Thank you very much, convener. I will be brief. I wish the committee a happy new year. I am sure that this will not be the last occasion on which I appear before it in 2020.
The principal aim of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill is to implement the withdrawal agreement that was concluded by the UK and the EU on 17 October 2019. I say quite clearly, at the outset, that given that the people of Scotland have rejected the proposal to leave the EU at every electoral opportunity that has been presented to them, the Scottish Government could not and will not recommend that the Scottish Parliament give its consent to the bill, which would implement that agreement in domestic law.
There are other strong reasons for not giving approval, which lie in the detail of the bill. This is the third iteration of the bill. Members will recall that it was first brought together at the time of the Theresa May agreement. It was reissued in a slightly different form in October and has been reissued again. The common themes, as the bill has progressed, have been a growing reluctance to accept scrutiny—indeed, there is a dislike of scrutiny—and a desire to centralise power in the hands of the Executive, and particularly in the hands of the Prime Minister, and to create a harder Brexit. Let me give members just one example. Extraordinarily, clause 26 of the bill would give ministers the right to tell courts how to interpret and what precedent to interpret.
The bill is a thoroughly bad bill that presages a thoroughly bad Brexit.
I notice that Mr Tomkins’s amendment to my motion for debate in Parliament this afternoon indicates that accepting and implementing the results of referenda is the key issue. I speak as a member of a Government that has accepted and implemented the results of two referenda. Obviously, because Scotland is not independent at the moment, that was done with the first referendum: the result of the 2014 referendum was the decision by the people of Scotland not to be independent, and the Scottish Government implemented that.
The material change in circumstances came in 2016, when the UK as a whole voted to leave the EU. That decision was imposed on the people of Scotland against their wish: they did not vote for leaving the EU. Even so, from the end of 2016 onwards, the Scottish Government proceeded to offer a range of compromises that would have avoided the situation that we find ourselves in today. Unfortunately, the UK Government did not accept any of those compromises on any occasion, and has pursued a harder and worse Brexit during that time.
There are a number of other provisions in the bill that we will, no doubt, talk about; I will be happy to talk about them. However, the Scottish people should not accept the bill, and the Scottish Parliament should therefore not accept it.
I look forward to the committee’s questions and to the debate this afternoon, in which I will continue with the burden of my argument. I hope that Parliament will accept that argument at decision time today.