Chamber and committees

When we look at the specific questions that Douglas Ross has put to me on the Ferguson’s issue, it is abundantly clear why a statement by me to Parliament was unnecessary, because he had nothing of any substance whatsoever to put to me.

I have been a member of the Parliament for a long time. The assessment has often been made that, when a political leader changes the topic of their question during First Minister’s questions, that is an indication that they are in trouble. That is exactly where Douglas Ross is.

Mr Ross knows full well—[Interruption.]

First, I note that I am answering questions today because the First Minister is still unwell with Covid. For many obvious reasons, I wish her a very speedy recovery. [Applause.]

I do not think that Douglas Ross is in the strongest position to question my engagement with the Parliament on key issues, because I gave a statement earlier this week, I answered questions last week and I handled a bill the week before. Unlike some Tory MSPs, you will not find me skiving off to the football for a few days when the Parliament is sitting. [Interruption.]

This Government is providing practical help to people with the cost of living. For example, the Scottish Government has doubled the Scottish child payment to £20 per week. It will go up to £25 per week. None of that support is available in any other part of the United Kingdom, including in Labour-run Wales.

The Scottish Government has assisted individuals with council tax support. [Interruption.]

No, I do not agree with that point. Obviously, a lot of hard work is going on to ensure that the census is completed. In due course, the final returns will be disclosed by National Records of Scotland, which has to undertake some analysis. Arising from that, Angus Robertson, the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, will update the Parliament on the progress of the census and the strength of the information that is available for us to use in the future development of public policy in Scotland.

As a consequence of the partnership that was agreed between the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Government, young people under the age of 22, rightly, travel free. Because of that agreement, there was an opportunity for other parts of the country to go further in relation to that type of collaboration, and I am only sorry that, in the city of Edinburgh, the Labour Party’s collaboration with the Conservative Party has thwarted further ambitious proposals being brought forward.

We know that all of these grubby deals at a local level have been approved by Jackie Baillie—frankly, that explains a lot about that particular agreement. However, as I said, I very much regret that there was not the opportunity to take forward some of these proposals and to advance the interests of people in Scotland by the collaboration that we have seen in this Parliament.

I agree with Mr Fairlie on that point. The food and drink industry is currently facing numerous significant and challenging impacts as a result of the UK Government’s mishandling of Brexit at the time of a pandemic. Those issues are being added to by the challenges that come from the cost of living crisis and the war in Ukraine. All those issues—the cost of living, the implications of Brexit, the barriers to trade and the obstacles to the free movement of individuals—can be addressed by independence. That is why Mr Fairlie is absolutely right to put that point to Parliament.

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.