Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2019
I welcome the motion that has been brought to the chamber for debate today. The Greens have long expressed support for deliberative democracy in a range of forms. We have seen at a local level—with participatory budgeting, for example—that it can be done well or done badly, and we need to learn from that experience as we explore the greater use of deliberative democracy. I do not think that that learning is going to be well served by the kind of debate that we have had so far this afternoon.
Deliberative democracy—Adam Tomkins is right about this—does not in any way need to be seen as being in conflict with parliamentary democracy or as undermining the role of elected Governments or Parliaments. It can and should be complementary and enriching in a way that was so chronically missing in the run-up to 2016.
Adam Tomkins and I are on the Finance and Constitution Committee, which has been hearing evidence on the Referendums (Scotland) Bill. Although I am sure that we will not agree on everything about that bill, one of the common themes that we can all recognise from the evidence that we have heard so far is the distinction between a referendum that is held in the full light of a well worked-up and detailed proposition—either published legislation or something detailed, such as the Scottish Government’s white paper—and what we saw in 2016, which was a referendum that was based on a narrow proposition and something as simplistic as the slogan “take back control”.
We should learn from the Irish experience of using citizens assemblies to inform and enrich the debate about constitutional change in their country. It is a far greater expression of genuinely deep democracy than what we saw in 2016. If the question on EU membership, for example, had been subjected to that kind of detailed deliberation in advance, we would have ended up with a much richer debate and far greater clarity about what should happen as a result.
Further constitutional change is coming. Whether Brexit is implemented—and I hope that it can still be stopped—or is killed off in its tracks and we simply reflect on what has happened to us in the past three years and the level of contempt that has been shown to Scotland’s democracy by the UK Government, further constitutional change is coming. Let us make sure that, when it comes, it is as informed as it can be by that deliberative process.
I understand that some people want to see this as an opportunity to have a proxy debate about independence. Adam Tomkins does not need to be suspicious that the SNP might privately, secretly or covertly support independence. We all know that the SNP supports independence, he knows that I support independence and I know that he does not. I have no fear of a citizens assembly that wants to consider whatever proposals Adam Tomkins makes, even they are to support every dot and comma in the UK Government’s proposals for what should happen after Brexit. I would have no hesitation in seeing a citizens assembly consider those options, and I would not feel threatened by that.