Hansard

The actions and the role of local government are of critical importance to the people who live in our communities. In that regard, we place the highest importance on our relationship with local government, as set out in the Verity house agreement, and we will continue to take forward that partnership working.

I return to the motion before us and today’s debate. With regard to the Sewel convention, members will be well aware that, since 2018, the UK Government has repeatedly chosen to ignore or override the views of this Parliament, and those of the Welsh Senedd, when they became an inconvenience to it. The UK Government has now breached the Sewel convention 11 times and, sadly, we can confidently expect the current UK Government to do so again.

Most recently, the UK Government has taken that approach further. During our negotiations on the Energy Bill, UK Government ministers indicated that the amendments that they offered were conditional on Scottish ministers recommending that the Scottish Parliament give consent to all relevant provisions in the bill. If the Scottish Government did not recommend consent, the amendments would not be lodged or would be withdrawn.

That approach effectively reverses the Sewel convention. The UK Government should respect the views of this Parliament and should promote amendments to reflect those views. Instead, it is threatening to revert to a form of the bill that is even less acceptable to the Scottish Government, and to this Parliament, unless there is a recommendation for consent. The Scottish Government has made it clear that such a negotiation tactic is unacceptable. It is tantamount to blackmail and incompatible with good-faith negotiation on important topics.

As I have clearly illustrated with regard to the hollowed-out shell that is the Sewel convention, instead of the need for legislative consent protecting the interests of this Parliament, the threat of proceeding without consent has become a weapon for the UK Government. Those concerns are coming not just from the Scottish Government. Mark Drakeford said:

“When it became inconvenient for the UK Government to observe Sewel, they just went ahead and rode roughshod through it.”

With regard to the Energy Bill, because we need certain provisions to further our net zero ambitions, we have, in effect, been forced to recommend consent to a bill that does not respect the devolution settlement. Other amendments that the Scottish Government requested have been rejected by the UK Government. The UK Government has refused to include statutory consent mechanisms for the Scottish Government in all but a very small number of clauses. Those amendments would have improved the impact of the bill, and would have fully respected devolved competence. That “Sign, or else” approach to devolution is not what people voted for in the referendum 26 years ago.

I turn to the main thrust of today’s debate: the UK Internal Market Act 2020, which illustrates all the actions that the UK Government has taken to undermine devolution. The 2020 act was passed after both this Parliament and the Welsh Senedd explicitly withheld legislative consent, despite its significant effect on devolved matters, after a minimal consultation period of just four weeks over summer 2020. If the Sewel convention can simply be ignored for legislation of such significance, that convention is clearly of little or no value in protecting Scotland’s democratic self-government.

Secondly, the 2020 act gives UK ministers powers, in effect, to change the devolution settlement unilaterally through secondary legislation at Westminster. UK ministers—and only UK ministers—can grant or refuse exclusions to the 2020 act, undermining legislation that is passed in this chamber. They can also decide to include or exclude whole sectors from the act, which means that areas such as health services, social services and water services can join the already long list of devolved policy areas that are at risk from the act.

No member of this Parliament should be comfortable with the thought that, with the mere stroke of a pen, UK Government ministers could open up our health service, or our water and sewerage, to the blunt market-access provisions of the 2020 act, and that we could do nothing to stop them from creating a hit list of public services that they wanted to target.

Thirdly, the 2020 act, like the levelling-up agenda, gives UK ministers a tool to dictate policy in devolved areas to this Parliament. We have already seen that with the deposit return scheme, which is wholly within devolved competency. The UK Government, at the eleventh hour, disregarded the agreed process and refused an exclusion from the 2020 act for our Scottish scheme, without providing any evidence for its decision, while we are asked to provide significant amounts of evidence throughout the process.

The UK Government was prepared to allow a scheme to proceed only if it reflected that Government’s policy for England—which does not even exist yet—and not the policy that was decided democratically in this Parliament for Scotland. We now find ourselves totally dependent on progress by the UK Government in England to implement a deposit return scheme without glass, despite the UK Government’s own evidence showing that aspect to be economically and environmentally beneficial to such a scheme, with which Scotland must align.

The potential problems with the 2020 act were obvious from the outset, but now it is starting to have practical effects in undermining and constraining devolved policy for Scotland. There is the issue of animal welfare, for example. We are taking steps to ban the use of cruel glue traps in Scotland, but, to end the use of those devices effectively, we need to ban their sale. Again, without an exclusion, we cannot do that effectively because of the 2020 act and, again, we are dependent on UK ministers’ agreement for us to implement effective policy in a wholly devolved policy area.

The 2020 act also creates new uncertainty about Scotland’s ability to legislate effectively in other areas where action is being considered. For example, in the area of public health, we have control of vapes—whether banning the sale of single-use vapes to protect our environment or exploring possible restrictions on vape flavouring and packaging to better protect the health of our young people. Other examples include the review of the minimum unit price of alcohol and other measures to control the marketing of alcohol, and environmental measures such as banning the sale of horticultural peat and introducing charges for single-use disposable cups. All of those might be affected by the 2020 act, which, crucially, empowers UK ministers to undermine this Parliament’s legislation.

Nor should we forget the other effect of the 2020 act. Just as we may not be able to fully implement decisions and matters within our responsibilities for Scotland, neither can we prevent decisions that are made by the UK Government for England from having an effect here. We have already seen that in the UK Government’s Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023, which removes gene-edited products from the scope of genetically modified organisms regulations in England. Despite that legislation not applying in Scotland, the 2020 act could allow gene-edited food and feed products coming from England to be sold in Scotland, unlabelled and unauthorised. If the UK Government relaxes other regulations on food standards or labelling, there is, again, nothing—not a thing—that this Parliament can do to prevent the relevant products being placed on the market here, despite different standards being set in Scotland.

As well as those direct effects, the 2020 act continues to undermine the common framework approach that has been agreed between the Governments of the UK. The Scottish Government has been an active partner with other Governments through common frameworks, and we have all agreed to manage some of the practical regulatory effects of Brexit in a manner that respects devolution and the democratic accountability of this Parliament. The Scottish Government continues to believe that the common framework process can provide a forum in which Governments can work together on matters of regulatory divergence, with principles of equality and respect. However, that relies on a system of working with mutual respect.

The 2020 act, in both its creation and its content, shows no such value. It radically constrains the powers of this Parliament, creates a massive power imbalance between the UK Government and devolved Governments, gives UK ministers exclusive powers to intervene in the policies of this Parliament and change our very powers, all without agreement or consent. The 2020 act is hostile to Scottish democracy; it is causing practical damage and it needs to go. Therefore, I commend the motion in my name to all members and ask them to vote for it at decision time.

I move,

That the Parliament notes that both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Parliament refused to give consent to the Internal Market Act because of concerns over its potential to undermine democratic decisions of the devolved legislatures; agrees that those fears have been realised to the detriment of the people of Scotland, and that the devolution settlement has been fundamentally rolled back by the Act, and calls for the repeal of the Internal Market Act and for the UK Government to stop taking back control to the UK Parliament of policy decisions that should be made in Scotland.