Hansard

The relationship between the Scottish Government and the UK Government is a long-running story. On taking office, the Labour Party thought that it could reset the relationship with the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Government was full of similar sentiments. I think that the cabinet secretary perhaps has the answer to the question that he is asking at his own fingertips.

Let me be absolutely clear that I actually agree with the cabinet secretary: it is wrong—plain wrong—for the European Union to make security co-operation conditional on anything. Such is the nature of the threat that we face on our shared continent that there should be no conditionality with regard to our working together to thwart the efforts of Vladimir Putin or anyone else who would seek to undermine the European nation states, which should be working together in what Keir Starmer, I think, has rightly called a coalition of the willing.

Where are we on this wonderful Thursday afternoon? Here we are again—in a packed chamber, as we can see—being asked again to indulge the SNP’s constitutional obsession, which we have already had a good introduction to from the cabinet secretary, as if the solution to Scotland’s economic challenges is always the same: break up the UK, rejoin the EU and pretend that sovereignty is a burden rather than a prize.

Angus Robertson’s motion—I hope that he will forgive me for saying so; he might even take this as a compliment—looks as though it could have been written in Brussels. It calls on the UK to abandon the basic pillars of our post-Brexit independence, to drop the so-called red lines of leaving the single market and the customs union, and to re-adopt freedom of movement. However, those are not just red lines; they are the democratic instructions of the British people. We did not vote to leave the EU in name only; we voted to take back control of our laws, our borders, our trade policy and our money, and that is what we have done.

In the past few days, we have seen the evidence of the fruits of an independent trade policy. That is something that Angus Robertson and the SNP would freely and willingly give up, but it is an advantage and a benefit that has come about because we left the European Union.

Since Brexit, the United Kingdom has signed more than 70 trade deals and we have joined the CPT—I always get this wrong. We have joined the CPTPP—the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. We are also negotiating the detail of free trade agreements with India and the United States.

In particular, the trade deal with India has been widely welcomed, especially by the Scotch whisky industry, because, behind that deal, there will be prosperity for the sector and jobs in some of the most remote parts of Scotland. That is one sector that can take advantage of trade between the United Kingdom and, for example, India and the United States, but there are other sectors, too. This is Brexit delivering and yet, now, amid the debate on this motion and in the light of today’s front page-story in the Financial Times, we must face a new risk: not just the SNP’s fantasy of rejoining the EU but Labour’s quiet attempt to reverse Brexit by stealth.

The FT reports on a so-called “reset”—although we all know that the European Union does not like the use of that word, as was made clear to our colleagues who took part in a committee visit to Brussels. The report says that the Labour Government wants a reset of UK-EU relations, which is being driven by EU demands for British concessions on fishing rights and youth mobility because Brussels wants long-term access to UK fishing waters. The Scottish Conservatives will stand with Scotland’s fishermen in refuting the European Union’s demands for such concessions. That is not the way in which such matters have been done in the past, and it should it not be how they are done in the future.

Brussels also wants our students—through our Government, here in Edinburgh—to subsidise European students. It wants its students to have cheap access to United Kingdom universities. Crucially, it also wants a role for the European Court of Justice in overseeing the UK’s compliance with any future agreement that is discussed, starting on Monday.

Let us be in no doubt about what that means. It is not about having a partnership of equals; instead, it illustrates a creeping return to EU control. However, Labour seems only too ready to sign us up to that, behind closed doors. There is talk of a “dynamic alignment”, which is code for accepting new EU laws without having a say in making them. There is talk of a “youth mobility scheme”, but with permanent obligations and no clear limits. There are whispers of effecting “regulatory harmonisation” in return for marginal gains in trade.

That is not co-operation; it is capitulation. The British people did not vote for Brexit only to have it reinterpreted in secret summits and quiet deals. The Labour leader might claim that he is not interested in the “battles of the past”, but if he trades away our fishing grounds, our borders and our legal autonomy, he will not just be fighting yesterday’s battles—he will surrender them. Meanwhile, of course, the SNP cheers him on, because anything that weakens the United Kingdom suits its separatist agenda. Surely we have heard enough grievance in the cabinet secretary’s opening statement alone to convince the neutral observer that that is the intention of the SNP Government here at Holyrood.

Let us be clear that this is not about strengthening—