Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 18 December 2025
It is a political issue, and it will be resolved—as these matters are—by people voting. We have an election very shortly, and it is up to Angus Robertson, Keith Brown and the other nationalists on the committee and in the Parliament to make the case for that. I think you will find—and some of you are honest enough in your hearts to know this—that the vast majority of people in Scotland have more pressing considerations and priorities, and that will shape how people vote.
However, this is a question of politics. Constitutional arrangements are very clear. The law is very clear. The issue should be determined—as you have said and as we would say—as a matter of democratic process. That is how it has been done in the past in this country, and that is how it will be done in future.
Frankly, the whole inquiry has been a fractious waste of time, because what we have heard in evidence time and again is what we already knew, which is that the Supreme Court judgment makes it clear that the powers rest with the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom. The evidence that we have received from many of the experts is also stacked heavily in the corner of those who say that the country has a very liberal and flexible constitutional arrangement, and the evidence of the past proves that.