United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Viscount Trenchard

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I again partly apologise to noble Lords because I intended to speak on later amendments and to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on Amendment 69. I will settle for Amendment 64.

I take exception to the definition of the Long Title from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. Whichever way we read it, it is about devolved matters in the United Kingdom. We have only to look at the definition of infrastructure in Clause 42 to see that it absolutely covers devolved matters. His was a bit of a cheap shot at the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, to try to imply that this was inconsistent with the Long Title.

My other beef is one I have had in the past regarding Wales and the Barnett formula. I have never understood why the people of Wales, including the politicians, have never risen up. Some years ago I was a member of the Select Committee that looked at the Barnett formula. It was abundantly clear that Wales had been cheated for years. If the Barnett formula was based on need, rather than population, Wales would be on about a third more than it is now. We told leading MPs about this, but I have never noticed any great kickback. Wales has been short-changed under Barnett for years. There is no easy answer to that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was absolutely bang on in delivering the information from box 3.1 out of the Red Book at the beginning of the debate. I thought his eight questions were incredibly telling. I would use the term “pork barrel”, because that is what it is about. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose Statement I heard earlier, made it quite clear that the spending of this money relied on the consent of the constituency Member of Parliament, although I understand that the Treasury might have disowned this since. I tweeted, saying that it is incredibly dangerous for constituency Members of Parliament to be involved in executive functions. Local councils are always involved in executive functions; Members of the House of Commons are not. It is incredibly dangerous territory for them to get involved in, particularly in view of incidents that arose in the past.

I understand that the Treasury might have backpedalled a little on that, but it shows the thought process of those who constructed the Statement today, which is intricately involved with the Bill: destroy devolution, open up the pork barrel and give money to your friends based on the constituency MP. That cannot be a good form of governance. It cuts across devolution massively, whichever way anyone defines it. I have said before that my experiences have been at Defra and MAFF before devolution, then at the Food Standards Agency, which was a four-nation, non-ministerial department at the time. Whitehall has never really done devolution and never really understood what was happening. It has taken a while even for the House of Commons to become clear about the quite distinct advantages of devolution. It all went wrong, of course, when the proportional electoral system gave a majority Government. That is not supposed to happen, but neither, on the other hand, is first past the post designed to give coalitions, which is what we had in 2010. You cannot base the future construct of the constitution on such whims.

Governments come and go and will not be there for ever, but I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said: with devolution now under acute and very massive threat, there is no question but that this will push the independence movements of Wales and Scotland wider and further, particularly in Scotland, where it is stronger. I cannot see a solution to it. I think that we are heading headlong towards the break-up of the union. I will fight like hell to stop that and a lot of people will. The problem is, keeping the fight in words and debate. We are heading for the destruction of our country, without any policy announcement, a clear vote or a manifesto commitment. It is being done by subterfuge and backhanders.

In my view this is the direct effect of the Bill, particularly these attacks on devolution. Amendment 69 covers the same for Clause 44; they are two sides of the same coin. I was going to speak about Amendment 65, but I will leave that to my noble friend. This fundamental attack on devolution, with the push to break up the United Kingdom, is a much more serious affair than has been recognised by your Lordships’ House, where it has been recognised more than in the House of Commons. We need to send a signal to the elected House that our country, our constitution and the make-up of the union are under direct threat as a result of the Bill.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

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.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Viscount Trenchard

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree very much with what was said early on in the debate, but I must say to both noble Earls, Lord Caithness and Lord Shrewsbury, that making the argument requires a positive approach to access. It came across certainly in the first few minutes of the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, that he would be very happy if there were no access anyway. He then went on to deploy the arguments and consequences of access.

Access is here to stay, whether it is the coastal path or access to the countryside. However, I could not agree more that in a small country it must be managed. Think about this: you go to a countryside car park for a walk. You will probably pay something, but there will also be a sign saying that every month the costs of removing the litter germinated by the car park and its users will be shared by every car parked there, and that by paying to park there you accept that. That might be a salutary warning to those causing the trouble, and to those who see trouble and do nothing about it.

I have been a walker in the Lake District for more than 30 years and I freely admit that I have never seen any seriously bad examples of fly-tipping. On the other hand, I have seen really bad examples elsewhere. I do not accept that it should be the responsibility solely of the landowner. There must be more enforcement, more cameras and more forensic examination of the waste. Given the kind of stuff that is so carelessly piled up in serious fly-tipping, the evidence that people leave can be traced back to where it came from. There is an argument about who actually did it, who was responsible in the end and where the waste came from, but the police should take some responsibility—they do not take rural crime seriously enough, and this is a rural crime. I very much agree with what was said about the broken windows theory, which is fundamental.

I am in favour of a crackdown. We have automatic number plate recognition cameras all over the city and in different areas. We need a bit more of it in the countryside, with some warnings about responsibility. That being the case, I realise that it is very difficult, though not impossible, to provide a proper enforcement system, but to be honest, there is no enforcement system at the moment. We ought to start to generate one.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, as I said on Tuesday, additional public access, however beneficial to people whose livelihood does not depend on agriculture, is a distraction from farmers’ primary responsibility to manage their land efficiently to produce food for the nation and to assist our balance of trade by producing high-quality food products for export around the world.

I congratulate my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Shrewsbury on their eloquent and persuasive introduction to their amendment. They are absolutely correct that the new scheme must properly compensate farmers for the damage and additional costs they will incur as a result of the obligation they will face to provide more public access. Littering has been getting worse in recent years. So has fly-tipping, which has got much worse through lockdown, as my noble friend Lord Caithness observed. I wholeheartedly support the amendment and look forward to the Minister’s reply.

As my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury said, the answer from my noble friend Lord Goldsmith, which I heard as well, was unsatisfactory and rather ambiguous. It seems that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, also considers fly-tipping to be at least partly the responsibility of the landowner, which I was rather surprised to hear him state. Could the Minister clarify the Government’s policy on responsibility for fly-tipping and what my noble friend Lord Goldsmith actually intended to say?