Scottish Devolution and Article 50

James Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, especially given your well-known Glasgow roots and your love for Scotland. I am sure you will be among the first to claim citizenship of a newly independent Scotland—or dual citizenship, perhaps.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right: I am 100% Scottish and all of those things. However, he is quite wrong to seek to involve me in the debate, in which I have no interest or involvement whatever.

[Patrick Grady]

My apologies, Mr Gray; nevertheless, the pleasure remains. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said, the circumstances in which we are having the debate have changed somewhat, following the First Minister’s announcement on Monday about the Scottish Government’s decision to seek a section 30 order. I pay tribute to the ever-ready House of Commons Library, which nevertheless managed to capture that announcement in its briefing note just before it went to press.

I will look briefly at the principles behind the debate and some of the practical implications for us in the House and beyond. For me, there are two key principles behind the devolution settlement. The first is the claim of right for Scotland, which we have discussed in this Chamber before. It is the concept of popular sovereignty. The 1989 claim of right was the basis of the constitutional convention and the current devolution settlement. It said:

“We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs”.

That claim still stands today, and it was asserted on 23 June 2016, when the people of Scotland said that they wanted to remain in the European Union. That claim was passed by the constitutional convention in 1989 and was again agreed by the Scottish Parliament in 2012, but is the principle of the claim now under threat from the Conservative Government? The Tories have never been clear about whether they endorsed that principle in the first place, and it appears even more under threat now, especially if the Prime Minister tries to block or delay the requested potential independence referendum in Scotland.

The second key principle, enshrined in the Scotland Act 1998, is that whatever is not reserved is devolved. As we all know, schedule 5 to the Act is clear about what is reserved: defence, foreign affairs, social security and aspects of trade and energy. There have been some derogations in those areas over the years, but anything that is not mentioned in schedule 5 to the 1998 Act is therefore devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Climate change is a very good precedent for that. When the UK Parliament decided it wanted to legislate on climate change emissions, responsibility fell to the Scottish Parliament to make legislative provision in Scotland. The Scottish Parliament took it upon itself in 2009 to pass some world-leading climate change legislation, which was some of the most ambitious anywhere in the world. It seems now that the principle of what is not reserved being therefore devolved is also under threat. We have certainly had ambiguous answers from Ministers to date.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. It may be helpful for Members to know that I intend to call the first of the three party spokespeople at 5.10 pm, and therefore we have about 15 minutes left for three speakers. If my arithmetic serves me right, that means about five minutes each. I call Ian Murray.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir James. May I apologise to the—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I am not in fact Sir James. It may be in the post, but it has not yet arrived.

[Ian Murray]

It must be in the post; I hope it is, because it would be thoroughly deserved. I apologise to you for elevating you to a knighthood, Mr Gray, and also to the House for being slightly late. A major constituency issue delayed me, so I only heard the end of the speech by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock).

This issue will be a key element of the discussions over the next few years in this House. I am not sure how many thousands or tens of thousands of statutory instruments and pieces of legislation we will see when the great repeal Bill is announced, but I hope we will have some kind of process that takes into account three things. First, English votes for English laws should be suspended with the great repeal Bill, given its severity. Secondly, there must be a streamlined process, so that we do not all end up having to sit and consider 10,000 statutory instruments. I am sure that the House, and certainly the Clerks of the House, would very much welcome that.

Thirdly, I hope that the Minister and the Government—I say this with all respect and in the interests of trying to find a way through—take into account the political difficulties and sensitivities of the Scottish Parliament’s responsibilities and schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998. Schedule 5 is incredibly simple to read now because it has got so small, given the number of powers that have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, but the key one in there is the relationship with the European Union and foreign affairs. That should not be an excuse for the Government to say that the devolved Administrations should not be heavily involved in this process.

None of us wanted to be here—I certainly did not—in terms of Brexit, but we are, and this process has to be followed through. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for securing this debate. It will probably be one of many we have on Brexit and Scotland over the next few years.

I said this to the Prime Minister yesterday in the House and will emphasise it again now. The general principle should be that where a power is not in schedule 5 to the 1998 Act and where a power has been devolved—whether to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or the metro mayors we are about to elect in May—the power should be devolved. The reason I put it as a principle, rather than saying everything should be devolved in a blanket way, is that some things will take some thought when it comes to the framework. While things such as fisheries, agriculture, the environment, regional development and policy from the European Union are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, it is under the EU framework. That EU framework gives the minimum standards and framework in which member states have to operate.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and take part in this debate, which was ably introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock). She laid out the position very well. The tone of the debate has been very good; I hope the Minister will continue in the same vein.

Let me mention a few issues that my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) raised. One of the main reasons for the situation we are in—and why we are having these debates—is the huge uncertainty we face. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) said, there has been no clarity from the UK Government about how the processes or the timescales will work. Will there be a fresh Scotland Bill or just amendments to the Scotland Act 1998? Exactly how will the processes work? As for the timeline, we do not want to fall into a legislative trap or get stuck in legislative limbo. I am sure that the UK Government have plans, but it would be nice if they told us what they were, so that we could be aware of the timescales. If we are going to try to work together in a future settlement, it would be best if we got off on a good footing, with as much information as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North and I have discussed the great repeal Bill at length; no doubt we will continue to discuss it in the coming months, because we are particularly interested in the process. The great repeal Bill has the potential to become a great power grab for the UK Government, giving them a lot of powers that they do not currently have. I do not imagine that that is what most people who supported the leave campaign had in mind. [Interruption.]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes, or less if Members come back earlier.

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On resuming—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I think we can assume that the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) is not returning to the Chamber, or perhaps he will return in a moment. Because of the Division, the debate will finish at 5.45 pm. Therefore, if my arithmetic is right, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) has another three minutes to go, the Labour spokesman will have five minutes and after that, the Minister will have 10 minutes.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Thank you, Mr Gray. I am always a bit discombobulated if there is a vote in the middle of my speech, but I will do my best. I was asking for clarity over the process of the great repeal Bill. We very much make the case to the UK Government that as soon as they have clarity, we would like that to be passed on to us, so we can make informed decisions.

On agriculture and fisheries, there is a lack of trust from a huge number of people in those industries because of how they have been treated. Part of that is genuinely a lack of understanding from the UK Government about the differences in fishing in Scotland compared with fishing in the south of England, for example. On that note, I understand that the Prime Minister will undertake a tour of the UK to talk to us about how wonderful Brexit will be. When she comes to Scotland, I would appreciate it if she spent her time listening—rather than talking—to people from industries, and particularly those that are over-represented in Scotland but under-represented in England. She may know less about them, so that would be good.

I will briefly mention trade deals and protection for communities. We have a lot of communities in Scotland—as in Wales—that are heavily reliant on one industry. Aberdeen is very reliant on the oil industry. Areas such as the one that represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr) are heavily involved in the farming and agriculture industries. If things are not right for those industries, those communities are likely to be decimated, so the UK Government should think about prioritising industries that will have a dramatic impact on certain communities rather than those that are the most lucrative for the UK as a whole. They should think about that and reframe the position.

Finally, Brexit is not a situation of our making. The Scottish Government have done their very best to propose a compromise, which we put forward in December, but we have struggled to get any sort of coherent response. It is really important that the UK Government start to work with and talk to us. If we are going to work together, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South suggested, we need actual, real dialogue, rather than the Prime Minister just standing up and saying that she is talking to us. If she actually talks to us, it will make the process a whole lot easier and a whole lot better tempered.

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[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Michael Ellis)]

It is a pleasure to appear before you, Mr Gray.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

You can “appear” before a judge.

[Michael Ellis]

Well, that has not quite happened yet. Nevertheless, it is a great pleasure to be here and to represent the House in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) on securing this debate; I am sure it is one of the many debates on this subject that will continue to take place.

As a Government, we are keen to ensure that the process of leaving the European Union receives the maximum scrutiny and parliamentary debate possible, and this discussion has been an important contribution to that dialogue. In fact, Ministers from the Department for Exiting the European Union have already responded to more than 600 parliamentary written questions, appeared at 13 Select Committee hearings and given six oral statements in eight months, and there will, of course, be many votes on primary legislation to come, as I am sure hon. Members recognise.

The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill is a straightforward Bill. It is intended to implement the outcome of the referendum. That trusts the decision of the British people, and respects the judgment of the Supreme Court. In June last year, the United Kingdom voted as a whole to leave the European Union. By invoking article 50, using the authority given by Parliament when it passed the Bill on Monday, the Prime Minister will simply be getting on with the process of taking forward that result.

When they invoke article 50, the United Kingdom Government are committed to ensuring that the interests of all parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented as we enter negotiations to leave the European Union. Since the referendum, we have ensured that the devolved Administrations are fully engaged in our preparations to leave the European Union. We established the Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiations, chaired by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, which has met four times since its inception in November. The Joint Ministerial plenary, chaired by the Prime Minister personally, has also met twice—in October and January—and there has also been substantial bilateral engagement between Ministers.