Meeting of the Parliament 21 March 2018
The bill is not one that the Scottish Conservatives ever wanted to see. We made it clear from the start that we consider it to be unnecessary and beyond the powers of the Scottish Parliament. Nevertheless, we have engaged fully in the legislative process. At stage 2, my Conservative colleagues and I lodged a long list of carefully considered amendments that sought to improve the bill. Although the Finance and Constitution Committee rejected the majority of those amendments, I am pleased to say that, in a number of cases, our amendments were accepted.
We saw a similar pattern this afternoon, at stage 3, when we made serious attempts to improve the bill, although we remain very concerned about aspects of it. It is our view that the bill will simply be bad law, although it is better than it was when it was introduced.
Throughout the process, we have heard from the Scottish National Party Government that the devolution settlement must be respected, and we heard that again from the cabinet secretary at the start of the debate. However, that self-same SNP Government has ignored the opinion of the Presiding Officer of the Parliament that the bill is beyond the Parliament’s powers.
We have also seen the SNP Government rush the bill through Parliament as emergency legislation, which has meant that, despite the best efforts of the Finance and Constitution Committee and, indeed, all the members here today, it has simply not been given the level of scrutiny that it deserves. Neither has there been the opportunity for external stakeholders to have their views heard. The bill has been treated as emergency legislation when there is no emergency—we are not due to leave the EU for another year.