My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, but I could not disagree with what he said more. The threat to our United Kingdom results from the power grab being attempted by devolved authorities, led by nationalist parties, of powers that were never theirs in the first place.
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Amendments 64 and 68, in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, strike at the very heart of the Bill by removing the Government’s powers to make provisional
assistance for infrastructure projects. Many such projects need to be provided across the whole United Kingdom in a coherent and consistent manner. I greatly respect the opinions of both noble Lords, but the devolution settlement that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, talked about is different from one that properly preserves the UK internal market.
I welcome Amendment 66, in the name of my noble friend Lord Callanan, which seeks to allay the concerns of noble Lords about these clauses. I would have expected your Lordships to be pleased that my noble friend has proposed that the Government “must” make an annual report to Parliament. Amendment 65, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, pre-empts the Government’s announcement about how they intend to set up and run the shared prosperity fund, which is to take over the functions of the EU structural funds. As my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh said in a Written Answer on 10 August:
“The fund will bind together the whole of the United Kingdom, tackling inequality and deprivation in each of our four nations.”
In this regard, I think the fund should not be restricted by powers that may be exercised by the devolved authorities to any greater extent than the EU structural funds have been restricted until now.
This amendment is far too prescriptive, and it is, of course, inconceivable that the Secretary of State would not discuss disbursements from the fund in the same way that European officials have hitherto discussed disbursements with both the UK Government and the devolved authorities. Nevertheless, I share the concern of the movers of these amendments that there is now little time before the EU structural funds are consigned to history as far as the UK is concerned, so I hope that the Minister will tell us when she expects that the Government will announce exactly how they intend to operate and distribute the new fund?
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering told the House that a Scottish Minister had stated that Scotland intends to continue direct payments to farmers rather than introducing something similar to the ELM scheme. Of course, this is a slightly different—though related—matter, but it clearly shows why it is so important to maintain a coherent internal market in the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, talked about “the bad old days before devolution”. Does he remember that less than 25% of the electorate of Wales supported even the limited degree of devolution at that time? The noble Lord’s Amendment 67 seems to me to be aggressively nationalistic. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, spoke in favour of what Baroness Thatcher called “subsidiarity”—but I have not heard her, or the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, or other noble Lords opposite criticise the EU as it moves to centralise and harmonise fiscal and other powers at the expense of the nation states.