Hansard

It should be clear to all of us that leaving Europe means that the role of citizens in influencing laws in the European Parliament has now gone. Given that 80 per cent of our environmental laws were born out of the EU’s democratic processes, what replaces that is of critical concern. The balance of power between Parliament and Government is a critical issue, and the proposals in the Environment Bill put the control of many areas firmly in the hands of the UK and Scottish Governments, with only a cursory nod to the critical role of Parliament.

There have been sheaves of secondary legislation under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which have made minor and technical amendments to laws, but that looks set to become the new normal for secondary legislation. Major policy changes could be pushed through under the Environment Bill, with no Sewel convention forcing a full and robust democratic process.

Even though the Scottish Government has reflected on the committee’s concerns and proposed a new protocol with Parliament, ironically the Government has brought the LCM to the chamber ahead of any scrutiny of that protocol by the Parliament. That is not a great position to be in when asking for our consent. The provision of a cursory 28 days to consider a decision that has, in effect, already been made by the two Governments does not empower the Parliament or the people who elected it. The inability to even provide a copy of the proposed legislation in advance makes a mockery of our role as legislators.

A meaningful joint procedure between the Governments that involves their Parliaments is surely the only way of genuinely respecting the constitutional settlement that we have on these islands. The current routes for doing that, such as the Privy Council, are undoubtedly arcane, but they have already been used to agree the new UK emissions trading scheme, and they could evolve further.

The current Brexit mess was not of the Scottish Government’s making, and it wrote to the committee to say that the revised protocol

“cannot by itself provide an answer to the committee’s concerns about an appropriate influence of Parliament.”

However, the proposed set of powers for the two Governments sets a dangerous precedent for how elected Parliaments could be sidelined in the decision-making process, by virtue of having to rely merely on the good will of the Government of the day to allow any scrutiny whatever.

With the twin crises of Covid and Brexit, Governments often need to move fast and answer questions later, but the new normal must involve having more democratic engagement, not less, and at a time when we have lost our European Parliament, we need to be strengthening, not weakening, scrutiny. That is why the Greens will vote against the LCM at decision time.