My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 79, which neatly follows the questions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, about standing.
On 13 January, the following fanfare was announced from Downing Street:
“Prime Minister to chair new council with devolved governments”.
The No. 10 press release described this as a
“Landmark agreement on how UK government and devolved governments will continue to work together”,
and how an agreement on this “has been reached”. It promised “new ways of working”, “Reaffirmed principles” of
“mutual respect, maintaining trust and positive working”
and formalised a “council”, led by the Prime Minister, “overseeing strengthened working”.
I am going to come to the document that lies behind the press release in a moment. Of the five things the Government say this is going to achieve, they end with the principle about conflict resolution:
“Resolving disputes according to a clear and agreed process”.
I am trying to seek consistency in this Bill, which has been severely criticised for the relationships it is trying to and has to build with the devolved Administrations. At the same time, we have another document, setting up more machinery of government, which will look at resolving disputes. I understand that resolution of disputes is in the common frameworks procedure, but there is very little in the Bill about how the devolved Administrations can resolve disputes. I suspect—I am pretty certain—that there will be a lot of criticism over the coming months and years from the devolved Administrations.
In the document which lies behind the Prime Minister’s announcement, about the review of intergovernmental relations, there is a two-page section in which the first paragraph states:
“No Secretariat”—
it is an independent secretariat managing the council—
“or government”—
and that is all Governments in the United Kingdom—
“can reject the decision of a government”—
again, that is any Government—
“to raise a dispute.”
So this is a dispute mechanism which has clearly been put in place by the Government to provide an opportunity for the Administrations to raise their disputes. I do understand that if it is enshrined in law, if the legislation is there, it makes it trickier, but as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, asked, what happens when somebody wants or objects to an interpretation, particularly that of the Secretary of State, and this process escalates?
The Bill contains a lot of procedures which could well lead to a dialogue between the devolved Administrations and the Secretary of State. There is also a huge amount of what is called “guidance”—which we shall come to later—and a number of documents are going to emerge which will perhaps put flesh on the bones of some of the things we have been talking about in the Bill.
My question is this: will this arrangement announced by the council and by the Prime Minister, no matter what this Bill comes to and no matter what the processes described in it are, allow, as the intergovernmental relations document states, any Government to bring a dispute before all the other Governments? There are 30 or 40 lines and another page about how that dispute has to be resolved and the use of an independent secretariat.
If the right relationships as described in the document from the Prime Minister were built into this Bill, I would rather hope that it would minimise the necessity for such a dispute mechanism to arise. My test of this is to ask the Minister the following question. Given the announcement, and given the availability of this procedure, is there anything that he can see apart from the legislation before us that a devolved Administration could not refer to this council? If that is so, there is a strong case for making it easier for the devolved Administrations to engage through the mechanisms of this Bill without having to go through all the processes which would lead to the dispute mechanism outlined by the Prime Minister. I am asking for consistency, and I hope that the Minister can provide it.