Hansard

It is more than 100 years since Rutherford split the atom, and I would venture that his achievement was far less challenging than the SNP managing to split the finest of hairs and create quite possibly the most inane constitutional debate that it could come up with.

In a week when it has been announced that the bill to bring every home in one city in Scotland up to just a grade C for energy efficiency could be close to £10 billion—an issue with a huge impact on our net zero target—the Scottish Government has chosen to bring a debate to the chamber and create grievance. I understand the SNP’s need to avoid discussing anything for which it actually has responsibility, because that would lay bare the total incompetence of this Government in using—or not using—its significant powers.

Why is the Government not bringing health debates to the chamber—for example, on the record accident and emergency waiting times, staff shortages or the ambulance waiting time crisis? What about education, which is apparently the SNP’s priority? We could be discussing the stubborn attainment gap or the slide down international league tables. There is the ferries crisis, which sees two partially finished ferries rusting in a Government-owned yard—a yard that cannot even get on a Government tender list. Bring the climate emergency to this chamber and let us get on with discussing issues that actually matter to the people of Scotland.

Of course, we know that the Scottish Government leaves such matters to Opposition parties to raise. The fact that this debate has been brought to the chamber tells us everything that we need to know about the direction of travel of this SNP Government. The substance of the debate matters not. It does not matter that my colleague Donald Cameron—an advocate, no less—has systematically dismantled any legal position that the SNP has tried to manufacture and has exposed it for what it is: not a party of Government but a protest party and a party of grievance. It has become a parody of itself, and, in doing so, it devalues the Scottish Parliament and what it is here to do, which is to serve the people of Scotland.

It does not even matter that the LCM that we are discussing was reported on by the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee in 2020 or that a legislative consent motion was voted on and agreed to by the Scottish Parliament in November 2020. It will not even matter that the SNP-Green coalition is challenging a provision that is designed to protect rainforests around the world. Let that one sink in, Deputy Presiding Officer. Let us be honest: the motion will be passed this afternoon and the Government will achieve its objective of being able to sell the story to the media that the Parliament agrees that the UK Parliament is on a power grab. Job done. [Interruption.] I do not have time to take an intervention.

With its motion, the SNP-Green coalition has finally given up any pretence of governing for the people of Scotland. This debate is about creating constitutional grievance and finding ways to drive a wedge between Scotland and the rest of the UK. It highlights the SNP’s approach of being unwilling to negotiate and then blaming someone else.

I am in no doubt that, following the debate, the people of Scotland will rise up, as one, and—what? Politics sometimes has to be about compromise. It has to be about accepting that something is not perfect but is not the end of the world. The SNP chose not to compromise or to collaborate with the UK Government, because why would it choose to work constructively to solve a problem when any unresolved problem is another opportunity to paint itself as being hard done by? Why go to all the effort of getting things sorted when it can sit back and blame someone else for its failure?

This has been 40 minutes of my life that I will never get back. What an absolute waste of parliamentary time. Shame on this sham of a Government.