Meeting of the Parliament 21 March 2018
This Parliament is stronger for having people such as Adam Tomkins in it. He brings a wealth of experience and a hinterland—as people in other walks of life call it—that is important. But—there is a “but”; boy, is there a “but” after that speech—Adam Tomkins’s speech was one of the worst that I have ever heard in this Parliament, because at no time did he do the decent thing and say why we are here. Many of us have raised that issue, from the time when the minister had to introduce the bill.
Most of us would rather not be here having this debate at all. Most of us would rather not be leaving the EU. We hear people make great claims about how great it will be when we leave. My daughter is 26 years old. Her whole generation does not think that Brexit is right. It is not just my daughter; her first cousins, who live in the south-west of England, do not think that it is right. For that generation, in particular, this is a bad day, and it will be a bad day next March when we leave the European Union.
However, that is why we are here. We are here because the United Kingdom vote on Brexit happened and because the Governments across the UK have yet to reach agreement. I profoundly hope that the continuity bill will become redundant at some stage and that we will see no more of it.
However, when will agreement be reached on frameworks? I took heart from the First Minister’s language in London—I think last week—when she talked about consent not being unreasonably withheld. I hope that the UK Government moves towards that position. Much earlier today, Michael Russell mentioned the amendment in the House of Lords that Lord Mackay of Clashfern has tabled, which proposes mechanisms that involve a member of each Government in the United Kingdom. Lord Mackay is a serious person, who knows his way around the constitution—written or unwritten—of this country, and he is looking at ways in which the withdrawal bill can be made better. I wish that people in his party in London would take such proposals forward.
I make a couple of final points. First, the minister rightly made much of the people who have helped all members to get to where we are today. He commented on the ingenuity of some amendments. I have to confess that the ingenuity of most amendments—certainly those in my name—was the result of the brilliance of the clerks of this Parliament in interpreting my unbelievably inexact language and translating it into something that, in some cases, and probably quite worryingly, will subsequently become law. I particularly thank the clerks on Bruce Crawford’s committee and those who work in our parliamentary offices, who did a heck of a job in no time at all, including Matthew Clark and my staff, who stayed up as late as everyone else did, working to make all this happen.
As other members said, stage 2 was intensely challenging. However, having been through many stage 2s in this Parliament, I can say that it was one of the better stage 2s that we have had. More members turned up—although some did not—and the minister took a lot of the arguments on section 13, which was the cause of so much concern in the early stages of the bill. He did that in a productive way, sometimes because he lost the vote—Michael Russell would be the first to accept that in the Parliament that we have—but on other occasions by coming back with amendments at a later stage. I think that members of all parties can take credit for the way in which the bill was amended.
Finally, whatever happens in the coming weeks on frameworks and in the coming months on other aspects of the UK Government’s negotiations with Brussels, this Parliament will have a huge workload after March 2019 and during the transition period over the subsequent months. I trust that we are all ready for that, because we will certainly need to be.