Exiting the European Union (European Union)

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I am grateful to have caught your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, because those paying close attention to the call list will see that my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) ought to have been here, but he has been detained in Westminster Hall.

I am not sure whether it was a happy memory of or a nightmarish flashback to the parent legislation and my time served on the European Statutory Instruments Committee when I looked at this statutory instrument. The purpose of the instrument is

“to ensure that the UK statute book works coherently and effectively following the end of the transition period.”

I thought that was what the 2018 Act was for in the first place and all the 600 statutory instruments the Minister referred to, yet here we are, years after the referendum and years after the Act was passed, still having to through this process. It is the legacy of the mess of Brexit, caused by Cameron and his cronies, who had no real vision and kicked off a referendum process with no idea what would happen if people actually voted to leave. Here we are dealing with the consequences, and now we have a Government who do not particularly want any kind of deal. They would quite happily crash out and deal with all the consequences afterwards. That is why we are barrelling towards no deal.

This might be a necessary statutory instrument, but it really should not be. It is disappointing on a number of levels. First, as I have said, it is disappointing that it is happening at all. Secondly, it refers to the interesting concept of a UK statute book. Scots law has always been distinct from English and Welsh legislation, before and after the union of Parliaments in 1707, let alone after the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. I accept what the Minister says—of course there has been constructive dialogue with the devolved Administrations, because nobody wants a messed up statute book or acquis of law, but it does not change the fact that the UK Government are using a statutory instrument to directly amend primary legislation passed by Scotland’s Parliament, in the shape of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

This goes on with a host of repeals of primary legislation by statutory instrument, which is being done late at night in a not very busy Chamber. Thus these laws are amended. Where is the European research group, where are the Maastricht rebels for this great act of taking back control? In effect, this is ministerial fiat. Ultimately, the Brussels bureaucrats are being replaced by Whitehall mandarins. This is not parliamentary sovereignty; it is effectively executive diktat.

Frankly, let them get on with it, as my hon. Friend—he should be my right hon. Friend—the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) likes to say. Scotland wants no part of this shabby Brexit process. The more the Government hasten its implementation through statutory instruments like this, the more it hastens the day when Scotland takes full control of its statute book once again as a fully independent and sovereign nation.