My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I too welcome my noble friend Lady Hayman and the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, to the House, and I compliment them on their excellent speeches.
Like so many other noble Lords, I share the view that the Bill would cause this country to be in breach of the rule of law. Having spent over 40 years in practice at the Bar, over 30 of them in silk, I consider myself, like other Queen’s Counsel in this House, to be under a duty to oppose the Bill on that ground. I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in his amendment but shall not weary the House by repeating in a pedestrian way the arguments so elegantly and powerfully put by him and others.
I wish to raise another, different point. The Bill seeks to create a uniform internal market for goods and services, but it says nothing about the protection of those who actually make or provide the goods and services—the workers of the United Kingdom and beyond. I use the term “worker” as a lawyer, meaning someone who works for a living whether under a contract of service or a contract for services. The EU single market, from which this Bill takes inspiration, had much in the way of protection of affected workers; the Bill has nothing.
I accept that labour law—the law of the workplace—is not a devolved matter and therefore applies across the UK, with minor variations in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but that does not avoid the issue of social dumping. It is entirely foreseeable that measures are taken in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to protect workers in those countries from being undercut in England or abroad.
Let us take, for example, agriculture. In 2013, the coalition Government abolished the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales—a negotiating body representing employers and workers—the agreements of which on wages, housing costs, and, of course, dog allowances, became binding on every farmer and farm worker in England and Wales. The board was originally set up in 1924, a daughter of the Trade Boards Act 1909. Scotland retained its AWB. The Welsh Government, having lost the AWB for England and Wales, set up
their own under their devolved power over agriculture. The UK Government considered it intolerable that Wales should exercise this kind of sovereignty to maintain higher pay rates for its farm workers and therefore challenged the Welsh Government in the courts, a case they ultimately lost in the Supreme Court. Wales therefore now retains its own AWB.
In consequence of the Covid catastrophe, there will be more such differential measures of worker protection. Even before Covid, the Welsh and Scottish Governments considered the use of conditions attached to public procurement contracts in order to enhance worker protection and develop social dialogue with trade unions —a concept alien to the Government in Westminster. This Bill should make provision to permit national Governments to discriminate on goods and services in order to maintain labour standards, as well as on the grounds set out in Schedule 1. I propose to move an amendment to this effect in Committee, should the Bill proceed.
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