Sewel Convention

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State called for perspective. From my perspective, what happened last week was that the British constitution and the devolved settlement were unilaterally rewritten by the Government in the blink of an eye.

In Australia, a power grab like the one that we saw last Tuesday could not just be bulldozed through Parliament; it would require a double majority in a referendum of Australian citizens. If we were in Canada, such a power grab would need resolutions in both the Senate and the House of Commons, and then resolutions in the legislative assemblies of at least two thirds of the provinces—resolutions that could not then be ignored. In the United States, such a power grab would need a two thirds majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, or two thirds of the states would need to call a convention and three quarters of them agree to the proposals.

The contrast with the shoddy process followed by the UK Government last week could not be starker, with one Parliament unilaterally removing powers from another against its express wishes in a way that should not be countenanced in any self-respecting constitutional democracy. The Sewel convention, as operated by the Government last week, is clearly not worth the paper that it was eventually put on. In short, the UK constitution is looking increasingly beyond repair.