United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Ian Blackford and Patrick Grady

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Third Reading to the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill because it contains provisions which allow the Government to break commitments it has made under international law, and because it does not have the agreed consent to legislate within the competencies of the devolved legislatures which is contrary to the established devolution settlement.

May I thank the Public Bill Office for the consideration that it has given to the SNP as we have sought to table amendments to the Bill? I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) for the work that he has done in Committee.

This legislation has been rushed through by the UK Government over the course of the last two weeks, after a rushed consultation and a total failure to engage with the devolved Governments. The United Kingdom shows no respect for the devolved institutions in this Bill, and it does not have their consent. We are told that this legislation seeks to secure the Union, so it is telling that it has failed to gain the consent of even a single part of that Union.

With limited time in this House, parliamentarians have spent hours debating and dissecting this Bill. We have attempted to scrutinise every clause and every schedule to it. Members from all parts of the House have made significant speeches and a raft of Opposition amendments have been brought forward, yet here we are tonight and nothing has changed. This Bill still does exactly what it set out to do two weeks ago. It still breaks international law and it still breaks devolution. For the absence of doubt, let me make it clear: it breaks devolution.

It is the same auld with this Tory Government. They have not listened, they have not taken the chance to change course and they have not seen the need to compromise. This Government have typically and arrogantly ploughed on. Throughout the passage of the Bill, they have voted down and ignored anyone and everyone who has sought to defend devolution and uphold international law. The character of this Government is crystal clear: they are consistent in their contempt.

As always, we accept and respect decisions with regard to the selection of motions and amendments, but if Members refer to today’s Order Paper, they will see that the Government had options available to them that would have perhaps demonstrated they did have some remaining respect for the devolution settlement and the national legislatures of these islands. They could have held over Third Reading until each of the devolved institutions had considered legislative consent motions. That would have been respectful to the devolved institutions. They could have referred the Bill for further scrutiny to the Scottish Affairs Committee, the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Instead, they insist on using their majority to force the Bill through without even pretending they care what the devolved nations think.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I thank—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are getting very agitated about some of this, but is this not the point—the real power grab here and the real undermining of the devolution settlement is the callous disregard for the Sewel convention, which this Government put on a statutory footing and are now completely ignoring? That is one of the fundamental acts that has undermined devolution across these islands.

[Ian Blackford]

My hon. Friend is correct. You know, we were told after the referendum in Scotland in 2014 that Scotland’s place would be respected and that we were to lead the United Kingdom, and here we find not just our Parliament in Edinburgh but the Administrations in Cardiff and in Northern Ireland being ignored. We can refuse to give consent, as we are doing, to this Bill, but the Government carry on regardless. Where is that respect for devolution? Where is the respect for the people of Scotland? In a referendum in 1997, 75% of the people of Scotland voted for a Parliament. It is not the SNP’s Parliament. it is not the Scottish Government’s Parliament; it is the Parliament of the people of Scotland—the Parliament of the people of Scotland when the Scotland Act 1998 was passed that gave powers over devolved matters. What those on the Government Benches refuse to see—what the rest of us can see—is that this Parliament is giving itself the power to override the Scottish Parliament in health, in education, in transport and in housing.