UK Parliament / Open data

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, which poses more questions than even I had realised. I have also realised that I have not got a complete handle on the services that are covered. Are financial services excluded? I think auditing is excluded. It would perhaps be helpful if a note could be passed about what services are covered. I assumed they are cultural and intellectual property, education and architecture, but there are some interesting ones where there are big differences at the moment between countries.

I am particularly thinking of residential property, where Wales now licenses landlords and is ahead of us in licensing letting agents. We are now in discussion with the Government about the licensing—shortly, we hope—or authorisation of all property agents, but then that would be different between England and Wales and Northern Ireland and Scotland. Presumably all that would be caught by this, but I am not certain.

This is a genuine question and it would be really helpful to have, without it being part of the Bill and without it committing the Government to anything, a more useful note of what is covered. Then we could look at what is already different, particularly in licensing, as is certainly the case in the area that I know about of residential agencies in Wales and elsewhere.

In a sense, the bigger issue is the one I set out at the beginning. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, put it much better. I was asking about the purpose of Part 2. I think the noble Baroness went further and asked whether we even need Part 2. It actually comes back to whether we need the whole Bill or whether the common frameworks road might be the better one, or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked, whether it might be sufficient to fall back on the 2018 position on what things could not be agreed—it would probably save an awful lot of this. The purpose of Part 2 needs justifying, rather than defining. Why do we need it? Is the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, correct that we do not need this level of detail?

If the Minister could also informally explain a little more about what would be covered, that would be helpful, and we might come back at a later stage to look at whether we could define why we have this part. However, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

807 c360 

Session

2019-21

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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