Scottish Devolution Settlement: Retained EU Law

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of retained EU law on the Scottish devolution settlement.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this morning’s debate, Mrs Murray, and I welcome the Minister to his new post.

Should this shambles of a Government manage to stumble on past the weekend, we are being told that their Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will come before the House on 25 October. The Brexit freedoms Bill, as the Government like to call it, will give UK Ministers unprecedented powers to rewrite and replace almost 2,500 pieces of domestic law covering matters such as environment and nature, consumer protection, workers’ rights, product safety and agriculture, and that will be done with the bare minimum of parliamentary scrutiny. It is, in short, an ideologically driven deregulatory race to the bottom that will do enormous damage to our society and our economy.

The Bill, taken in conjunction with the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, will fundamentally undermine and alter the devolution settlement by giving primacy to UK law in areas that are wholly devolved, such as environmental health, food standards and animal welfare. Today, I thought it would be useful to consider the Bill to examine what it could mean for Scotland and for the devolution settlement. I believe that any objective analysis would see not only that it puts at risk many of the high standards and protections that the people of Scotland have enjoyed and come to expect from more than four decades of EU membership, but that it is part of the Government’s long-term plan to undermine the devolution settlement and weaken our Scottish Parliament.

Under the Bill, and with the 2020 Act already in place, any legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament could be undermined by a Government here in Westminster whom we did not elect, even in matters that are wholly devolved. I will give a few examples. In the area of food standards, if the Scottish Parliament decided that we would remain aligned with the European Union and would ban the sale of chlorinated chicken, but this place decided that cheap, imported, chlorine-washed chicken was acceptable, there would be almost nothing the Scottish Parliament could do to stop lorryloads of chlorine-washed poultry crossing the border, with that chicken then appearing on our supermarket shelves.

Similarly, if the UK agreed a trade deal that saw the UK flooded with cheap, factory-farmed, hormone-injected meat, but the Scottish Parliament decided to protect Scottish consumers and Scottish farmers by adhering to the standards and protections that we have up to now enjoyed, under the terms of the Bill—again, backed by the 2020 Act—Westminster could override that and Scotland’s supermarkets could be inundated with inferior-quality cheap cuts of meat that under existing EU law would get nowhere near our supermarket shelves.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Is it not the case that this is not just about standards? On farming and farmers, we have only to look at the trade deal signed by the UK with Australia and New Zealand, which allows them a higher quota for importing lambs to the UK than is allowed for the entire EU. The EU is protecting our farmers whereas the UK Government are throwing them to the wind.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is correct, and I will expand on his point in a moment.

This Government and the Bill are an existential threat to Scottish agriculture. Scotland could decide to stick to long-established best practice in the welfare and treatment of animals, and retain the stringent checks on animals entering the food chain. However, if this place decides to deregulate, animals whose provenance is unknown, and whose welfare history is unaccounted for, can and almost certainly will enter the food chain. Most worryingly, if the Government decide to change food labelling standards, Scottish consumers not only could be subjected to chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-injected beef, genetically modified crops and animals of questionable provenance, but will probably not be able to tell what they are eating. The labelling regulations could be so diminished that the protections consumers now enjoy could be completely removed.

On Friday, I met with the Argyll and Bute regional board of the National Farmers Union Scotland. Its message was stark: farmers feel forgotten and undervalued. They have been battered by Brexit. They are barely surviving the energy crisis. At a time of falling incomes, they are at a loss as to how they will cope with the skyrocketing costs of feed and fertiliser.

Farmers know, too, that the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill is a potential death sentence for an agricultural sector that requires a hefty subsidy. It needs that subsidy because it manages the land, keeps the lights on in our hills and glens, provides employment in rural communities, and helps stem the tide of rural depopulation while producing high-quality, high-value beef, lamb and dairy products. They know—we all know—that the lowering of food standards, the relaxation of rules on labelling and animal welfare, and the mass importation of inferior products will be an unmitigated disaster for Scottish agriculture. They are also painfully aware, as we are, that there is precious little that their democratically elected Scottish Parliament can do about it.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

It is very witty to frame this debate in those terms, but I think the right hon. Gentleman is missing the point. This is not about the power to hold a general election; this is about the power being ceded from this place to the Executive and what the Executive choose to do with that power when they get it. I will come on to what their powers could if that happens.

By opposing this Lords amendment, the Government are saying that the decision to dissolve this Parliament and call an election would rest entirely with the Prime Minister, and that that could be done without any parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever and in the absence of any judicial oversight. I suspect that many people watching our proceedings will be surprised to see that the Government are so opposed to the Lords amendment given that it is so limited and that all it seeks is a simple majority in this House.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Is it not strange that Conservative Members who we have had to listen to banging on and on for years about Parliament being sovereign and Parliament having control are now willing to cede that control to the Executive for cheap political gain?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I suspect he may have been reading my speech earlier, because I will come to that issue shortly.

This Government are determined that the Prime Minister, without consultation with or approval from this House and free of the threat of legal challenge, can call a snap general election when it is politically expedient for him so to do. Regardless of what is happening at home or abroad, basically, electoral calculus and the position of the governing party at the time will decide when we have a general election. It is wrong, and I believe it is unacceptable in a modern democracy.

Of course, as my hon. Friend says, a great irony here is that the very limited check that the Government will vote down this evening will be voted down by people who were elected on a promise that this House would take back control. Well, they should realise that they are not taking back control; they are surrendering control. The collective outrage displayed at the general election of 2019 about the perceived emasculation of this Parliament by Brussels and the European Union—they were absolutely determined to restore the sovereignty of what they like to call the mother of Parliaments—is going to look rather hollow when, at the first time of asking, they vote to take powers away from this legislature and hand them over to the Executive. I hope that when they go through the Lobby tonight, they understand that this is not taking back control. Voting with the Government this evening is about this House handing control to the Executive and about abdicating responsibility to the Executive.

At the risk of adding a note of discord, let us have a look at who we will be handing those increased executive powers to. They will be given to a Prime Minister who has illegally prorogued Parliament, who sought to purge his party of all but his most loyal followers, and who had to remove the Whip from a long-standing and highly respected Member simply for being chosen to head a Committee over his preferred candidate. We will be giving greater executive power to a Prime Minister who, in defiance of the security services, ennobled the son of a former KGB officer turned billionaire Russian oligarch, a Prime Minister whose career three weeks ago was hanging by a thread and who has been revealed to be up to his neck in dirty Russian money, and a Prime Minister who is currently under investigation by the Metropolitan police.

If Conservative Members vote to defeat this Lords amendment tonight, that is the character of the man to whom this House will be handing even greater executive power. I advise them to think very carefully about their decision, because this Lords amendment is there to protect the role of the House of Commons, to avoid executive overreach and, ultimately, to protect democracy.

Elections Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara]

If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to reduce this debate to that level, he is perfectly welcome so to do, but this is about a fundamental right for people to exercise their democratic right to vote. I urge him to take it a bit more seriously.

Yet again, this highlights the differences between what is happening here and what is happening in Scotland. If ever there was a reason why we need our independence, it is to get away from draconian legislation such as this. In May, when the Scottish National party won an unprecedented fourth term, we did it with a record number of people turning out to vote in a Scottish Parliament election. That does not happen by accident; that was by design. The SNP Government led the way by extending the franchise to all 16 and 17 year olds and, more recently, by allowing all eligible refugees in Scotland and those foreign nationals with settled status the right to vote. It is because we extended that franchise that we now have a thriving, healthy and robust democracy in Scotland. It is telling that, as Scotland, and indeed Wales, extend that franchise, this place seeks to do the exact opposite.

Over the summer, we learned that the Bill goes far beyond plans for voter ID. If it is passed, the Government will assume powers over the running and scrutiny of all future elections. The Bill reveals plans to strip the Electoral Commission of its powers and the independence it enjoys at the moment, and put it directly under the control of the Government, forcing it to conform to a strategy and policy statement which will be written by the Government. This means that the Government—the Executive—will be giving political direction to the organisation whose job it is to independently scrutinise and adjudicate on the fairness of elections. At a time when its powers should be extended, this Government are stripping the Electoral Commission of its powers and making scrutiny far more difficult.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. On extending the Electoral Commission’s powers, it has previously said that it does not have enough powers to keep the major parties in check and that overspending and breaches of electoral law have become business as usual, because it cannot fine them enough. Is this not all about taking further control rather than accepting open elections?

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are heading down a dangerous road and I urge Government Members to think carefully before proceeding.

One would have hoped that, at a time when democracies across the world are under threat from the influence of hostile actors, Governments could have taken this opportunity to introduce legislation to tackle those shadowy groups—those unincorporated associations—with anonymous sources of cash that are seeking to influence UK politics. However, given that openDemocracy recently revealed that since 2019, the Conservative party has accepted £2.5 million in donations from these shadowy groups, it was never going to be the anonymous, deep-pocketed bankrollers of the Conservative party who would be targeted in the Bill.

This Bill was always designed to hit the poor, the disadvantaged, the trade unions, the charity campaigners and civic society activists, because it will be the Secretary of State who will get to unilaterally decide who can campaign, what they can campaign on, when they can campaign, how much money they can raise and what they can spend those funds on. At a stroke, a Government Minister could ban a whole section of civic society, including trade unions and charities, from engaging in elections and campaigning or donating. It is fundamentally anti-democratic and people should be outraged by it. But, of course, if those people are unhappy and want to take to the streets to protest, this Government are already planning to block off that avenue to them.

Afghanistan

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

Just to correct the record, my local authority, East Ayrshire Council, has resettled Syrian refugees.

[Brendan O’Hara]

As has mine.

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) should correct the record.

Lobbying of Government Committee

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

The short answer is yes, and that is something that I will come on to in a moment. That is why this is so important.

It is not just Members of this House who are questioning the corrosive culture of cronyism at the heart of this Government; it has been attracting some fairly high-profile international attention too. At the end of last year, The New York Times decided to investigate how the UK Government managed what it described as the greatest spending spree in the post-war era. It concluded that of the 1,200 central Government contracts worth nearly $22 billion,

“$11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy.”

That is an incredible amount of money, and any hint that it has been spent at the behest of someone with close ties to Downing Street or for the benefit of companies that have political allies in Government is deeply worrying. It has to be examined—and examined fully, robustly and independently.

While people might understand and accept that things had to happen quickly in the circumstances, and perhaps that normal procurement rules were not sufficiently speedy, they will not accept that a Government have any right to rip up every rule, every standard, every safeguard and to start throwing about public money like a scramble at a wedding, particularly when it is their mates who are there waiting to pick it up.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Committee should perhaps look at other activities that this Government get up to? There are things such as the Brexit contracts—I recall that they gave a contract to a ferry company that had no ferries—and all the appointments to external bodies and regulators, which are further examples of cronyism. We need to look at this in the bigger mix as well.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that will not have escaped those on the Treasury Bench.

The Government’s inquiry, led by Nigel Boardman, simply will not work. It cannot be seen to be independent, as we have heard, because of the baggage and the back story that he has. Mr Boardman may have carte blanche to ask whatever questions he likes to whomever he likes, but they will have carte blanche not to answer those questions. If that is the case, what is the point? I have no doubt that this scandal will rumble on, and when it does, we must have a mechanism that is robust enough to see it.

Back in 2010, in his now risible speech, Mr Cameron said:

“We can’t go on like this…it’s time we shone the light…on lobbying in our country and forced our politics to come clean about who is buying power and influence.”

I wish he had meant it back in 2010. We have to mean it now, and that is why we will be supporting this motion.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Alan Brown

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

What a self-made mess this Government find themselves in, and it was beautifully articulated by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). For three long years this Government struggled to get their withdrawal agreement through this place. So much time was spent on it that I doubt that there was a dot or comma of that agreement that was not known to the Government. In January, they signed a legally binding international treaty. The Prime Minister signed it and described it then as a “negotiating triumph”. Not only was it a negotiating triumph, but, as he told the electorate in December, it was “oven-ready” and good to go. He told the electorate, “Vote for me and I will get Brexit done”, and for reasons that I will never fathom, the people of England did. So in December, flushed with a huge majority, he led every single Tory MP through the Lobby to support his deal. However, the Government now want unilaterally to move the goalposts and renege on what they signed up to at the start of the year. In so doing, they are wilfully prepared to break international law, take the UK’s already diminished reputation further into the gutter and take a wrecking ball to the devolution settlement. Even for this Government that is quite an achievement.

Are Ministers asking us to believe that, despite three years of intense negotiation, they did not actually understand what they were voting for, and that they did not understand what their confidence and supply partners from the Democratic Unionist party were saying about differential arrangements between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK? Are we to believe that they were unable to grasp the implications of their own Northern Ireland protocol—the one they designed with the EU to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland? It is not credible because it is not true.

[Alan Brown]

My hon. Friend makes a fine point: it is not credible and there has been bluff after bluff. Is it not the case that when the warnings were pointed out, Ministers stood at that Dispatch Box and said, “Don’t worry, we have a magic solution There won’t be any cameras or infrastructure at the border; technology will solve it all.”? We have technology that can control the movement of people and goods and deal with different customs arrangements”? Yet another bluff from an incompetent Government.

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend hits the nail squarely on the head. That is absolutely true. They knew exactly what they were signing up to and exactly what they were voting on—a fact acknowledged by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster himself, who said in April that the deal ensures that we can leave the EU, and it is “entirely consistent” with the Belfast agreement and all our other domestic and international obligations.

So, how did we get from the agreement being a negotiating triumph in January, and being entirely consistent with domestic and international obligations in April, to today, with a Government boasting that they will knowingly breach international law if they do not get their own way? I believe that, in short, it is because those at the heart of this Government have decided, in true Trumpian fashion, that the UK will no longer play by the rules. They have cynically done their sums and reckon they have the numbers to push this legislation through. It is the behaviour of a Government who have lost their moral compass—a Government who have been reduced to using the Good Friday agreement as a bargaining chip.

It is little wonder that the United Kingdom is fast becoming regarded as a bad-faith actor among the international community, where adherence to international law and the obligations that come with it are what sets us apart from rogue states and dictatorships. The irony of all this is that it emerged against the backdrop of the faux outrage about the last night of the proms and whether it was appropriate to play “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!”; we know it is a case of Britannia waives the rules. It is not just now; it was ever thus. Ask the Irish and the people of India. Go to large swaths of Africa. Go anywhere that is still recovering from the wreckage of British colonialism and the people there will give chapter and verse about Britannia bending, breaking, inventing and waiving the rules all day long to suit its own ends. The world had hoped and probably half expected that those days were gone; sadly, they clearly are not.

For Scotland, it does not have to be this way: we have an escape route available to us—an escape route with independence that will take us back to the family of nations of the European Union, as a law-abiding European country on an equal footing with every other independent country. It is little wonder that opinion poll after opinion poll has shown a majority for independence. I confidently predict that tonight’s shenanigans will bring that independence closer and Scotland will become an equal member of the European Union, because that is the fast-approaching settled will of the Scottish people.