Chamber and committees

I beg your pardon, Presiding Officer. I do not disagree with the member’s assessment of some of the banners that he is talking about. However, in the interests of completeness, he will be aware that many of us on this side of that particular debate experience bigotry and intimidation from people of an extreme view on the other side.

Will the member accept an intervention?

The member probably knows what I am going to ask. Is the Labour Party in favour of rejoining the European Union?

Governments sometimes undertake tasks of breathtaking byzantine complexity, and sometimes they do something of such pointless stupidity that few in any party can truly fathom what they have done. Rarely, however, does a Government manage to pull off the two feats simultaneously. The UK Government is, however, working hard to do the political impossible in just that way, in the form of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

I will not rehearse how it was that Scotland did not vote for Brexit and so does not deserve the fallout from it—some things are self-evident. The relevant point today is that even people who voted for Brexit could not in their wildest imaginings have thought they were voting for the REUL bill, which, in tandem with the UK Government’s blatantly anti-trade union legislation, has the potential to destroy decades of legislative progress in protecting workers’ health, safety and wellbeing.

After all, the public was assured by the UK Government and countless project leave advocates, at the time of the Brexit vote and in its aftermath, that workers’ rights would in fact be strengthened outside the EU. Some of them may even have believed what they said.

At least as far as I can understand their reasoning, Brexiteers wanted Parliament—not this Parliament, obviously; the other one—to “take back control” from Brussels. They believed that countless opportunities awaited us once freedom from the EU had been achieved.

I thought, along with most others, that the notion of taking back control was supposed to be about giving Westminster the right to make future laws unilaterally. In other words, if the UK discovered, post-Brexit, that there were things wrong with our laws, the UK Parliament would fix them. Nobody was told that Brexit might also be about scrapping 47 years’ worth of existing UK law and hoping for the best. However, rather incredibly, that is exactly what the UK Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill now seeks to do. It will repeal virtually every piece of UK legislation known to have any European association that was passed during the whole period during which the UK was an EU member state.

This cleansing of the legislative Augean stables will, admittedly, not be done in the 24 hours that were given to Hercules, but the proposed timescale is not far off that in its ambition. We are invited to believe that, within the next 10 months, the UK will have sunsetted—which is to say, scrapped by default—some 2,400 extant UK laws for no reason other than that they have their origins in Britain’s former membership of the EU. Actually, it might be 4,000 laws—nobody really knows.

I apologise for labouring the point, but, just to be clear, we are not just talking about the UK Government abolishing laws that it does not like or might have good reason for not liking. We are talking about its abolishing all those thousands of laws and then trying at some later date to work out what to put in their place. The expert evidence that the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee has taken has been universally scathing about both how and why it is being done.

Hard-fought workers’ rights and protections are among some of the thousands of laws that the UK Government has in its sights for the post-Brexit bonfire before the end of this calendar year, and, because employment law remains reserved, the Scottish Government cannot move to ensure the continuity of rights and protections for workers directly through legislation.

Of course, there are—other members have alluded to this—things that the Scottish Government can do in the meantime to try to pick up some of the pieces. We can continue promoting fair work, including by paying the real living wage, encouraging employers to adopt flexible working policies and exploring the possibility of introducing a universal basic income to support workers and their families. The Scottish Government should use every available lever, through public spending and policy agenda, to raise the bar on employment standards.

However, until employment law, business law and other areas are devolved to this Parliament—a position to which all parties who care about such issues should sign up—Scotland is at the mercy of pieces of unhinged UK legislation such as the one that is being discussed today. That is without going into the impact of acute labour shortages that affect almost every sector from agriculture to social care, childcare and the national health service—certainly in my constituency—all of which have been exacerbated by the UK Government’s short-sighted fixation with reducing migration at all costs. It is harder and more expensive for businesses to export goods and services to and from the EU and to employ EU nationals in their workforce. The UK Government continues to refuse to engage with the Scottish Government on any viable solutions to those problems, which are of its own making.

Scotland’s democracy, economy, environment and consumer and workers’ rights all continue to be threatened by the UK Government’s ill-thought-out—if they have been thought out at all—plans in the piece of legislation that we discuss. Like a great many people, my most immediate hope in all this is to discover that Westminster has heeded this Parliament’s objections to the bill or, simply, to find out that the UK Government merely tabled it in jest.

That is a very interesting point, which I am sure that we will pursue with the local authorities when they come to see us.

You raised another point that I am keen to explore further. People who are homeless are given priority for social housing. You said that there is a difficulty in acquiring homelessness status. People also acquire social housing, either from a council or from a housing association, by getting points. They can get points because they have a disability, or a history of homelessness, or for all sorts of reasons. I do not know whether you can answer this. Are you aware of whether a person gets points or recognition because of their special status as a displaced person?

We have rightly focused on the issues that you raise about the services and opportunities that are here for displaced people from Ukraine, but it is also important that we continually remind people in Scotland why people are displaced and why people are here, so that people in Scotland understand that. Therefore, I will give you the opportunity to talk about what is happening in Ukraine now, so that people understand the situation and so that we do not allow this to leave our news screens or miss an opportunity to explain to people what is going on. Are you able to give us an update on the position in Ukraine?

You have answered my question. My next question is, what are the best opportunities for intervening to provide that information so that people are not left without it?

Thank you, consul.

You ask very important and difficult questions, consul, but it is good that we hear them and that you are so clear and honest about them.

Some of the issues that you have raised are for local authorities, from whom we will hear soon. However, I think that, on some of the other issues—if the convener would be willing to allow this—the committee should hear from the UK Government or a UK Government agency at some point. For instance, consul, you mentioned the recognition of qualifications, which, as I understand it, is one of the very few areas of education in Scotland for which the UK Government has responsibility, so I think that there are other people from whom we should hear in the future, with the convener’s permission.

The issue that I am most interested in is that of displaced families who are trying to get a house and who find that, although they have money for rent, they do not have the right paperwork and need someone to act as a guarantor. You suggested that a local authority might do that. Can you say more about that? How do people get trapped in that situation?

The cabinet secretary mentioned the commitment to examine the case for fixed links on the Sound of Barra and the Sound of Harris. Aside from the obvious benefits, there is another incentive, given the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s reclassification of those waters and the potential implications for the type of replacement vessels that will eventually be required. Can the cabinet secretary give an update on that aspect of the issue?