Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 07 October 2020
This has been an extraordinary process leading to an extraordinary bill, which poses an extraordinary threat to us all. The process cut right through the discussion of common frameworks and began with a short consultation that could not have been more perfectly timed to coincide with the parliamentary recesses in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It involved the refusal of the secretary of state who is responsible for the bill to come and give evidence; it included no draft bill for consultation; and it included a clear threat to legislate without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.
As I understand it, the Scottish and Welsh Governments were still asking to see the bill during a meeting of the joint ministerial committee when a photo of the press release announcing its publication was leaked on Twitter. That could not have been more shambolic.
The substance of the bill poses an extraordinary threat, too. The direct assault on the Parliament’s democracy—this democratic authority—comes from the political party that opposed the creation of the Parliament in the first place. The bill is not an insurance policy; it is a wrecking ball.
Where mutual respect genuinely exists between jurisdictions, co-operation is possible, even when political parties with very different politics are in power. The past 20 years show us that. However, that shocking power grab is what makes co-operation impossible. There is no incentive at all for the UK Government to negotiate or compromise if it has already taken a decision to ignore and overrule Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and even international law. That is why I am pleased to say that more than 6,000 people have signed up to support the Scottish Green Party’s campaign against the bill.
Beyond the extraordinary substance of the bill and its extraordinary process, there is an extraordinary threat, which raises a deeper concern about the true agenda of the current UK Government. It is encapsulated not only in the bill but in that Government’s trade agenda. It is apparent from the speech that Liz Truss gave to the free market extremist lobby group, the Cato Institute, a couple of years ago, in which she complained of a “thicket of regulation” and welcomed the race-to-the-bottom agenda on food, safety, public services, public health and environmental protection.
Liz Truss is far from alone in the UK Government in her attitude toward those issues, as shared with a right-wing, anti-environment, anti-social, climate-change-denying outfit such as the Cato Institute. The UK Government just appointed Tony Abbott, for goodness’ sake, to the UK Board of Trade. He has worked with Nigel Lawson’s dishonest climate denial lobby group; he has denied basic climate science for years and called it a “cult”.
The UK Government is willing to bring people like that into government. It is willing to break international law and render itself untrustworthy to both international partners and to Governments elsewhere in these islands. The UK Government is willing to undermine human rights and to overturn devolution. I agree with the STUC’s comment, which I quoted to Mr Rowley, that if the UK Government makes good on its threat to pass the bill in defiance of a refusal by this Parliament to consent to it, that will make
“the case for a second independence referendum unanswerable.”
That is because the bill does one thing very clearly: it exposes the reality of the choice that Scotland faces. In the context of the current UK Government, that choice is between direct rule and independence.
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