My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I thank them both for setting out detailed consideration of this rather long list of amendments, the length reflecting the levels of concern in the Committee about this area of the Bill.
I will speak to a series of amendments in this group to which I have attached my name, Amendments 15 and 64 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and Amendments 16, 41, 48, 74 and 99 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. I apologise to your Lordships for not taking part at Second Reading. My name was down to speak, but I was caught up in the collision with the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill, which also prevented me from taking part in earlier Committee sittings.
That is not the only crucial political collision we are encountering at the moment. As a former newspaper editor, I am well aware of the problem of the media being able to focus on only one issue at a time. I sought to place an article about the environmental issues in the medicines Bill with a major news outlet, and was told “No, we’ve already run too many articles on this Bill.” We are at risk of falling into the same problem with this Bill.
I can identify at least three major areas that could in normal circumstances expect attention from the serious media. Rightfully getting top billing are the Part 5 issues that we expect to get to on the final day of this Committee’s deliberations. The second area, which would normally get massive amounts of attention, is the clauses that provide powers even greater than those of Henry VIII, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and others spoke to so powerfully earlier today. As a former journalist, I have a shorthand for that—Henry VIII on steroids. I share the liking of the noble Lord, Lord German, for the amendments that wipe those out altogether.
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The third serious issue, which has probably got the least attention but is not the least of them, being crucial to issues of democracy and the rule of law, is the riding roughshod over devolved powers—almost wiping out devolution altogether—which these amendments seek to address. Those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, refer to “obtaining consent” on several crucial matters in this Bill. Those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, refer to “seeking consent”. The former wording seems stronger, but the latter is at least a fallback, which is why I have attached my name to both.
Today’s debate has already ranged through real pig semen and metaphorical biscuits, but I will introduce another image—a bridge. Yes, this is a hypothetical bridge; unlike our Prime Minister, building bridges in unlikely and unwanted places is not a passion of mine. I draw here on the historian Joan Wallach Scott, who in her recent book On the Judgment of History reflected on those who assume that history is progressing forwards towards a future golden age and talk about building bridges to that new age, and found there is an assumption that the traffic is only one way.
That has certainly been the expectation and desire of the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They have been streaming across the bridge in the direction of control of their own communities and lives, through the mechanisms of democratic parliaments and assemblies which reflect reasonably accurately the views and wishes of the people, as well as being far closer to where those people live. Consequently, to an increasing degree they have taken different paths on social, environmental and many other issues. That, after all, was the point of devolution: to diverge. In an earlier debate, the question was put whether the Government acknowledge the benefits and advantages of divergence; I am not sure that that has been answered. Scotland in particular, which has a separate legal and educational system, has always retained a very distinct identity, something that my later Amendments 79 and 106 address.
I do not believe anyone has raised the point that devolution is not just an issue for three nations of the UK. It is also the hope of many parts of England, from Cornwall to Yorkshire, to head in the same direction, with assemblies or parliaments of their own to take back control from faraway, distant, couldn’t-care-less Westminster. This Bill could severely hamper the freedoms they seek, as well as being an enormous flood sweeping away the existing structures of devolution.
Greener UK has pointed to a simple, very clear example. I was recently commenting on the extremely limited—indeed derisory—“plastics ban” introduced in England, covering three items. The Welsh Government are proposing to introduce a ban on the sale of nine separate single-use plastic items. Unfortunately, under the provisions of this Bill—I would be very interested in the Minister’s comments on this—they could ban only the production of these in Wales, while sale of the items made elsewhere in the UK would be forcibly allowed by this legislation. The Welsh Government have said,
“a ban that could only apply to Welsh-produced plastics would undermine the policy and render it ineffective”.
I can only agree.
I note also that the Centre on Constitutional Change reports:
“The UK Bill includes a much more restricted set of public policy justifications for exemptions from the market access principles than is permitted under EU law.”
Again, powers are being taken away from the devolved Administrations. This is not “take back control”, as the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland might have hoped for. This is control being lost, Brexit having been imposed on two of the three nations by the English nation’s size of population.
The House is really dripping with irony today, as noted earlier, with the Government and their allies lauding the benefits of free unencumbered trade while slicing that off from the continent. I look forward to the Minister’s answer to how dictatorship from Westminster over the other nations squares with taking back control.