European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Deidre Brock

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I have an open mind on that, and I have fiddled around with my amendments, which have not appeared on the order paper today, to see whether we can find a way of doing that. I do not know whether this is the right Bill through which to do that—probably not—but such things are statutory in other decentralised systems. There clearly needs to be something much more formal, but we should perhaps experiment without statute first to see whether it is necessary. My Committee took evidence from one civil servant and a former Speaker’s Counsel who said, “It has worked very well for the past 300 years, so why do we need statute?” but that does not recognise that we now have competing political centres with, I repeat, competing narratives about what the constitution actually is. SNP colleagues talk about the natural sovereignty of the Scottish people, but the legal constitutional reality is that the Queen in Parliament in Westminster is still absolutely sovereign. Those things need to aired, discussed and understood.

[Deidre Brock]

Further to that point, the Scottish Government have consistently made it clear that they cannot support the Bill as it stands, so if the UK Government do not vote for amendment 72 tonight, would that not render the Sewel convention completely pointless and not worth the vellum it is written on?

[Mr Jenkin]

I hear the hon. Lady’s impatience, but we need to be more patient. We are not completing the consideration of this Bill this evening, and I am encouraged by the work done by the First Secretary of State, who chaired the last meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee and seemed to be drawing people together around some agreed principles for how joint frameworks might be approached. We all want to see that, so let us hope that that work will continue.