Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2025
It is this Government that is undermining democracy. It is this Government that is trying to put up a barrier to trade with the rest of the UK. It is important that farmers, traders and businesses have unfettered access to the rest of the United Kingdom, which they can have through the principles of mutual recognition and non-discrimination. Kate Forbes knows that absolutely.
The IMA is absolutely crucial to protecting Scottish jobs, to our economy and to ensuring that trade flows freely. However, rather than recognise those economic benefits, as we have just heard, the SNP claims that the act is undermining devolution. The internal market act does not take away powers from the Scottish Parliament; it ensures that we can operate freely without unnecessary trade barriers. The real threat to Scotland’s economy is not the IMA but the SNP’s relentless pursuit of separation, which would devastate our economy, cut off vital markets and create even more uncertainty for businesses and workers.
The SNP claims that the UK Government’s use of a section 35 order for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was an attack on devolution. That is entirely misleading. Kate Forbes has not answered my colleague Douglas Ross’s question as to whether she would have supported the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill or the section 35 order, which was essential to protect women’s spaces and maintain their protections. This Government ignored those concerns about women’s protections. It rushed the bill through Parliament and it left the UK Government with no choice but to act to protect legal consistency across the United Kingdom and to protect the rights and protections of women. That was not about devolution; it was about responsible governance and ensuring that laws passed in Scotland do not have unintended consequences for the rest of the United Kingdom. Even Labour, which voted for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, has since admitted that the UK Government was right to step in.
We know that the SNP is obsessed with divergence from the rest of the UK, even when it is not in Scotland’s interests. It refused to embrace gene editing, which could revolutionise Scottish farming and boost our agriculture sector, choosing instead to be different for the sake of it, at the expense of Scotland’s farmers and food producers. It also chose political posturing when the UK took decisive action to ban XL bullies, simply to be contrarians, only to, embarrassingly, U-turn later—[Interruption.]—yes, embarrassingly U-turn later, Ms Robison.