My Lords, speaking after so many distinguished noble Lords, I will try to avoid repeating what has been said. I formally offer the Green Party’s support for these amendments and thank the noble and learned Lord who tabled them and his co-signatories for their labours and powerful arguments.
I will offer three perspectives from green political philosophy. First, on the value of diversity, which the common frameworks approach embraces, a healthy ecosystem and a healthy governance system contain diversity. Our outdated, dysfunctional Westminster system acts to suppress that and, in response, we have seen the successful drive for devolution that has brought in political diversity across these islands. As we speak, the Senedd is considering extending that diversity to local government in Wales. That is a direction of travel that the Bill clearly and deliberately seeks to wrench into reverse, being deliberately destructive, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnier, said.
Diversity has obvious practical benefits, such as the ability to experiment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, reflected earlier, with different approaches to blocking the flood of single-use plastics into our choked islands; different approaches to producing healthy food from flourishing small market gardens and farms; and different approaches to educating our children, which later amendments in my name address. Where one approach is transparently successful, we hope others will follow its lead—unless political calculations get in the way.
The second philosophical point is about the value of localism—the people affected making the decisions that affect them, ideally democratically, as the nations other than England enjoy their democratic devolved legislative structures. “Take back control” was a very popular slogan in 2016. I entirely agree with that need, and put it to your Lordships’ House that this is what the amendments in support of the common frameworks agreement do for the people of these islands.
Finally, there is the value of co-operation. Working co-operatively is something that we, as Greens, find is very popular with the public. They are fed up with the see-saw of two-party politics, of a new Government seeking to sweep aside and to argue against everything their opponent did, just for the sake of claiming victory. The common frameworks approach is the very epitome of a co-operative way of working.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said that for the Government to reject these amendments is to reject devolution itself. I agree. She said that it would be a step towards the break-up of the United Kingdom. I agree. My view of the union is different from the noble Baroness’s. I believe there is a strong natural current towards taking back control in many parts of the United Kingdom but, if it is to happen, we can surely agree that it should be in a co-operative, positive environment, not nations feeling that they have to struggle their way out from under the boot of an overweening, care-less, distant Westminster.
Finally, taking the scientific perspective that reflects my background, I invite your Lordships’ House to consider the fate of the trilobites, whose long story of ocean success and eventual extinction was laid out in a paper in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science this week. Through three periods of mass global extinction, the trilobites were a large part of ocean ecosystems but, after each challenge, they had less diversity in ecological niches and bodily forms. Eventually, they dwindled to one species and disappeared. In diversity, co-operation and local power is strength. In homogeneity, dominance and centralism is a loss of resilience, decline and the potential for disaster.