Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2026 [Draft]
The Scottish Conservatives will be supporting the bill at decision time because it protects the political, administrative and financial independence of local government. Of course, as many have mentioned, Parliament unanimously agreed to the general principles of the bill and passed the bill at stage 3 back in March 2021.
However, it is important to touch on the question of why we are back in the chamber today, reconsidering certain elements of the bill. It is because the UK Government referred the bill, under the Scotland Act 1998, to the UK Supreme Court. We should note, too, that the court did not reject the principle of strengthening local government. In fact, throughout the debate, members have referred to the importance of taking the bill forward and the desire from local councils the length and breadth of the country to have the legislation in place. The issue was that the court found that parts of the bill went beyond the Scottish Parliament’s competence regarding what it is legally allowed to do.
Alexander Stewart referred to the length of time that it has taken for the bill to be brought back to the chamber and the commentary from the Law Society of Scotland that such delays do not make for good law. I agree with that, and I also agree with the Law Society’s comment that reconsideration of the bill should have taken place within a two-year period. This is perhaps an opportunity for the Scottish Government to reflect on those points, given the number of bills that we are rushing through towards the end of the current session of Parliament. If we had had more time to look at this bill earlier in the session, we would not be here today, rushing it through in the last few remaining weeks.
To touch on what Mark Ruskell said, it has been good that COSLA has kept up the pressure and that it wanted the bill to come back to Parliament as soon as possible, because it is a huge opportunity for national and local Governments to work together and to ensure that rights for councils, which are commonplace internationally, can be put in place in Scotland, too. The cabinet secretary also mentioned that the amendments that have been passed today will now be legally competent, which is good to hear. It will be good for councils, and for the former member who originally introduced the bill in the previous session of Parliament.
A lot has been said today about centralisation, and that is a huge point that should perhaps have been raised previously in relation to other matters, not just this bill, in the current session of Parliament. Local government has borne the brunt of quite a lot of the decisions that have been taken in the chamber, and councils have not had the political, administrative and financial independence to decide whether a particular decision is best for their area or whether they face financial or resource constraints on their ability to implement legislation that is passed in the chamber. That needs to be reflected on.
Mark Griffin was right to touch on the need for safeguards to ensure that local authorities can make decisions that best fit their own communities, and to avoid a repeat of what we have seen in previous years under the SNP Government, whereby councils have not been taken into account when decisions have been made.
I will leave my remarks there. The Scottish Conservatives will support the bill at decision time, and I look forward to its being passed.