Sewel Convention

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

I want to give credit to the other parties in the Scottish Parliament, where there has been a strong level of engagement. We need to improve on that and enhance it. In principle, I am very happy with what the right hon. Gentleman has just said.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his passionate speech. Does he agree that, when the British Government deal with Wales and Scotland in these very sensitive discussions, they would do well to reflect on the wise words of the great French philosopher, Voltaire, who said:

“Injustice in the end produces independence”?

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful to be reminded of that quote.

I would say to hon. Members on the Government Benches: be careful. This is not about the offence that has been taken by the Scottish National party. Conservative Members need to take on board the fact that they have offended the Scottish Parliament and all the parties in it that I have talked about. All of us on these Benches were back home in Scotland over the weekend, and I can tell the House that Scotland has changed. The strong message that is coming across is that the people who voted for devolution in 1997 can see clearly what is going on. However the Government want to try to define it or spin it, this is an attack on the powers of the Scottish Parliament in the teeth of the opposition of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people. The Conservatives will pay a heavy price, as they have done in the past, if they do not listen to the voices of the Scottish people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

“All this crowd are interested in doing is performing stunts and disrupting Parliament.”

Those are not my words, but the words of the SNP’s Deputy First Minister in Scotland, John Swinney, when an Opposition party in Holyrood performed the same theatrics that we saw from SNP Members last week. Their own Deputy First Minister thinks that they should be in Parliament standing up for their constituents and listening to the debate, rather than walking out. I agree with John Swinney, and I hope, in the cold light of day, that SNP Members will reflect on what they did last week and also agree with their Deputy First Minister.

I want to move on to the points I put to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford). In my intervention, I made two specific points, neither of which were answered. I asked, first, how many powers the Scottish Parliament currently has and how many it will have after the implementation of the legislation in this Parliament, because if it is a power grab, there must be fewer powers afterwards. I am giving an open invitation to all SNP MPs in the Chamber to stand up and intervene on me to tell me how many powers the Scottish Parliament currently has and how many it will have after the legislation has gone through the Westminster Parliament. How many fewer powers will there be? Come on! Nobody? Nobody, because they cannot answer. They cannot defend their claim of a power grab because it does not exist. Their leader could not answer the question in my intervention, and now the entire parliamentary party cannot intervene to tell me the answer, because it is not happening and will not happen. They are not losing any powers; they are gaining powers as a result of this Government.

The second question I put to the right hon. Gentleman was: what was his party’s position in the 1997 general election? He stood up and said that the Conservatives opposed devolution in 1997, but the SNP opposed devolution in the 1997 general election. I have read its manifesto for the 1997 election, because the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) was so perplexed at my point, and it said:

“The SNP are proposing a fully-costed manifesto for an independent Scotland”.

Devolution was never mentioned: in those 37 pages, it was never once mentioned. Why? Because it is all about separation for the SNP. Every year, every month, every day, every hour—it is about separation for the SNP. It opposed devolution in the 1997 general election, and they are working against it now because it is not in the interests of separation.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Several of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have referred to the deal struck by the Government of my country with the UK Government. However, during a session of the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee of the National Assembly, Professor Tim Lang was asked what he thought the consequences would be for Welsh agricultural interests, and he said that Welsh interests would now be “steamrollable” following the Welsh Government’s capitulation. Is that what the hon. Gentleman wants for Scotland?

[Douglas Ross]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention because I am about to speak about Wales and about other people.

The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said that the people of Scotland are watching. They are watching, but does the SNP know what they are saying? They can see the grievance politics of the SNP. They will come to their own conclusions about why the SNP Scottish Government have ignored the Scottish Parliament’s Presiding Officer, who has said that its continuity Bill was outwith the remit of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish public will have to wonder why the SNP does not accept the concessions from the UK Government that have met with the approval of the Welsh Assembly and of Welsh Labour. The SNP told us that it was hand in glove with the Welsh Government in these negotiations, but all of a sudden, with concessions from the UK Government, we have agreement in unionist Wales, but not in separatist Scotland.

The people of Scotland have to ask why Labour and Liberal Democrat peers are wrong when they say that the devolution settlement will be respected. Many of those peers are the architects of devolution itself, yet they can agree with what the UK Government are putting forward. The public in Scotland will also have to ask why the SNP thinks that Lord Sewel is wrong. The man who gave his name to the convention we are discussing today says that he backs the UK Government position. Lord Sewel has said today that he backs what the UK Government are doing, which is respecting the devolution settlement of our country.

Yes, the people of Scotland are watching, and they see the SNP working in the nationalist interest rather than in the national interest. I want more for Scotland: I want Scotland to get more powers from this UK Government, and that is what is happening. People will have to ask: why does the SNP not want these powers, and why does it want to give these powers straight back to Europe? As my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) said, it wants to do so for fishing. That is hugely important in my constituency of Moray, yet the SNP does not want fisheries powers to come from Westminster to Holyrood; it wants them to go back to Europe.

My final message to SNP Members today is: if they do not want these powers, Scottish Conservatives do, and after the next election in Scotland, Ruth Davidson will use these powers as First Minister of Scotland. The public can see that those who do not want and cannot use these powers need to be replaced, and the Scottish Conservatives are ready to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lesley Laird (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)]

Let me begin by echoing some of the sentiments that have been expressed tonight about the fire at the Glasgow School of Art. Let me also thank my colleague the junior shadow Minister for the efforts that he has made to raise the profile of this issue, appearing on Canadian television tonight. That demonstrates that it really is a global issue.

I remind the people in this Chamber, and the people we represent, that the debate is of the utmost importance. I also acknowledge that several Scottish Members are unable to attend today, as they are otherwise engaged with the Scottish Affairs Committee.

At the heart of the debate are concerns about the future of the Scottish devolution settlement, and about the future of the United Kingdom itself. In that context, it is unbelievable that the Minister responsible for these matters has chosen to absent himself. Let us be clear: responsibility for the position in which we find ourselves today sits squarely in the lap of the Conservative party. This Tory shambles is epitomised by the Secretary of State, the invisible man in the Cabinet, who is now missing in action rather than being at the Dispatch Box. This is not a personal attack, but it is a critique of a performance. The Secretary of State has been AWOL on many fronts. He is not at the Brexit negotiating table; he is not able to keep his commitments to the House; he is not able to deliver for the Scottish Parliament; and he is not able to deliver on the commitments that he made to his colleagues on clause 11.

Today’s debate, and the Tory shambles, were totally avoidable. The Tories’ approach involves playing fast and loose with devolution, and with the future of the United Kingdom. The current approach of a party that claims to want to protect the Union serves only one purpose, and that is to play into the hands of the Scottish National party, which—let us all be clear about this—does not want to protect devolution, and which never wanted it in the first place.

In contrast, let me set out the grown-up approach taken by the Scottish Labour party. As the party of devolution, we want to protect devolution and protect the future of the UK at the same time. That is why Labour in the Scottish Parliament voted along with the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens to withhold consent for the EU withdrawal Bill, particularly due to the provisions in clause 11. At that point the Tory Government must surely have understood the depth of concern about the way they were proposing to utilise the new powers, but, alas, they did not. Instead, they carried on regardless, ignoring the Scottish Parliament and playing into the hands of the SNP. In acting in this way, it has become abundantly clear that the Tories are as much a threat to the UK as the nationalists.

Let me outline how and why this shambles came about. We are here because the Secretary of State for Scotland and his UK Government decided when they drafted the EU withdrawal Bill that all powers coming back from the EU would come to Westminster and be devolved to the devolved Administrations at a time of their choosing, something that is entirely incompatible with the devolution settlement, a fact that their own Scottish MPs acknowledge.

The Secretary of State for Scotland then promised on four different occasions that he would fix this flawed course, but he did not. Last Tuesday he managed to do something that I do not think anyone in this House could have envisaged: be complicit in a situation where no Scottish MPs or the Secretary of State for Scotland were able to speak about devolution, truly taking this process to a new level of farce.

A number of hon. Members have suggested that it was Labour that somehow disrupted this debate—that Labour somehow stopped democracy happening—but it was the Conservatives who set the timetable. In fact, they wished to set the debate for only one day, and only on our pressing did they set it for two. But that was still not enough to debate what are some of the biggest constitutional issues this country is facing.

Labour throughout this process has tried to play a constructive role. We have tabled amendments and made suggestions to both Governments. These could have helped break the deadlock; but instead what we have seen is two competing nationalisms entrenched and intent on cancelling each other out.

Throughout this process only Labour has genuinely sought an agreement that protects devolution and breaks the impasse. The leader of Scottish Labour and I wrote to the First Secretary of State asking for cross-party talks; so far he has refused.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lesley Laird]

I will not give way; the opposition has had ample time to state its case.

I have spoken to the Secretary of State for Scotland urging him to facilitate these talks; so far he has refused. On each occasion the mantra has been, “Unless there is something new to discuss we will not meet.” If that is the Government’s approach, it is a defeatist one. That is why it is time to freshen up the Treasury Bench. As other Members have said, it is time to take a fresh approach and bring new thinking to the table: to bring experts on law and the constitution to the table, and to bring in people from industry and business who ultimately will have to make sense of it all. As the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) pointed out, the NFU and others are waiting to see what that will look like. The Government have clearly run out of ideas, but openness to new ideas is of course predicated on having a genuine desire to resolve the issue, and so far their reluctance to do that may suggest that they are indeed content with the way things are.

Once again it will be Labour that brings forward proposals to break the deadlock. I will again be writing to the First Secretary of State and also Mike Russell with a further proposal that, at the very least, should compel all parties and experts to get around the negotiating table and find a way to resolve this issue, because while we may have the luxury of standing here debating the constitutional implications of the Sewel convention, we must remember that behind all of this constitutional wrangling, people and businesses require certainty, and require both of Scotland’s Governments to work constructively together to reach a solution. We understand the need to negotiate on the common UK frameworks, but we do not understand why the industries and sectors that will be impacted have not been actively involved in the negotiations.

Let us be in no doubt that we are in this mess because of the UK Government. There has been no Joint Ministerial Committee meeting for eight months. That is eight months of time wasted that could have been used to sort this out. It is also my understanding that two JMC meetings have been cancelled in recent weeks. It is abundantly clear that deeds are not matching words. The Secretary of State for Scotland has stated:

“Scotland is not a partner of the United Kingdom; Scotland is part of the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 14 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 1129.]

That really tells us all we need to know.

Since Brexit, it has become clear that the intergovernmental and constitutional mechanisms in the UK are inadequate, and the debate that we are having about the Sewel convention serves only to reaffirm that case. The Secretary of State for Scotland cannot even be compelled to come to the Dispatch Box to answer for his decisions and his quite obvious failings on this matter. We also have a situation in which the UK Government can ride roughshod over the wishes of a democratically elected Parliament in Scotland, and there is no recourse. [Interruption.] That is why it is called democracy; that is why it is called devolution. People in Scotland will be looking on at this and wondering whether the UK Government have any real intention of trying to fix it. They will be wondering whether not getting a deal and causing a constitutional crisis are actually politically beneficial to those who are nationalists on both sides of the argument. Constitutional debates only fuel the politics of grievance; they do not fuel economic stability, equality or social justice. They just divert us from addressing those real issues in our society.

In closing, I ask the First Secretary of State to be bold and to demonstrate the courage this situation requires by committing to four simple things. First, will he show political leadership by getting back to the negotiating table and convening a cross-party meeting—which the Leader of the SNP in this House has indicated he would be willing to attend—including legal and constitutional experts, to resolve the issues on the devolution settlement and to use the new offer that I will send him to resolve the impasse?

Secondly, clause 22 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill allows for consequential amendments to be made to the Bill where that is appropriate. Has the right hon. Gentleman explored this avenue, and will he be open to consequential amendments to the clause? Thirdly, the Secretary of State for Scotland has so far refused to publish the minutes of all meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee. Will the Minister for the Cabinet Office agree to do so now and also set a date for a JMC meeting before the recess? Finally, if there is no agreement between the UK and Scottish Governments, will he ask the Prime Minister to sack the Secretary of State for Scotland? By virtue of his standing here today, it is clear that the Minister for the Cabinet Office does not have confidence in his colleague to deliver for the people of Scotland.