‘Botched Brexit could trigger hardship and chaos’ – warning
BREXIT risks turning the clock back on devolution and could pave the way for chaos, experts have warned MPs.
The Welsh and Scottish first ministers have already described the UK Government’s flagship Brexit Bill as a “power grab” and yesterday Cardiff University Reader in Law Jo Hunt joined other experts to set out concerns to the MPs responsible for scrutinising Britain’s departure from the EU.
A key debate is whether powers today held by Brussels will be transferred to the Assembly straight after Brexit or held by Westminster. The Welsh Government argues that powers in areas of devolved responsibility such as agriculture should go to the Assembly.
Dr Hunt told the Exiting the EU Committee that under the UK Government’s proposals “these things are taken back to the centre and are then in a sort of piecemeal [way] handed down”. She argued that its plans go “too far in requiring that degree of control over how these things play out”.
Laura Dunlop QC, a leading Scottish lawyer, also raised concerns, saying: “[I] think it’s incontrovertible that there are powers which are leaving [Brussels] – I envisage them coming in a labelled box from Brussels and those powers at the moment [are] destined solely for London. There are no boxes to go to Edinburgh or Cardiff or Belfast.”
Ms Dunlop pushed for the different nations in the UK to play full roles in the international negotiations that will take place post-Brexit.
She cautioned that under present proposals it was expected “the international arrangements, whatever they are going to be, are going to be negotiated by the UK Government and then the UK Government will be telling the devolveds what they have to do to comply with them so the participation is really minimal”.
Ms Dunlop argued that “one obvious solution is to have full participation by the other three [nations] in the negotiations and then the positions can be agreed with full participation by all the devolved bodies”.
Dr Kamala Dawar of the UK Trade Policy Observatory warned that if there is no coordination between the different nations on key issues the Westminster Government could struggle to negotiate trade deals.
She warned it would be a “terrible thing for the UK economy if we had subsidies flying around in the different regions that weren’t coordinated”.
Ms Dawar said: “The worst scenario is that we have four different sets of economic models of what the nations want and no single coherent one that the UK can push forward at the international [level]. And, actually, that would undermine the message that the UK Government is trying to give out about being a trading nation, outwardly focused.”
Describing the challenge of reaching agreement, she said: “How many moving parts is the Government able to deal with at the same time. Just in this one Bill I see so many moving parts, we’re talking about standards, we’re talking about mutual recognition, we’re talking about competition, we’re talking about state aid, we’re talking about the procurement, we’re talking about environment... “That is the real problem.” However, she was in no doubt about the damage that would result if the UK leaves the EU without having secured a deal and has to trade with the block under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
She said: “If there’s no deal and in less than two year’s time we fall back on the WTO rules and regulations, our tariffs are going to spike, we’re going to be locked out of EU markets to a considerable extent and there’s going to be some real economic hardship.”
Ms Dawar also warned of the consequences of the UK Government pushing ahead with its Brexit legislation if the Assembly and the other devolved legislatures refused to grant consent.
She said: “The faith and the goodwill and the trust that we’ve been talking about would just fly out of the window if there wasn’t consent from the nations.”
Cardiff University’s Ms Hunt said the time had come for a serious discussion about how the UK nations should work together.
She said: “It should be a profound constitutional moment where the nature of the UK is properly addressed and a debate and a discussion is had about what the United Kingdom is for and what the roles of the different parties [in] the United Kingdom is for...
“If not now, then when? This seems to be the absolutely critical time to do it.”