Meeting of the Parliament 21 March 2018
I open on a point of consensus—like my friend and colleague Murdo Fraser, I am always looking for consensus. On behalf of the Scottish Conservatives, I echo the remarks that the minister correctly made in thanking the Parliament and its staff for rising to the significant challenge of legislating in the absurdly restricted amount of time that the Government made available for the bill.
Parliament rose to the challenge successfully at stage 2, but perhaps did so a little less successfully at stage 3. This afternoon we heard about a number of disturbing incidents. We have had amendments that appeared to have been agreed with the Government but which turned out not to do what was promised. There have been very serious allegations of Government ministers “strong-arming” members of a key scrutiny committee in this Parliament. Those allegations will, no doubt, be for others to investigate, but whatever the full picture, those and other related incidents serve only to reinforce the core point that we made about this bill when it was introduced: it is bad law, which we have been asked to make badly.
The bill is unwelcome and unnecessary. We have resisted it at every stage of its process and we will vote against it tonight. The first reason for that is that there are grave doubts about its legislative competence. Mr Russell’s response to my question a few minutes ago was extraordinary. Competence is not a question of democracy; it is a question of legality, and the only place that can rule authoritatively on the legality of this legislation is the United Kingdom Supreme Court.