Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 22 December 2020
I also congratulate Angela Constance on her very recent appointment.
Amendment 7 refers to a number of important areas in which keeping pace powers may be used. In his supporting remarks, Tom Arthur referred to the policy intention of maintaining the highest standards in Scotland. We totally agree with that. In fact, Scotland and the rest of the UK already have some of the highest standards in the world in these areas, and we agree that that should continue to be the case.
However, the standards have to be appropriate for Scotland. Simply copying and pasting future EU laws is not the best way of doing that. That was made clear by NFU Scotland, when it said in its briefing paper that that would reduce the capacity of Scottish ministers to introduce policies that are genuinely fitting to Scotland’s unique environmental and agricultural context.
The Law Society of Scotland’s briefing also made it clear that these are future EU laws, in relation to which we have no influence or input, and they would be adopted without any scrutiny from the Parliament or consultation with key stakeholders.
That is the point: clarity of purpose is not the same as parliamentary scrutiny. The Finance and Constitution Committee heard substantial evidence that those powers would turn the Scottish Parliament into a passive rule-taker.
For those reasons, we will not be able to support amendment 7. However, if it passes, we will support the consequential amendments 22, 23 and 30, which introduce additional reporting requirements in these areas.