Hansard

There has been a lot of noise surrounding the UK internal market proposals, but when further restrictions on economic activity have just been announced, surely the priority must be to protect the 550,000 jobs and livelihoods and the 60 per cent of trade that depend on barrier-free access to the UK internal market. That is certainly the view of key stakeholders, such as the Confederation of British Industry and NFU Scotland, which have given evidence that the internal market is extremely important—more important than the EU market and the rest of the world put together. That is also our priority.

On the other side of the debate, I recognise that there are legitimate questions about how the proposals might work in practice, but too much focus has been on constitutional scaremongering and hypothetical concerns. Take, for example, paragraph 13 of the legislative consent memorandum, which claims that the bill will result in declining standards—what the cabinet secretary referred to as the “race to the bottom”, which is a claim utterly devoid of any factual evidence. The inconvenient truth for the Scottish National Party is that the UK Government has introduced higher domestic standards than the EU has in many areas.

Just weeks ago—[Interruption.] Let me make progress. Just weeks ago, the first major free trade agreement following Brexit—the economic partnership with Japan—was signed. Far from lowering standards, the agreement goes way beyond the scope of the EU-Japan free trade agreement and has increased the number of protected geographical indications for Scottish produce. That means that Scottish salmon, cheese, wool and beef will now have much higher levels of protection in the Japanese market.

The SNP’s poster child for lowering standards is the proposed free trade agreement with the US. When, at committee, I challenged Ivan McKee to give real examples of his concerns about those lower standards, his response was: “All concerns are hypothetical.” There we have it—a long history, as well as very recent examples, of high standards being adopted by the UK Government, in direct contrast and in contradiction to the hypotheticals that we have heard from the other side.

The memorandum goes on to claim that the bill will “undermine the powers” of this Parliament, when quite the opposite is true. At the end of the transition period, this Parliament will enjoy more than 100 new powers coming from the EU, making it more powerful than ever. [Interruption.] My colleague just said that it is a power surge—it absolutely is. As we all know, the SNP wants to surrender every one of those powers back to the EU, in what would be the biggest power surrender that this Parliament has ever seen.

The Scottish Government’s motion states that the bill will reduce and constrain the competence of the Scottish Parliament. Again, that is completely untrue, because the agreed approach of all four nations is that the mutually agreed common frameworks will regulate the vast majority of the additional powers coming back from the EU. [Interruption.] Let me make an important point. Those frameworks will deliver agreed standards as well as dynamic divergence in areas in which devolved Administrations want to take a different approach. We support all those objectives, but there still has to be a mechanism in place to deal with residual elements of trade that will sit outside those agreed common frameworks.

That is where the bill comes into play. [Interruption.] I will take an intervention in a second.

Witnesses such as Professor Michael Keating recognised the need for such a fallback mechanism. He said in evidence that the common frameworks

“will cover most issues. If something arises that is not covered by the common frameworks, there should be a mechanism for dealing with that.”—[Official Report, Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee, 24 September 2020; c 32.]

That is the fundamental point. The bill will apply only as a default mechanism to a residual element of trade that falls outside agreed common frameworks. On that basis, to say that the bill will cripple the Scottish Parliament and its devolved competence, as the First Minister has repeatedly said, is wholly misleading.

Take minimum unit pricing for alcohol, for example. That is a good example that the SNP uses. A divergent approach by the Scottish Parliament will be allowed in the future. That means that alcohol that is produced elsewhere in the UK can be sold in Scotland only if it complies with minimum pricing in Scotland. Contrast that with the position under EU law, whereby the Scottish Government had to defend that divergent approach through the courts.

In his opening remarks, the cabinet secretary talked about the United Kingdom no longer being a partnership of equals. The real test of any partnership is how a partner reacts during a crisis. We have seen the strength of the UK partnership delivering for Scotland during this time of crisis. There has been £16 billion of additional support as part of the UK Government’s Covid response, the UK furlough scheme has saved more than 900,000 jobs in Scotland, and the bill will deliver even more investment to Scotland.

What has the cabinet secretary’s contribution been during this period of crisis? He has spent time and money on an unwanted second referendum, walked away from negotiations on the internal market, and interfered with the Brexit negotiations. When the cabinet secretary questions the partnership of equals, he is the one trying to undermine the partnership. [Interruption.]