Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Luke Evans Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant]

Following the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute, the existence of schedule 2 specifically tells us everything we need to know about the nature of what is sometimes claimed to be democracy in this place. There is an explicit assumption in the schedule that Ministers in this place have the right to directly hold to account the democratically elected national Parliaments of the United Kingdom. That is not devolution; that is colonialism. It is not democracy; it is elected dictatorship. I appreciate that what is stated in schedule 2 is simply a restatement of the assumption that has run through this place for the past 300-plus years, yet it is a false assumption. It is an assumption that ultimate sovereignty by gift of God resides with an unelected individual who then passes down that sovereignty to a semi-elected Prime Minister.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

If the SNP decides to join the EU, is that not exactly what would be being joined?