Scottish Devolution and Article 50

Debate between Deidre Brock and Dan Poulter

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the implications for the Scottish devolution settlement of triggering Article 50.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I have to say that this debate has taken on a bit of a different taste in the past few days. On Monday morning, I was quite clear about what we would have to discuss, but by lunchtime my party leader, as well as the Prime Minister, had rather knocked me off my stride. She does that sometimes—she is pretty good. I find myself coming back to the basics of the debate and considering what it is we really need to know: what is in store for Scotland?

If Members will allow me, I will keep things a bit sober and restrained so that we can have a sensible discussion of the issues, which I consider to be extremely important. Over the past few months we have asked questions about the Government’s approach to, hopes for and starting position in the negotiations over the UK’s leaving the EU. I am afraid we have received no substantive answers, which has led some people less charitable than me to suggest that the Government do not know the answers to those questions. I would never suggest such a thing—not yet, anyway.

The point of fracture for me came at the Scottish Tory conference in Perth, where the Prime Minister did two things in her speech. The first was to claim that Scotland has the most powerful devolved legislature in the world and the second was to suggest that competencies repatriated—if that is the correct word—from the EU will be exercised in Whitehall rather than in Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast.

Let me first address the idea that Scotland has the most powerful devolved legislature in the world. I have seen no evidence to support that claim, although it has been made repeatedly over a number of years. I have seen no comparison made that supports such a suggestion, nor any indication of the definition of a devolved legislature being used. I cannot but think that there are more powerful examples of sub-state bodies, such as the German Länder and the Australian states and territories, which would better fit that description. Anyway, it strikes me that we should not care whether Scotland is the most powerful devolved legislature in the world; we should be asking whether the arrangements—current and proposed—are what best suit Scotland’s needs.

I will argue that Scotland should be independent, because I believe we have a different outlook on public life from that of the fine people south of the border. Our public discourse is different and our values and societies are different. I understand that people on the other side of the debate will see it in a different light: they look at the issue from a UK point of view and decide that Scotland is better where it is. They are entitled to do that. In my view they are entirely wrong, but they are entitled to be wrong and to support the continuation of the UK rather than the re-emergence of its constituent nations.

The idea of the most powerful devolved legislature in the world brings us to the point about where power should rest. In the early days of devolution, some believed that they had squared the circle and that the separation of policy areas that should be reserved and those left devolved was finalised. We discovered fairly quickly, however, that that was not the case and that the issue had to be revisited. The prediction of Ron Davies, the one-time Welsh Secretary, came to pass. Devolution is a process, not an event.

The extension of devolution, by the way, was described by the previous leader of the Scottish Conservatives as the most important debate in the Scottish Parliament. Interestingly, she said that at a time when a Labour Scottish Secretary, Des Browne, was busy trying to strip powers from Holyrood—presumably because the Scottish National party had won the Scottish election in 2007. The upshot was an extension rather than a constriction of the competencies of the Scottish Parliament, and the debate continued. In policy area after policy area, power and competency has been ceded to Holyrood as it becomes clear—even to those opposed to any further devolution—that those powers and competencies are best exercised in Scotland. It is a process, not an event.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has secured an important debate. When the UK devolution settlements were designed in 1998, there was no thought of Brexit and, at that time, the single market was the European single market. After Brexit, the single market will be the UK single market—at the moment, because Scotland is not independent. How does she believe that will work in agriculture, fisheries and other policy areas?

[Deidre Brock]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that I will address that later in my speech.

Now we find ourselves about to leave the European Union, the Prime Minister is making the threat of removing competencies from Holyrood as they come back from Brussels; other than that, we do not really have any idea of what she is planning. Leaving the European Union means that the Scotland Act 1998 must be revisited, because it compels Scotland to comply with EU law. The clawing back of powers and competencies from Holyrood to Whitehall, as suggested by the Prime Minister, would also require amendments to that Act.

If Members want to understand exactly how much disentanglement there will be, they should ask the Commons Library, as I did. They will be told that there is a huge number of directives and regulations to look through and that to come up with a definitive figure, list or even idea of what is reserved and what remains devolved is, to all intents and purposes, a fool’s errand.

To give an example, there are 527 regulations under the environment, consumer and health sections alone, and there are a whole host of environmental regulations under other headings such as “energy”. I do not know whether the Scotland Office has been working to draw up a list—or the Wales Office or the Northern Ireland Office for that matter. It would be good to be told, but it is clear that there is an enormous amount of work to be done and an enormous amount of legislation to comb through. Sifting that, considering it, deciding where to lay it and working it out will need a new Scotland Act.

It is true that the Government could use section 30 of the 1998 Act further to reserve powers over those areas currently under EU control, but that would seem frankly perverse if the Act has to be amended in any case. That seems simple, but when I asked the Prime Minister last week whether she would consult the people of Scotland properly and seek the consent of the Scottish Parliament before making changes to the legislation that frames devolution, she seemed perplexed. Her answer to me was that she undertakes

“full discussions with the Scottish Government on…reserved matters and…where we are negotiating on behalf of the whole of the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 8 March 2017; Vol. 622, c. 808.]

However, we discovered on Monday that that is simply not true. Scotland’s First Minister was clear that none of the devolved Administrations had heard a peep from the UK Government before the announcement that we are all being dragged out of the single market, in spite of that being the major part of the Scottish Government’s compromise proposal on Brexit.

There is a sweetheart deal for Nissan, but no discussion of Scotland’s needs—far less any movement to accommodate those needs. Membership of the single market is vital for Scotland’s exports, and essential to the exercise of the economic competencies of the Scottish Parliament and to the future of many Scottish businesses. An immigration system that offers EU citizens the right to come to Scotland to live, work, study and settle down is essential to our continuing to grow a population that is economically active and demographically sustainable, as was discussed in the recent Scottish Affairs Committee debate. Academic research and the excellent record of Scotland’s universities is under threat, because Brexit will cut them off from an enormous research funder and from the universities they co-operate with on the continent, not to mention the academics who come to Scotland from elsewhere in the EU.

The implications for Scotland of triggering article 50 are enormous and deep-seated and, whichever way things go, they will have a long half-life. We have heard the glib “Brexit means Brexit”, that it will be red, white and blue and that there will be no running commentary, but I am beginning to suspect that there is no running anything behind Whitehall’s firmly closed doors. It is time that the Government started to lay out what Brexit actually means in terms of implications for the people who live on these islands, rather than continuing use of tautology.