My Lords, Amendments 10, 11 and 41 would expand the list of legitimate aims used to justify where statutory requirements in one part of the UK can indirectly discriminate against goods or services from another part of the UK. So I will start by saying that the Bill provides an updated, coherent market structure which will help to avoid future complexities and prevent costs being passed on to customers through an increase in prices or a decrease in choices. An expansive list of legitimate aims would increase the potential discrimination faced by businesses or service providers, eroding the benefits of the internal market and creating damaging costs and internal barriers to trade.
The current list in the Bill is targeted to allow nations to meet their respective goals while avoiding unnecessary damage to the internal market—a point that was well made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. For example, the Bill already includes the protection of public, plant and animal health, and in some cases, of course, this will align with the protection of the environment. However—I cannot stress this enough—the Government have repeatedly committed to maintaining our world-leading standards across a number of different areas, whether that is in consumer protection, the environment, social and labour standards or public, animal and plant health. The Bill does not undermine the great strides that we have taken in these areas, and we will continue to be at the forefront of improving and protecting our high standards.
Under this Bill, the devolved Administrations will retain the right to legislate in devolved policy areas. Legislative innovation remains a central feature and, indeed, a strength of our union. The Government are committed to ensuring that this power of innovation
does not lead to any worry about a possible lowering of standards, by both working with the devolved Administrations via the common frameworks programme and by continuing to uphold our own commitment to the highest possible standards. It is important to remember that the market access principles do not prevent the UK Government or the devolved Administrations adopting divergent rules for goods or services.
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Let me deal directly with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about Welsh language provision. The Welsh Government will still be able to require goods made in or imported into Wales to be labelled in Welsh, provided they are non-discriminatory. The provisions in the UKIM Bill will mean that these goods can then be sold throughout the rest of the UK under the market access principles. Those principles will simply protect against the application of new rules if they give rise to harmful barriers to trade.
Amendments 21, 48 and 49 seek to introduce broad new exclusions from these principles for goods and services and the automatic recognition principle for professional qualifications. The framing of the exclusion would allow the market access principles to be set aside if it could be shown that a measure was a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim, as set out in the proposed new clauses, but that list of legitimate aims is so long that it would effectively render the protections in Parts 1, 2 and 3 virtually meaningless. It would give little protection to businesses, service providers or professionals who wish to operate across the whole of the UK with a minimal regulatory burden. A regulator or legislator could justify a very wide variety of discriminatory measures using the justifications in the new clauses.
The noble Lord has attempted to remedy this with sub-paragraph (1)(c) of the new clause, which states that the exclusion can be used only if it is
“not a disguised restriction on trade”.
The Government’s view is that the combination of a greatly expanded list, and this new and ambiguous concept of a disguised restriction on trade would create a completely unreliable metric and make the operating conditions of the UK internal market ambiguous for UK businesses and professionals. This amendment could create a massive additional burden on the judicial system, through those seeking legal clarity on this legislative ambiguity, on a case-by-case basis, as to whether a matter is proportionate to a legitimate aim, and whether it is in fact a disguised restriction on trade.
I can confirm for my noble friend Lady McIntosh that, as I have explained on previous occasions, the exclusions and derogations we have drafted from the market access principles across Parts 1, 2 and 3 are narrow and tightly defined in order to protect the functioning of important policy areas. This protects the ability of the devolved Administrations and the UK Government to preserve the proper functioning of important policy areas, while avoiding any harmful or costly barriers to trade within the UK’s internal market. The Government’s view is that the internal market framework is best served by a set of clear principles which are not caveated by the more expansive
legitimate aims and exclusions that these amendments introduce. Allowing such wide and undefined exclusions would inevitably lead to new barriers to trade for businesses and professionals across the United Kingdom market.
It should also be noted that our proposed regime does not require a central authority to confirm or rule on public policy matters applying to DAs—unlike the system within the EU, of course. This means that the devolved Administrations are free to set their own regulations in devolved areas for their own producers, as long as these regulations do not result in trade barriers with the rest of the UK.
I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Clark, that public procurement is not within the scope of the Bill in relation to either goods or services, so she need not listen to UNISON in future on this matter. On her question about banning single-use plastics, we are of course committed to being a global leader in environmental protection and to maintaining our high standards in this area. In fact, the UK’s plastic microbead ban came into effect in January 2018 and was a landmark step, before the EU introduced similar legislation. The Bill will preserve Wales’s ability to regulate in line with its current policy for domestic producers; however, given our shared commitment to high environmental standards, it is only right that goods being sold lawfully elsewhere in the UK are not denied access to the Welsh market.
The Bill aims to ensure frictionless trade, movement and investment between all nations of the UK, and these amendments would, in our view, compromise our ability to achieve that objective. For the reasons I have provided, I therefore cannot support these amendments and I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.