Chamber and committees

With great pleasure, I thank my friend and colleague Keith Brown for bringing this important debate to the Parliament. It is timely, given the events of the weekend and the undermining of this Parliament’s legislative competence by the Secretary of State for Scotland’s actions over the deposit return scheme.

I find myself as the only member of this Parliament who legislated for its establishment, having been a member of the House of Commons from 1997 to 2001. I had the privilege of listening to every debate on the floor of the house during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998. I listened to the long, long, long contributions that Mr Cameron’s relative Michael Ancram made to that debate.

I also listened to contributions from the late Secretary of State for Scotland and our first First Minister, Donald Dewar, and to Henry McLeish, who did all the heavy lifting on the implementation of the act. I cannot let Sarah Boyack’s speech pass without saying that they would be horrified by what has now become the Labour Party’s opinion in Scotland.

I listened not only to their and Michael Ancram’s contributions but those of distinguished Liberals in the House of Commons, such as Jim Wallace, Ray Michie and Michael Moore, all of whom conveyed the importance of the concept of self-government being at the heart of the project for Scottish devolution. That attitude ran through their speeches. Even though I sat there as a Scottish nationalist, I could hear in all the contributions from those Labour and Liberal members—Mr Ancram did not take the same view—a commitment to the concept of self-government within Scotland. That is being shredded in front of our eyes.

The United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and the Subsidy Control Act 2022, to mention only two acts, are devastatingly damaging pieces of legislation. They do not try to confront the concept of the Scotland Act 1998 by the front door; they do it by the back door. They use the excuse of Brexit to undermine this Parliament’s legislative competence and we are now living with the consequences.

To everybody in Scotland I say that we had better wake up to what is happening to the Parliament for which we all voted in the 1997 referendum. I campaigned enthusiastically for a yes-yes vote in 1997 and that concept is being shredded in front of our eyes by a malicious United Kingdom Government. My colleagues in other parties know how seriously I take these questions. I say to them that we have to act collectively to try to resist it.

When I sat with Maggie Chapman on the Smith commission in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, we pleaded for the cementing of the Sewel convention so that we could go further than the concept that was put on the record by Lord Sewel that the UK Parliament would not normally legislate on devolved matters in Scotland without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. We got some token words in the Scotland Act 2016 that Westminster would not normally legislate over the head of the Scottish Parliament. However, I ask members to look at what has happened since: it has happened as frequently as any statutory instrument process that goes through this building. It is now commonplace for the United Kingdom Government to ignore this Parliament’s views.

That was not the settlement that was crafted in 1998 and if we do not wake up to the threat that is coming our way as a consequence of all of this, we will witness the dismantling of the effective competence of the Parliament.

I will close on one of the points that Donald Cameron made, although I apologise for mentioning him in my final minute because I should allow him the opportunity to intervene if he wishes, but he can do it some other time. Mr Cameron accused us of not making full use of the powers that are available to us. However, we did so on the deposit return scheme: the Parliament made use of the full powers that are available to us and our powers and our competence were shredded by a malicious United Kingdom Government. All parties in this Parliament need to resist that.

I understand that there is uncertainty about that—of course there is—but there is also a lot of other uncertainty. I have been rehearsing this point with my friend Mr Rennie during the course of the debate. Before Brexit, we had seven years of certainty about agricultural support and investment. At the moment, we have annual commitments only up to 2025. Mr Carson cannot tell me what stance the UK Government will take on the application of the UK Internal Market Act 2020. [Interruption.] I say to Mr Carson that I am addressing his points.

Mr Carson cannot tell me what the UK Government will do with the UK Internal Market Act 2020 in the design of the agricultural support regime, nor can he tell me what the UK Government will do with the Subsidy Control Act 2022. The cabinet secretary will have to wrestle with those uncertainties. I point out that both those pieces of legislation were resisted by this Parliament because we recognised them as being incursions into our powers to decide on an agricultural system that will suit Scotland.

I think that Mr Rennie summed that up. He should perhaps be drafted in to write the occasional sentence or two, because he came up with a really good point today that sums it all up for me. He said that farms need to survive, but we need to take the climate action and biodiversity action that are necessary. That is the $64 million question that we are wrestling with. The evidence that has been taken by the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee and the careful listening by the Scottish Government and its cabinet secretary will serve us well as we take the difficult steps to reconcile what might in some cases seem to be irreconcilable, in order that we achieve sustainable agriculture, which is what I want for my constituents in Perthshire North.

Does Edward Mountain not understand that the plea for stability, which the Government responded to positively, was made by the industry?

In the Government’s vision for agriculture, there is an explanation of the tiered support arrangement that is proposed and that has been consulted on. Does Rachael Hamilton support that or not?

What has the committee been doing? What has the Government been doing? They have been listening to those people for ages. Why do we not celebrate the fact that folk are getting on with it, rather than using it as a way of attacking the Government, which is the most pedestrian of parliamentary tactics?

Yes, I am right.

Will the member give way?

Will Mr Rennie give way?

I actually agreed with quite a bit of the analysis from Mike Rumbles that Mr Rennie talked about regarding the impact of Brexit. Had we not left the European Union, Scotland would have had access to seven years of certainty in agricultural programmes.

I know that Mr Rennie and I occupy different constitutional positions, but he must accept the fact that, after Brexit, there is not as much certainty from the UK Government about future funding flows as there was during our membership of the European Union.

In preparing for this debate, I looked with care at the Official Reports of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee’s evidence taking on its exercise in pre-legislative scrutiny. It takes a long time to read them, because the committee took extensive evidence. I compliment the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee on the exercise that it has gone through in gathering that information.

That evidence demonstrates a fundamental point that my friend and colleague Karen Adam made, which is that there is a diverse range of views on how to proceed on the matter. I think that the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee has done Parliament a service by mapping out the range of different and distinctive views that exists, so that we can resolve on a way forward. That range of evidence illustrates the scale of the challenge that faces the cabinet secretary, and it demonstrates that the careful work that the Scottish Government has undertaken for some time has been necessary in order for it to try to build a greater degree of consensus than would ordinarily be the case in such deliberations. Some strikingly different views exist on how to proceed, which Parliament and the Government will have to consider.

The Rural Affairs and Islands Committee has contributed meaningfully to the process, and the Government has responded to that by taking the necessary time and care to ensure that we have consensus. That has left us in a position in which there is broad consensus that we want to take an approach that ensures that we have confidence in our food supply and know that we have a sustainable agriculture sector, that adequate measures are being taken to tackle climate change and that the farming industry is involved and engaged—as much of it already is—in addressing biodiversity loss in our rural environment. Those are three absolutely fundamental priorities.

The exercise that the Government has gone through has got us to a strong position. I appreciate that people would like us to be further on, but I will come on to say why I think that that is a bit challenging. It has got us to a position in which we have the substance of a really strong agriculture bill for the Parliament to consider.

That has been added to by two fundamental commitments that the cabinet secretary has given to Parliament today. First, she has committed to there being a just transition. There has to be a transition—everybody accepts that. Some people would like the transition to be more acute than others would like, but everyone accepts that there has to be a transition. The fact that the cabinet secretary has committed to a just transition is a welcome assurance to people who might be concerned.

I will take a brief intervention from Mr Whittle.