Oral Answers to Questions

Philippa Whitford Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

I, too, welcome you to the Chair for Scottish questions, Madam Deputy Speaker, and join Labour’s shadow Secretary of State in celebrating Scotland’s win. It is just a pity that people could not watch it on Scottish terrestrial television.

The devolved Governments have led on many innovative policies, such as the carrier bag charge in Wales and the smoking ban and minimum unit pricing of alcohol in Scotland, with the UK Government following years later, if at all. The attacks on the latter policy at the time show that, had it existed then, the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 would inevitably have been used to block minimum unit pricing, which has recently been credited with a 13% drop in alcohol-related deaths in Scotland. Even the EU single market allows policy divergence to improve public health and the environment, so why are there no such derogations in the internal market Act?

[Mr Jack]

Let me pick up the hon. Lady’s first point, because we do not want the grievance factory to say, as I have seen on social media today, that the English Government blocked people in Scotland watching the game against Spain last night in which we were so victorious—[Interruption.] I said “on social media”. The Scottish Football Association sold the rights to the football match. It was the Scottish FA’s decision.

On the hon. Lady’s second point, there are opportunities for derogations and exemptions within the UK internal market. We did it in the case of plastic cutlery because the same proposal was coming forward in the rest of the UK six months after it was introduced by the Scottish Government. The schemes worked together and a derogation for six months worked. But derogations do not work when there are different schemes in different parts of the United Kingdom, some of which include glass and some of which do not, and when producers have to sign up to different schemes that have a huge cost implication. We do not think that is the right way forward.

[Dr Whitford]

It is funny how differences in the different nations worked fine before Brexit. One has to wonder why the UK market does not seem able to cope right now. Is the Secretary of State planning to hold back the devolved Governments repeatedly to avoid making his Government look bad? Or is he just going to seek every single chance to attack devolution and enforce Westminster rule?

[Mr Jack]

I quoted earlier the chief executive of Tesco, the largest retailer in the United Kingdom. In the paper yesterday he made the very good point that there is one drinks industry across the United Kingdom and we should have one solution to the recycling problem.