Chamber and committees

I congratulate Kevin Stewart on bringing the motion to the chamber. On a personal note, I warmly echo his praise of the late Allan Macartney MEP.

I have doubtless told members before about how, in heady pre-Brexit days, I was once on a train between Luxembourg and Brussels. A man selling sandwiches was making friendly conversation as he made his way up the train. Although I could not follow a lot of what was being said, I could hear that he was speaking to his customers, as required, in fluent French, German, Dutch, English and Luxembourgish. My point is that around the world, multilingualism is normal whereas by contrast, monolingualism is unusual. Yet, in the UK, we still look at things the other way around.

Therefore, it is deeply disappointing to see my alma mater, the University of Aberdeen, taking an apparent step backwards in its commitment to language degrees. Following the widespread backlash against initial proposals, the university made a welcome commitment to developing new language courses, as well as continuing to provide additional and evening language classes, and joint honours language degrees. However, I am not sure how any of that mitigates against the loss of single honours courses.

Tha ionmhas an oilthigh 1.6 millean nòt a dhìth, ach, mar a bha oileanaich agus luchd-obrach ag ràdh, cha bhi molaidhean an oilthigh a’ dèanamh dad ach a’ Ghàidhlig a lagachadh air a’ champus. Cuideachd, cha bhi cothrom sam bith ann a-nis cànan sam bith aig ìre single honours a dhèanamh àite sam bith gu tuath air meadhan na h-Alba.

Following is the simultaneous interpretation:

The budget for the university is short of £1.6 million. Students and staff are saying that the recommendations from the university will do nothing for Gaelic except weaken its presence on the campus. There will also no longer be the opportunity for students to take a single honours language degree there.

The member continued in English.

The proposals run counter to the very idea of a university as a place where students come to realise, inter alia, that the world does not operate solely in English. As has been alluded to, since the founding of King’s college Aberdeen in 1495, when its working language was Latin, French has also been taught. Gaelic has been studied in some form since those very early days and, since the 19th century, the university has offered a wide variety of degree courses in classical and modern languages.

German language professors in Aberdeen were among the voices calling for peace on the brink of the first world war. Since then—o tempora, o mores—Latin and Greek have already retreated, as have single honours degree courses in Italian and Spanish.

Meanwhile, the one-plus-two model has ensured the much wider roll-out of languages in Scotland’s primary schools, although I acknowledge the point that the university makes about the falling numbers of pupils taking language qualifications in secondary schools. That certainly raises questions about what we do to encourage students to choose languages in the upper end of secondary and when moving on to university. However, it is unclear to me how abolishing single honours language degrees is likely to strengthen language courses in schools, given their popularity with those looking to become language teachers.

I realise that this is a pet subject for me. I try to encourage the wider use of languages in the Parliament, not least in my office. I hope that I am not about to overlook the skills of anyone in my staff but, between all of us in the office, we manage Gaelic, Scots, English, Irish, Norwegian, Danish, French, Spanish and Italian.

Universities are, of course, independent of Government, but I urge the University of Aberdeen to think again about what kind of university it wants to be and to listen to the concerns that are now being raised by its students, staff and graduates.

Very good—it is on the same thing.

On a point of order, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is only a couple of sentences, and members will be able to work it out from the context, but I would be very grateful if anyone wishes to tune in. [Laughter.]

Carol Mochan talks about some of the pressures on Scotland’s budget. Does she anticipate that an incoming UK Labour Government would continue to hold to its plans to stick to Tory spending priorities for the first two years?

I thank the member for giving way, and for the characteristically thoughtful tenor of his remarks.

The member points to the demographic crisis—let us use the word—that Scotland and other parts of northern Europe face. Does he also take the view that that must make us think about our policy on freedom of movement within Europe and from elsewhere?

Will Sandesh Gulhane give way?

Will the member give way?

To ask the Scottish Government whether, as part of its work to further the case for Scottish independence, any of its future publications on independence will cover any constitutional lessons that can be learned from structures used in Parliaments elsewhere that include unelected members. (S6O-02928)

Does the minister agree that, following Baroness Mone’s disastrous television interview last month, the lesson that no Parliament, if it wishes to be accountable in any way whatsoever to the electorate, should have an unelected house has once more clearly—if rather painfully—been made?

Happy new year, Presiding Officer.

I recognise the considerable work of the CEEAC Committee, which reported in October on the changing constitutional relationships in the UK. In its report, the committee concludes diplomatically that

“whereas constitutional change prior to EU-exit was implemented across the UK on a largely consensual basis this has not been the case after EU-exit.”

That goes to the heart of the matter. The kinds of changes that we have seen to the way that devolution works are not the product, as previous changes were, of some kind of conversation between the UK Government and its counterparts in Edinburgh and Cardiff, but are the work of a UK Government to which the previous political consensus about devolution does not now wholly extend.

It is as well to note that in the view of Professor Jim Gallagher, the former director general for devolution at the UK Cabinet Office, the UK constitution—in so far as there actually is one—has now been “stretched beyond breaking point” by Brexit.

One concrete example of all that, which other members have discussed, is the Sewel convention. From the re-establishment of this Parliament in 1999, right up until the Brexit referendum, the convention was engaged more than 140 times. Only once in that period did the UK Parliament even attempt to legislate in a devolved area without Scotland’s consent. The Sewel convention is now, however, clearly history: Westminster now regularly seeks to make law in devolved areas, regardless of what Scotland’s elected Parliament might think.

When that is taken together with other developments, we see that there is now a clear trend: we now see the UK Government spending, in devolved areas, public money that would, in the past, have unquestioningly been left to this Parliament to allocate. The United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and the Subsidy Control Act 2020 place effective restrictions on Holyrood’s agency to do things differently—a restriction that has, apparently, been endorsed today by Alexander Stewart—and we have seen a section 35 order made to prevent royal assent being given to a Scottish act.

Then, we have the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, which—to be fair—eventually had its so-called automatic sunset clause abandoned when the UK Government finally realised that it was about to unpick so much of the UK and Scots statute books that it would threaten a legislative meltdown.

It is not easy to avoid the impression that, even after 25 years, elements of the Westminster machine continue not to fully understand devolution. Interestingly, the CEEAC Committee report points out that the lack of clear structures for governance of England contributes somewhat to that on-going confusion.

Members should have seen the warning signs some time ago, when it became clear that Westminster was regularly unclear about whether it was speaking as the English Parliament or the UK Parliament. An early example was when the then Speaker of the House of Commons, John Smith, said, on receipt from us of the “Articles of Union” in 1707, that

“we have catch’d Scotland and will bind her fast”.

I quote that remark because it betrays a view that in some quarters has not been entirely consigned to history, and which certainly has an impact on the way in which the rules of devolution shift mid-game in our own day. Indeed, Professor Rawlings told the committee:

“there was profound ambivalence on the part of the UK Government as to the extent to which the other Administrations had a legitimate part to play in the governance of the UK. Without that shared understanding of what the roles of the various Administrations could be, productive intergovernmental relations were not likely.”—[Official Report, Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, 9 March 2023; c 20.]

Anyone might have hoped that there would be—as there was in the committee, on the report—political consensus in the chamber that the pressures on this Parliament from Westminster since Brexit do not represent good government, regardless of what our individual differing constitutional politics might be. Indeed, there was a time when even the Tory party promoted people who, although they were politically unionist, would stand up for Scotland’s distinctive institutions and her right to pursue policy differently. Sir Walter Scott and John Buchan are conspicuous examples of that tradition, although I concede that they are by no means the most recent.

These days, however, the refrain from the Tories in here, with a number of honourable exceptions, is to ask why Scotland should ever do anything differently from England—a question that is, tellingly, never posed the other way around. Meanwhile, in the UK Government, we have a Secretary of State for Scotland whose view of this Parliament is, I am afraid, perhaps more dismissive than that of any of his predecessors in that office since the first Earl of Seafield.

Constitutional reform is supposed to be about first principles, but that is not how constitutional change works in the UK. Layer upon layer of new and byzantine qualifications to devolution have been laid on one another in an effort to square the Brexit circle.

This Parliament and the Senedd in Wales are not even considerations in the UK Government’s mind in any of this. It is as well that we all just say that.