My Lords, I listened carefully to noble Lords who spoke before me. The devolved Administrations are failing to recognise that both the CMA and the office for the internal market are fundamentally UK-wide bodies working on UK-wide issues. They are not bodies where territorial interests will be played out. The devolved nations are part of the United Kingdom, which exists and is not just a federation of four independent nations. There are clear United Kingdom functions, which is why we have UK Ministers looking out for the interests of the whole United Kingdom. We should not regard the UK as somehow morphing into an equivalence with England, which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, came close to saying, even if he did not actually say it, when he spoke earlier.
Furthermore, these significant independent public bodies should not be seen as having nominees or representatives on them: it is important that you get the best people to contribute to the functions given to these bodies by statute. Those people will require qualifications and experience. It does not matter where they come from: the most important thing is to get the right quality of individual on those bodies to carry out their functions. Any sense that those individuals become the possessions of devolved Administrations could take them into political alignment, which would have a very negative influence on the effective operation of the independent bodies.
Schedule 3 already requires consultation with the devolved Administrations over the appointment of the chair and panel of the office for the internal market. That is the normal formulation. I do not think that there is a precedent for what is proposed, for example, in Amendment 117: direct appointments by devolved Administrations to independent UK-wide bodies. That would take us in a direction that could undermine the independence and coherence of those bodies. I hope that noble Lords will not pursue their amendments.