Business of the House

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I clearly do not know any details of the parish church to which my hon. Friend refers. There is sometimes a difficult balance to be struck between what a congregation wants to meet the needs of worship and the historic fabric of a church. I would hope that such matters are always approached with proper sensitivity and high regard for our architectural and design heritage, and that the views of the local community, and particularly of the church congregation, are fully taken into account.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I join in the thanks and tributes to the chaplains of the House for their exemplary work last week. I congratulate Marvi Memon on winning your inaugural award, Mr Speaker—thank you for such a fantastic idea. I also thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for after the recess.

It has certainly been another one of those weeks, hasn’t it? What an historic week. This is therefore not the time for meaningless or provocative soundbites, but later we will continue with this pace when we see the White Paper on this shabby repeal Bill, as this Parliament attempts to repatriate almost 20,000 pieces of European legislation in what will be the greatest transfer of powers from Brussels to this Government. For a Parliament that has so jealously guarded its sovereignty throughout the centuries, how cavalier the Government have been about leaving the European Union. Parliament will need to have a look at this. These powers are not so much Henry VIII; it is more like a bespoke new Tessy the first.

One thing that we need to hear from the Leader of the House is a commitment that the shabby repeal Bill will not be subject to the English votes for English laws procedure. I say to him: just do not seek a certification. It is far too complicated and cross-jurisdictional for that, so will he rule it out today? This morning, without any fanfare or flourish, we got the Leader of the House’s review into the operation of EVEL. The dramatic conclusion he comes to is that it is working perfectly. In fact, it is an absolute and total embarrassment to this House. The bells go off, we suspend our business, we go into Committee, we come out of Committee, and not a word is said. It is not so much the court of Henry VIII; it is the court of Byzantium when we are dealing with issues such as this.

Lastly, we still have not had any sort of statement or response from the Government on the historic vote that was held in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday. That seems to be consistent with the way this Government treat Scotland. We know that there is no such thing as a common UK approach to leaving the European Union, and this Government could not have gone further out their way to antagonise Scotland over their plans to leave the European Union. Today, when we look at the great repeal Bill and think of Henry VIII, on the Scottish National party Benches we will be thinking of Robert the Bruce.

[Mr Lidington]

For a moment at the start of that question I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to become part of the new consensus that the Prime Minister is seeking to build. I hold out some modicum of hope for him, but I have to confess, after the rest of the tirade, not all that much.

I seriously encourage the hon. Gentleman and members of his party to read the White Paper before they make a judgment on it. When they have seen it, they will see that the case for certain powers as regards delegated legislation is made in detail. The argument is set out very clearly, as is the Government’s position that it will be necessary for the exercise of any such specific delegated legislative powers to be subject to conditions and restraints to ensure that they cannot be abused and are used only for the purpose for which they are created. I am sure that other Scottish National party Members will want to put questions to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union this afternoon, but the Government will be proposing a number of very important safeguards on the exercise of those powers.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the application of the English votes procedures to the repeal Bill, I have to repeat what I have said to him in previous exchanges. As we both know, the English votes procedures can be exercised only in a case where an issue to be determined is both devolved to the Scottish Parliament and, in relation to legislation before this House, applies to England only or to England and Wales only. The chances of that happening in the repeal Bill are very slim indeed, given that it addresses the application of the European treaties to this country and, as international agreements, they are reserved matters under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998. I cannot at this stage rule out some hypothetical piece of future secondary legislation, but it is not right to exaggerate fears of something that is very unlikely to come about.

The hon. Gentleman then asked me about the First Minister’s call for another referendum—[Hon. Members: “The Scottish Parliament’s.”]—and the vote by the SNP and the Greens in the Scottish Parliament for a second referendum. The Prime Minister was very clear yesterday that we are embarking on a major change of policy in response to what the people of the United Kingdom as a whole have decided, and that now is not the time for a further referendum on a matter that all sides agreed would be settled in the 2014 referendum. I simply remind the hon. Gentleman of what the First Minister of Scotland said when launching her party’s manifesto for the Scottish elections in April last year:

“Setting the date for a referendum before a majority of the Scottish people have been persuaded that independence—and therefore another referendum—is the best future for our country is the wrong way round…If we don’t succeed, we will have no right to propose another referendum.”

I support what the First Minister of Scotland said on that occasion.