Plenary, 03 Feb 2005

Meeting date: Thursday, February 3, 2005

Official Report 756KB pdf

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Inquiries Bill

The next item of business is consideration of motion S2M-2242, in the name of Cathy Jamieson, on the Inquiries Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation.

Motion moved,

That the Parliament recognises the benefits of a modern statutory framework for the holding of inquiries into matters of public concern and agrees that the provisions in the Inquiries Bill, so far as they relate to matters within the legislative competence of the Parliament or to the executive competence of the Scottish Ministers, should be considered by the UK Parliament.—[Hugh Henry.]

I oppose the Sewel motion, because a Scottish bill should have been introduced to cover Scottish inquiries. The Deputy Minister for Justice told the Justice 2 Committee that that was entirely possible and that the matter fell under devolved competence. His defence of the use of the Sewel motion was twofold. First, he argued that it will save time for this Parliament if Westminster legislates. The logical extension of that argument is that we should just send everything to Westminster; we could save a lot of time and not bother with this place at all. Of course, that is perhaps exactly what he intends.

The minister's second defence of the use of the Sewel motion was that some inquiries could be cross-border and that we should therefore allow Westminster to produce UK legislation on the matter. The logical extension of that argument is that, instead of our allowing Westminster to legislate, Westminster should allow Europe to legislate because—of course—inquiries could be transnational and go across national borders. For example, England and France would be affected by an oil spill in the English channel, or the UK and Ireland would be affected by an accident at Sellafield.

Of course, the Executive is not suggesting that we send powers from Westminster to Europe; it is, quite rightly, suggesting that cross-border working arrangements can be put in place to deal with transnational matters. If perfectly acceptable arrangements can be put in place to deal with cross-border inquiries when it comes to working with countries such as Ireland or France, it should also be perfectly possible and entirely acceptable to do the same for the small number of cross-border inquiries that take place in the UK. Scottish administrative justice should be protected in the same way as civil and criminal justice is. At First Minister's question time today, the First Minister said that he did not want to give away responsibility, but to take it. Well, now is his chance: vote no to the Sewel motion.

It is hard to know where to start, so I will begin with the fundamental hostility that the Scottish National Party has to Scotland's being part of the United Kingdom and, indeed, to the devolution settlement that was voted for by the people of this country. The SNP does not want the settlement to work, and it sees anything that is connected to the rest of the United Kingdom as alien. That is a position of principle for the SNP; personally, I think that it is silly in the extreme. However, the SNP takes that silliness further by opposing policies that are, on the face of it, eminently sensible.

I mentioned at the Justice 2 Committee a number of examples in which it would make eminent sense to hold inquiries between two jurisdictions. The Dunblane inquiry, in which there were issues to do with firearms offences but also profound issues to do with child safety and security, was one such example.

I seek two points of clarification. The first concerns section 14 of the Inquiries Bill, which relates to the

"Power to convert other inquiry into inquiry under this Act".

I refer of course to the question—on which the minister has already given an opinion to Bill Butler—whether the Fraser inquiry could be converted. Will he confirm that his opinion remains as it did at committee? Secondly, I wonder whether the minister could give us any hint as to the possible enactment date of the bill, since the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is now in court defending itself and may wish to seek access to tapes for the record.

On the first point, I am happy to confirm that Bill Butler did indeed press me on the question of the Fraser inquiry, and I repeat that the advice that I have been given is that, if the bill had been in force at the time, the BBC and IWC Media would have been obliged to release the tapes. Any future inquiry will have a power of compulsion that was not available to Lord Fraser.

As for the implementation date, that is a matter for the UK Parliament. The bill will need to go through due process there, and thereafter will follow the normal enactment. I am not in possession of a specific date.

Essentially, it is an eminently sensible proposal that is before us. It is one that will benefit Scotland—not just Parliament but the Scottish people. The SNP is now on record as saying that it is opposed to motions that give more powers to Scottish ministers or to the Lord Advocate. I would have more respect for the SNP if it said that it was a matter of principle; however, it cannot be a principle because the SNP supports some policies and opposes others, some of which would transfer powers to this Parliament. What we now have with the SNP is a party that is bereft of ideas, bereft of leadership and, sadly, bereft of common sense.