Hansard

Given some of the comments that have been made about the other signatories to the bill, it might be useful to say that there are 145 signatories to the BBNJ agreement, including the European Union and the United States of America, and that 81 parties have so far ratified that agreement, including Ireland, France, Denmark, Norway, Brazil and China, with many more expected to do so and the UK due to ratify it on Saturday 17 January.

I thank all those who have contributed to the debate and have recommended consent to the relevant provisions in the bill. I make it clear that agreeing to the motion is an agreement to the effect of the bill and to Scotland playing its full part in implementing and managing it. However, we are not agreeing to this way of managing consent to UK bills, which must not be rushed or put together without thought to devolution. That wastes time, and we will never agree to a bill that tramples over devolution. I am glad that we have reached the resolution that we have, but that has held things up.

I understand the challenges for the UK Government in grappling with a complex bill within a difficult timescale, and I am fully committed to partnership working to make it effective, but I remain frustrated that we have had to work in this way. I share the profound disappointment that our parliamentary committees have not had the appropriate time in which to scrutinise the Government’s position across all clauses of the bill. As I noted earlier, that could not be avoided by the Scottish Government, given that the UK Government’s first draft of the bill was shared with us only just before its introduction and did not account for devolution, leading to the need for us to robustly defend devolution not only on behalf of the Scottish Government, but for Scotland as a nation and for this Parliament. That resulted in the need to reach agreement in a staged way, across all provisions, analysing complex clauses and engaging with the UK Government during the rapid passage of its bill.

My officials and I have been in regular contact with the relevant committees to assist their scrutiny as best we can. We have responded to questions, given evidence and proactively provided updates when possible, including my update over the festive recess to advise members that negotiations were over and that we had secured the concurrent powers that we needed. We provided as much information as we could, while also preserving the right for some private space for on-going and constantly evolving intergovernmental negotiations. I recognise that that has been frustrating for the committees involved, but it was important to have a private Government-to-Government space for those negotiations.

I place on record my thanks for the committees’ careful consideration and understanding over the past three months, and I reassure members that my ministerial colleagues and I continue to raise those issues with the UK Government and to press for better and earlier engagement on UK bills with devolved impacts. Regarding Edward Mountain’s suggestion, I imagine that the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee or the next Government might want to discuss that more widely with the UK Government, although how well that will go remains to be seen, because we have seen this happen quite a few times.

For now, I am proud that we can be part of an important agreement for the world’s oceans. It is an important step forward in the global effort to tackle the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss and in the shared stewardship of our marine environment.