To follow on from what the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, has said, I am tempted by the reverse approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the mechanism that he has described. I have just one point to add to the debate: I am worried about the emphasis on the single market—the internal UK market. There was a debate in Europe, following the Cockfield White Paper 30 years ago, about how much uniformity was needed in a single market; how much you could rely on mutual recognition; how much you did not need to standardise at all and how much you could harmonise. Noble Lords will remember that that debate became quite controversial at times. Some of us argued that the Commission took a more expansive view of the need to harmonise and standardise, rather than to recognise diversity. In my view, devolution inherently means a recognition of diversity. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, that the Government have an evil, malign intent here. However, the way that this dossier has been handled has created suspicions in Scotland and Wales of such an intent.
Looking at the criteria set out in the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, there is no difficulty with a common framework in areas necessary to,
“safeguard the security of the UK”,
or,
“provide access to justice”,
or,
“enable the management of common resources”,
or,
“ensure compliance with international obligations”,
obviously. I pause on,
“new trade agreements and international treaties”,
because there are suspicions that the fox might get into the hen house. The real suspicion arises over the first item:
“enable the functioning of the UK internal market”.
I do not think “enable” is a transitive verb. As all noble Lords recognise, “ennoble” is, but “enable” is intransitive. However, that is not the main reason that I object to this section of the amendment. The phrase,
“the functioning of the UK internal market”,
could be interpreted very widely, and there are those in Scotland and, presumably, in Wales who assume that the Government might want to interpret it widely.
We do not have a single market in the UK now; it is variegated, as are the views on the extent to which it needs to be further harmonised or advanced. I wonder whether it would not be better if the Government could drop from their presentation on this dossier, on Brexit and devolution, the references to the UK internal market. There would be very few areas where it needed to be used and they would all be covered by one of the other criteria in the noble and learned Lord’s amendment.