Leaving the EU: Financial Services

Debate between Joanna Cherry and William Cash

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry]

Yes, I am concerned about that. Edinburgh’s reliance on financial services is 23.8%, compared with 18.9% in London, 17.3% in Brussels and 17% in Amsterdam. By comparison, Glasgow’s financial services sector is worth about 12.4% to its economy.

This is not fearmongering. Paris and Frankfurt are already angling for some of the jobs that may leave London and Edinburgh if we leave the single market. I attended a briefing last week at which the Irish ambassador spoke. He pointed out that while Britain leaving the European Union poses some problems for the Republic of Ireland, it will also provide some fantastic opportunities for Dublin to attract jobs that we really need in our financial sectors across the UK. In Edinburgh, we really want to hang on to those jobs.

I am happy to say that a lot of people in my constituency are employed in legal and accounting services, which is what I used to do before I came to this place. More than 3,000 of my constituents are employed in the legal services sector. Across Edinburgh, that figure for the legal and accounting sector is closer to 10,000. The Law Society of Scotland has its headquarters in my constituency, and the Faculty of Advocates, of which I am non-practising member, has its headquarters in the neighbouring constituency of Edinburgh East. A lot of lawyers and other people who work in law firms live in my constituency and are worried about the impact of Brexit on legal services. There are many aspects of EU law that have particular relevance to the legal system and professions, including the directive on the mutual recognition of diplomas, the lawyers establishment directive and the lawyers cross-border provision of services directive.

[Sir William Cash]

Does the hon. and learned Lady recognise—I imagine she might—that there is a certain circularity in her argument? It is not surprising that the legal profession inside the European Union, which is concerned about European law, would want to protect that particular part of their activities. She could perhaps be a little more generous in understanding that those who want to leave might actually end up with laws that are made in this place.

[Joanna Cherry]

That is not what I am actually talking about. I am talking about the way in which European Union law has enabled Scots lawyers, English lawyers and lawyers across these islands to practise across Europe not for their benefit but for the benefit of their clients. That is the point. It is also to the benefit, as earlier speakers pointed out, of the financial services sector and to the British economy in general. This is not naked self-interest on the part of the lawyers. Lawyers depend on their clients to make a living. If lawyers are not able to practise across Europe easily, they will not be able to provide such a good service to their clients. That does not just apply in the financial sector. It covers all sorts of areas, including, very importantly, child and family law.

In Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland will be urging the UK Government and the Scottish Government to argue in negotiations that the current arrangements for lawyers to be able to practise in the European Union should be retained. It would be very disappointing if the only route for lawyers to be able to practise in Europe in future would be to requalify in other EU jurisdictions and go through the cumbersome processes that we have done away with as one of the many benefits of being in the EU.

Clearly, the best way to protect the legal and financial services in my constituency and in the city of Edinburgh is to remain part of the single market. That would be the easiest way to give comfort to those sectors. Of course, we are not able to give any comfort to those sectors, because the Government “do not want to give a running commentary”. However, it appears, as the result of a legal decision today, that the Government may in due course be forced to come to this democratically elected Chamber and tell us a little bit more about what their plans are. It is worthy of comment that that is not as a result of European judges sitting in Brussels, Luxembourg or Strasbourg. It is the result of English judges sitting in London. As a Scots lawyer, I wish to pay tribute to those English judges for the decision they have reached.

European Affairs

Debate between Joanna Cherry and William Cash

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

It is always very daunting to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). There has been much talk today about whether sovereignty is an illusion. I know that the notion of parliamentary sovereignty is one that many hon. Members for English constituencies hold dear. I want to address that issue of sovereignty, and to make a plea for respect for the different constitutional tradition in Scotland in relation to sovereignty.

After his statement on Monday, I asked the Prime Minister to confirm whether it was his intention to unveil a British sovereignty Bill in the next few days, as has been widely reported, and what provision he would make in the Bill to recognise that the principle of unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle that has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law. He confirmed his view:

“We do have a sovereign Parliament…and I look forward to bringing forward some proposals in the coming days.”—[Official Report, 22 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 53.]

We await his proposals with bated breath, but he did not address my comments about the difference between English and Scottish constitutional legal theory. I rather had the impression that he did not know what I was talking about. I do not mean that disrespectfully, because I am very well aware that he is a distinguished scholar with a first from Oxford, but I believe it is in PPE rather than in law.

Every lawyer with a Scots law degree knows that there is a tradition of the sovereignty of the people in Scotland. I know that that conflicts with the Diceyan tradition in England, but many distinguished Scottish jurists have put it on a very firm footing. They include Lord President Cooper in the well-known Scottish case of MacCormick v. the Lord Advocate in 1953 and, most recently, Lord Hope of Craighead in his dicta on a case about the Hunting Act 2004, Jackson v. the Attorney General. Lord Hope said that

“Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute… It is no longer right to say that its freedom to legislate admits of no qualification whatever. Step by step, gradually but surely, the English principle of the absolute legislative sovereignty of Parliament which Dicey derived from Coke and Blackstone is being qualified…The rule of law enforced by the courts is the ultimate controlling factor on which our constitution is based.”

[Sir William Cash]

May I refer the hon. and learned Lady to chapter 12 of “The Rule of Law” by the late Lord Justice Bingham, in which he severely criticises other members of the Supreme Court for taking what he would describe as a wrong view of the whole question of sovereignty?

[Joanna Cherry]

I am very well aware of Lord Bingham’s opinion of the views expressed in the Jackson case. I am not saying they are binding precedents—they are opinions. My point is that the opinion of Lord Hope of Craighead in Jackson and of Lord President Cooper in the 1953 case are very well founded in Scottish historical tradition.

We heard much in the Chamber last year about Magna Carta, which was signed at Runnymede in 1215. Arbroath is Scotland’s Runnymede, and Scotland’s Magna Carta is the Declaration of Arbroath. It recognised that the people, not Parliament, are sovereign in Scotland. That is the difference between Scottish and English constitutional law, which is of long standing, and I ask the Government to reflect that in their Bill on British sovereignty.

The Declaration of Arbroath was a letter, written by the nobility of Scotland to the Pope in 1320, that asserted the nationhood of Scotland, our right to independence and the right of the Scottish people to choose their King—the people’s sovereignty. Most importantly, the Declaration of Arbroath said that the independence of Scotland was the prerogative of the Scottish people, rather than the King of Scots, and that the nobility—at that time, the nobility were, for these purposes, the people of Scotland—would choose someone else to be king if Robert the Bruce proved unfit in maintaining Scotland’s independence. That last point has been interpreted by many scholars as an early expression of the notion of popular sovereignty—that Government is contractual and that kings can be chosen by the community, rather than by God alone. We find that notion of popular sovereignty in other modern democracies that consider themselves to be governed by the rule of law, rather than parliamentary sovereignty. Of course, law can have many sources.