There is a list of areas in clause 46 where the Government are taking powers for direct funding into the devolved nations.
The upshot is that passing the Bill intact would not provide a safety valve or insurance if the Government’s oven-ready deal threatened to burn down the house; if the house burned down, the tenants—our home nations—would rebuild it several feet apart, ending our historic Union. The Government never were honest that leaving the European Union would create an existential threat to our United Kingdom. They have never addressed the inherent tensions that they themselves created and that the Bill deepens rather than resolves.
Upending our international reputation as a nation that upholds the law, and creating the barriers to trade that no deal would create, will have severe consequences and threatens creating an unstoppable force that will cause our nation’s fabric to be permanently rent asunder. I cannot support that, and neither should Government Members. That is why I support the Labour Front-Bench amendments in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer).