Meeting of the Parliament 19 December 2019
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in favour of the bill, which I do confident in the knowledge that pretty much no serious evidence was submitted during the process that disagreed with the principle of having framework legislation on referendums. Rather, there was broad agreement that it is a good idea.
There was, however, also broad agreement that the bill as introduced was not adequate; it has been substantially changed since then. Adam Tomkins said that the bill is “less bad” than it was when it was introduced, which might be the closest that we get to high praise from him. Nonetheless, it is true that it is a less bad bill. There have been significant improvements, which are adequate for me to be able to support the bill.
Referendums can be done well or they can be done badly. That is true in relation to the practice, the process, the conduct, and the legislation under which they operate. It is also true in relation to the political judgments and the nature of political campaigning around referendums. The bill will improve the former: the practice, the process, the conduct and the legislation under which referendums will operate in the future.
However, improving the politics of how and why we use referendums—of their purpose and meaning in our democracy—is something that we all, as political actors, need to take responsibility for. I do not mean just we, in the chamber; I mean we, in our society and our democracy.
There can be very little doubt that the argument that Alex Rowley referred to, about the sovereignty of Parliament, holds great importance for many people at UK political level. However, it does not always sit easily with the principle of the sovereignty of the people that we speak of in Scottish constitutional history. That conflict is one of the things that has played out in chaotic and damaging ways at UK level in recent years. In fact, the people in the UK Government who are today proudly and patriotically asserting the sovereignty of Parliament are the very same people who have been demanding that a wafer-thin majority in an advisory referendum that was conducted with—at best—dubious tactics represents the unshakeable and unchallengeable will of the people, and that it has to be implemented, even to the point of illegally proroguing the UK Parliament. Those who assert one principle but live by another do not necessarily speak from the high ground in relation to those issues.
I have argued since—I think—before the bill was introduced that we should look to Ireland if we want to learn how to improve the politics of how we do referendums and why we use them. In what could have been deeply divisive and polarising issues, Ireland did not frame referendums simply by giving the job either to politicians or to an electoral commission. Rather, it actively brought in deliberative processes, with citizen-led discussion about what questions should be put to referendum and how to frame them. In that way, what might otherwise have been divisive and polarising referendums were much more unifying experiences.
I do not pretend that we can solve every aspect of the challenges that we will face as we approach the next independence referendum; it is coming and it is necessary. We can improve the legislation today, but we cannot with a single bill improve the politics of how we do referendums. We will all need to take responsibility for that, and learn lessons from what, in the past, we have done well and what we have done badly.
15:55