Chamber and committees

Mr Rennie talks about the relationship between the Governments. I have put on record today, as dispassionately as I possibly can, the comments of the secretary of state, who told the House of Commons in October that he was ready to

“engage constructively with the Scottish Government to ensure relevant issues that may arise are addressed at the earliest possible stage.”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 20 October 2021; Vol 701, c 48WS.]

In my answer to Joe FitzPatrick, I set out two propositions that I put to the secretary of state, both of which were rejected. They were attempts by me to ensure that the will of the Parliament was protected. The secretary of state has essentially vetoed that, and I regret that very much.

I will have to bring a reconsideration proposition to Parliament that will restrict what Parliament passed in the spring of 2021. I regret that. However, I certainly did not think that it was in my gift to do that without exhausting the dialogue with the Secretary of State for Scotland. He has not been interested in engaging in that dialogue. I hope that the secretary of state and the office of the Advocate General will engage with us constructively in the advice that is required to ensure that the bills are compliant in the next period. I will update Parliament on that.

Mr Rennie says that there was nothing new in my statement, but I set out to Parliament the legislative changes that I will make, and it is the first time that I have done that. I did not want to do that earlier because I did not want to give up on the possibility of the Secretary of State for Scotland saying, “With these changes, you can keep your bill the way it is.” That is the explanation.

It is obvious that there has to be adequate consultation in Parliament, and we will engage with the parliamentary authorities to do all that and to minimise the impact of the changes on the bill.

I agree whole-heartedly with the statements that Ruth Maguire makes and that it is important to ensure that, in two respects, we live up to the very high ambition that she sets out. First, the Parliament should be prepared to change legislation when we do not believe that it lives up to those aspirations—for example, if there are provisions in the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 that we do not believe are UNCRC compliant, we can legislate to change it and should be prepared to do so. Secondly, the way in which we exercise our wider policy responsibilities—I am thinking particularly about the work on getting it right for every child—is fundamental to ensuring that the aspirations that Ruth Maguire sets out are lived up to. I give that commitment to Parliament.

The whole focus of the UNCRC incorporation bill is to proactively establish an approach in public authorities and public bodies in Scotland that is about protecting the rights of children. It is vital that such a culture is created as a consequence of the legislation, and the obligations that the bill places on public bodies are exactly the type of obligations that will enable the aspirations that Clare Adamson put to me to be fulfilled as a consequence of the legislation.

I assure Clare Adamson that much of the preparatory work has already been undertaken, but we will be able to reinforce that with the passing of the bill. There will, of course, be legal remedies available to a range of different people around the country should they feel that those rights are not fully enacted in existing legislation and not protected by the UNCRC bill.

I am grateful to Miles Briggs for his points. The idea that the United Kingdom Government and the Office of the Advocate General for Scotland “reached out” is an interesting observation on my statement. I made it clear that there was complete inflexibility from the United Kingdom Government on those questions, and no willingness to use the existing Scotland Act orders arrangements in order to expedite those issues.

I thought that it was reasonable for me to approach the United Kingdom Government, given that the Parliament had unanimously passed the legislation. I did not think that it was in my gift, essentially, to undermine the legislation that the Parliament had passed. I therefore sought an understanding from the UK Government, to get it to a position of respecting the will of this Parliament, and it has refused to do so. If, as Miles Briggs describes it, the conduct of the UK Government over the past few months has been a reaching out, I would hate to see what outright hostility looks like.

On the question of the involvement of the Parliament, this is the first bill that will have had to go through a reconsideration stage, so we are in new territory. It is not in the gift of the Government to specify to the Parliament what a reconsideration stage looks like, so we will engage with the parliamentary authorities, through the Parliamentary Bureau and the committees, to make sure that we undertake that scrutiny as effectively as we can. Obviously, I want to move quickly, but I have to be mindful of the requirements of parliamentary scrutiny, so those will be the parameters that we work within.

On the point about the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill and the national care service, Parliament has passed the bill and any future legislation that the Government brings forward must be compatible with that.

Essentially, I put two propositions to the United Kingdom Government: that the devolution settlement could be altered to offer the Scottish Parliament additional routes to increase the effectiveness of incorporation and that the standard Scotland Act 1998 orders could be used to allow us to bring UK acts in devolved areas within the scope of the bill. Both propositions were ruled out, and we will now proceed to the reconsideration stage. I suspect that the committee that Mr FitzPatrick now convenes may well be involved in that, but that will, of course, be a matter for us to discuss with the parliamentary authorities. I look forward to engaging with the relevant committees on that question.

I know that Meghan Gallacher was not a member of the Scottish Parliament when that bill was passed, but her Conservative colleagues—every single one of them—voted in favour of it. It looks as though Conservative Party members are trying to suggest that they did things only because I told them that they were the right things to do. I generally do not think that I command such influence. However, if that is now the scope of my influence over the Conservative Party, the prospects for it are improving no end from the doldrums that it was in.

Members of the Scottish Parliament looked at that bill and it was thoroughly scrutinised by all of them. As I said in answer to Mr Marra’s question, Parliament wanted to have the most ambitious set of provisions in place to protect children and young people. The Conservative Party is now running away from a commitment that it made only a little while ago, which is a terrible indictment of the Conservative Party.

I hope that that is the case. When Parliament considered the bills, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill—I was more closely involved with that than with the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill—we had extensive evidence taking throughout the full parliamentary process. Indeed, Mr MacGregor may have been on the committee that scrutinised the bill.

It was very clear that Parliament wanted to take the maximal position, and I was enthusiastic about that. That was the proposition that I put to Parliament, and Parliament appeared to be very supportive of that objective. Therefore, legislating to the maximum extent possible is a critical part of the contents of the bill. I want to ensure that, at the reconsideration stage, we maintain as much of that protection as we possibly can while satisfying the legislative competence requirements placed on us by the conclusions in the Supreme Court judgment.

I am not doing that; I am offering Parliament a resolution to an issue and a difficulty that has arisen out of Parliament’s unanimous support for a bill. It is not a bill that just my colleagues voted for; every member voted for it. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to undermine the unanimous will of Parliament as expressed by the legislation that we have put in place.

We will bring forward the reconsideration stage. Mr Balfour says that it should all be done this afternoon, but if I said that it was all going to be done this afternoon, Stephen Kerr would be on his feet saying that there was not enough time for us to do it all, that we were railroading Parliament and all the rest of it. We will take the necessary time to discuss these issues with the parliamentary authorities and will lodge the necessary amendments.

I will oppose it of my own free will.

I agree on the final part of Mr Hoy’s question, that hospital visiting, when it is clinically safe to do so, is absolutely essential.

However, I rather parted company with Mr Hoy at the start of his question because it suggested that that is not the approach that we should take. Everything that the Government is doing around hospital visiting is founded on clinical analysis. We are all familiar with nosocomial transmission of Covid, so we must be careful to ensure that we are taking the right clinically advised steps on hospital visiting so that we can protect the population that is in hospital and people who are visiting hospital for legitimate purposes. Yes—we will take an approach that is driven by clinical analysis and clinical advice because we must make sure that it is safe for individuals to visit in the current context.