Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

David Linden Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is about consent, because the Scottish Parliament has never agreed to this. I am sure I speak for future Scottish Parliaments, while the SNP are in government, when I say that we will never consent to having our rights taken away by a Government we did not elect.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

In answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), the difference in how the European Union treats its members is that, in our current Union, Scotland has 59 out of 650 MPs, so we do not have a proportionate say. The European Union’s members are equal, so a country with the population of Malta has the same say as Germany.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I could not agree more with what he says. He is right to say that the way Scotland has been treated by this Government is disgraceful and it cannot continue, and this power grab will be called out for what it is.

Let me ask the Minister this: what would happen if the Scottish Parliament decides that we will remain aligned to the European Union and we ban the sale of chlorinated chicken, but this place decides that cheap, imported, chlorine-washed chicken is acceptable? Exactly what power will the Scottish Parliament have to stop lorryloads of chlorine-washed poultry crossing the border and appearing on our supermarket shelves? Similarly, what happens if the UK agrees a trade deal that sees the UK flooded with cheap, factory-farmed, hormone-injected meat but our Scottish Parliament decides to protect Scottish consumers and Scottish farmers by adhering to existing standards and protections? Can he guarantee that the Scottish Government will be able to prevent that inferior quality, hormone-injected meat from reaching Scotland’s supermarkets? What happens if the Scottish Parliament decides that it will stick by long-established best practice in the welfare and treatment of animals but Westminster chooses to deregulate? Can he give a cast-iron guarantee that the Scottish Parliament will be able to prevent animals whose provenance is unknown and whose welfare history is unaccounted for from entering the food chain?

Can the Minister guarantee that should this Government decide to “relax” the regulations on the labelling of food packaging but the Scottish Parliament decides to remain aligned to the EU’s rules, that this place, using the provisions in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, will not force labelling changes on Scotland and have Scottish consumers unwittingly subjected to chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-injected beef, genetically modified crops and animals of questionable provenance?

There is a genuine fear that this Bill and the power it confers on this place is a potential death sentence for the Scottish agricultural sector, which in my constituency requires a hefty subsidy to in order to manage the land, keep the lights on in our hills and glens, provide employment and stem the tide of rural depopulation, while producing high-quality, high-value beef, lamb, and dairy products. My Argyll and Bute farmers know that the lowering of food standards, the relaxation of rules on labelling and animal welfare, and the mass importation of inferior-quality products will be an unmitigated disaster for Scottish agriculture.

I know, as the Minister does, that Angus Robertson, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, has already raised these serious concerns directly with the Government. The Minister knows that if the UK Government choose to act in policy areas that are wholly devolved, they will do so without the consent of Scottish Ministers or the Scottish Parliament, and that that will represent a significant undermining of the devolution settlement.

This Bill is the starting whistle on a deregulatory race to the bottom; one in which individual citizens will surely lose out to the spivs and the speculators and, no doubt, to the “politically connected”, who will be fast-tracked into making a quick buck at our expense. Because despite the Government’s assurances, which we heard earlier, that the UK will have the opportunity to be bolder and go further than the EU in securing consumer and environmental protections, there are clauses in this Bill that will prevent Ministers from imposing any new “regulatory burden” on anyone. To me, that suggests strongly that this is headed in one direction only: to deregulation. That deregulation will make it easier to circumvent our existing legal obligations on labelling food for allergens; to row back on safe limits on working hours; to change those hard-won rights on parental leave; or to avoid paying holiday pay.

The Government will be aware of the fury that will follow should they move to weaken the existing controls on polluting substances being released into the air or to lower existing standards for water and in any way dilute the protections and defences of our natural habitats and our wildlife. It seems that for some Conservative Members there is no price too high in their desperate, deluded pursuit of the mirage of Brexit. They are prepared to put at risk our natural environment, food quality, animal welfare standards, consumer protection, workers’ rights and even our natural environment in order to achieve it.

As I said earlier, this is not a road that Scotland has chosen to go down—rather, this is a road that Scotland has been dragged down. Our nation rejected this Tory Brexit fantasy, but our democratic wishes have been ignored at every turn. This is not Scotland’s doing, but because of the constitutional straitjacket in which we find ourselves, we are having this done to us by a Government we did not elect. Thankfully, Scotland has a way out and will, as soon as possible, rejoin the European Union as an independent nation. I sincerely wish the people of the rest of the United Kingdom well in finding their way back, too.

The Government should be under no illusion that SNP Members will oppose the Bill every step of the way. Not only are the Government coming for the rights and protections that we have all enjoyed for decades, but they are coming for our Parliament as well. I urge them, even at this late stage, to perform another of their trademark, almost legendary, U-turns and abandon this disastrous Bill. Not only does it undermine the devolution settlement, but it diminishes the role of MPs, with a plan to deal with everything via secondary legislation, conveniently avoiding scrutiny measures by Parliament. A former Secretary of State said that this was taking back control, but we have to ask who is taking backing control. It is not Parliament, as the Government have gleefully announced to the press that

“the amount of parliamentary time that is required has been dramatically reduced.”

Taking back control for this Government appears to mean finding a group of a hand-picked party loyalists and putting them on a Delegated Legislation Committee, which has a built-in Government majority, so that they can bulldoze through change after change after change, as required. In the history of DL Committees, in the past 65 years, only 17 statutory instruments have been voted down—and that has not happened since 1979. While there is a role for such Committees, it is not to make wholesale and fundamental changes to vast swathes of the law, covering everything from the environment and nature to consumer protection.

As we have heard, parliamentary scrutiny is being avoided because, in their desperation or fervour to rid themselves of any European influence, the zealots at the heart of this collapsing Government have arbitrarily included a sunset clause, meaning that 2,500 laws will be removed and not be replaced. Unless the Government grant themselves an extension, those laws will simply disappear from the statute book.