Strike Action

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, that being the case, why is it that this Government spent the summer aggravating the situation and failing to sit down with representatives to negotiate a settlement? That is why we have ended up in the situation we are in.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

As I said, the Government do not negotiate; it is for the employers and the unions to get together. There have been negotiations that involve not only pay but changing practices, which I strongly support and which will help with services and productivity on the railways, which I strongly support. I regret that people cannot come together and come to an agreement on this, which will help to save the railways’ future.

EU Retained Law

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for being here to answer questions on this Statement. We wonder about the Government’s priorities in the light of it. After all, yesterday was the day on which the Office for National Statistics announced that inflation had reached 9.1%—the highest level in over 40 years. We think that is of far greater concern for the country than anything in the Statement.

However, perhaps with today being the sixth anniversary of the EU referendum and the Conservative Party desperate not to lose its safe seat in Tiverton and Honiton, we can see why Jacob Rees-Mogg was deployed. The Government have long stated their intention to review retained EU law, and we await further details about the so-called Brexit freedoms Bill, which I am sure many across your Lordships’ House will take an active interest in. It was suggested that this was to be done via a default sunset clause that would delete laws unless Ministers prevented it. Has this madcap plan now been dropped?

Although there will be areas where it will make sense to amend or repeal retained EU law, we should remember that the framework in the 2018 withdrawal Act fed into negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and the TCA. We should have flexibility, yes, but we should also act in good faith.

In another place, the Minister failed to answer questions about the cost of this project, so could the Minister confirm what the costs are? Was the build of the dashboard put out to tender, for example? If so, have details of the contract been published in the usual manner?

In recent years, we have passed the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, the Environment Act, the Subsidy Control Act and many other post-Brexit pieces of legislation. Each of these Acts presented the ideal opportunity to strip away retained law, but Ministers repeatedly chose not to do so. Is that not a sign that much of that body of law is actually highly technical and therefore not as contentious as the Government would like to make us believe?

The Statement speaks of identifying “supply-side reforms” to combat inflation. Have the Government calculated the likely economic benefit to be derived from this programme? If so, perhaps the Minister could share that figure with us. How does it compare to other measures the Government could take to support the economy?

Finally, could the Minister explain how the Government will balance economic and other considerations, such as animal welfare, consumer and environmental benefits? What principles would be applied? The Government lack direction, so how will Ministers know how to approach this task? This whole exercise looks like a gimmick. There is no detail about the Government’s intentions. All we have is a list—calling it a dashboard is stretching it. The best advice we can give Ministers is to focus their energy on interventions that would make a tangible difference to people who are struggling every day to make ends meet.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read the Statement. It takes us into a surreal world of fantastical Government, in which, as the Minister for Brexit Opportunities declares,

“our country will achieve great things.”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/6/22; col. 866.]

That is like Donald Trump promising he will make America great again—just as windy and as empty of content.

There is no evidence behind this Statement. I challenge the Minister to find any. A great deal of evidence was gathered and analysed on exactly this issue between 2012 and 2015 in what was labelled the balance of competences exercise. Eurosceptic Conservatives in the coalition Government believed that an extensive survey of business, sector by sector, would produce a long list of unnecessary Euro regulations that the UK Government could then demand to be renegotiated.

Three Ministers oversaw this exercise: David Lidington, Greg Clark and myself—two Conservatives and a Liberal Democrat. Sector by sector the responses came in, saying that companies were happy with the current balance between domestic and European regulation. Several transport companies argued for greater emphasis on common European regulation rather than less of it. The Scotch Whisky Association, whose then chief executive was David Frost, now the noble Lord, Lord Frost, was particularly enthusiastic about the advantages of common regulation with the European single market. Of course, that was before the noble Lord’s damascene conversion from evidence-based argument to embittered opposition to everything European.

Can the Minister tell us what consultations the Government have conducted in the past year with large and small companies before committing themselves to diverge from EU regulations in the way Mr Rees-Mogg plans? My understanding is that UK exporters, both large and small companies, would much prefer the Government to maintain close alignment between UK regulations and those in our largest overseas market. Does the Minister have any recent evidence to the contrary? Does he understand that the Government have any recent evidence to the contrary?

The chimera of making a bonfire of regulations has appealed to the ideological right ever since Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Belief in the superiority of unregulated markets has survived through stark evidence to the contrary, as in the loose regulations that led to the Grenfell fire. Margaret Thatcher understood that a well-regulated market is fundamental to a thriving economy, which is why she pushed for the common regulatory structures of the European single market. British Ministers and officials played a major role in creating that common single market. Many of the regulations that Mr Rees-Mogg is now denouncing were shaped by UK efforts, not imposed by foreign Governments on a powerless UK, as he is now suggesting—but Mr Rees-Mogg’s career has been entirely in finance rather than the real economy of production, marketing and exporting, and much of it offshore in Hong Kong, Singapore and other low-tax financial jurisdictions.

Mr Rees-Mogg is also the Minister for Government Efficiency. He notes in his Statement the extra work that Whitehall officials have undertaken to grasp these “Brexit freedoms”, as he puts it. He does not note that leaving the EU and setting up a range of national regulatory agencies to replace those we shared with our European partners has required a substantial increase in both the number of officials and the costs involved. Part of our contribution to the EU budget went towards funding those common agencies; some of them, such as Europol, were led by British officials. Yet at the same time as being Minister for Efficiency—that wonderfully odd phrase—Mr Rees-Mogg is pushing for a sharp reduction in Civil Service numbers, without regard to the additional tasks that it is taking on. Can the Minister explain how the Government propose to manage this additional effort while slashing the number of staff?

There are more windy comments in the Statement about restoring the sovereignty of Parliament, followed by the declaration that most of this will be pushed through under secondary, even tertiary, legislation, without effective parliamentary scrutiny. The illusion that we now stand imperially sovereign in the world, freed of the European yoke, is punctured by the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, circulated yesterday, announcing that we are opening trade negotiations with the Gulf Cooperation Council—in which we will not mention civil or political rights so as to avoid offence. This Government are willing to negotiate and compromise with the GCC but not with our democratic neighbours. Can the Minister explain how giving concessions to the Gulf autocracies avoids limiting UK sovereignty while Mr Rees-Mogg insists that any compromise with the EU infringes on UK sovereignty?

Last night, I wondered whether the Minister might revolt as he attempted to justify this irrational ideological waffle and follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, by walking out of the Chamber and the Government mid-Statement. However, I fear that he has not yet reached that point, despite the nonsensical Statement that he is forced to defend.

Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan: Gambling Addiction

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend and others on all Benches who have campaigned on this matter. I am pleased to tell him that setting up this process is not the end; the end is the action that follows. We are committed to taking tangible action, where appropriate, to redress past wrongs. To do this in a meaningful way, we have to fully understand the impact that the historic ban still has today, and the independent review will help to do that.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, we know from research from Swansea University and others that veterans are 10 times more likely than non-veterans to experience problem gambling, yet we do not screen for it. Support for those leaving the Armed Forces has vastly improved in recent decades but there is still more to do, and support cannot be provided if we do not know those most likely to need it. When the Minister goes back to his department and speaks to colleagues at the MoD, will he encourage them to include screening for a propensity for problem gambling as part of the usual mental health screening?

[Lord True (Con)]

I am sure that my colleagues will take note of everything said in this House; I certainly promise the noble Baroness that. I remind the House, if anyone doubts this Government’s commitment, that it was this Government who set up the first ever dedicated Office for Veterans’ Affairs, to champion veterans in every respect, at the heart of government. We have an action plan and we will have a veterans strategy refresh, drawing on all the wise advice given by your Lordships and others, but I think the Government deserve some credit for what has actually been done here.

EU–UK Partnership Council

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I of course very much agree with my noble friend’s question, and she is right to refer to the spirit of constructiveness. It is natural that the disputes catch attention, but it is worth dwelling on the fact that a huge amount of business in this very wide-ranging trade and co-operation agreement is carrying on satisfactorily. I hope that the same spirit might be shown in the ongoing discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol, which no doubt we will touch on.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, the key word in my noble friend’s Question is “partnership”. Both our economy and our place in the world will be stronger if disputes can be resolved amicably. Some commentators have likened the Minister’s negotiating strategy to puffing out his chest for weeks or months before finally getting down to the serious business of achieving consensus. On the issue of Northern Ireland, will he assure us that he is not intending to use the issue of the supply of medicines to the people of Northern Ireland as leverage in his negotiations?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, there has been a lot of discussion of my negotiating strategy over the last two and a half years. The fact that we achieved the broadest, most wide-ranging and most comprehensive trade and co-operation agreement ever reached is testimony to my wish to achieve partnership with the EU. On the issue of medicines, we continue to be in discussion with the EU on this subject, and I will talk again to Maroš Šefčovič tomorrow. I am not convinced that we are going to reach agreement on it by the end of the year, but we will try. Of course, it is a national priority that medicines should be available in Northern Ireland, as they are everywhere else in the UK.

European Union: Border Control Checks

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I share the characterisation that Northern Ireland is both part of the United Kingdom and part of the EU. It is certainly in a somewhat different position as regards goods trade. Northern Ireland is a very successful part of the United Kingdom, has some great companies and has a very bright future. I am very happy that, as the FT article noted, it has grown well. Nevertheless, the burdens of the protocol are significant and will probably grow over time, so we need to find a solution.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, this continued failure to reach a stable agreement with the EU is expensive for business and the UK taxpayer. We have one set of checks that were postponed back in September, another waived in December and others that are still due to come into force. The Government are spending £360 million on trader support, £150 million on digital agri-food certification and IT systems and £50 million on checking facilities. What is the Minister’s assessment of how much of this money we would get back should he trigger Article 16?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is reasonable that we should bring in controls as we see fit, in a staged and controlled way over time, so that companies have time to adjust to them. That staging means that the process is spread over a year or two, but that is reasonable and makes life as easy as it can be for businesses both exporting and importing.

The noble Baroness is correct to refer to the substantial sums we have spent on implementing the Northern Ireland protocol. That demonstrates that the accusation sometimes made against us that we are not interested in implementing the protocol is not correct. We have spent a lot of money in an attempt to mitigate the burdens, but there are obviously simpler ways of mitigating the burdens than requiring every good moving to Northern Ireland to go through a customs process and paying the heavy costs of that—and it is those new solutions that I hope we can find in the coming months.

Northern Ireland: Supply of Medicines

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, that might indeed be a solution; it has not been part of the discussions so far, and I think that the regulators on both sides guard their discretion closely and the ability to proceed at the speeds that they think best, as we have seen this year on vaccine licensing.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, there can be no question of any interruption to the supply of medicines to Northern Ireland. This is urgent for the UK, but we should remember that the EU needs to resolve this issue for Malta and Cyprus as well. Patients, their families and clinicians need certainty. Will the Minister confirm that he is not taking a “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” approach? The EU needs to resolve this issue on behalf of member states and is likely to present further suggestions imminently. Does he accept that supply of medicines should be dealt with as a priority and, if necessary, separately from other Northern Ireland protocol issues?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that the Government will not allow there to be any disruption to supply of medicines to Northern Ireland; that is an absolute obligation on us. Of course, medicines are only one of many problems that we have put on the table. They are a special case, if you like, of the issue of supply of goods more generally to Northern Ireland, so the matter cannot be seen entirely in isolation but needs to be solved as part of many of the other difficulties on the protocol.

Beyond Brexit: Institutional Framework (EUC Report)

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, having listened to the excellent speeches this afternoon, I am aware that I am a complete newcomer to this House and to this debate, but I am not a complete newcomer to having arguments about Brexit.

I would like to make noble Lords aware, if they were not already, of how grateful Members in the other place have been, particularly since the referendum but before that too I am sure, to the European Union Committee and its sub-committees for their work. They were invaluable in supporting work while I was an MP. It has also been very refreshing to take part in a debate on our relationship with the EU that has been relatively easy to follow. We have not talked about humble Addresses or taking control of Order Papers or any of that. By and large, the discussion has been forward facing and not backward looking, which I very much welcome.

I pay tribute to all the noble Lords involved over what I now understand is five decades-worth of work. It is older than me, so I have the utmost respect for the work that has taken place. I find it strange, as a newcomer, that we debate these reports on quite fast-moving issues so long after they are published. I wonder whether that is normal here, or whether the Government might try to assist in enabling us to do this in a more timely way.

I welcome the noble Lord, Lord True, although it is interesting that he has been assigned to this debate, given the ministerial responsibilities of the noble Lord, Lord Frost, his evidence during the course of the inquiries we are debating and the many references to him in the Government’s response. I hope the Minister passes on our best wishes to him; it would have been good to see him here as well. I do not know whether this decision is part of a wider pattern, but I note that he has taken to making Statements on the last day of term, or when the Commons is not sitting, and issuing Written Statements rather than Oral Statements. I hope that will not become a habit.

The noble Lord, Lord Frost, has been meeting regularly with Mr Šefčovič, and I hope that Members’ comments and concerns can be relayed to him. They are real and immediate problems that urgently need to be resolved, such as that of ensuring the supply of medicines to Northern Ireland. Triggering Article 16 would be a failure of negotiation and lead us nowhere. Can the Minister please share the Government’s latest thinking on this issue?

Many of the trade issues raised in the reports are just as important today as they were when the documents were published in the early part of the year. Although figures have stabilised for some sectors, disruptions or other barriers to trade remain for others, and deals are still lacking in areas such as financial services. The Government need to think much more about the practicalities for businesses—red tape, bureaucracy and fragility of supply chains. The Government cannot pretend that these are not problems; it is their responsibility to solve them. This has to work. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong said so well, failure to address these issues will hold back regions such as the north-east.

We are all familiar with issues around the supply of labour, whether it is HGV drivers, fruit pickers or abattoir workers. They have left UK businesses urgently making contingency plans. In the case of the agri-food sector, some farmers are exporting animal carcasses for processing before re-importing them, which adds to delays and costs. As we have heard, an SPS agreement of some sort is urgently needed on some basis—through equivalence or some other mechanism—to smooth trade, especially with Northern Ireland. These issues are not going to go away. Our food and drink industry, which is our biggest manufacturing sector, is something we are all proud of; it needs an active, engaged Government working alongside, not against, it.

On trade flows, last week, we saw figures that highlighted the volume of goods that used to flow through the UK while transiting between the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the EU but which now bypass our ports and businesses entirely. Brexit has happened, but I do not agree with everyone who argues that our economy can never thrive again; we have to make our new status work and the Government do not need to relitigate the arguments of 2016 and 2019. We have, sadly, heard that happening, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Frost, I have to say, in recent months. Even though the Government are possibly addicted to, or just habitually used to, those debates, we have to move on; this means working together to tackle shared problems such as climate change and refugees with our nearest international neighbours.

On the institutional side, some of the various joint bodies have only recently been established and have been slow to meet. Despite controlling parliamentary business prior to the summer, the Government insisted that it was not their responsibility to bring forward the necessary Motions in both Houses to enable the appointment of UK representatives to the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. Having glanced at the Order Paper in the other place this morning, I gather that this may have moved on, but can the Minister confirm what is happening with that? Many of the specialist committees have met for the first time only in the past month or two, with the specialised committee on customs co-operation and rules of origin meeting on 7 October and the equivalent body covering road transport on 24 November. If we are going to have these committees, we should treat them seriously, so can the Minister explain what Her Majesty’s Government are going to do to ensure that these structures work effectively and that the UK gets the best from them?

We have heard concerns about lack of parliamentary scrutiny, particularly when such issues as cabotage, the creative industries and financial services are not resolved. The Government, as well as assuring us that these issues are in hand, need to resolve them fully; scrutiny and challenge will be part of that process for the long term. We have seen too many short-term commitments and statements. What have been lacking are behaviours that indicate to the country that the Government have long-term stability for business at the forefront of their mind. We desperately need stability and predictability. Although the final text of the TCA has been published and ratified since the reports were published, side agreements are still lacking. The Treasury has seemingly abandoned financial services equivalence, it seems to me, while the long-term status of Gibraltar still has not been confirmed in a legal text. Can the Minister update us on that?

We need normality. My worry is that constant wrangling becomes the new normality. The Government really must ensure that that is not the case. Dispute resolution seems to be a necessary part of the landscape at the moment. It is inevitable, I suppose, that there will be disputes; it is vital that the Government and the EU together show that they are able to navigate issues in a timely and effective way. This has not been the case so far, and both sides need to do better on fish and—tragically, I think—on Northern Ireland. There must be a calm, mature approach. It is in nobody’s interest to fail to get on with its neighbours. The approach we have seen harms our international reputation. This matters if we are to secure first-class trade deals; it also matters that we are reliable partners, especially given our role in peace and security around the world. Even allowing for Covid, the Government’s handling of Brexit and our future relationship with the EU is not being managed well. If the Government do not change their approach, I am afraid that our regions, our communities and the people of this country will be worse off.

Retained EU Law

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a very good question. It is indeed one of the difficulties with the protocol, as constructed, that EU law, in areas of the single market for goods, is imposed without any agreement by the institutions in Northern Ireland. That is a situation we are seeking to remedy in the negotiations I am currently conducting.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is being rather slippery in his responses to questions about retained EU law. The reason I say this is that we were promised—in the other place at least and, I am sure, in here too—that changes to retained EU law would be subject to primary legislation, and I can remember vividly Secretaries of State Raab, Barclay and Davis saying in terms at the Dispatch Box that this would be the case. Is the Minister now overriding that commitment?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

A number of things have happened since those commitments were made, including a general election, which we won with a clear set of policies. Our policy on this matter was as I set out on 16 September in my Statement, and we are considering the best way of delivering that policy.

Ireland/Northern Ireland: Solid Fuels

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point, as always. It is a concrete case that demonstrates that it is possible to manage these matters in other ways. This is one of the reasons why what we put forward in the Command Paper is a compromise. It is not my noble friend’s proposal. It is that we would for most purposes police goods going into Ireland and the single market in the Irish Sea, but would wish to see goods flowing freely into Northern Ireland. That is a workable and sensible compromise proposal, and in the negotiations we have not yet heard why it could not work.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, this situation rather highlights the need for a certain amount of bandwidth on behalf of the Government, in that occasionally they need to negotiate simultaneously with the EU and with individual member states. Does the Minister think that the undeniable damage to the Prime Minister’s authority in recent weeks is leading to a bit of a problem with government bandwidth? I ask this because it is really easy to talk tough about Article 16, at least when he is here, but not if the Minister and the Prime Minister do not have the backing of the entire Cabinet to see through the consequences, which would be further damage to international relationships and possibly a trade war. Is he confident that any of his Cabinet colleagues will be with him in the trenches if he leads us into further disputes?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the Cabinet and the Government stand fully behind the policy that we set out in the Command Paper in July, which is a very good compromise policy that we still hope to negotiate. We have made it clear that a negotiated outcome is the best one, but that policy paper, which we all stand behind, also makes it clear that Article 16 is a legitimate and useful tool if necessary. That remains the Government’s position.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Impact on UK Internal Market

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the trade and co-operation agreement and the withdrawal agreement are obviously separate. I have said that the difficulties we are having on the protocol are at the heart of some of the broader mistrusts that exist in the process at the moment. That said, the implementation of the TCA is going well. The specialised committees have largely met. The trade committee met earlier this week and, despite difficulties on issues such as fisheries, we are nevertheless implementing the TCA well and effectively, and the processes are working well.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a problem here, because the response the Minister gave to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, seems to contradict the impression given to the UK and European media—and Simon Coveney, who said that he welcomed the change of tone from the Minister and anticipated that with political will, this issue could be resolved by Christmas. Earlier, I implied that the Minister was not in the mood for answering questions today. Can he prove me wrong by giving us his percentage assessment of the chances of success by Christmas?