Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2019
I turn my attention first to the Liberal Democrat amendment, which has just been so movingly moved by Mr Rennie. We on the Conservative benches strongly agree with every word of it—not quite with every word of Mr Rennie’s speech, but certainly with the sentiment behind it. It is a matter of deep regret that the idea of a citizens assembly for Scotland was introduced to the Parliament and to Scottish politics as part of a package of measures that were designed by the First Minister to achieve independence for Scotland. I think that everybody, even Mike Russell, can understand why that has made us all so deeply suspicious of it, just as we have our suspicions about the Referendums (Scotland) Bill, which is another part of the same package. For all those reasons, we will be voting for the Liberal Democrat amendment tonight.
I now turn my attention to the Government motion. The first thing that it says is
“That the Parliament supports the use of deliberative democracy in Scotland”.
I support deliberative democracy in Scotland and I will explain why briefly. I support it because I do not think that party politics gets everything right. I do not think that the Parliament has shown that it is able to get to the bottom of every social or economic problem that faces Scotland today. For all its merits and virtues, the Parliament does not have all the answers, even when we all come together to agree that an issue is of pressing national importance. Climate change might be a good example. If we had started with a citizens assembly on climate change and then moved to other matters, that would have been infinitely preferable to starting with the constitution and the SNP’s obsession with independence.
Another example, which I have given before, is that we all agree that Scotland faces a crisis when it comes to drugs deaths. There is cross-party agreement that the issue blights our nation and it shames us all that we have not been able to come together as a Parliament to agree a way forward. It is not just unfortunate but appalling that the issue has become constitutionalised and has become about where reserved powers lie with regard to safe consumption facilities. That is exactly the kind of issue that party politics is failing to address in Scotland and which a citizens assembly could and should be established to address.
If we had started with climate change or drugs deaths, perhaps there would have been much less suspicion about the idea of citizens assemblies and we could have had genuine all-party support for it.