Shadow Leader of the House Jesse Norman calls for action from the Government as it faces mounting economic challenges, with downgraded growth forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England, alongside fiscal constraints and new US steel tariffs.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
Like some of our leading podcasters, we love a storm cloud or two in business questions. Sure enough, the poor Government have been desperately hoping that recent events in America would drive the storm clouds away from the UK economy. Even though the news from Washington DC has been startling, to say the least, it has not been enough to dispel yet another week of adverse economic headlines. Both the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England have reportedly downgraded their growth forecasts, the latter cutting its by half, to a measly 0.75% for the year. So much for the Chancellor’s much-vaunted dash for growth.
Meanwhile, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has reported that “zero fiscal headroom remains” to deal with any shocks, in the same week that President Trump has announced 25% tariffs on steel. It is easy to see what has happened here: Labour never expected President Trump to win. It sent a team over to campaign for his opponent. The Government passed an anti-growth Budget, and they did not build enough leeway into their financial planning. Indeed, the Chancellor promised no new taxes or spending. Now we are having to live with the consequences.
It was also hard to miss the continuing controversy that the Attorney General is creating, and harder still not to notice the extremely critical words of his Labour colleague, Lord Glasman. I do not propose to repeat those words here, but they point to two issues that demand this House’s full and proper attention. In both cases, the concern is not over the legal positions taken by the Attorney General as such, but the contradictions that they offer to the rest of Government policy. People can agree or disagree about the policy, but the contradictions cannot be fudged. They cannot be blamed on others, and they require explanation.
The first contradiction is in relation to international law. On 3 February, the Attorney General told the Council of Europe that the Government would
“never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, or refuse to comply with judgments of the court”.
In doing so, he was simply restating settled UK policy for many decades, a fact that he somehow neglected to mention. The difficulty arises, however, because the Government’s new legislation on small boats appears to retain a measure banning migrants from claiming protections under the modern slavery laws. That is a ban that the Prime Minister went out of his way to denounce when it was first introduced in 2023. In his words:
“It is a crying shame that…we face legislation that drives a coach and horses through our world-leading modern slavery framework, which protects women from exploitation.”—[Official Report, 8 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 295.]
That is quite a U-turn. You see the deeper problem, Mr Speaker. Which is it to be: will the Government abide by international law in this instance and protect women from exploitation, as the Prime Minister said, or will they reverse his newly adopted position in support of the ban?
The second problem relates to domestic law. Last November, the Attorney General strengthened his official guidance to Government lawyers on possible legal risk. He specifically cautioned against offering legal support for policies that have only a tenable case. Elsewhere, he has pledged to restore checks on Executive—that is, Government—action. This comes at a time when the Prime Minister has specifically pledged to end vexatious litigation while building a huge amount of new housing and infrastructure. You see the problem, Mr Speaker. It was the problem that the noble Lord Glasman was pointing out when he praised the rule of law, but not of lawyers. This edict will have a chilling effect on what I think we can already agree is pretty sluggish decision making by Ministers.
Will the Government now take less legal risk, as the Attorney General requires? Will their lawyers now require Ministers to act only when they can defeat a legal challenge, or will they curb the judicial reviews and other legal cases that will otherwise inevitably disrupt their building plans? I do not expect the Leader of the House to tell us how the Government plan to resolve those obvious problems today, but the House would be grateful for a debate in Government time on what on earth the Government’s approach will be to resolving them.