European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Ian Blackford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I always take the hon. Gentleman extremely seriously—[Interruption.] Order. I most certainly do. He is a very assiduous new Member of this House, and I do. However, I hope he will not take it amiss if I say that I think what he has just said amounted to a declaration of intent on his own behalf and that of his colleagues to get his message across. I am not sure that, in any meaningful sense at this point, he is really in need of my advice. In so far as he wants my advice, my general advice to all colleagues is a word beginning with p and ending with t—persist. Persist, man!

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

rose—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

rose—

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[Mr Speaker]

As the House is in a state of repose, I suggest, building on earlier conversations that perfectly properly took place with the Chair, that we come now to the next Lords amendment, but if the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, who leads his party, would prefer to raise his point of order now, I will be perfectly sanguine about that.

[Ian Blackford]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Speaker]

No. He will come to it afterwards. Very good; I am grateful to him for his guidance.

Before Clause 10

Continuation of North-South co-operation and the prevention of new border arrangements

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[Mr Lidington]

It is simply not possible, by legislation, to constrain the UK Parliament. The UK Parliament is sovereign. I know the hon. Gentleman’s party in the Welsh Assembly opposed the compromise on offer, but I was very pleased to see that the Labour Government in Wales and the Liberal Democrats in Wales were prepared to accept what I thought was a reasonable compromise, to vote in favour of a legislative consent motion and to commit themselves to repeal the Welsh Government’s continuity Bill at the earliest possible occasion.

The Scottish and Welsh Governments have also been clear that we should not try to use these regulations as a mechanism to avoid seeking legislative consent when creating future frameworks. We agree, and we have spelled that out in terms in the agreement. They asked us for a guarantee that we would not legislate for England where devolved powers to legislate for their respective nations were frozen, and we have put that into the agreement as well. That is why I do not accept the case that has been put forward by the Scottish Government for withholding consent for these proposals.

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he not acknowledge that when we passed the Scotland Act 1998—the right hon. Gentleman was a Member of Parliament at the time—it was very specific about what are reserved matters? We cannot get away from the fact that what this Government are doing is legislating on matters that are devolved. This is a power grab. Will the Secretary of State commit today not to legislate without a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Parliament on behalf of the Scottish people?

[Mr Lidington]

Not only do the agreements that we have reached with the Welsh Government and embodied in these amendments respect the devolution settlement— indeed, Welsh Ministers have said very firmly that they believe that devolution is fully respected—but I think that we have complied in full with our obligations under the Sewel convention. The right hon. Gentleman should look again at the statement by Mr Mike Russell, the Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe from the Scottish Government, who described the situation we are in as a “novel” one and said:

“In normal times, such a bill would follow a normal timetable, but these are not normal times.”—[Scottish Parliament, Official Report, 1 March 2018; c. 29.]

It is the Scottish Government who are saying that we are not in a normal situation.