause 8(7) and thereby removed the Government’s power to make regulations, but the new subsection (7) requires the Government to consult the devolved Governments about the regulations under “Subsection Removed”—as it says—and the Lords have obliged the Government to obtain consent from the devolved Governments for such regulations. There has to be some understanding that consultation is good, but the veto of one part of the United Kingdom over another part of the United Kingdom makes the settlement unworkable. Of course, that is what the SNP wants—it does not want a workable settlement.
I am struck by Lords amendment 60, which I think contains the seeds of a better method of operation. It talks about appointment to the Office for the Internal Market panel and suggests:
“Sub-paragraph (2C) applies if consent to an appointment is not given by any of those authorities within the period of one month beginning with the day on which it is sought from that authority.”
It also says that the Secretary of State may in the end make that appointment, but has to give reasons as to why they do not accept the views of the devolved authorities. We need new methods of consulting with each other and they need to be inter-parliamentary methods as much as intergovernmental methods. Those inter-parliamentary methods should scrutinise the decisions that are being made on behalf of the whole of the United Kingdom that affect the devolved Governments and Parliaments. That is where the development needs to be, with rather less hysteria and hyperbole. For the official Opposition to protest that we should uphold the principles of devolution and say, “I love the United Kingdom,” and then whip up the fury about this Bill is just to feed the nationalist beast. It is about time they stopped doing it.