Meeting of the Parliament 20 December 2022
Here we are, then. After months of warnings from me and my party, which were largely ignored, we now face a vote on a motion that goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the final vote on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill before Christmas. This is the culmination of the many bureau meetings at which I voiced my concerns and the minister, in turn, voiced excuse after excuse as to why the bill should be rushed, all to avoid some bad public relations for the Cabinet.
I confess that, despite all the timetabling motions and the underhanded moves from the convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, who, of course, is a Scottish National Party MSP, I never actually thought that we would reach a point at which the choice before members was so blatant. Members can support the motion and, in doing so, directly support the SNP’s gleeful push to deny Parliament the scrutiny that it was elected to provide, or they can take the correct path and support my amendment to give the bill adequate time to be considered properly.
In the previous session, the SNP would not have been able to get away with it, but now, with the Greens mindlessly nodding through every cynical political decision, it has shut down scrutiny on any legislation that is considered remotely controversial: the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Bill, the coronavirus bills or the rent freeze bill, to name a few. That has now become the norm and, sadly, this Parliament, its MSPs and its officials, appear to have accepted that. What a joke.
A future version of Parliament will have to spend a full session going back and repairing or repealing the rushed legislation passed during this sorry stint of government. We should all be thoroughly ashamed of the example that we are setting for the rest of the world of how not to do democracy.
The situation is made even worse when we consider the kangaroo court that took place on Monday, when the SNP finally allowed evidence to be taken from a United Nations expert on violence against women and girls but stacked the evidence session in its favour by re-inviting a Government-backing witness, too. That witness had already given evidence, and I note that organisations and former MSPs have written to complain about being excluded from the process—