Hansard

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, in that I am an advocate.

This is the third time that we have debated the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. The Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee has reported at length on the initial LCM to the bill. However, it is worth noting that, today, the committee unanimously agreed the terms of a report on the supplementary LCM, which the committee’s convener has just spoken about.

Much has changed since this Parliament last debated the matter. The bill returns to the House of Commons on Monday, so it is still not in its final state. However, the UK Government has made meaningful changes to it in response to a number of concerns that were raised by devolved Governments across the United Kingdom, by the civil service and by stakeholders, including those in Scotland, working across many sectors.

In earlier debates, I have set out my personal misgivings about various aspects of the bill, particularly the then concern about timeframes. I am glad that those concerns have now been answered by the removal of the sunset provision. Now, only the retained EU law specified in schedule 1 to the bill will be revoked at the end of the year. That means that the existing corpus of retained EU law will remain and will not be subject to sunset provisions.

Even more than before, that should allow the Scottish Government to follow its stated policy of keeping pace with EU law. Such an approach is enabled, because it can now choose to keep on the statute book any EU laws that it sees fit, whether it be in primary or secondary legislation, without fear of there being a cliff edge whereby that law would have disappeared automatically. That is why it is all the more disappointing that the Scottish Government continues to withhold consent.

The cabinet secretary has argued that he cannot support the supplementary LCM because of the nine instruments in schedule 1 that, in his view, cannot yet be said to be obsolete, such that he opposes their removal. However, on closer scrutiny of that list of nine instruments, I have to say that, although each of them is important, that opposition is not insurmountable.

In addition, the cabinet secretary’s officials made it clear in their evidence to the committee last week that discussions with the UK Government on having those nine instruments removed from the schedule are continuing. There remain two deadlines for doing so: before the bill is given royal assent later this month, and then again by 31 October this year.

I would argue that it is disproportionate to withhold consent for the sake of those nine instruments, whose removal from the schedule might yet be agreed by the Scottish Government and the UK Government before the timelines expire. The Scottish Government, of course, now has the power to do that itself by identifying items to place on the schedule or to remove from it if they fall within devolved competence. I refute the argument that has just been made that that is a threat to the devolution settlement, because the UK Government has, of course, clearly set out that that device is designed to save the Scottish Government time in removing retained EU law that is now obsolete. As we said in our report, that is intended

“to reduce the additional resource pressure that the devolved governments may experience, by enabling the UK Government”

to legislate on behalf of a devolved Government when

“they do not intend to take a different position”.

That is a quote from the UK Government.