Marco Longhi
Main Page: Marco Longhi (Conservative - Dudley North)Department Debates - View all Marco Longhi's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberOn the contrary, there is every reason to do that precisely because I have been making the argument—I do not know how carefully the hon. Member has been listening to it—that there is absolutely no need to encroach on the existing devolved settlement to deliver all the things that we are being told need to happen.
Frankly, this is nothing more than an arrogation, a usurpation and a trespassing on the principle that the decisions taken exclusively for Scotland should be made in Scotland by those who are directly accountable to the people of Scotland, taking us back to the bad old days prior to devolution, when Ministers of a party elected on a minority of the votes and seats could nevertheless rule the country without going to the trouble of winning an election beforehand.
Devolution was once described as
“the settled will of the Scottish people”—
as a way to accommodate legitimate desires for growing democratic aspirations within an old Union. That was certainly how it looked until 1997, and it is how it has looked for many in Scotland until recently, but the Union that Scots were invited to vote for in 2014—the balance that existed between Parliaments, Governments and institutions in London, Brussels and Edinburgh—has already gone. The failure to back an amendment of this nature shows that the very principles of autonomy, consent and respect that lay at the heart of the devolution settlement are also about to go.
People who voted in 2014 to be part of two Unions—the European Union and the British Union—can now see that they can only possibly be part of one. If this amendment falls and is not taken on board by the Government, it will show that the entire basis of devolution—that decisions should be taken for the people of the devolved nations and regions by those elected by and directly accountable to them—is being similarly trashed.
If the UK Government wish to depart from the EU and to deploy their majority to crush these principles, there is very little that I or my colleagues can do in practice to stop that, although there is plenty that can be done outside this place. For all that I used to make the argument that one day, the Scottish Parliament might have its wings clipped by a politically motivated activist Conservative Government, I never imagined for one day that a Government would come along so stuffed full of John Bull as to make it actually happen.
The polls across Scotland—I am sure that private polls in the Scotland Office confirm what the public polls say—show that increasing numbers of Scots know and understand that to re-attain EU membership, independence is required. If the Bill is passed unamended, it will become equally clear that independence is also required to preserve Scotland’s hard-won democracy and autonomy. It will give me no satisfaction to be proven right, from back in 1997, about where devolution might end up. There is if not yet a settled will, very definitely a settling will in Scotland that that is the case. If yet more of the Scottish people reach the conclusion that independence is now the only way to protect Scotland’s Parliament, this Government, having acted in haste, will be left to repent at leisure and in not very splendid isolation.
I rise to speak with enthusiastic support for clauses 46 and 47, and I start by saying that long before the advent of the EU, the UK internal market functioned seamlessly for centuries. This Bill and the clauses we are debating ensure that every part of the United Kingdom—England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—will benefit. The Government committed to delivering the UK-wide shared prosperity fund, replacing the awful bureaucratic EU structures. Clauses 46 and 47 are specifically designed to ensure that no one, regardless of home nation, misses out on this fund.
Of course, if we cast our minds back to 2016, one of the leave arguments made during the referendum was that not only is the UK a net contributor to the EU, but that the reduced funds that it receives back are prescribed explicitly by the EU in terms of how much and where in the UK these funds are spent. We were being told where to spend our own money, and less of it. Brexit and the Bill rectify that utterly bizarre arrangement and allow a sovereign UK Government, working together with their devolved Administrations, to set out how and where these funds are spent, which is precisely as it should be. We voted to take back control, and control we are taking back.
Under clauses 46 and 47, our UK Government could make payments, including grants, loans and guarantees, to any person in the United Kingdom for the purpose of promoting economic development in the UK, providing infrastructure in the UK, supporting cultural and sporting activities, projects and events, and supporting international and domestic educational and training activities and exchanges.
We have very recently seen the benefit of taking a UK-wide approach to funding issues such as covid-19 and the effects of Storms Ciara and Dennis, and the Bill supports exactly that type of approach.
The hon. Gentleman has just said that Storm Dennis should be recognised as a UK responsibility, yet we have not had a single penny in Wales from the Westminster Government in relation to Storm Dennis. He also referred to the shared prosperity fund. That does not exist. The Government have not yet even produced a consultation document on it. We do not know what it will look like at all. We would look on these clauses with far more interested eyes if we had all that in the Bill.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the intervention, but I refer him back to answers previously given by more learned colleagues than myself on those specific points.
I hold Scotland close in my heart, with many fond memories of holidays—and how could I not mention the excellent whisky, as I think about Laphroaig and the Macallan still in my cupboard? It is a worldwide export from the United Kingdom. We are our own biggest trading market between whole nations, and I want to see Scottish businesses and businesses in my constituency of Dudley North continue to have unfettered access to each other’s markets—something that simply would not happen, were the SNP to have their own agenda, with their separatist approach.
So far, all we have seen and heard from Opposition SNP Members is this damaging rhetoric that champions separation instead of growth and jobs through trading in our Union. They criticise this Government and, by default, ordinary British people who voted to leave for, as was stated yesterday, unpicking 60 years of European jurisprudence; yet they want to unpick over 300 years of a Union much closer to home that has proven to work for everybody. For all their claims to be defending the Scottish people and devolved powers in Scotland, it seems utterly bizarre and ironic that the SNP would want to return those powers back to Brussels, because not only will sovereignty be lost, but as the former SNP Minister Alex Neil admitted, there would have to be a customs barrier between Scotland and the UK, and no doubt a separate currency. I cannot for the life of me understand why SNP Members would actively advocate to suppress their whole nation and damage their local economy.
The Bill strengthens the Union, so it is no surprise they seek to oppose it, but they should all be held to account for not wanting to stand up for all the British jobs that the Bill would support and protect.
As Martin Howe QC outlined in a recent article, a single unified internal market is a key block in the constitutional foundations of the United Kingdom. When the transition period ends on 31 December, we shall be finally free to leave the provisions of the EU. This country needs a legislative framework that protects the integrity of the UK and provides continuity, certainty and prosperity to all four parts of the country.