Hansard

I always listen very carefully to the cabinet secretary. However, the more I listened to him this afternoon, the more I heard echoes of Jacob Rees-Mogg. That is not a throwaway insult. The detail of what the cabinet secretary said contains many similar arguments to those that were made by the Brexiteers. Talk about a deadweight UK and slow economic growth are what Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg said about the EU, at that time. The cabinet secretary’s argument that there is a huge market elsewhere in the world is exactly the same as the one that was made by Jacob Rees-Mogg. Equally, the argument about our democracy being overruled has frequently been made by the cabinet secretary and Jacob Rees-Mogg. There are many similar echoes between the two arguments; those two forms of nationalism are taking over the debate.

One thing that we have learned over the past few years is that putting up barriers causes economic damage rather than creating economic opportunity. The only real and tangible benefit that we have had from Brexit has been the trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand, which was criticised by the former agriculture minister at the time that it went through.

We therefore know that there are no real benefits from Brexit—we have seen none of the tangible things that Jacob Rees-Mogg talks about—and we know that it would be exactly the same if we were ever to be in the unfortunate position of breaking up the United Kingdom.

In recent weeks, I have noticed that several members on the SNP benches have been exercised by the new “Not for EU” labels that are being stuck on to UK produce. That is the consequence of the Windsor agreement—the protocol on Northern Ireland—to deal with green lane issues.

I say that not to point to the failure of Brexit—although I think that it is a failure—but to warn about what would come if we were ever to be in the unfortunate situation of breaking up the United Kingdom. We would be replacing those labels with labels that said “Not for the UK”. That is what would be on our produce in Scotland. The thing that we get very angry about now is exactly the thing that would happen if we were ever to break up the United Kingdom. The SNP should be careful regarding what it campaigns about and what it claims to support.

I think that the cabinet secretary and I agree with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research on the impact of Brexit—the 2 to 3 per cent GDP drop, which is £850 per person. That is a big economic disadvantage to citizens in this country, which comes on top of the damage of Ukraine and Covid. Brexit has also brought difficulties in attracting workers for important sectors such as social care and the NHS, and it has caused division. We saw that tensions were raised again last night in Northern Ireland, with the protests outside the Democratic Unionist Party meeting.

We know that there are tensions, we know that there is economic damage and we know that there is a shortage of workers, and we have to ask ourselves a question: what do we do next? Do we repeat those mistakes or do we learn the lessons? I am determined that we learn the lessons.

I was opposed to Brexit and I am still opposed to Brexit. Of course I want to be in the European Union. I wish that I had not gone through the past few years of arguing endlessly about pointless things that have not given any advantage to our country. I am trying to learn how we can get back to a position where we can reduce the economic damage, get the workers back into our NHS and social care sectors and eradicate the division.

The gradualist approach has to be the one that we are in favour of. The SNP used to be in favour of that, but it does not seem to be any more. We need a gradualist approach to make sure that, for example, we bring the UK REACH—registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—regulation together with the European REACH regulation. There is hardly any difference between the two, so let us get them working together. Let us have mutual recognition of trades and professions, so that a joiner from Auchtermuchty can go off to Brussels and do exactly the same job over there. That should be the opportunity that we are presenting for people. We need to look at veterinary checks and eradicate some of the bureaucracy around that. Those are the practical steps that we should be taking.

We also need to implement powers that we said we were going to utilise. For example, the Taith scheme is the replacement for Erasmus in Wales, but the pilot for the replacement here has been delayed. Young people in Scotland are being deprived of an opportunity that the SNP said in its manifesto that it would provide but that it has failed to deliver. In Wales, students are going to 23 European Union countries and 40 countries in the rest of the world, thanks to the programme that has been put in place. However, in Scotland, it is a case of, “Nah. We’re not interested, because it’s not the slogan that we’re really after any more. We were able to use Erasmus to make our arguments for independence, but we’re no longer interested, because it doesn’t suit our case any more.”

The cabinet secretary said that he would take no lectures from me about Brexit. I am going to lecture him about this, because he needs to remember, as Neil Bibby rightly pointed out, that the SNP was more interested in the Shetland by-election than it was in the European Union referendum. The SNP spent more money up there on that by-election than it did in the whole of Scotland on the referendum. In the whole of Scotland, it spent a fraction of the money that it spent in Shetland. That does not look like a pro-European party to me.

I remember something that happened at the time. Alex Salmond used to be the leader of the SNP—