Skip to main content
Donate to the 95 years appeal
Reform Internal Market act or face ‘years of inertia’, say campaigners
A Saltire flag is flanked by Union flags flying above Whitehall in Westminster, London

LABOUR must reform the Internal Market Act or risk consigning devolved governments to “years of inertia, delay and uncertainty,” campaigners have warned.

The post-Brexit Act was passed by the Tories in 2020 with the aim of harmonising legislation within the United Kindgom and creating a nationwide single market, limiting the legislative powers of devolved administrations in economic policy.

A new report for Scottish Environment Link (SEL), a charity which brings together more than 40 different environmental groups, argues that the legislation is stifling innovation.

The report’s author James MacKenzie said that despite devolution being introduced to “great fanfare,” two decades on “those devolved institutions were radically undermined [by the Act] in a way many people are still not aware of.”

Pointing to Scotland’s failed deposit return scheme for bottles and cans as an example, Mr MacKenzie branded the Act “a mechanism unfit for the governance of four nations.”

He urged the Westminster government to undertake the legislative “keyhole surgery” required to help “devolved institutions flourish again.”

SEL chief executive Deborah Long said the role of devolution as “part democracy, part test-bed” had now “come to a grinding halt under the Internal Market Act.”

“Devolved governments and parliaments are now wary of prolonged tussles over measures which had been well within their power for two decades,” she said.

“If the changes proposed in our report today are not adopted, we face years of inertia, delay and uncertainty, just as all the indicators show we should be acting more urgently than ever before.”

A Westminster government spokesperson said: “We are beginning a broad review of the UK Internal Market Act this month and will be consulting widely.”

 SNP Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes said: “The Scottish government is clear that the statutory review must lead to the Act’s repeal, with the powers of the Scottish Parliament fully restored.”

 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
A general view of the University of the West of Scotland's Lanarkshire Campus at Hamilton International Technology Park, June 24, 2019
Workers' Rights / 7 July 2025
7 July 2025
A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward
Scotland / 7 July 2025
7 July 2025