My Lords, the hour is late, and I will shorten what I was going to say. Amendment 78 is intended to achieve exactly the same objective, in respect of Part 2, as my Amendment 6 does in respect of goods. In other words, it seeks to incentivise both the Government and the devolved Administrations to commit fully to the common frameworks programme and rely on the market access principles only as a fallback when all else fails. The other two amendments in this group, Amendments 67 and 71, are consequential on it, since they would make the point at which the regulations came into force the point from which market access principles would apply. I cannot see why there is any difficulty with that.
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I have been struck during this long and detailed debate by how few of us on all sides of the House share the Government’s concern about the apparent threats to the internal market. That seems to keep the Minister awake, yet we are trying to come up with a solution. This Bill seems to be a solution in search of a problem. The approach of these amendments is not to peremptorily dismiss these notable concerns of the Government with the simple reassurance that there is no monster hiding behind the common frameworks in a rather darkened room. Rather, they provide the robust mechanism to ensnare any monster or threat which, unlikely as it seems, might emerge. This is why both Houses of Parliament would control the lever to trigger this.
I urge the Minister to give serious consideration to this mechanism, which, as I pointed out earlier in Committee, is one which the Government were brought to accept as a compromise on the EU withdrawal Act. Far from being unsatisfactory, the Government clearly feel that this has unlocked a constructive process, as reported to Parliament by the noble Lord, Lord True, a little over a month ago, in the Government’s regular quarterly report, which hailed the
“significant progress … being made across policy areas to establish common frameworks in collaboration with the devolved administrations.”
In conclusion, if the common frameworks process is developing and the Government have not had to exercise the fallback option that the EU withdrawal Act provided of coming back to Parliament to impose restrictions on devolved competence, why do they not now accept the same approach that was previously accepted? I may be being dense, but I fail to understand why the solution being offered is not accepted.