Chamber and committees

The minister said something that is worth mentioning again: only one of many bids from the Highlands and Islands was successful in this round of UK Government levelling up funding. My constituency previously—and rightly—benefited enormously from EU structural funding. Does the minister believe that the UK Government’s watered-down replacement for EU funding is equitable and fit for purpose, or does he believe that it again demonstrates how far removed the UK Government is from the needs of rural and island communities?

My question is also about housing. Mr Sharp mentioned the housing crisis, and there are certainly pressures there. I realise that planning decisions do not immediately deal with the here and now, but I am keen to hear from any of you how addressing housing problems for displaced people fits into your planning policy or approach.

You will be aware that swathes of suburban Scotland have large private developers building houses that are beyond the reach of anyone who lives within 50 miles of them or has not sold a house in a large city somewhere else. What is being done to factor the needs of displaced people into planning decisions that are made around such issues?

Thank you, convener—it has mostly been covered, but I have one question for the witnesses.

You mentioned the background and home checks that local authorities are doing. How varied is the situation in different local authority areas across the country? Anecdotally, we have heard that some local authorities, possibly for good reasons, have taken some time to do that work. I appreciate that they are not doing it on their own, as they have to co-operate with other agencies.

Thank you. As you said, convener, others have covered that area, so I will come in on other subjects later on.

I appreciate and agree with the points that Stephen Kerr has made about the importance of defending democracy and its being our birthright. However, can he understand—I ask this honestly—the reaction that there is likely to be from people who do not have a passport or a driving licence and who turn up at the next UK general election only to be told that they do not enjoy such a birthright?

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 take an intervention?

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.