Hansard

It seems to be becoming a bit of a bad habit for me to deliver an ill-tempered speech about an LCM. The last time I did so, I referred to a sense of déjà vu, because we had been in the same position too often before. Today, it is déjà vu of déjà vu, or déjà vu all over again.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill implements an international treaty about the high-seas marine areas beyond the 200-mile limit. It commits signatories to more sustainable use and protection. I remind the Parliament that the treaty was signed in 2023. It took two years to introduce the bill, and now there seems to be an unseemly race to get it over the finish line this month, apparently to meet well-telegraphed international obligations.

The Scottish Government lodged a legislative consent memorandum two weeks after the bill’s introduction. As is often the way these days, it could be called a holding LCM, as it did not set out a substantive position, except in a minority of cases. The triggering provisions relate to new powers for the UK secretary of state that could intrude into Scottish marine management. One might ask how a treaty about extraterritorial waters could trigger devolution issues. The main answer that we got was about the potential impact on Scottish marine-based actors—who, I hasten to add, are not underwater thespians, but the fishing and offshore energy industries and the like.

By late October, no updates had been provided, so we wrote to the Scottish Government. On 7 November, we got a reply that said that Government discussions were on-going but which provided no further substantive detail. We tried again later that month, but the reply was no more illuminating. With the clock running down, we had the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy in to give evidence on 9 December. The committee found it a slightly peculiar evidence session because, on the one hand, the Scottish Government’s main line continued to be that it could not show its hand while it was still in negotiations with the UK Government and, on the other hand, the cabinet secretary and officials were perfectly happy, at times, to delve into the detail of what outcomes they wanted in respect of this or that clause.

As the committee said in its report, in a context in which holding LCMs are increasingly becoming the norm, there is no good reason for the Scottish Government to be coy about its main asks of the UK Government and to be inconsistent in sharing them. Those should be a matter of public record.

For the Scottish Government, the story of the bill seems to have had a happy ending—it has obtained the amendments that it wanted, and it can now recommend that consent be given. I put on record that that happened just too late for our deliberations, with the result that the committee is not able to express an informed view on the late provisions.

Asking the Parliament to agree to something without any real chance to reflect on it totally devalues the principles of legislative consent. There might be rare occasions when it is unavoidable, but it seems to the committee that it happens more often than that and the system feels dysfunctional, if not broken.