Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 07 October 2020
Despite all the hysterical language that we have heard about the bill, we need to focus on what really matters—the importance of the UK internal market to Scottish business. According to the Fraser of Allander institute, which might know more about it than The Ferret, more than half a million jobs in Scotland are supported by demand for our goods and services from the rest of the UK; 60 per cent of Scotland’s trade, worth more than £50 billion to the Scottish economy annually, is with the rest of the UK. Trade to the rest of the UK is worth three times as much as trade to the EU single market.
Against that backdrop, it is no wonder that there have been calls from those involved in business and trade for legislation to ensure that the UK internal market works seamlessly in a post-Brexit environment. The CBI has said that
“preserving the integrity of the internal single market—the economic glue binding our four nations—is essential to guard against any additional costs or barriers to doing business between different parts of the UK”.
The Scottish Retail Consortium has said that Scotland benefits “enormously” from the UK internal market, NFU Scotland has said that it is “vital” for the agricultural industry, Oil & Gas UK has said that regulatory barriers will harm its sector, and Quality Meat Scotland has said that it wants frictionless trade in the UK to be maintained as far as possible.
There is a clear demand for the legislation before us, and it is disappointing that, in the contributions that we hear from the other parties in the chamber, there seems to be little recognition of the need for the legislation. We heard from Michael Russell that the bill represents a power grab by the UK Government but, as we have heard, 111 extra powers are coming to the Scottish Parliament as a result of Brexit and not a single power that is currently being exercised here is being removed. The hypocrisy of the SNP politicians’ position is that, while they complain about a power grab in this bill, they are pursuing their own power grab on Holyrood with the Scottish continuity bill, which will hand extensive powers to the Scottish ministers to introduce new laws in Scotland without detailed parliamentary scrutiny, in order to keep pace with EU laws that will be made by a third party, where we have had no say in their development. Under the SNP’s plans, we will become a rule taker but not a rule maker. It is little wonder that there has been so much opposition from stakeholders to what it is proposing.
We should not forget that the SNP wants to hand every power in the bill that it is complaining about straight back to the EU. So obsessed is it with EU membership that it would rather damage our businesses and the Scottish economy by aligning with the EU than align with the UK, despite the fact that the UK market is worth three times to Scottish business what the EU market is worth. Yet, for reasons of narrow ideological obsession, the SNP will damage the Scottish economy by threatening our ability to trade with the UK.
We should not for a moment accept the nonsense that is being stated about the bill leading to a lowering of standards. As Dean Lockhart said, the UK already has exceptionally high standards when it comes to the protection of consumers and workers—higher standards than the EU as a whole. Whether it comes to animal welfare, the environment, or workers’ rights, we are far ahead of what the EU offers. That is the position that we should maintain, and nothing in the bill threatens that.
The bill also contains the right for UK ministers to spend money directly in Scotland, a measure that we should all welcome. With Brexit, we will no longer have EU structural funds, and the UK Government has agreed that those will be replaced with direct UK investment in Scotland, in exactly the same way as we have seen from the EU in the past. Yet, strangely, SNP politicians object to that extra money and resources for their constituents, infrastructure projects, cultural projects and community initiatives. They are happy to accept that money when it comes from the EU, but they are so blinkered and prejudiced against the UK that they would rather turn that money down because it is a UK shared resource rather than an EU one—