My Lords, I offer a few comments on these amendments. It seems to me that Amendment 1 has the effect of confining the concept of the internal market to consumers and the environment. That completely misses the point. If we go back to the Government’s White Paper in July, we see they were clear that the policy objectives were economic opportunities across the UK, increasing competitiveness and making the UK the best place to do business, thereby supporting the general welfare, prosperity and economic security of all UK citizens. The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness puts the cart before the horse, trying to make that an overarching requirement when it should be a consequence of achieving all the other things.
I emphasise that this is about frictionless business—about making it easy to do business across the UK. In all our debates, we should not lose sight of the importance of this to the devolved nations. About 60% of the exports of Scotland and Wales go to the rest of the United Kingdom; for Northern Ireland, it is a fraction below 50%. They are important to those economies. We are trying to create an environment in which trade can prosper and grow within the UK, without barriers, which will in turn allow the other objectives to be achieved—for example, the protection of consumers and supporting the general welfare of the country.
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I turn briefly to the other amendments in this group. I thought that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, made the case himself that, to the extent that Amendment 2 applies to proportionality, it is not required because proportionality is already a principle of our public law, and so it is not necessary to write it into the Bill. I am also having great difficulty in seeing why subsidiarity—although I understand the arguments for respecting the interests of the devolved nations—should become one of the market access principles, because the market access principles are the overarching ones of mutual recognition and non-discrimination. I cannot see how we can have an equivalent principle of subsidiarity alongside mutual recognition and non-discrimination, which are the foundations of achieving frictionless trade.
Lastly, on Amendment 59, I cannot believe that we would want to establish in our country the notion that public sector purchasers can, in effect, discriminate
against suppliers from other parts of the United Kingdom. That is what the amendment would, in effect, do by taking it out of market access principles.