Chamber and committees

Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting of 2024 in session 6 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, which is fully virtual.

We have no apologies. I remind all participants that they must keep their cameras on. Our broadcasting colleagues will control your microphones, so you do not need to touch these at any point. Just watch for your mic icon to show you as being unmuted and then take a second before you speak. Thank you.

Agenda item 1 is to agree to take item 4, which is consideration of today’s budget evidence, in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, Angela. I will bring in Heather Williams. If answers could be brief, that would be very helpful, as I am mindful of the time. We have a range of questions to get through, so I remind everyone that succinct and focused answers will enable us to cover the wide range of scrutiny that we wish to undertake this morning.

Thank you. Paul, is there anything further that you would like to ask at this point?

We will now look at the theme of participation, with Karen Adam.

Thank you, Heather. We hear you. Thank you for making reference to the way that the committee engaged in citizen participation. We got excellent feedback from the citizens who took part. They felt more connected to the process. I hope that that could be rolled out across other committees. Thank you for acknowledging that.

Thank you, Heather. Would either Clare Gallagher or Angela O’Hagan like to come in on that one? They may wish to come in on my next question.

The committee intends to focus its pre-budget scrutiny of 2025-26 on transparency. What should our priorities be? What is paramount? I bring in Angela.

Thank you very much for that extensive but very useful list. I will bring in Clare Gallagher.

That will probably be the last question, so I will give all of you the opportunity to respond to it. Heather Williams can start, followed by Angela O’Hagan and Clare Gallagher.

Simone Weil, the late French politician and Holocaust survivor, said that Europe is an ideal for which one must be prepared to fight. We have just marked Holocaust memorial day, and it would be remiss of us not to consider exactly how the European project came about. Out of the ashes of war, when so many lives were torn apart, nations across the continent yearned to build a better future—one that preserved the right of national sovereignty but saw beyond rigid borders and isolationism, with each allied nation working together on common policy areas such as food production, justice, security, environmental protections and the promotion of human rights.

The European Union, as it is today, is the home of 27 member states and around 450 million people. It is a co-operation of nations that is three times the size of the Russian Federation, and is a highly influential and formidable player on the global stage, of which, sadly, we are no longer part.

We are no longer part of the single market, which provides frictionless trade with our nearest international neighbours. We are no longer enjoying freedom of movement, enriching our citizens with broader horizons and the ability to live, work and even fall in love in new surroundings.

Shockingly, we are no longer a part of the Erasmus+ programme, which gave students across our continent the invaluable opportunity to live and learn in a different nation, experience different cultures and learn different languages. Instead, it has been replaced by the vastly inferior UK Turing scheme, which, unlike Erasmus+, does not even cover tuition costs.

I will come back to some of those points. My points are about what we are missing out on. Remember, Scotland did not vote for Brexit.

As I was saying, Erasmus+ has been replaced with the vastly inferior Turing scheme. The European project—the European ideal—has been stolen from us by a governing Tory party that was tearing itself apart on EU membership. Admittedly, that cost the party two Prime Ministers, but it cost the rest of us so much more.

I am sure that colleagues on the side of EU membership will discuss some of the broken promises of Brexiteers, which is a word that I cannot abide as it attempts to heroise those who inflicted this dreadful mess on us. Last year, the UK Government’s Office for Budget Responsibility predicted that Brexit had caused long-run productivity to be 4 per cent lower, and both exports and imports to and from the EU to be 15 per cent lower.

However, at least the UK can now forge its own trade deals with nations around the world, right? When Liz Truss, the then international trade secretary, signed a trade agreement with Japan in 2019, she boasted that one of its benefits is the lifting of tariffs on cheese products from the UK. What a triumph! We can now sell more cheese halfway around the world to a nation where 90 per cent of the population is lactose intolerant.

There is not a single tangible benefit of Brexit that those who perpetrate it can cite. It has turned the UK into an insular state on the periphery of real influence; it has denied our citizens a myriad of crucial rights and privileges; and it has made it harder for key industries such as agriculture and hospitality to employ seasonal workers. That all happened without the democratic consent of the four nations of the UK.

Unlike the European Union, the United Kingdom is not a union of equal partners. Scotland voted, as a whole, by 62 per cent to remain in the EU. In some parts of my constituency, that figure was as high as 78 per cent. That is why I am glad that we are debating the issue today. Brexit and EU membership cannot be allowed to drop off the radar of public debate.

The Scottish Government’s paper “An independent Scotland in the EU” is an informed prospectus of what we can aspire to be as a nation. With Labour now fully absorbing the Tory policy of staying out of the EU, along with the Liberal Democrats, it is clear that the only route back for Scotland is to become an independent country. I am therefore encouraged that the Scottish Government’s position is that Scotland would apply to become a member of the European Union as soon as possible after achieving independence.

There are, of course, certain criteria for joining, but those matters would be subject to negotiation once Scotland had become a candidate country.

“I think that when independent the Scots could apply and probably get in pretty quickly through the door marked accession.”

Those are not my words but those of Lord Kerr, former ambassador and now permanent representative to the European Union.

I am mindful of the time, so I will come to a close. Scotland’s brightest days lie ahead of us. Independence in Europe is normal—just look around. Small independent nations such as Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and Ireland, which have populations that are similar in size to Scotland’s, are in a true union of equals, with equal say and voting power in the Council of Europe to that of larger nations such as France and Germany. We deserve so much better, and I believe that the door is open for us.