Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Pete Wishart Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I remind hon. Members that, if there is a Division, only Members representing constituencies in England and Wales may vote.

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That the Committee consents to the Civil Liability Bill [Lords].—(Rory Stewart.)

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

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Lindsay, especially when we are in such privileged surroundings as the de facto English Parliament. As you know, I always think that it is important that we mark and commemorate these auspicious occasions when English Members of Parliament get the opportunity to express their true English political values and to get to their feet, en masse, to discuss and debate these critical English-only issues. I also like to make a contribution in these events, as you know, Sir Lindsay. I have the proud record of having taken every single opportunity to speak when the English Parliament has met. In fact I have got the record—I have taken up something like 80% of the time in the English Parliament.

What surprises me is that when this opportunity is available to English Members, they cannot seem to bring themselves to actually consider and debate these critically important issues. There are important issues in this Bill that are English-only. In fact, the whole Bill is English-only, which rather prompts the question of why on earth we are doing this. I know that the Serjeant at Arms needs a bit of exercise, and it is quite an onerous responsibility to take the Mace down and then put it back up. We obviously need an opportunity to see if the Division bells are still working, so the bells will go on and off, but then nothing ever happens. What is the point of this ludicrous session that we go through every time that a Bill has been certified in this way?

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to ask what is the point because under the Government’s position, this English Parliament passes a legislative consent motion, but the experience of the Scottish Parliament is that legislative consent motions are worthless, and that the Government do not need legislative consent motions from the constituent parts of the United Kingdom to pass their legislation.

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend makes a good and valid point, because legislative consent does seem to mean different things in different Parliaments. Here, for example, we have the Legislative Grand Committee: an innovation of this Parliament to allow English Members the opportunity to put forward their own particular English-only issues and amendments. In Scotland, of course, we have legislative consent motions that require our Scottish Parliament to agree, on its own behalf, to legislation passed in this House. There seems to be a particular problem with this. We have our own Parliament that is responsible for legislative consent motions, which are now more or less ignored by this Parliament. Here we have the English Legislative Grand Committee squatting in the UK Parliament. This is the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but somehow it still operates as a de facto English Parliament and as the venue for this Legislative Grand Committee.

It strikes me that that might be a bit odd. I have a little solution that I have presented to this House before, thus far without any great success and without anybody really paying attention to what was suggested, so I will make one more attempt: how about English Members getting their own Parliament? Then there will be a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly, a Northern Ireland Assembly and an English Parliament. Then, instead of having all these Legislative Grand Committees, we can all come together in a United Kingdom Parliament that is responsible for particular, defined issues, instead of having this ridiculous notion where English colleagues seem almost to squat in this place in order attend a debate that nobody takes part in.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I give way to the Minister first, because I am particularly interested in his views about this.

[Rory Stewart]

I would be grateful to know how Union issues of foreign affairs and defence, which the people of Scotland voted in a referendum should continue to be dealt with by the United Kingdom, would be covered by the hon. Gentleman’s proposal.

[The Chairman]

Order. We are discussing the legislative consent motion.

[Pete Wishart]

I only have a few seconds left. I am surprised at the Minister, because he is an erudite chap who understands constitutional issues and the history of this nation. Quite succinctly, I will tell him what it is called. It is called federalism, which is where there are constituent Assemblies that have equal power and authority, and there is then another stratum of government, which would be the UK Parliament—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I begin by trying to find a bit of consensus and agreement across the House. We are all basically agreed that we need to improve the Bill in Committee. Everyone seems to suggest that lots of amendments are required to improve this legislation.

I may have inadvertently misled the House last Thursday when I broke the crushing news that only eight days will be available in Committee, because actually only seven days will be available. That is because we are going to lose four hours out of the eight in days five and eight. So we will have seven days to rewrite the whole of the law system of the United Kingdom, whereas 41 days were given to the Maastricht treaty, 29 were given to the Lisbon treaty and 21 were given to entering the Common Market. We will have only seven days for this great repeal Bill—what an absolute embarrassment for this Government. They had better come back with a proper programme motion to give this House sufficient time—

[Mr Francois]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I have not got time for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, so he should sit down. On this side of the House, we have been trying to outdo each other in describing this Bill. I would describe it as a “Hammer House of Horror” Bill: it gifts unprecedented power to this Executive, drives a coach and horses through the devolution settlement and presents a profound threat to our human rights. It is hard, if not impossible, to conceive of a Bill that more undermines this “taking back control” mantra of all those who parroted it ad nauseam when they were talking about leaving the European Union.

I would not vote for this Bill in a month of Sundays. The UK is engaged in an almost unprecedented exercise of national self-harm with this whole Brexit project. We are indulging in a grotesque episode of economic, political and cultural self-flagellation and, by God, we are determined to give ourselves a damn good thrashing! We are opting for the hardest of hard Brexits, reaching for the most painful implement in the box, and the scars and pain will be there for decades to come.

Turning to the negotiations, I will put my cards on the table when it comes to these tricky conversations. I will try to lay them down as delicately and sensitively as I can. Never before has an enterprise of such political significance been prosecuted with such delusional cluelessness, which is approaching a national embarrassment. It is hard to think of any major international negotiations being handled so ineptly and chaotically; it is almost as if we have put the clowns in charge of the Brexit circus and their huge clown footprints are all over all of this. We are becoming a national embarrassment with our negotiations, and this Government have to start to get real and drop their delusions. This repeal Bill is only throwing salt on the wounds.

What interests me more than anything else about this is what the Bill tells us about how Scotland is now perceived in this union of nations. Today, we celebrate 20 years of the vote that delivered the Scottish Parliament: 20 years of really taking back control—Members may wish to see it like that. This Bill presents the biggest challenge that our Parliament has ever had to confront, as it undermines the very foundation and ethos of the development of our national Parliament: if something is not listed in the reserved powers, it is devolved. That approach was designed elegantly by Donald Dewar as a means to determine and shape our national Parliament, and it has served us so well since then. This Bill drives a coach and horses through that. Indeed, it is worse than that, as the Law Society of Scotland tells us:

“The effect of the Bill would be to remove the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament in relation to any matter in retained EU law. This would be the case even if it related to areas of law not reserved to the UK under the Scotland Act, such as agriculture or fisheries.”

Then we must consider the Henry VIII power, an innovation so spectacular in its political audaciousness that one of Henry’s executioners would baulk at the whole experience. We have our own powers, which I refer to as the Robert the Bruce powers. We are actually compelled to exercise them as part of this Bill, even though we might have fundamental concerns in respect of democratic oversight. We are sailing towards the big Brexit iceberg, but Scotland has an opportunity. We can get down below decks, get on that lifeboat labelled “Scotland”, get out on to the ocean and row as quickly as we can to the shores of sanity.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Psychoactive Substances Bill [Lords]

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I do not understand this argument, and I do not know whether the shadow Minister does. If someone is buying a product that is illegal, that will be illegal. If they are selling a product that is illegal, that will be illegal. We will not criminalise a small group of people—

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

If you get it for free, is that all right?

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Gentleman makes a comment when he is not even in the Chamber—he should know better, as he has been here long enough.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I, too, have attended humanist weddings in Scotland, including that of my niece last October, which was an incredibly special occasion. I can fully understand what my hon. Friend says about the concern and hurt humanists across the UK will feel that these ceremonies that have worked so successfully in Scotland since 2005 have not been replicated here in England.

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

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. There are now 2,500 humanist weddings a year in Scotland. It is now the third most popular form of marriage that we have in Scotland, yet the Attorney-General has suggested that these weddings are somehow illegal under European law. However, the UK is the signatory to European human rights treaties, so what he says is a lot of nonsense. Will the hon. Lady confirm that the UK is the signatory to the European human rights treaties and that, if these weddings are illegal in England, they must also be illegal in Scotland?

[Kate Green]

Obviously, I do not answer for the Government, and I will not respond to any specific interventions on that point. The hon. Gentleman may wish to make a speech later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The hon. Lady is a lawyer so, with the greatest respect, she has no excuse for not listening to the advice of the Attorney-General. He made it clear to the House—any hon. Member would follow the logic very straightforwardly—that it would not be possible in the Bill to give privileges to one non-faith organisation, the humanists, without its being challenged by other similar non-faith groups, such as the pagans or the secularists, who have had weddings celebrated in Scotland. Pagans would say, “We are allowed to have marriages north of Hadrian’s wall. Why cannot we have marriages south of Hadrian’s wall?”

[Pete Wishart]

I strongly object to what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting—that we in Scotland could not care less about marriage. We have had 2,500 humanist weddings per year. Marriage is important to people in Scotland. The only thing we want to do is extend it to people who love each other.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Nothing that I have said could possibly be construed as implying that Scotland is not concerned about marriage. The fact is that under a celebrant-based system, pagan marriages take place in Scotland. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asks what is wrong with that. There has been no consultation in England as to whether or not the people of England would wish to have pagan marriages celebrated in England. I am afraid that, if he cannot understand that, there is a great deficit in democracy so far as he is concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

Six hundred.

[Pete Wishart]

Two thousand five hundred a year.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Hon. Members are calling out numbers to me—600 in England and 2,500 in Scotland. Why something is so easy in Scotland and so difficult in England is beyond me to imagine.

One point that the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) made quite strongly concerned democracy. Democracy is not dictatorship of the majority. Our kind of democracy accepts freedoms for minorities as well. The humanists are a substantial and significant minority, of whom I am proud to be one. Over the past decade, between the past two censuses, there has been a substantial increase in those professing no religion, and a significant proportion of those people have become humanists. If a number of those professing no faith understood that there was an alternative way of living according to some strong ethical beliefs, they could become humanists themselves. They would only need to find out more about humanism, and they might well become humanists and want a humanist marriage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Grant]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am being reassured from both flanks, and from much higher authorities than me, that that is the situation.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on these devolution matters and for the work the Government have done to ensure that we have our own separate legislation for same-sex marriage. Can she assure me that she will do all she can to work with Scottish Ministers and ensure that everything required for a legislative consent motion will be approved by the UK Government so that we can go ahead with our own process in Scotland?

[Mrs Grant]

I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We will certainly work very hard on that together.

I turn now to Government amendments 30 to 32, which are purely technical and simply ensure that the use of the phrase “existing England and Wales legislation” is entirely coherent, so as to remove any possible doubt as to its meaning. Government amendments 33 to 39 are technical and make changes to the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973 to ensure that it works entirely properly for same-sex marriages. Amendment 33 makes changes to the 1973 Act in relation to what applies to opposite-sex and same-sex marriages and to give effect to schedule A1.

Amendments 34, 35, 36 and 38 make changes to ensure consistency of language with the 1973 Act. Amendment 37 inserts a provision into schedule A1 to enable applications for an order to end a marriage because one of the couple is dead to be made under the Presumption of Death Act 2013. Amendment 39 enables schedule A1 to work using the presumption of death provisions of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 if the 2013 Act is not in force when the Bill comes into force. Amendment 39 also amends schedule 1 to the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973 provisions on staying—meaning halting—matrimonial proceedings in England and Wales when there are other court proceedings at the same time outside England and Wales about that same-sex marriage. That will ensure that such proceedings on the same divorce, judicial separation or annulment do not give rise to conflicting decisions, which would prevent resolution of the issue.

Detainee Inquiry

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We have not taken any decisions yet about the exact point at which we will start constituting a new judge-led inquiry or approaching a judge and people who might wish to serve on the inquiry. What we did this time was to set up the Gibson inquiry in the belief that we were about to start imminently—going into the full formal stage after a few months of preparation. Presumably, we will try to repeat that, but at this stage it is impossible to know when we will be in a position to do that. At the moment, we want to review the facts of these cases so I do not feel the need to create a new appointment to review the legislation in this area; indeed, I would argue, subject to what emerges, that the law in this area is reasonably clear. It is the facts that we hope to investigate, and then the application of the law to those facts.

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

Is not the real lesson of Gibson that important inquiries such as this cannot proceed properly without the full confidence of all interests and participants? What is the Justice Secretary doing to ensure that any future inquiries will have the full confidence of all human rights groups and all lawyers involved in such cases?

[Mr Clarke]

I have met a very wide range NGOs, human rights groups and those with an interest, and I have been trying to persuade them that the Gibson inquiry is something that they should get engaged with. I very much hope still to see them doing that. I am still having meetings about the Green Paper on security and justice and of course on the supervision of the security services. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was here earlier; we will continue to engage. I agree that it would be very much better if we could get the NGOs and others to accept that this is the way to proceed. We will continue to listen to their arguments about why they feel that they cannot, and we will do our best.