Seòmar agus comataidhean

I was going to ask you to be spontaneous and take some interventions—

I beg your pardon. I was going to ask the member to be spontaneous and take some interventions so that we could have a lively debate, rather than having him just heckle us and rant at us.

Had I known that, I would not have let him in. He has taken 45 seconds of my day.

Whatever happened to democracy? With only six Tories at Westminster, Alister Jack being one of them, we are having Tory policies and Tory funding directed against the democratic wishes of the Scottish people.

There is a lesson for all who defend democracy in this Parliament. The charge that is being led and laid at the feet of the Tories is that they will use every device they can to undermine what you, the Scottish people, have voted for, and they will use your money to do it. What an insult. It is beyond democratic and it reveals the vulnerability of devolution. Only independence guarantees that you will get the Governments, the policies and the priorities that you vote for. That might even—heaven forfend—be a Tory Government, but if you had voted for it, you would have to live with it. That is democracy for Scotland.

Of course, because I believe in spontaneous debate.

Will the member give way?

I am struggling with technology again—hang on a second. I beg your pardon.

I was there on 13 May 1999, at the inaugural sitting of the recalled Scottish Parliament, and I can quote the Presiding Officer, which I think will entertain you. He said:

“One of the worst habits of the House of Commons in the past decade has been the bogus use of points of order. I propose to be very strict; points of argument are not points of order. Points of order are for the occupant of the chair; if we degenerate into the habit of using them as points of argument, we shall develop some of the worst habits of a place that some of us have been glad to leave.”—[Official Report, 13 May 1999; c 16.]

I understand that Mr Kerr, who was as entertaining as usual, has just such plans to use the bad habits that he brought here with him.

I thought I would pop that quote into the debate to remind members, most of whom were not here in 1999, that bad habits can develop to epidemic proportions. We also thought then—naively—that, at the very least, devolution was secure, if not “a process”. In my 24 years’ experience here, I have never known a time when devolution and this Parliament’s democratic powers were under such overt attack.

In those early days, the Lib-Lab coalition proceeded hand-in-hand with Labour at Westminster. That was before the UK banking collapse of 2008, so there was ease of policy collaboration and funding between Westminster and the then Executive.

Indeed, while I support the constructive amendment referred to by Labour, I suspect that that would always be on Westminster’s terms—a kind of “take it or leave it” deal.

It was apparent in 1999 that Labour, in particular, but the unionists in general thought that it would always be the case that they would be in charge and that, even if the SNP did well, it would never be in power. The 2007 election changed all of that, and there has been a story ever since of tensions between devolved and reserved, with Westminster holding the purse strings. Of course, power devolved is power retained—a statement that is attributed to the late Tory MP Enoch Powell. That is a truism, and we are now learning that bitter lesson daily.

By the way, I ask Willie Rennie why, if the Liberals and, indeed, Labour are so opposed to the House of Lords, so many failed Labour and Liberal MPs and MSPs are happily sitting there.

Devolution statutes have increased our powers. The devolution of planning under the Scotland Act 1998 was, of course, a mega-oversight on the part of Westminster. The SNP Government can block—for the time being—the erection of nuclear power stations, although not the licensing of oil and gas developments at sea.

However, the Conservatives have never been happy with any of that. If they cannot exercise power through the ballot box, they have to find alternatives, so we have no section 30 order, thank you very much, even if an overall majority of MSPs stand on and for an independence referendum.

Once again, I turn to the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020—the orphaned child of the European Union and its internal markets act. It has proved an excellent unionist tool for prising open devolution. It has blocked the deposit return scheme and it can block the banning of the sale of glue traps, snares and shock collars. In fact, its blocking powers are wide ranging. If someone sells goods or provides services across the UK, the UK internal market act ensures that they can continue to do so. The leave of the UK is required if we wish to vary something. Would minimum unit pricing of alcohol have passed here if we had had the internal market act? I doubt it.

However, I am getting ahead of myself. Scotland voted 62 per cent remain in the 2016 EU referendum, yet the referendum’s consequences go beyond the all-invasive, indeed pernicious, internal markets act. Money that flowed from the EU to the Scottish Government for devolved projects is now filtered through the Westminster Conservative Government, which determines its destination. Under cover of “levelling up”, devolution is bypassed and areas that are favoured by the Tories, such as Dumfries, strangely find themselves being recipients, with projects being union badged and so on. You see, if you can’t beat them at the ballot box, try buying votes or, as Donald Cameron would say, investing directly—

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to some members of the judiciary expressing opposition to juryless rape trials. (S6F-02405)

I, too, have read the submission from the senators, both those in favour and those against. I am not quoting, but I will paraphrase it. The evidential difficulty that most alleged victims and the accused were in a relationship, sometimes even after the alleged crime, may be an influence on the low conviction rate, no matter what we do. The right to a fair trial under the European convention on human rights, as far as that may affect the accused, is embedded in the Scotland Act 1998.

Crucially, the Government is, I understand, to assess the efficacy of the pilot. For me, that trespasses on the principle of the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary, which is an extremely serious issue. Will the First Minister confirm that there will be robust scrutiny of the proposal and that his Government has an open mind and is reflecting on those concerns, which are indeed my concerns?

It is so good to hear a Conservative wanting to give people decent pay. I wish that the Conservatives would devolve employment law to Scotland so that we could work together.

There is a bit of both, but there is no doubt that some people left and could not return. Covid exacerbated that. People from Poland who used to work in hospitality in the Parliament have left and not come back. Brexit has had a big impact on people who were skilled in hospitality.

I go back to the big impact on commercial drivers. That is easing off a little, but not enough.

I will make my final point on immigration. One of my sons has gone the other way—he has just migrated to Canada. He is welcome there, but we have lost a family. The good thing about migrants coming here is that they are generally young—they are not my age—and, when they come here, they have a family. I do not think that we have to rely on that, but they help the demographics as well as contributing to the economy.

Migration is a two-way thing. We do not just receive—we lose at the same time. Brexit has had a substantial impact on the mobility of employment in this country, and it has in particular hit the sectors that I referred to. That has not yet been sorted.

I thank the Deputy Presiding Officer for her tolerance and I thank Mr Whittle for his interesting intervention.

I was not going to speak in the debate, but I am here, so I will. I say to Brian Whittle that my understanding is that the rural visa pilot scheme is tailored—it addresses community, employer and third sector needs—because one size does not fit all across Scotland.

I agree with Ariane Burgess that there is exploitation of some migrant workers. Without spilling the beans, I will say that I am working on something in my constituency, where I know that people are crowded in a place where their employer is charging them at least rent, if not for their board, so they are really trapped. They might not think that they are but, from our perspective, they are.

With the Deputy Presiding Officer’s leave, I will move beyond the seasonal to the all-year-round impact of Brexit in my constituency on three sectors—the care sector, hospitality and commercial driving by people such as bus drivers and lorry drivers.

There is no doubt that Brexit has had a substantial impact on the care sector in the Borders. People have left, never to return. In rural areas—I am speaking generally; I cannot say that this applies all the time—people are welcomed and become part of the community. In hospitality, that is even more the case. Hotels that I know well have cut their services because they do not have enough people to work there. The people who left were skilled, but their roles are not on the shortage-of-skills list.

The same thing happened with bus services across the Borders. Firms did not have enough drivers, so people lost services and timetables went all askew. [Interruption.] Does Mr Whittle want to intervene? I can tell that he is an athlete, because it is almost as if he is at the starting blocks—he has half raised himself.