UK Government Union Capability

Motion to Take Note

Moved by

That this House takes note of (1) The Dunlop Review into UK Government Union capability, and (2) the progress update on the review of inter- governmental relations, both published on 24 March.

My Lords, if the previous debate was about a major part of the United Kingdom’s external soul, this debate is about a major part of our internal one. The past 25 years have seen huge changes in how we are governed, with the devolution of much power from Westminster in various stages. The job of creating the mechanics as to how the UK’s resulting governmental bodies interact has, however, not kept step; this is contributing to the significant creaks and groans within the union that are of such concern today to so many here—certainly to me. I thought I would remind the House of some of the history and then draw some conclusions.

The instrument that governs the principles of intergovernmental relations in the UK is the memorandum of understanding of October 2013. This 60-page document is in fact only a draft, as it was never fully adopted by all the parties. It vests the responsibility in the UK Government for the MoU and the Joint Ministerial Committees with the Deputy Prime Minister—a position vacant since 2015. Ten pages are also taken up with a chapter entitled “Concordat on Co-ordination of European Union Policy Issues”. Those two anachronisms are not the only issues.

The Scottish independence referendum was in September 2014. The resulting Smith commission agreement led to a substantial additional number of powers being devolved, as duly happened pursuant to the Scotland Act 2016 and the Wales Act 2017. These significant changes in the devolution settlements represent yet more things that the drafters of the October 2013 MoU had not sought to address.

Under the strong chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, who will speak later, our Constitution Committee reported in May 2016. The committee went into things in impressive detail in its report, The Union and Devolution, which built on its incisive May 2015 report on the Smith commission agreement. It concluded that the UK Government must

“devise and articulate a coherent vision for the shape and structure of the United Kingdom, without which there cannot be constitutional stability.”

Indeed, the whole report is as relevant and to the point today as it was five years ago.

The Brexit process kicked off in June 2016, just one month later, and exacerbated the situation. In our report, Brexit: Devolution, the European Union Committee commented in July 2017:

“The devolved governments, and some of our witnesses, have also argued that fundamental reform is needed to give the devolved institutions a more formal role in UK decision-making post-Brexit, analogous to that of regions and states in federal systems.”

I remember well the evidence sessions. The committee could not take a formal view on this, of course, as it was outside our remit, but the very fact that we included this paragraph shows how concerned we were.

My Lords, I welcome the report of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop. It addresses very important issues and makes serious recommendations, including on the need to improve intergovernmental relations in the United Kingdom. Your Lordships’ committee dealing with common frameworks, of which I am a member, has recommended improvements to the IGR system, and the Government themselves, as we just heard, are making certain changes, but we need much more radical change to the way in which the Governments in Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh and London work together.

We now live in a very different constitutional world. The British political landscape has changed dramatically and, during the past year, having to deal with Covid, more and more people are now conscious of devolution in our country. The First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has this week spoken of the need to reform the union. He is right. There must be British Government recognition of the new picture.

When I was a territorial Secretary of State, many in Whitehall adhered to the maxim “devolve and forget”. This will no longer work. There must be mutual respect between the partnership of nations in our country. We should have an independent system to deal with disputes between those Administrations. Your Lordships’ House could play a significant role in representing the different parts of our country.

Flags and United Kingdom Government offices in Cardiff and Edinburgh will not strengthen the union. Only a wholly new approach will work. I want the union to survive and prosper. It will remain only if we seriously reform it.

My Lords, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the new leader of the DUP, said this morning:

“The Northern Ireland Protocol represents the greatest threat to the economic integrity of the United Kingdom in any of our lifetimes.”

The United Kingdom Government thrust upon one of the four constituent parts of the UK a vital constitutional and economic framework without consultation. The DUP has no ownership of any part of it. I entirely understand unionists’ frustrations, although I disagree with their stance and rhetoric.

The review of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, points to an entirely new structure and an approach to devolution which would largely prevent these strains on the coherence of the union. I welcome his review and recommendations and I, too, regret very much that it took so long to publish it and to address its important first two propositions. The progress report makes it clear that, although there is some movement forward, there is as yet no agreement on the structure and responsibilities of the UK Government and devolved Administrations council. Will the Minister kindly update us on that issue and on the current state of any discussions?

In their report, Reforming Our Union, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and published on Tuesday, the Welsh Government point out that there has not been a plenary meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council—the existing, feeble body for discussions on devolution—for 12 months. Mr Drakeford declares that

“it has become harder and harder to make the case for the Union, and the threat to it has never been greater during my lifetime.”

He rightly says that when the UK Government act in an aggressively unilateral way on behalf of the whole UK, without regard for the status of the nations and the democratic mandate of the Government, that inevitably creates anger and alienation. I commend the report as an excellent contribution to the debate. I regret that that is as far as my Japanese haiku—or Welsh cynghanedd—of a speech can take me.

My Lords, in the miserably short time allotted for debate on this Motion that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has so wisely brought before us, I will make just two points.

First, the Dunlop review is an excellent piece of work and an excellent contribution to the reformed machinery of government for a better union that we must build and must be on offer if the United Kingdom is to remain intact. Unfortunately, the Scottish independence movement is about a lot more than machinery and governance. It has to be realised that that is primarily an emotional cause, driven by a proud people in an ancient and exceptionally talented kingdom. That means that the movement is ready to sweep aside all rational, economic and administrative argument as scaremongering and project fear. It is emotions that have to be responded to. The separatist arguments can be met only by asking and answering the question as to why we need and how we gain consent for a good and friendly union in these islands, where we are all mixed together, in this utterly transformed age of new conditions. On that, frankly, we have hardly started.

Secondly, the key to the whole Scottish independence trajectory lies not in the hands of the hard-line one-third of Scottish republicans, who always wanted breakaway at any costs, but with the broad swathe across the middle—the moderate unionists who are now extremely inclined to independence of some kind, especially after Brexit. Given the emotional content, most practical proposals for more devolution will make little impact. This is about sovereignty, not just devolution—a different, although overlapping, concept.

So the question boils down to what can be done via tone, respect, language of partnership and a proper say in national and world policies for Scotland which is short of severing the link of sovereignty, yet gives Scotland a real feeling of place in the scheme of things and the comity of nations, large and small. It is time —well past time—to pin down the loudest voices in Edinburgh about what they really want and what independence actually means to them. Once that is done, we can start the steps towards a better kind of union and the full value of the Dunlop reforms can come into play. Let us hope that it is not too late.

My Lords, the present Government came to power with a commitment to significant constitutional change. Their manifesto pledged that a Conservative Government would hold a constitutional review to restore “trust in our democracy”. As well as the Conservatives, every other major party had commitments relating to constitutional change. Polling showed that 85% of people felt dissatisfied with the political system. All this contributed to a sense that there would be change.

There was an opportunity for a wider debate around the Dunlop review but it was never allowed to happen. Eventually, we discovered that one of the findings was that Whitehall had little understanding of or interest in devolution. That was confirmed by the imposition of the internal market Act.

Constitutional reviews are loudly announced but quietly disappear. We heard from the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord True, on 14 June that the Government had

“no plans to establish an inquiry into the constitution.”—[Official Report, 14/6/21; col. 1657.]

He also said that there could be no sharing of sovereignty. That, in effect, means that there is no constitutional protection for the devolved Administrations. The regions and nations all face a battle to protect themselves from the centralising agenda of this Government. Will the Minister accept the suggestion that the Government should invite the nations and regions to undertake the unfinished business of devolution and ask them to lead a constitutional review?

In 2009 David Melding, a Conservative Welsh Assembly Member, wrote a perceptive book called Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020? —and that was before Brexit sent a huge constitutional shock through our muddled constitutional arrangements. The UK Government are now scrambling to recentralise powers previously held at EU level but then devolved down to the four nations. Devolution settlements are messy. I steered a Wales Act through this House in 2014 and there has been another since, but piecemeal arrangements will not withstand the impact of sustained attack by the SNP, combined with Brexit and the careless, ignorant imposition of the Northern Ireland protocol.

The Government believe strains in the union are due to problems in the three devolved nations. Ministers should examine themselves and consider how Englishness has changed. They must solve the problem of Ministers who one moment are English and the next are Ministers for the whole UK. An Anglocentric UK Government cannot prevent the break-up of the UK. The practical proposals by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, in his excellent report are the minimum needed but they must be accompanied by a fundamental change of approach.

I have been a Minister in both the Welsh and UK Governments. I understand the perceptions from both ends of the M4. Twitter tells me that the new HMRC HQ in Cardiff will feature a huge, eight-storey union jack. If I were in charge, I do not think I would start by using the tax office as an icon of Britishness. If the Government want to save the union—and I hope they do—they will have to dig much deeper than that.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, for his report. I too regret the delay in its publication. There are many positives in it, and I admire and applaud—

I am afraid we cannot hear the noble Lord. I suggest we move on.

The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, reminded us that the Government sat on their Dunlop report for 16 months and do not seem to be planning to implement it in full. They slipped it out surreptitiously, without allowing a proper debate, and their curious progress update document is still a disputed draft, 39 months into the review. Where is the drive or the urgency? Government documents are not at the level of events.

In Scotland, as in Northern Ireland, devolution is on life support. New structures could be agreed in a week if the Prime Minister were to engage and get them done. Maybe that is the problem. It is almost as if his heart is not in it; as if he meant it when he called devolution a disaster; as if he cannot see what is now the only alternative in Scotland to making it work; as if he really believes that refusing a Section 30 order would close out that alternative, and that Northern Ireland need not involve him and can safely be left to Mr Brandon Lewis.

I have time for one piece of advice only to the Prime Minister: when in a hole, stop digging. Do not repeat the Brexit negotiations mistake of excluding the devolved Administrations. Invite them into the joint committee under the withdrawal agreement now. Do not insist on an immigration policy that ignores their demography, so different from England’s. Why repeat under state aid the internal market Act’s override of the devolution settlement? Do not, with no prior warning, do trade deals with third countries such as Australia, which the three Celtic countries—possibly wrongly but deeply—believe will damage their farmers. Do not go on feeding the perception that you are not really a UK Government but an English Government. Cut out the unforced errors, stop digging the hole deeper and please scrap the hard hat, high-vis jacket photo-op visits, which only annoy. Instead, show parity of esteem, get around the table with your counterparts, settle the structures and make them work. You have not long; time is running out.