Chamber and committees

There is no quick fix for the challenges that lead to depopulation. We must work with regional, local and community partners to ensure that we collectively deliver a sustainable solution to the challenges facing our rural and island populations.

Many such challenges have been exacerbated by Brexit. Increased barriers to the migration that has helped to offset an ageing population and keep services running will leave a particularly damaging gap in our rural communities. The Scottish Government continues to call upon the United Kingdom Government to make vital reforms to the immigration system to meet Scotland’s needs.

The detrimental impact of Brexit on our rural and island communities has been profound, especially where reliance on tourism, accommodation and hospitality-related employment is acute. Such jobs help to sustain rural and island economies. However, we know that those sectors are particularly vulnerable to Brexit impacts including labour shortages, with which 57 per cent of island businesses reported difficulties in 2021.

The Scottish Government is clear that we need practical, deliverable and evidence-based migration solutions that meet Scotland’s needs. One example of our work in that space is the development of a proposal on a rural visa pilot that is to be submitted to the UK Government.

Frankly, that has absolutely nothing to do with my statement, and I am sure that I would be rebuked for going down highways and byways that have nothing to do with—

The general point is that the question that has been asked has nothing to do with the bill that is being proposed by the UK Government.

I thank Sarah Boyack for her questions and the positive way in which she has put them. I welcome the Labour Party’s commitment to protect the Sewel convention and to protect standards.

Sarah Boyack is absolutely right that we look at all means that are at our disposal to be able to protect those safeguards. She will understand what is involved in that, given the paucity of information that we have had from the UK Government—save for the mention of the quantum of the legislation that is being envisaged, which is more than 2,000 pieces of legislation.

Let us say for the sake of argument that the Parliament agrees that it will decline to give legislative consent for that UK Government’s measure. Unfortunately, our experience thus far in the Brexit context is that the UK Government overrides the Sewel convention. If that is the case, we will have to use a lot of parliamentary time to find ways of being able to protect and maintain the safeguards that have existed through EU legislation.

We are right at the beginning of that process. I say to Sarah Boyack that she is absolutely right to highlight that that is the key challenge for us all. We have been trying to find our way through it, together with colleagues in the constitution committee, and have been looking at how we have been able to remain aligned with the EU thus far.

What we need to do now is of an order of magnitude that is far beyond that, and a lot of work will have to go into that. I look forward to working across the chamber to make sure that we use all the powers that are our disposal, as a Parliament and as a Government, to protect and retain the benefits of the safeguards that have been legislated for in an EU context.

Ross Greer is, of course, correct. Ultimately, our only way to safeguard being part of the European Union’s legislative framework is to be in the European Union. That is exactly where an independent Scotland shall be, and that is exactly the choice that people should be able to have, given that we live in a democracy.

In the meantime, we need to do everything we can, in this Parliament, to make sure that we do not have the rug pulled from underneath us by the UK Government removing safeguards from the statute book and acting in a way that will deluge the Scottish Parliament through its having to find precious time to legislate to retain the safeguards—[Interruption.] Clearly, that is something that Conservative members do not take particularly seriously.

Yes and yes. The title given to the bill would be laughable if its potential impact were not so deadly serious. The only freedom that is on offer is that of being worse off, more polluted, and less safe as a consumer, customer or employee.

While all this untold damage is being inflicted at breakneck speed—all to meet an artificial public relations-drive deadline—this Parliament will have no freedom whatsoever to pass the measures that the member’s constituents and mine actively want to see. Frustration and dismay are just two of the many words—some of which are more colourful—that I would use to describe our reaction.

I wish to make a statement on the United Kingdom Government’s so-called Brexit freedoms bill, which will have a profound and, sadly, a damaging impact on this Parliament and Scotland as a whole.

The people of Scotland rejected Brexit by a margin of 24 per cent, and there was a majority for remaining in the EU in every local authority area in Scotland. Nevertheless, in February this year, the UK Government published a document extolling what it called the benefits of Brexit. At the time, I noted to members of the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs Committee the profound absence of Brexit benefits for people and businesses in Scotland. Indeed, the disbenefits were all too evident. Polling shows that 75 per cent of people in Scotland have a negative opinion about whether the UK has benefited from Brexit, and only 2 per cent believe that Boris Johnson has delivered a good deal.

Five months on—and with the Brexit freedoms bill potentially imminent—we find ourselves in an even more desperate situation; we are in the midst of a cost of living crisis. The think tank UK in a changing Europe says that Brexit has led to a 6 per cent increase in food prices. The Centre for European Reform reports that the UK economy was 5 per cent—or £31 billion—smaller than comparator economies at the end of last year, primarily because of Brexit. Scotland’s total trade with the EU was 16 per cent lower in 2021 than in 2019, with food exports down by £68 million.

Now, with the UK in real danger of entering recession, and in the middle of the cost of living crisis, the Tory Government at Westminster seems intent on provoking a trade war with the European Union by tearing up an international agreement that the Prime Minister had hailed as a fantastic moment.

Therefore, despite much searching by the UK Government’s so-called minister for Brexit opportunities, the only thing to have changed since February is that the disbenefits of Brexit are now more pronounced.

Although Mr Rees-Mogg has been on his feet this afternoon in the House of Commons—hopefully providing the clarity that we have not yet received—the UK Government has declined to share the Brexit freedoms bill instructions with us, or provide any settled certainty of its policy intentions. Regardless, we should be under no illusion about the risk that the legislation presents to Scotland. We understand that the bill will end the supremacy of European law and repeal or reform regulations on business. The danger is now greater than ever of a race to the bottom, inspired by a hard Brexit.

Beneath the froth of crown marking on pint glasses and the adoption of imperial weights and measures, the UK Government’s intention to turn away from EU laws should trigger real concern for businesses, members of this Parliament and all those who hold dear the standards that the EU helped to embed in our society.

More than 2,000 pieces of legislation, which were carefully influenced or possibly proposed by the UK Government as a member state over 50 years, must be made to go through a legislative process or, according to media reports, will simply “sunset” and fall away from the statute book entirely.

There is no understanding in Whitehall about how much of that legislation falls within devolved competence. I have had a look at Jacob Rees-Mogg’s statement, in which he makes no mention whatsoever of the devolved consequences of his announcement. There is no desire to understand the consequent implications for devolved powers or legislation.

Apparently, those changes are to be made by 2026 or 2030—dates whose sole rationale is that they make good public relations as an anniversary of the Brexit referendum or the end of the transition period. They are not driven by the magnitude or importance of the task, or by the availability of time in this Parliament, the Senedd, Stormont or Westminster. The dates take no account of the fact that, as a direct consequence of the hard Brexit that the UK Government has chosen to prosecute, there is no Executive in place in Northern Ireland. Instead, yet again, the bill is driven by the same blind ideology that caused so much damage to Scotland in the first place.

The truth is that the pace of the exercise threatens parliamentary scrutiny and workloads. The UK Government is tilting at the windmills of EU standards, when it would be better advised to cease undermining the Northern Ireland protocol, an action that blocks implementation of the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement, and causes our continued exclusion, for example, from the horizon Europe research programme.

There is little to no appropriate consideration of the bill’s impacts—intended or otherwise—of doing away with the regulations and case law that have driven the high standards across Europe and from which we benefit.

The UK Government has said that it wants the Brexit freedoms bill to “utilise regulatory freedoms” by “lightening their burden” on UK businesses. Its main purpose appears to be to give the UK Government the freedom to abandon the legislation that has protected Scottish interests for almost 50 years.

The bill will create uncertainty for business and threatens to fire the starting pistol in a race to the bottom on standards with regard to food, the environment, animal and plant health, and workers’ rights.

The bill is a threat to devolution. Taken alongside the powers of the UK Internal Market Act 2020, devolved competences will be disastrously exposed and undermined by a UK Government that is searching for an answer to the self-inflicted pain of Brexit.

Our policy of aligning with EU standards will be at risk. The common frameworks process, which is designed to manage divergence and alignment, looks to be side-stepped or ignored completely.

Sensible standards and regulations will be kept only if they are re-enacted through this Parliament, and they will then be only temporarily protected if the 2020 act is directed to undercut them.

We do not yet know the exact implications for this Parliament’s legislative programme, as we have not been provided with the necessary detail. However, we know that, if we want to maintain the legislation, we will have to find a great amount of Government and parliamentary time.

When I met the minister for so-called Brexit opportunities, I was assured by him that the Sewel convention would be respected. If that commitment is to be honoured, it would mark a departure from the UK Government’s approach during the Brexit process, when it has repeatedly legislated on devolved matters despite this Parliament refusing its consent to do so.

An approach that “sunsets” EU law—which would see legislation automatically fall if unamended by a fixed deadline—takes no account of our priorities or our interest in staying aligned with EU legislation. It is unacceptable that the UK Government seems ready to unveil sweeping measures that could have profound consequences for Scotland with such little discussion with or indeed respect for this Parliament, the Scottish Government or the people of Scotland. This makes a mockery of the UK Government’s recent commitment to reset relationships with the devolved Governments.

I said that the minister of so-called Brexit opportunities has been searching for the benefits of Brexit since at least February. That has included the attempt to crowdsource ideas from the public via the media, presumably in the absence of suggestions from Whitehall departments.

The disaster of Brexit is becoming ever more apparent, and the attack on this Parliament by a UK Government that was comprehensively rejected by the people of Scotland is gathering pace. The question for all of us here is whether we are prepared to put up with this unfolding catastrophe, which is being imposed on Scotland against its wishes and interests, or whether we say that enough is enough and forge a better future for everyone who lives here.

I thank Katy Clark for the positive way in which she asked her question. It mirrors the point that was made by her Labour front-bench colleague.

We will have to ascertain which of the UK Government’s proposed list of 2,400 pieces of legislation—which has apparently gone up by 700 in the past week—might or might not have an impact, depending on how the UK Government decides to treat the Sewel convention. Incidentally, if the UK Government wanted to take devolution seriously, it could legislate and limit the scope of its legislation to England or to England and Wales only, such that retained legislation could remain on the statute book in Scotland.

I give a commitment to Katy Clark and to any of her colleagues who have a close interest in particular policy areas that, over the months ahead, we can discuss what needs to be done to protect safeguards, and the most appropriate way of doing that, and to protect the Parliament’s ability to better understand the proposals that are being made, while at the same time having a conscious understanding of the scale of the potential job at hand, given the way in which the UK Government is planning to go forward with this measure.

No, I do not. However, perhaps we can find some common ground on that question. If it is the case that the member and his colleagues are happy to see EU standards as a minimum, they will no doubt be happy to impress on the UK Government that it respect the Sewell convention and this Parliament’s decisions on legislative consent. If the UK Government then wants to legislate on devolved matters while excluding Scotland, it should take the praise for that.

Why do we not work in partnership on that challenge, make the UK Government proceed for England, and let the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government work on the standards that are based on the safeguards of European legislation that we agree should be retained? I look forward to that. [Interruption.]